Sleep can be refreshing. Invigorating. The dreams we have, whether remembered or not, give our subconscious the chance to play through the issues plaguing us. It doesn't always mean we awaken released from their hold, but our sleeping mind does its best to aid us.

Sleep can also make us feel we've had none. We can wake more tired than we were hours before, at the beginning of the night. Our heads feel stuffy, as if we'd had a negative amount of unconsciousness. Headaches, untouched by painkillers, have us thinking all we need is more of the very thing that caused it.

Cassidy generally enjoyed the former. When he awoke, he had both feet firmly in the latter's camp. After snoozing his alarm, he pulled the quilt over his head and closed his eyes. He knew it wouldn't help, but he could tell himself it might. It didn't, though his head cleared a little. It was enough that, half an hour later, he felt he could get out of bed.

Jack Daniels would step aside for coffee. He might feel more human.

With a yawn, stretch and heavy sigh, he pushed back the quilt and sat up. Usually, his first thought, without getting out of bed, would be to reach for his phone. He'd check the news, notifications (swiping so many away, he'd tell himself he needed to switch them off for the offending apps), scroll through social media until his bladder told him he'd liked enough posts about breakfast and talented dogs. He'd deliberately not charged his phone through the night on this occasion, however. He knew it would be flat by morning, hence his use of an old alarm clock he thought he'd thrown away before finding it when packing to move. He wanted the peace a lack of technology would give.

The automatic injection of social media posts each morning, almost as soon as the eyes opened, was something millions of people across the world did. It was as if some couldn't function if they didn't discover what their friends or family had to say. Others didn't want to miss out on the latest trending celebrity scandal. Still others just needed to get past the game level that had been defeating them. This go would see them do it. Or this go. Or this.

Cassidy was aware he was one of the many. On this morning, he wanted to be one of the few. Enjoy the silence of a quiet house with a, hopefully, quiet mind.

He looked around the room. It was large, with a high ceiling. The floor was natural wood and, he assumed, had been there since the house was built. There were sections that had clearly been replaced, but it was otherwise generally intact. To an extent, the floor was a mirror of the rest of the house. Odd parts had been replaced, such as the boiler and the stair banister. The locks had been changed and the windows were double glazed, updated from the original sash windows.

He'd done well, he thought. To get such a place at the price he'd paid was unusual. The fact it had remained empty for a while helped push the price down to an affordable level.

Well, it was about time he took advantage of it. Another sigh pre-empted his climbing out of bed. He shivered as he pulled on his dressing gown. It was chilly, though the weather was meant to be mild to warm with clear skies. Somebody should have told the house that. He'd have to make sure he installed his smart heating wotsit later so he could voice control it and set up a routine. Cassidy liked the ease a smart house - lights, heating and television remote control - gave him. He didn't see himself as lazy, just on the cutting edge of the technology he was avoiding at the moment.

He glanced at his phone before leaving his bedside and saw the screen was illuminated. The battery icon was red, so low. It just wasn't as low as he'd anticipated. It had been clinging on through the night, handing out charge to the phone's various functions in meagre rations that only just allowed them the power needed to stay alive. Doing so had enabled it to survive until morning so it could be used by its glorious owner, to inform and entertain, as was its purpose. Cassidy's hand was already reaching before he realised and snatched it back.

"Almost got me there," he said, smiling.

In resignation, the screen faded to black. It had tried. It had failed. One day, it would be victorious. This wasn't that day.

Cassidy, the glorious, but not feeling it, owner, plugged his phone in.

"Have some charge on me," he said.

Coffee time. That was something he'd yet to smarten up. He needed to do it himself. Coffee granules and sweetener in the cup. How quaint.

Pulling on his slippers, which he always wore when he wasn't wearing shoes or trainers, because he intensely disliked the feel of a floor against his feet, he left the bedroom. Walking past the wardrobe, he pushed the open door closed without looking or slowing.

The coffee, accompanied by a couple of rounds of well done toast with lashings of butter, brought him somewhere in the vicinity of normality. His headache faded to a niggling throb at the back of his head that only bothered him when he thought about it. Being active during the day eradicated even that.

By lunch time, his house was smarter. All boxes were emptied and flattened, ready to be recycled. He didn't actually have anything in for lunch, as he'd not been shopping and his new refrigerator needed twenty-four hours to get used to its equally new environment. Or for the oil to settle. Cass liked the first reason better than the more accurate second. He mentally gave most things identities and personalities of their own, rather than thinking of them as merely inanimate objects, there only to serve us and be discarded away when they can no longer do so.

If he wanted lunch, he'd have to go out and get it. He was quite enjoying sorting his house out, putting everything in its place and finding places for those items that didn't particularly have one. He was being carried along by a flow of productivity he didn't want to interrupt. His stomach told him he had to.

Fine. If he must.

He donned his jacket and picked up his keys. The jacket was one he wore all year round, regardless of how cold it was. If the temperature dropped too much, he'd add a scarf. If it rained, he would deign to wear a showerproof one, but otherwise he stuck with his usual one. He wasn't particularly attached to it, it was just comfortable. Cass liked comfortable.

Surprisingly, the weather man the day before hadn't lied about the potential warmth expected. Mild to warm had been superseded by warm to hot, and he regretted his decision to take the extra layer. He removed it in his car and set off for a shopping trip where he'd only buy the essentials. If he lingered too long, he was at risk of not being able to get back into the zone he'd been in. He'd be more likely to just set up his games console and television and spend the rest of the afternoon shooting aliens. Though there was no real rush to finish what he'd started, Cassidy knew he was a world class procrastinator. There'd still be things to be done in a month if he didn't get on with them while he was in the mood.

He returned quickly. The shops closest to him didn't have the greatest range, so he'd had to forgo some of the items he'd wanted. That was fine. Tomorrow, he'd go further afield to stock up properly. For the moment, what he'd bought would suffice.

Picking up the three carrier bags he had in one hand, he fished out his keys with the other. It was something of a struggle, but this was how he usually brought shopping in. He could have used two hands and just put the bags down while he unlocked the door, but that would mean the bags would be dirty. He couldn't then put them on the kitchen worktop to empty and put the contents away. Instead, he would make things awkward for himself by trying to carry everything in one hand and in one go.

He entered the house in a buoyant mood. He could feel a new chapter beginning. Onwards and upwards. His new home would be welcoming quickly. It would be a place of warmth that wasn't purely degrees related. At the moment, as it was new, that warmth wasn't there yet.

In fact, it actually wasn't there. Cassidy actually shivered as he walked through the door. There was a distinct drop in temperature at the threshold and he now regretted not putting his jacket back on. Had he left a window open? Had the heating packed in? That would be just the worst! Age didn't mean decrepit. His grandmother - Nanna - would say so often when he offered to take her shopping and carry it all, or bring the washing in from the line in the back garden. She could manage, she'd tell him.

He'd hoped it would be the same for the house. Just because it was old did not mean there would be any problems with it. It seemed he'd been very wrong.

Cassidy had a zip up hoodie hanging on the coat hooks just inside the front door. He pulled it on before venturing further inside. It'd cost a fortune to employ a plumber, and they were notoriously busy. He was banking on the possibility there was a window open somewhere and the heat had gone outside to play.

Except, when he looked, the only thing that was open when it shouldn't be was that damned wardrobe door. He'd have to check the hinges. And the heating was working fine.

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