To sleep, perchance to dream

[Ed]

I don't know why I'm still awake, really.

Last night, I went to bed (too late, as usual) and I put the tv onto the Hallmark channel, propped myself up on the pillows and watched the beginning of Law and Order.  I was extremely comfortable - on a scale from 1 to 10, I was at about 9.5 (the extra .5 could only be achieved with the aid of gorgeous 'hand' maidens popping peeled grapes into my mouth and... well, you know ).

Anyhoo, there I lay, feeling at one with the bed, duvet, et al, and I felt myself getting drowsier and warmer, sinking into the most peaceful, relaxed state I have felt in years - and I mean decades.

1:45AM - bedlam, bedlam, bedlam - wife screaming, duvet flying through the air, lots of shaking and slapping.

She says, "A spider ran over my face!"

Me, "Urgh."

Her, "No, it did - a big one - I didn't dream it!  At least I don't think I did...."

Me - 

I settle back down, try to warm the duvet again, try to get to that zone of comfort where I was, just half an hour before, but to no avail.  Every few seconds, to my left, I can hear and feel a paranoid wife, lifting the bedclothes and peering under the bed.  Nevertheless, I slip into the twilight zone, right on the edge of full blown sleep.  2:45AM Slap!  Bedlam, bedlam, bedlam!  "There it is!  I knew I didn't dream it!  It's disappeared under the bed now!"

Me, "It's not like it's going to kill you, is it?"

Her, "I was watching this programme on telly, and they say you eat at least ten bugs in your lifetime, while you're asleep, because they crawl into your mouth and you swallow them."

Me, "If that was true, don't you think you would awake, at least once, with a few legs dangling from your lips and a funny wriggly sensation in your mouth?" :angry:

Her, "Eew!  Don't!"

After much ferreting around and more palava, I retire again.  Drift off into a peaceless sleep.

3:30AM Bedlam!  Light goes on.  Me -  blinded.

Her, "It's no good - I can't sleep with it in the room.  You'll have to kill it."

Me, "It could be anywhere by now."

Pull bed out, lift it up (damned heavy with all that stuff in the drawer) trembling wife brandishing rolled up newspaper hops from foot to foot like a big white hunter with an elephant rifle.  Nothing.  Pull out wardrobe.  Nothing.  Pull out chest of drawers, bedside cabinets, etc., etc.  Nothing. 

Finally get to sleep at 4AM, wildlife still at large but in hiding.  Wake, like a zombie, at 6:30AM, have shower while still in coma, and it's taken me until now to be fully awake (2:05AM)

[SharonBell]

Egads! Sounds like fodder for your fiction, Blunt!

[Ed]

I could understand the fuss if it was a tarantula or a funnel web spider, but it was only a house spider - all they're capable of is tickling

[JoyceCarter]

It must've been maddening, but that's a lovely piece of writing, Ed.  Magazine piece, maybe?

[Ed]

It must've been maddening, but that's a lovely piece of writing, Ed.  Magazine piece, maybe?

  Thanks, Joyce.  You think a magazine would accept that?

It wasn't so much maddening as frustrating, which is worse when you're fatigued and just wanting to get some shut-eye

[canadian]

Could be a good one for toowrite.com, blunt. There's a £1000 prize!

[JoyceCarter]

You think a magazine would accept that?

I don't see why not, if you do the usual and check for the word-count and tweak as necessary.  Or a local paper.  Do you see the Blackmore Vale Magazine?

[Ed]

Might be worth a bash, I suppose

I don't think it'll be winning the £1000 at TooWrite, but thanks for the suggestion, Donna.   

[Geoff_N]

Well written, Blunt. I felt I was in bed with you and your wife...

If you decide to send it off somewhere so others can squirm to their delight with it, I would suggest a minor embellishment. It seems to fizzle out in an anti-climax, which real life often does, I know. But maybe when you shower - the beastie lands on your face? 

You are not quite right that house spiders don't bite. All spiders bite - that's how they feed. But few bites penetrate the skin, especially those found outside the tropics. However, there is a house spider, Steatoda nobilis, found in the UK, that can, if provoked, bite through the skin. But the most damage humans suffer from spiders is psychological, and the odd case of dermatitis.

Whenever my wife points at a TV Sci Fi and say how ridiculous those alien creatures look, I show her an enlarged pic of a spider,  an earwig, or deep sea creature. There is nothing we can imagine for outer space, that isn't already here!

Geoff

[JoyceCarter]

About UK spiders, biting - the big ones that live around here (i.e. pretty close to where Blunt does), which tend to come indoors when autumn becomes colder and damp, certainly bite, as I know from 25 years'-worth of  ceremonially letting them know they should still be in the garden, particularly when my daughter still lived at home, or when my mother is visiting.  I can feel them testing all the exits from my half-closed hand, and the little pinches of their jaws.  But there's only ever been one that nipped hard enough to make me go 'ouch' (and my hands are, of course, soft and ladylike).  To add to what Geoff said, I believe that, even if they manage to penetrate the skin, their poison isn't of a kind or strength to upset a human.

On the matter of poisons that do or don't affect you - there's a gene being interestingly transmitted down my family that I haven't ever heard mentioned anywhere else, of not being stung by stinging nettles.  My grandfather used to paint, and he found out while painting a landscape.  His eyes still on the view, he was groping around in the long grass at his side for a dropped brush.  He didn't find it, so looked down, and found that his bare arm was up to the biceps in a clump of nettles - he'd been avoiding the things, taught from childhood, and they didn't actually hurt him at all.  His grandson (my cousin) is also unstung, as is my son, although my uncle (father of that cousin) seems to have passed on the trait without inheriting it.

[GrinReaper]

v funny blunt.

you should think yourself lucky. At our last house - a real dump - I was sent on rat-killing missions!! My whacking stick has three notches in it.

Which is why I *never* hear strange scratching noises at night!

[JoyceCarter]

We had a cat thirty-five years ago who was a wonderful hunter.  A lot of cats avoid rats because they're really dangerous fighters, and not good eating.  However, one morning we came down and found that she'd cleaned out a rats' nest (which turned out to have been under the neighbours' chicken run): the nine inhabitants were laid out in order of size on our kitchen floor, all noses level, all facing the same way, like a surreal xylophone.  I don't know what she'd think of our present furry family member - he's only ever taken a keen interest in wildlife, passing.  He's a naturalist, not a sportsman!

[SharonBell]

Now THAT'S a GREAT cat!