Unsettling thoughts at 3:54 a.m.

I know 3:54 a.m. is a funny time to be alive and checking on my blog but this waking up in the middle of the night thing happens to me sometimes.

The first problem with this is the fact time never stands still so it's already 3:56 a.m. Well time moves in diverse paces and if one minute is a snapshot of our lives we seldom have time to collect our thoughts before we are on to the next.

For me 3:57 a.m. is a sobering time. If I wake up in the night I am either ambushed by night fears or I can see clearly. I think of the song I Can See Cearly Now the Rain Has Gone, but really I can't because I associate it with an advert now, for coffee, I think. In saying that "advert's" not a term I should use, certainly not in copy. It's an English term.

Even now after half a decade in the states I can throw people with these terms. An official asked me if I wanted a coffee yesterday and I said: "That's so kind."

She told me I had confused her because in American this meant I was declining whereas I seemed to be accepting.

I told her it would help me see more clearly now the rain was gone. I didn't tell her City Hall coffee wasn't so good.

By 4:02 a.m. I'm not so sure if I can see more clearly at this time. I certainly can't see where this blog posting is going. Just hours after posting about old people, something slipped in my back and I have been walking around like a geriatric ever since.

Which brings me to another cultural difference. At home people will readily ask you what's wrong as you walk through the newsroom with the gait of someone who had wet their pants. Here people won't ask, but you know they are thinking: "what the heck?"

I think the same thing when I check the stats on my blog these days - 60 something views this week on a post about Anderson Cooper, 30 something on one about old people, 3,500 on a post about Justin Bieber. So the cynical strategy worked but who are these viewers? They never leave comments. I wonder if they are actually viewers or some strange computer generated phenomenon.

I half caught an interview tonight by Piers Morgan with the Winklevoss Twins, who say they invented Facebook before Mark Zuckerberg stole it. It was rather strange to see this chisel cut duo in their expensive suits and frat boy hairstyles banging on about their working class roots and how they were fighting the good for social justice. They left me unconvinced and sure there are worthier causes, democracy in Egypt, that kind of thing.

I was struck by the review by Rachel Dillin in the Oklahoma Examiner, mainly because it was the first thing that came up on Google. Morgan, said the reviewer, was combative towards his guests the entire time. Really? it didn't strike me that way. But maybe this is another cultural difference to bear in mind as Brits like Morgan take over the world as we know it.

By British standards Morgan and even Simon Cowell are hardly combative. It's surely time to unleash Jeremy Paxman on America, assuming he can avoid those embarassing gaffes with the word "cuts."

By 4:21 a.m. it's become clear that I am losing the plot and my thoughts are becoming increasingly fragmented. I blame this on being a single dad for at least two-and-a-half weeks while my wife is in Canada. Things have spiralled out of control of late and I am hoping the baby isn't still in the freezing car. A quick check reveals this isn't the case and it's now 4:22 a.m. What is it with Bieber anyhow?

The house is starting to look like Francis Bacon's studio. My back problems make tidying it up a non option. So I have decided to go away on a road trip. I may be gone some time.

Enjoy the silence. Failing that you can always tune into Jeremy in trouble with that pesky c word.