Everyone is writing those tedious end of year lists about 2011. Waking up on New Year's Day in some discomfort made me think about my worst night's sleep, so here I present to you another tedious list, of my top 3 worst night sleeps of all time.
1.) Last night. Went to bed in the early hours, sleeping companion already asleep and snoring like a roadworks, like a freight train, like an emphysemic camel, (take your pick). The heating came on at 5.30 am, turning the room into a sauna, and enhancing the dehydration and hangover quite magnificently. Got up and saw the bed that I had climbed into in the dark was covered in black sheets, absolutely carpeted in long strands of white cat hairs. It was like discovering you'd been sleeping in the cat basket. (How you feel about this depends on your tolerance of animals and animal hair in bed. It makes me go 'yik.' And sneeze. I can't even stand feather pillows near me.)
2.) The B&B I stayed in in Italy a few summers ago had double booked for the last night, so the course director kindly offered to put me up for free in a room in the studio, which was in a medieval castle, at the top of the hill surrounded by beautiful Italian countryside. This was very romantic, but the mattress was practically medieval itself, and I was viciously bitten to death by romantic Italian countryside mosquitos by the morning.
3.) As a teenager went camping with the youth club in the Lake District. But our mad youth group leader had neglected to check the weather forecast so we were up Scafell Pike in a howling gale. It was so cold you could feel the wind whistling through your teeth. It felt like if we hadn't been lying down on the tent groundsheet to anchor it, the whole tent would have picked up by the wind and shot off whirling into the sky, like the cyclone scene in the wizard of Oz. 8 hours of that. (In the morning we picked our way with some difficulty down the mountain and encountered a Duke of Edinburgh group on their way up at the bottom. We warned them. They insisted on carrying on up. Ten minutes later, we met them in a cafe at the bottom, looking sheepish. ) The following night's sleep (in a barn on straw pallets) was one of the best I've ever had though.
The Man Who Fell's Top 10 lists are here. V good. Feel free to share your lists of worst sleeps (or any other lists) in the comments, fair readers.
About pretension
1 week ago
Sleeping companion?
ReplyDeleteYes. It was all innocent.
ReplyDeleteVery very drunk in Barnsley, I'd been promised a sofa to crash on. I left the room for a few minutes and on returning found a couple having sex on my sofa. (Friends of friends, a bit awkward, I didn't like to interrupt.)
ReplyDeleteI lumbered about the house and eventually clambered onto a top bunk and settled down with a deflated dinghy for a cover. Despite being hammered I couldn't get to sleep so I found something to read, but the only light was a naked 100W bulb that was about a foot from my head.
I felt surprisingly okay the next morning but by the afternoon I came down with something and spent the next 48 hours flat on my back and delirious. All my own fault really, for going to Barnsley.
Artog - teehee! Oh no! V funny. (Reminds me of the joke about the couple having sex on a train, and everyone in the carriage ignoring them. When they light up cigarettes afterwards, another passenger coughs and says "I think you'll find this is a NO SMOKING carriage.")
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as the parent of a small child, fuck you.
ReplyDeleteI did it just to annoy you.
ReplyDeleteWe stayed with friends over new years, which meant four nights with the little foghorn sleeping in our room. Even when he's sleeping he's noisy, how is that possible?
ReplyDeleteI can't wait until he's a teenager and just wants to sleep the whole time.
Don't worry! He's getting bigger and will sleep through! (trying hard not to mention the new one on the way, because I don't want to make you cry.)
ReplyDelete