406: Go to sleep

As soon as I barged in through the front door, after work today, I caffled forward into a heavy coma brought on by an indescribable demon, forcefully tea-bagging me and excreting pure goopy confusion into my sleeping head. I felt fine all through the day – larking around with shoes; showing customers where to find the men's socks; chatting about food, weekends, parenting, shoes, films, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies, etc; reading the papers, walking about and moving stuff around, generally being awake – but as soon as I re-entered the comfortable quiet shell of home, sleep dropped hard and sudden like blitzkrieg. Half way through my coma-cycle I was shook half-awake by my fiancee urgently saying something about something. There was probably no fire, so the coma took me back into its lair. I am awake now, so it's fairly safe to assume that at some point I woke up.

What is sleep anyway? An excuse to climb into a warm comfy pit for a few hours a day, or a factory for producing bizarre but tedious stories set in your imagination which you can later use to bore co-workers with? What's with all the questions; just shut up and go to sleep. My hobby is sleeping; I practice every day, I thoroughly enjoy it, and I'm improving constantly. I really do enjoy it; I lie there with a big wet dribbly grin on my face, cooing and gurgling like a baby drunk on boob-juice. I wake up ready to face the day, but gosh darn golly I do like the day to end and for bed time to coax me into its welcoming folds. Sometimes I can't even wait to get back home, and on the bus back from work, while trying to read whatever exciting tome is enterteaching (or edutaining) me, I doze and dream my head into the window, bump. Or the shoulder of some lucky stranger sitting beside me.

Have you ever done a sleep before? If not, I highly recommend it. Maybe not now, but when you are ready: put it on you bucket list, your amazin' Amazon wish list. It can be done almost anywhere with the most basic of equipment. You know that room in your house; the bed room? Ever wondered why it's called a bed room? Let me tell you. A bed is a popular sleep-related piece of paraphernalia (although it can be used for other activities; a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat). You may even have a bed; check in the bed room right now and see. It is a large, comfortable, square or rectangular surface covered in a padded sheet with small rectangular cushioned objects placed at one end. All you need do is climb or fall onto the bed. If you intend only to sleep for a very short time (this is often called a nap) it is acceptable to keep your day clothes (but not shoes) on and to remain above the padded sheet (known as a quilt or duvet); for longer sleeps I recommend disrobing and climbing under the sheet. Hope it goes well; good luck, and good night. Don't let the bedbugs bite.

"Bedbugs? What bedbugs?"