Sweet Dreams...

I tend to listen to music or the radio as I am attempting to go to sleep. I know that, on one level, this is counter intuitive. That it probably stops me from getting to sleep. That I should really just close my eyes and let sleep steal over me. And I do this whenever I can. It's a good feeling.

The problem is that, most of the time, it doesn't work like this. My brain starts shouting at me instead. Frequently, just when I feel like I might be near dropping off, it will throw some long forgotten memory my way, to remind me of my own inadequacies. Something deeply embarrassing that has happened to me during my life. Or something unpleasant or painful. Like some little homunculus pointing out mental scars and shouting "Remember this one! Wow! You were a complete dick!" And it will often continue as long as it can, undermining my confidence and waiting for my sanity and self-esteem to collapse entirely.

Last night was an odd one. It began with a memory from when I was very young. I was with my parents, who were themselves doing a scavenger hunt organised by a pub in Bickleigh (the village where I went to primary school). I was probably somewhere between five and eight years old, I guess. One of the items on the scavenger hunt list was, perhaps oddly, a snail. My parents had given me the snail to look after, as I was fascinated by creepy crawlies of all kinds when I was a wee 'un. I remember, when we got back to the pub, I had the snail on my hand. It was just crawling about, like snails do. I showed it to another boy (of whom I have forgotten the name), the son of some of my parents friends. It's fair to say that he wasn't quite such a fan of invertebrates as I was. I know this because, upon seeing my snail friend, he slammed his hand down upon it, crushing it. So I now had a dead snail smeared across my hand. Which was deeply upsetting as, in our short time together, I had developed an attachment to the slimy little thing. And nobody likes having snail innards on them anyway. So I cried like the tiny child I was, and ran back to my parents.

No idea why that memory has stuck with me so, or why it should return in the dead of night like it did. But, regardless, it is not a feeling you want to lie there reliving as you try to sleep. The feelings of sadness, shock, powerlessness, guilt and inadequacy. So I decided to listen to an episode of Yes Minister on iPlayer. At which point I fell to sleep.