For the last few weeks I’ve been having really quite bad nightmares.  The unspecified sort that wake to up repeatedly, scaring both you and the cats, but which you cannot remember one scrap of detail about the second you sit up. 

I put it down to the joys of Christmas, the fact that my car is due its MOT (and I have no idea how it will pass), the fact that over Christmas I need to work out how you ‘do books’ for a business (and numbers have never been my strong point), the fact that work and therefore my job are currently very fluffy and the fact that a couple of people have recently turned a little psycho and make a lot of my waking hours as bad as the nightmares.

But no.  It would seem that those things are NOT what have been causing the night terrors.  Because last night I slept through (well, until Norman woke me up to present me with a mouse I did).  SO what can have been the reason for my problems?  I think it may have been this:

I found it in WHSmith where I was keeping warm when I missed my train a few weeks back.  I felt bad that I was standing in the shop clearly reading it so I thought I should buy it.  And the only time I get to read is just as I am dozing off in bed.  So every night since I’ve ‘entertained’ myself with a few of the ‘stories’ – clippings from papers around the world.  Ones like these (do NOT read these if you are about to go to bed…although these are some of the nicer ones):

A farmer in Pakistan climbed up the side of a slurry tank to rescue on of his chickens, but lost his balance and fell in.  When he failed to resurface three brothers and a cousin climbed up after him.  All four lost ther balance and fell head first into the tank.

A German tourist somehow survived a fall from the window of his 8^th floor hotel room in Lausanne, Switzerland with no more than a broken ankle; but on the way to the hospital he fell out of the ambulance and died under the wheels of a passing bus.

A 59 year old chef died after a 50cm Asian swamp eel was put up his bottom.  Doctors in Sichuan, China found the marine creature in the man’s rectum after his death in April 2010.  It had allegedly been inserted after the man passed out drunk, by ‘pals’ playing a prank.  Doctors said the eel had devoured his bowels.

I finished the book the night before last.  And, like I said, last night was nightmare free.  I think we can therefore conclude that reading about a number of deaths, however weird and wonderful they may be, just before bed is not good for the soul.

Well, at least now I can get a few good nights sleep.  One more day of work and then I get a break from that too.  Lovely :o)