People who have been reading this blog for a long time may know that I have often had difficulty getting to sleep. It is not unusual for me to go around the place feeling a bit sorry for myself because I feel tired. And I like to think I have become a bit of a master at coping having had just a few hours of sleep on the odd occasion when I have to get up earlier than normal. I don’t often get ill. But these past couple of days have been terrible.

I had an exam yesterday. That is the reason why I haven’t been able to blog so much over the past couple of weeks, in case you were wondering. Unfortunately, the exam was at 9:30am which meant getting up before 7am.

I know that lots of people have to get up at worse times and more often. I think it is easier to get up if it is just part of your normal routine though. I had to get up at around 7am more often in previous years and it felt like just a minor inconvenience rather than a full-on nightmare.

I am a night-owl as it is. Nowadays my lectures tend to be in late afternoon rather than early morning. I usually work in the evenings. So normally I don’t get to sleep until around 3am or 4am — and I don’t get up until around noon.

This is perfect for my normal routine, but when I am given one day — just one day — when I have to get up four or five hours earlier than normal, it is full-on panic stations time. Normally I try to get up a bit earlier every day, but it doesn’t really work. If I don’t have to get up early, I don’t get up early. I have tried all sorts of things like giving up coffee, but they never work.

Although I have done it before, I felt like I couldn’t afford to get to sleep at around 4am before having a vital 7am start. So I decided to get up at 9am on Tuesday morning, hoping that it would make me tired earlier in the evening.

Of course, that didn’t happen. I had awful trouble falling asleep, and in fact I finally dropped off at around my usual time — 4am. For a 6:45 start. The upshot was that in two days I had around 8 hours of sleep.

At first it felt okay. Not great, but capable. I suppose when you have an important exam you don’t really have the time to feel tired. You just have to get on with it. I felt that mentally I was fine, so I had no problems dealing with the exam in that regard, although my writing hand was tired, so it was a bit of a scrawl.

It started to hit me on the way back home. Ever since then, I have felt just about the worst I have ever felt. It was hunger, shortness of breath and a flying heart rate at first. Since then it has been indigestion, strange aches all over my body (particularly in my upper arms at the moment), a headache, loss of appetite, dizziness and — my favourite — inability to sleep properly.

I felt like taking a nap yesterday afternoon and ended up staying in bed until around 8pm. I got very little sleep during that period and when I did get to sleep — at around 11pm — it was the start of a highly uncomfortable night. I must have woken up six or seven times and my duvet felt like it weighed a ton.

I have often felt tired and lethargic, but everything that has happened to me before feels minor. Now I know what real sleep deprivation feels like.

I was going to write a review of the election leaflets, but I don’t think I have the energy to do it. I would have done it earlier in the week, but I have had exams to concentrate on.

The worrying exam was today, and I was rushing to get the train back home — I had bought a cheap day return, and in some kind of mad post-exam suicide mission I thought that I would easily be able to catch the last train before peak time kicks in.

Of course I didn’t catch it, so that running around with heavy books in the hot sun was all in vain, and I ended up spending the next hour and a half pottering around Princes Street (with heavy books) because that is the sort of idiot I am.

I have decided to subject myself to a punishing schedule of blogging about the elections and staying up all night. Because that is the sort of idiot I am.

But I’m not the only one. Plenty of us will be liveblogging. You will find me here at Twitter (where else?), but the odd post might appear here as well. Keep an eye on Scottish Roundup, because a few posts will appear there as well this evening.

In case you’re wondering how I voted, I voted for the Liberal Democrats in both Scottish Parliament votes. It could have been the SNP for the constituency vote, purely as an anti-Labour vote. The SNP were second last time around, but the Lib Dem candidate has built up a high profile in Kirkcaldy since she booted the old Labour councillor out last time round (she is hardly out of the paper, and is seemingly quite popular). On balance, I decided on the Lib Dems.

I am only hoping for a collapse in Marilyn Livingstone’s support. She sorely deserves based on the stories I have been hearing. I have heard bits and pieces about the wheels falling off the Kirkcaldy labour campaign. It seemed as though it was typical Scottish Labour arrogance getting the better of Marilyn Livingstone.

Apparently at the polling place today she was complaining about the size of the Lib Dem sign (!!), squealing, “But I’m the MSP!” No you’re not. Nobody’s an MSP during the election.

It’s this kind of nonsense that is sickening people about Labour in Scotland. It is childish and a turn off. Labour think they have a God-given right to be in office. They totally take the voters for granted, or even look down their noses at them. It was for this reason that our local Labour councillor lost last time around. I can’t help feeling that this is the situation right across the country.

Talking of local government, here is how I voted.

1. Liberal Democrat
2. SNP
3. Conservative
4. Solidarity

In case you were wondering — yes, that it everyone except Labour. I wrote before about how queasy I felt about voting for anyone apart from the Lib Dems.

But I decided I really wanted to maximise my chances of kicking Labour up the rear, so I just decided, “what the hell, I’ll just vote for everyone but Labour.” Who’d have thought I would have ended up voting for the Conservatives and Solidarity — and both of them at the same time as well!

I delayed the posting of this until 10 o’clock. I’m not a fan of that thing that newspapers do, when they tell you who to vote for. I have my opinions, but I expect the readers of this blog to have their own opinions. I certainly wouldn’t like to tell anyone who to vote for.

But it might be of interest, so I have stated who I voted for just so that it is there. Plus, I probably should be held to account for it.