Evidence of Fran's special skill

Sixteen years ago, we moved house to Warwickshire after a quarter-century spent in South West London because, in South West London, you couldn’t catnap on a bus without people noticing whereas in Warwickshire the local buses had high-backed seats. This meant you could nap in private without anyone taking a video and posting it to TikTok with the caption, ‘Look at this old biddy with her mouth hanging like the Gardens of Babylon.’

There were other reasons we made the big move - jobs, family, health, fields, birdsong, trees, stars visible in the night sky, fewer jumbo jets skimming our roof - but, frankly, for me, it was all about the buses. As a non-driver, I travel on them all the time and, should I need to be on a bus in the afternoons, that’s when I fit in my catnap.

I’ve been blessed from on high with a preternatural catnapping gift. I appreciate this particularly as I missed out when other gifts were distributed such as elegance, crafting with wool and knowing when to shut up.

Here’s a photo of me in action in inaction.

I know I’m admired for my catnapping abilities by many friends and family members who, if they snooze of an afternoon, wake feeling as though they’ve been ploughed into by a wall and don’t recover until bedtime at which point they are fizzing until 3am.

I don’t even have to fall asleep to have cat-napped. If I close my eyes for 10 minutes on a bus ride and play ‘Guess Which Bus Stop We’re At’ in my head, I slip into a state of semi-consciousness, arriving at the destination like a different woman by which I mean ‘a different version of myself’, not ‘like Jennifer Lopez’, because catnapping’s helpful but not bloody miraculous.

If I’m at home, and I feel that post-lunch droop in energy which means a catnap is essential before normal activities can recommence, I select a 15-minute radio programme on my phone, then listen to about 1.5 minutes of it before I’m snoozing. Ten or so minutes later, I wake refreshed, just in time to be thanked for listening to the programme.

Playing it back later, I can identify the exact point at which I stopped listening and pick it up again from there.

My son once made me an entire CD called ‘BBC Radio Sleep’, convinced that the only reason I ever listened to the radio was to anaesthetise myself. He recorded a special selection of spoof plays in which nothing happens, documentaries about tedious issues and interminable passages of futile dialogue between two farmers in ‘The Archers’.

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the entire collection of pieces. Do I need to explain why?

More recently, though, things have changed for me regarding catnapping.

Trigger warning: tragic events.

The local bus company withdrew the buses with the high-backed seats and replaced them with buses like those in South West London.

My precious fleet of high-back-seated buses was sent elsewhere in the UK and, indeed, on our most recent holiday in Wales, we saw some of them, their Welsh passengers contentedly snoozing against the seats, privacy assured. They were sleeping so peacefully, in fact, that they didn’t see me shaking my fist at them and throwing eggs at the windows.

Inside Fran’s Diary

On Saturday 21 September I’m compere for a couple of author discussions at the South Warwickshire Literary Festival to be held right here in Leamington Spa where I live. Come and join us!

On Saturday 5 October from 10.30-12, I’m taking part in Birmingham Literature Festival, appearing as a ‘writer in conversation’ at an event for local writers at any stage of their careers. Here’s the Festival programme and there are other events happening at the same time as mine if we’ve recently fought and you’re trying to avoid me.

In November, I’ll be at Alcester Library in Warwickshire talking about ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’. It’s a free event but book here if you can come!

On Saturday 14 December, I’ll be at this volunteer-run beautiful library called the Earlsdon Carnegie Community Library in Birmingham to talk about my writing. More details to come but expect bundles of my books wrapped cack-handedly in green and red ribbon.

In the meantime, I’ll be snoozing between 2pm and 2.10pm each day so don’t call.