To sleep, perchance to dream

 

The facts about sleep

12% of people dream entirely in black and white

Before colour television was introduced, only 15% of people dreamt in colour. Older people dream in black and white more often than younger people. I dream in colour, in 3D and in stereo surround sound. 

Two thirds of a cat’s life is spent asleep

This will come as no surprise to most cat owners. Every sofa is a sofa bed to them. Otherwise found on your favourite seat or computer keyboard. That's why cats have nine lives.

A giraffe only needs 1.9 hours of sleep a day, whereas a brown bat needs 19.9 hours a day.

It takes a long time for the sleep to travel from the giraffe's head/brain to the rest of its body. The bat sleeps upside down so the sleep reaches its brain quicker. But it is problematic when it needs to go to the toilet.

Humans spend 1/3 of their life sleeping

This obviously differs depending on the age of the human, but on average it’s around a third, which is quite a lot when you think about it. I hate it when I wake up and find I've missed the turning off the motorway.

The record for the longest period without sleep is 11 days

This was set by a Californian student named Randy Gardner in 1964. This is definitely not recommended, however, as Randy experienced extreme sleep deprivation and others have died staying awake for too long. 

Dysania is the state of finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning

We’ve all no doubt found it tricky getting out of bed before, but those suffering from Dysania find it particularly difficult. It’s most likely to be a form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

It’s thought that up to 15% of the population are sleepwalkers.

This is according to the National Sleep Foundation. It’s also a myth that you shouldn’t wake someone who is sleepwalking.

Within 5 minutes of waking up, 50% of your dream is forgotten

After an additional 5 minutes, 90% of recollection is gone. Sigmund Freud believed this was because dreams represent our repressed thoughts and so our brain wants to get rid of them quickly. However, it’s much more likely due to our brains simply being used much more as soon as we’re awake and so we forget much of what we’ve dreamed about. (It depends on the dream Freud ... my dreams can be quite memorable you know!!!)

Sleep experts have discovered a direct link between people’s favourite sleeping positions and their personalities

This is according to Professor Idzikowski, suggesting that those who sleep in the foetal position “may appear tough but are actually sensitive souls right to their core". I sleep hanging upside down from a hammock. What does that say about me?

Ideally, falling asleep at night should take you 10-15 minutes

If it takes you less than five minutes, chances are, you’re sleep deprived. ZZZZZ .... ZZZZZ .....

Humans are the only mammals that willingly delay sleep.

How nice it must be to just go to sleep whenever and wherever you are! I once dreamt I was asleep at a business meeting. When I woke up ... I was!

Sleeping on your front can aid digestion

Hands should apparently be positioned above the pillow so you’re in a ‘freefall’ position, whilst laying on your left side can apparently help reduce heartburn. Take care ... sleeping on your front can make you break wind. 

To sleep, perchance to Blog about it

 

I could not get to sleep last night. So I eased myself slowly to the very edge of the bed and soon dropped off.

Research shows that where you sleep is in itself conducive to a good night's sleep. I don't like sleeping on a bicycle as I keep falling off. Much better to sleep in a car. Although the difficulty with this is that I wake up suddenly and discover I have missed my exit on the highway, and have to drive to the next one and turn back. Also, the person I'm sleeping with has rolled our of bed when I took that corner too sharp.

The position one sleeps also has an effect on one's nightly performance or lack of it. Some people like to sleep in a North/South position, whereas others prefer an East/West position to be in alignment with the Earth's rotational movement. I find that hanging upside down from a hammock can be perilous as one can fall off and hit one's head on the floor. Similarly, sleeping on a trampoline would make you or your partner hit the roof.

Who you sleep with can also be very important. Some people like to sleep with their pets for companionship and contentment. I did that once. The next morning the bed was soaking wet and my goldfish had died.

When you sleep is also important. Traditionally people tend to sleep at night. But this is not always possible for everyone, especially people who work at night and it is their means of earning a living. Some people like to nap for an hour or so in the afternoon especially when watching programs like Downton Abbey on TV. Others manage to sleep at any time of day and night. I once fell asleep and dreamt I was making a speech at a business meeting at work. When I woke up I discovered that I was!

The duration and quality of one's dreams depends on one's affluence and prosperity in life. Most people dream for a few seconds in monochrome, black and white, images. I dream in full colour, in stereo surround sound and for the duration of the whole film that's on TV at the time. When I wake up I find that I cannot even afford my dreams.

Sometimes I even dream with subtitles/closed captions inscriptions at the bottom of my eyelids. But then wake up suddenly by my wife complaining about how I've behaved in her dreams.

Dreaming

 

Once upon a time there was a man who always slept lying on his back and, whenever possible, wearing his spectacles on.

