Dreams before Sleeping

Dreams before Sleeping ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I’ve bored you all about my relatively new Tinnitus, and the music I use to try and mask it, not to mention the old style of  humour associated with the explaining of it. So now I’m going to talk about Dreams before Bedtime, or rather Dreams before Sleeping. When you can’t sleep it’s irritating to say the least, you count sheep, and wish you could have a kebab, or maybe just some mint sauce.

Time doesn’t seem to flow clearly, have you been trying to get to sleep for 5 minutes or is it 50 minutes ? Your mind wanders over the day’s events, what you said or what you should have said. Why is it only you who say the wrong thing, or fart loudly just as the boss goes past, you’ve blown your promotion now.

You try and empty your mind so that you sleep, but you watched a film before bedtime so you are thinking about James Bond or his car, or is it Mr Bean and his car, you smile and roll over and fart, at least you’re warm in bed. Then you think did you do your homework, or have you finished that project, or where did you leave your PE kit. Will the tutor spot the cut and paste essay you have produced. You hope not, but there is software to spot cheats nowadays.

You yawn, as I just did as I typed the word, what is it with yarns, they are always catching like colds. You stretch and point your toes, then hunch back again, you’ve touched a cold part of the bed sheet, or duvet if you are posh. You plump up the pillows, maybe that’ll help you to get to sleep. You look at the alarm clock, or mobile if you are a lot younger than me, and everybody is. You’ve been trying top get to sleep for 40 minutes.There’s supposed to be a trick that Military people use, to be asleep in 3 minutes, or should you just watch MASH and then you’ll sleep.

And on it goes, you see shadows on the ceiling as people walk past or rather stagger past on the way home from the pub, some with their dog. The light moves from one direction to another over the ceiling as their shadow disturbs the streetlight, it seems to go the wrong direction over the ceiling, a Doppler effect for shadows. If you haven’t seen this go clothes your bedroom curtains and look at the ceiling in the dark. And as you remember this you remember your brothers tiny cine camera with a small film, just pictures inside of Barny Rubble. Ten it broke so we went to the local cinema to get the projectionist to fix it. A James Bond film was showing, it was the late 1960s.

So as you try and get to sleep, memories come flooding back, so you smile in the darkness, your eyes are wide shut, but the memories are like sunshine in your eyes. You would reach for your sunglasses in the dark. You change positions in your bed, but come quickly back to the warm side of the bed. You must buy a new duvet instead of a ton of blankets, there was an offer in Argos on tv. So stray thoughts from the dark side of your brain drift in and out of your consciousness. You’ll never get to sleep.

Then the full moon comes past your window, you should have closed the blinds, it floods the room. You are afraid of the dark so always sleep with the curtains or blinds open. You have to get out of bed to close or partially close the blinds, only Totoro the cat has been hiding under your bed, so she jumps out and frightens you. Finally you sleep as you faint, and bang your head as the blinds fall down on top of you. You sleep on the floor while Totoro the cat takes over your warm bed.