An hour before eleven

 

An hour before eleven is worth two after seven

‘Red panda slumbering 

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.