A is for...

Talking of sleep, I have been waking up before dawn recently, and finding it difficult to go back to it.  So I tried a little experiment a few nights ago, along the lines of 'counting sheep'.

The task I set myself to begin with was to name one town in Britain for every letter of the alphabet -  A: Aberdeen,  B: Bristol, etc.  It only worked when I got to J, as the only town I could think of in Britain which begins with that letter was Jarrow, and I fell asleep trying to think of others.  The next day, I asked friends if they could think of any, and after a long pause, one of them said that he believed there was a town in Scotland called Jedburgh, but I had never heard of it.  He pronounced it 'Jedberg', but I'm sure that if it does exist, it would be pronounced in the same way that everyone except Americans say 'Edinburgh'.

The next night when I woke up, I used the alphabet to name fruit and vegetables, which was a little more difficult.  It all goes fine at the beginning and end (Apples, Zucchini) but all falls apart somewhere around 'G'.  I think that ancient man was very lazy when naming things, settling for the for the beginning of the alphabet with almost everything on the surface of the earth - or at least this part of the surface.

Then last night, I played the same game, but this time I found sexual slang words, or pet names for body-parts - anything that a schoolboy would find amusing - and my faith in human ingenuity was restored.  Two or three dirty words for every letter of the alphabet came effortlessly tripping off my tongue, and I kept myself awake through quietly laughing in the dark.  I eventually went back to sleep with a smile on my face.

Try it - it works, and you would be amazed at your own secret vocabulary.  I also guarantee that you will not quickly arrive at 'G' without laughing out loud.