He wore his spectacles, or sometimes he kept his contact lenses on, because he claimed that by doing so he could see his dreams nice and clearly. Without his glasses the dreams were rather fuzy and out of focus.

He always tried to lay sleeping on his back and not move at all. Because if he turned to his side, left or right, his dreams would fall out of his ears and leave altogether.

He'd be sleeping on his back dreaming that he was on the beach with a beautiful lady wearing the smallest of bikinis and just as he smiled and lay down beside her comfortably on his side she would escape from his ear and he would lose the whole dream.

He tried a few times putting pieces of cotton wool in his ears to stop the dreams escaping. But this did not work, because now his dreams were totally silent. People in his dreams would move their lips but he could not hear what they were saying. It was very annoying especially when the lady in a bikini spoke alluringly to him and he could not make out what she was saying.

OK ... now that I got your attention, and you are possibly sitting there day-dreaming yourself, with or without your glasses on, let's get to the point ...

We often go through life with pre-conceived ideas and notions in our heads based on no fact or evidence whatsoever. We may have views about ourselves, the way we look, our background, our education, status in life or whatever. And this vision of us blurs the whole of our lives.

We feel we are not attractive enough. We are getting a little old perhaps and certain parts of our bodies are moving South where we'd rather they were not. We don't like the way we talk, our accent perhaps, our standard of education or the job we are doing.

Whatever our pre-conceived notion may be, often without reality, turns into a nightmare which blights our lives.

Let us now focus for a moment or two on this scenario I have painted, all too prevalent in many lives.

What do you imagine God thinks about us when we waste valuable time focussing on our imagined imperfections rather than delight in how wonderful we are?

Strange dreams triggered by Shakespeare

 

We all have dreams from time to time. Some are dramatic and perhaps disturbing, whilst others are easily forgotten or not remembered at all when we wake up.

I dreamt about Shakespeare last night. I never liked Shakespeare's plays. There isn't a car chase in any of them. In my dream, the old Bard was eating a KFC. 

"What's in a name?" he said, 

"That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet...

But this KFC unpronounceable as it be

Would taste as sweet as an artichoke dipped in honey!"

I then woke up and continued eating the chicken leg I had in my pocket.

Have you ever dreamt that you were a chicken wearing a pin striped suit to work and they would not let you in because your tie was the wrong colour?

Or dreamt that you went to see a hypnotist to cure you of the compulsion to visit hypnotists?

Whilst at the hypnotist you asked him also to cure you of your fear of heights? He did so; and when you woke up you were on top of the cupboard?

And why when it is in the kitchen it is called a cupboard, and in the bedroom it is a wardrobe? Is it because, as the Bard said, a rose by any other name is still a cupboard? Or a wardrobe? If so, why not call the cupboard a rose?

No? Never had such dreams?

Well, neither have I.

My dreams tend to be memorable. Last week I dreamt that I was in a marshmallow factory, a bit like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book by Roald Dahl.

Anyway ... I dreamt I was in a marshmallow factory and when I woke up I'd eaten the pillow.

I remember being told off in the morning for ruining the pillow!

The best dreams of course are those that inspire us to greater things. They can be dreams we have when asleep or indeed something we think about when awake and mull over in our minds and spur us into action.

Many a great idea started with a day dream, an inspiration, a word of encouragement ...

The ideal dream is to make life better for someone else. It need not necessarily be a big thing that you do. Perhaps a kindness to someone. A smile. A helping hand.

For when our time is at an end, we should not be remembered for who we have been, but for what we have done. 

 

To dream ... the impossible cream ...

Please do not mock me, or laugh at me. But I've been having some weird dreams lately. I don't know why.

I've been having this recurring dream that I am chased by a big cheese. More often than not it is one of those round cheeses that you cut into wedges. Sometimes it is a French Roquefort, or and Italian Gorgonzola, a Dutch Edam cheese with the red wax around it or even at times a good old English Stilton.

Usually it is the same dream. I am in bed asleep. I hear a big rumble outside, a big roll of cheese comes up the stairs.

I run out of the house wrapped in the bed sheet like a Roman toga.

The sheet is like a Roman toga, not me. Please pay attention.

The type of cheese chasing me is different. I can't explain how I know. It's not as if the cheese is talking in French "Zut alors! Dépêchez-vous!" Or in any other language for that matter. The cheese is always silent but I hear it rumbling as it rolls behind me.

The cheese rolls after me the faster I run. It never seems to catch up with me and then I find I am on a beach somewhere and there's this young lady in a bikini sunbathing. She distracts me for a while.

I stop, oblivious that the cheese is catching up on me.

I am oblivious, not the girl! The girl is Olivia. Are you paying attention or what?

Anyway, I start running again and I am in a castle somewhere. I slam the door shut and I press hard on a button on the wall. Suddenly, a panel in the wall opens and I enter it and I am in an open-air restaurant. Al Fresco ... that's the name of the owner; not the fact that the restaurant is open-air.

