Thinking About: Sleep

My bed is probably one of my favourite places to be. I feel at home there and look forward to sleeping in my own bed whenever I’m away for too long. Buying my present double bed and orthopaedic mattress turned out to be one of my better decisions – prompted as it was by my then girlfriend’s criticism of my futon (which I loved for different reasons).

Getting my sleep is very important to me. I do not function at all well if I don’t get my sleep and believe that it would be a fair defence in any future murder trial that the deceased had stopped me from sleeping enough. That’s something I’m not doing at the moment – sleeping enough. I’m tired pretty much all of the time which isn’t doing me any good at all. It got so bad about 18 months ago that I was almost hallucinating. Being me I was actually fascinated by the whole thing. It was a time when about half of my project team left within a matter of weeks of each other. The show had to go on regardless so for about 3 months or so we had three people doing seven peoples jobs. You can imagine what that was like. All of the day-to-day ‘donkey’ work was being done by just two of us. It was relentless. Near the end, just before we got some new people who fortunately hit the ground running (I shudder to think what state we would have been in if we’d had have to train them as well), I remember being in the Mall on my way to having a pizza with the guys prior to seeing a film. I was feeling pretty punch drunk – missing too many lunches probably not helping my blood sugar levels – and I could actually feel parts of my brain shutting down to rest themselves as best they could. It was the weirdest feeling. I couldn’t help comparing it to whales and dolphins who do something similar so that they can ‘sleep’ and still keep from drowning. It must also be something similar to the experiences of combat troops who need to stay alert for extended periods of time and basically rest when they can. It’s certainly something that I don’t want to repeat.

I much prefer sleeping on my own. It took me the best part of three months to get used to sleeping with my girlfriend. One reason is that is, from the evidence of my covers in the morning, I tend to move around a lot in my sleep. With someone else there a small part of my consciousness is obviously ‘on guard’ so that I don’t push them out or sock them in the mouth with a flaying arm and this inevitably cuts down on the deep sleep we all need to function. I also like to stretch out and use far more of my ‘fair share’ of the mattress which I can only do on my own. I’m just too conscious with someone else there. If I was living with someone permanently I’d probably give serious thoughts to separate beds in separate rooms. I hear it’s the way for relationship bliss.

I have slept in the nude since I was about 10 years old and intend to continue doing so until I die. I can’t stand wearing clothes in bed. I quickly overheat and feel constrained if I’m wearing much of anything. If it gets really cold I might wear a T-shirt until the bed warms up sufficiently but then it’s whipped off and my own body heat can do its thing care of a decent duvet. One of the things I like about the summer is that, for three or four days of the year on average, it’s warm enough to sleep on top of the duvet. It has to be my idea of Heaven. Maybe it shows that I’m just in touch with my animal nature but I think of it as a real treat. Anyway, all this talk of beds is starting to make me feel sleepy. So goodnight everyone!