Very Comfortable

My mother doesn't want to get up this morning.

"I'm very comfortable," she says. "Do I have to?"

I rummage round for compelling rejoinders and can't find any.

So I leave her in bed.

She's 95, she sits around all day doing nothing, she doesn't understand the world (if she ever did- if any of us ever do) and her one remaining pleasure is food, though she never knows what she's eating.

Sweet dreams....

Update

I try again an hour later. It's now 11.00 o'clock. She has of course forgotten her earlier reluctance and is as amenable as a lamb, gets up, puts on her bed jacket and dressing-gown, inserts her hearing aids (all with assistance) and comes downstairs.

I suppose it would be impossible to run our complicated urban civilisation without clocks, but I don't see why those of us who live on its edges- who are old and sleepy and ruralised- need to be so much in thrall to them.