So I sit at a table on the side walk like they do in some restaurants in Europe.

The waiter brings me some soup. French onion soup as I recall. As I start eating it starts to rain. It takes me ages to finish the soup. It's a race between me eating the soup and the rain re-filling my plate.

I ask for some cheese and biscuits. They say, "No cheese ... No cheese ... Just soup!"

They bring more soup. More rain. More soup. More rain.

I need to go to the bathroom. I wake up!

What do you do in bed?

We cannot go long without sleeping. If you deprive yourself of sleep for up to 18 hours the body would react as if you're drunk. So for a short cut just have yourself a drink or more and then go to sleep.

Scientists have yet to discover why we sleep. Some believe that the body re-generates whilst we're asleep, but this is not proven conclusively. Some people in fact have been known to degenerate whilst in bed but the least said about this the better.

Scientists have proved however that we actually use up energy whilst we're asleep. We in fact use up enough calories equivalent to a small bar of chocolate. So you can have a bar of chocolate for breakfast every morning and you've made up your weight loss.

Also, it is estimated that up to 70% of us have actually eaten at least one spider in our lifetime whilst asleep in bed. Yes ... we sleep with our mouths open and that attracts spiders apparently who attempt to build a web on the mouth opening and fall in. I read this on the web; so it must be true.

Usually when we're asleep we have to wake up in the night to go to the bathroom. No one knows why we do this; because more often than not we do not have a full tank to be emptied anyway. It seems to be just an annoyance to wake us up so that we can annoy our partners by making a noise whilst we go to the bathroom and flush the toilet.

Speaking of which, it is not clear what is the etiquette when you are a visitor in someone's house. Do you flush the toilet in the middle of the night or not? Risking waking up the entire family?

What if it is a Number 2? Do you flush the toilet then or not?

What if your hosts wake up and go to the bathroom and find your deposit there un-flushed? You can hardly deny it is yours? Normally you do not put a tag on it with your name on - or do you? What is the normal thing to do in these circumstances?

Animals and birds need sleep too, you know. Some of them wake up in the night to go to the bathroom too. The bat is so lazy it does it whilst hanging upside down from a tree and then wonders what's in its eye!

Fish go to sleep with their eyes open because they have no eyelids. That's why they get water in their eyes and can't blink it out. Despite having their eyes open all the time they still get caught and put in tins of sardines or made into fish sticks. How stupid can they get?

It is also a well known fact that some people walk in their sleep. Yep ... they get up in the night and walk in their sleep. This can be particularly frightening to your pets if you sleep naked.

A friend of mine even swims in his sleep. He gets up at night and goes out in the garden for a swim. Unfortunately he does not have a swimming pool so he lies on the ground and flaps his arms and legs like a fish out of water. In the morning he wonders why he has mud all over his pyjamas.

When I was young I used to walk the plank. We did not have a dog at the time!

I even know someone who walks in his sleep and goes downstairs and writes himself threatening letters which he then goes out to post in the post box nearby. The next morning he gets upset at receiving the threatening letters.

He went to the police with the letters. They all said the same thing: "If you don't stop sleeping with my wife I'll sort you out good and proper!"

The police told him to stop sleeping with the man's wife. He said, "Can't you see? None of the letters are signed!"

Most of us dream whilst we're asleep. Good dreams ... bad dreams ... not so good dreams.

I remember when in London my neighbour rang me in the middle of the night complaining that my horse was in her garden. I was half-asleep so I apologised.

The next morning I realised that I had no horse. So I went round and told her so. She said it was a nightmare!

As a side line ... I always take my wife morning tea in my pyjamas. Is she grateful? No! She says she'd rather have it in a cup.

I don't always remember my dreams. But once I dreamt I was in a marshmallows factory. The next morning I discovered I had eaten half the pillow.

Some people take their pets with them in bed to sleep. I once took our rabbits to bed with me. By the morning I had a litter of about two dozen hopping all over the place.

It is often suggested that if you can't sleep you should count sheep. I used to do that. But now with all the importance given to Health and Safety I just lie there in bed considering safety risk assessments. Are the sheep safely tucked away in their pens? Has the gate been left open? Are they safe from predators? Have they had their health checks by the vet?

I saw an advert the other day that a memory mattress is the best modern invention to help you sleep well. I bought a memory mattress and now it is trying to blackmail me.

I talked to my psychiatrist about my lack of sleep. He reminded me that he was a psychiatrist, and that his wife was a psychiatrist too. He suggested a group therapy session with him and his wife, with me and mine.

I thought about it. To be honest, I am rather uncomfortable having him and his wife in bed with me and my wife. What kind of therapy is that? And will the bed be big enough?

That will give the memory mattress something to talk about!