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| The offending camel stool |
The same is true of snakes and indeed
frogs. Animals are considered poisonous if they make you ill when you eat them. If the animal inflicts its poison via a sting or bite then it is in fact venomous. These are the things you learn if you have insomnia (actually that’s not
strictly true as I guess I would have read the fact even if I was reading in
the daytime) but it makes a good opening. Another thing you learn when you
cannot sleep is that cleaning your house can result in serious injury. As you’ll
know, I cleaned my house on Sunday and, as is my wont, I rearranged the
furniture and, I might add, was very pleased with the results. Until last
night.
I’m
currently having the type of insomnia that I call medium-bad. I fall asleep
very well and get at least the two hours necessary for life to function
correctly the next day. I then wake up. I don’t mind this kind of non-sleeping
too much, I feel safe in the knowledge that I can drive relatively safely on
two hours sleep but there are still down-sides to it. Probably the worst is
that feeling when it approaches 4am and you know that if you leave it much
longer to return to sleep you’ll actually feel worse in the morning. I have
been known on summer nights to forget sleep altogether at this point and paint
my nails instead.
Last
night I woke at 2:40 after a traumatic dream and (once my palpitations had
subsided and my heart removed itself from my throat returning to somewhere
nearer the middle of my chest) felt the immediate need to continue my latest
read (see what I’m currently reading for details of this). It’s a large,
hardback natural history book with lots of colour photos so it’s not the
easiest thing to read quietly (as in without disturbing Rob – whose only brush
with insomnia is having a wife that doesn’t sleep and even that doesn’t seem to
bother him too much, usually) so I decided to take my book and read it on the
settee, by torchlight.
I
do the torch thing for two reasons, firstly our house is open plan and using a
light would still wake Rob no matter where I was in the house. Secondly I find
that if I read by torch in a dark environment it aids sleep – it kind of dulls
your senses to anything other than the book and the brightness of the page
within the dark surrounds also has a hypnotic effect. Last night I needed only
around 60 minutes reading and my eyes were getting heavy again. The downside to
my bright light in a darkened room scenario is that your pupils are really
contracted so, when you turn out the light, you are effectively blind for some
minutes after (the effect of this is even more pronounced if you try to pluck
your eyebrows using a spotlight and a magnifying mirror in an otherwise pitch
black house). I always turn out the torch whilst still on the settee as I know
the layout of my house very well and can return to bed, in silence, without the
use of any lighting (and hence preserving Rob’s restful sleep). Until I decide
to rearrange the furniture.
Last
night I managed to crash (shin and ankle) into the camel stool which I had repositioned
on Sunday. This is just below the bedroom mezzanine – not only did the stool
fly across the floor (rather noisily) but I fell to the floor, clasping my hand
over my mouth and fighting the pain, in silence (in the vain hope that Rob
would remain asleep). There was a moment of stillness where I tried to
determine whether I could still walk – given that my toes had gone numb in pain
– and then Rob mumbled sleepily,
‘I
felt that.’
Which of course
strictly speaking – he didn’t.
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