An hour
before eleven is worth two after seven
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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Charlotte Brontё said, ‘A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow’.
How true that is. A restless pillow leads to tangled sheets and anxious counting of the hours. ‘I’ve got to get up in five hours . . . three hours . . . one hour . . .’ and as the time to rise approaches, suddenly sleep arrives. The day that follows is one of dull headaches and listlessness and a determination to go earlier to one’s rest.
‘I’m tired’ doesn’t really express the feeling of utter weariness, the brain-numbed exhaustion of body and spirit, but there are other expressions that seek to illuminate that unhappy condition.
‘I’m shattered’ comes close. It illustrates the fragmenting of resolve and energy but even better is, ‘I’m knackered’, with its undertones of destruction.
The knackerman is a person who removes and disposes of dead or dying animals from farms or roads. The knacker’s yard is a slaughterhouse for horses and other animals not destined for the human meat market, but is correctly called a knackery. The carcasses are rendered into fats, tallow (yellow grease), glue, gelatin, bone meal, bone char (charred bones, which used to be used in the production of refined sugar and in water purification), sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride, used as a food additive, E510), soap, bleach and animal feed. The hides of the animals might be used for leather production.
Slaughterhouses or abattoirs are premises designated for killing and butchering animals intended for human consumption.
‘Ready for the knacker’s yard’ describes something which has outlived its usefulness. From mediaeval times being a knacker man was thought a squalid occupation and knacker men were often used by the courts of justice as public executioners.
Knackers is also vulgar slang for male gonads, though it may derive from nakers, which were small mediaeval drums suspended in pairs from a belt round the waist.
So, ‘I’m knackered’ carries a heavy meaning. The only cure is a good night’s sleep, or, since exhaustion is cumulative, several good nights’ sleep, starting before midnight, preferably before eleven.
Night,
night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite.
I remember the days when I would fall asleep at 10.30 and wake at 4 or 4.30 in order to be at work on time to open the store at 6am. Physical tiredness is often the key to sleeping well, mental exhaustion is a whole different matter that I'm not entirely familiar with. It does seem that people working hard mentally at desks and computers all day just don't sleep as well as forebears who worked hard physically out in the fields and in the home without the push-button conveniences we now have. So who was better off?
ReplyDeleteI suppose most of us are materially better off, but mentally often less so. A good balance of physical and mental exercise is what we need.
DeleteYour blog post was rather timely today Janice as I am sleeping so appallingly badly lately & do feel rather "knackered" each & every day.
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of the sleeping red panda.
I don't suppose the ongoing tension between the intruder and the occupants is helping, you to relax, Julie. Lavender spray on the pillow is meant to help, though when my daughter tried it on me - in clouds! - it just gave me a headache.
DeleteYou noted that in mediaeval times being a knacker man was thought a squalid occupation. So I am not the slightest bit surprised that knacker men could be simply transferred from brutally killing animals to brutally killing human criminals. But I assume that no-one in their right mind voluntarily chose knackering as a career.
ReplyDeleteNo, not a chosen occupation, but a necessary one.
DeleteHi Janice - I'm loving your posts with their informative origins ... and yes with this heat that hour before eleven is not enough - cheers Hilary
ReplyDeleteThere don't seem to be any restful hours when it's humid, Hilary. x
DeleteI just had my breakfast when I read your description of the knacker yard, the yellow grease fitted well with my Müsli. But I couldn't understand what a slaughterhouse has to do with my sleep ? I googled and now I am more wiser ! I go to bed at 10 (when Rick was still alive he went to bed and I went to bed on different hours or the same, we had no rules) Now I am forced to go to bed at 10 because of Rosie who meows until I go ! She is a dictator. But when I fall asleep is another story. First I have to read, sometimes I fall asleep with my tablet in my hand. On other nights I don't fall asleep, so I get up (in summer) sit on my terrace and look at the stars or animals which cross the garden ! And if nothing works I take a sleeping pill. For the moment I sleep with a lot of interruptions, but I fall asleep again rather quickly. Rosie doesn't sleep anymore with me, she stays until I switch off the light and then she withdraws in her basket ! Therefore I suppose that I am sleeping like a windmill.
ReplyDeleteYour nights sound like mine. I quite like falling asleep when I'm reading, apart from the pain of my glasses digging into my nose.
ReplyDeleteI wonder about the expression - I’m dead beat. Where did that come from….does it mean the same as the one you chose today?
ReplyDeleteYes, it means exhausted.
Deletebing says:
The term “dead beat” was first used colloquially as an adjectival expression, “completely beaten, so exhausted as to be incapable of further exertion” in 1821. The noun “deadbeat” meaning “worthless sponging idler” was first used in 1863. It is believed that the term originated in the United States.
I've wondered about the noun knackers and why male testes are called that. The explanation you came up with is as good as any. The word connection to abattoirs sits uncomfortably with me.
ReplyDeleteI think most men feel uncomfortable about that, Andrew.
ReplyDeleteMy maternal grandmother would spend the weekend with us about once a month. My mother would do her extra laundry then and Grandmother taught me to crochet. 1960's. And she and I shared a bed. She always always said the rhyme on Sleep Tight, don't let the bed bugs bite. I often am so tired I think of the expression "knackered."
ReplyDeleteI didn't know there was a second part to the rhyme - how fascinating!
ReplyDeleteHaving just experienced such a night as described, I can totally relate. Oh, and I do love your posts on the origins on English idioms and sayings. English might not be my mother tongue but it's one of my main interests. Wonderful stuff! xxx
ReplyDeleteI am always rather ashamed that most Europeans speak and write English as well as and in many cases better than the Brits.
DeleteMost of us do not return the compliment. x x
F has been saying words like tired and exhausted a lot lately so this was certainly a timely post. Xxx Mr T
ReplyDeleteI hope F's intense work period soon eases x x
ReplyDelete