Sleeping with your dreams

Sleeping with your Dreams ©

By Michael Casey

Sleep is good, its great even, especially if you’ve missed it, or not had good sleep in a while. Where does it all begin?  It begins as a child when we cuddle up with mum or dad and fall asleep on them, we don’t want to go to bed or we’ll miss something that Uncle Johnny from London might say. So we beg to stay up a while longer before we fall asleep and have to be carried upstairs to bed.

Years later we’ve inherited an old Bush radio and we are listening to the Book at Bedtime, it’s the Ghost and Mrs Muir, so we force ourselves to stay awake while the news and  Douglas Stewart Reporting is on, then we can hear the rest of the story. Only we fall asleep and you have to rely on your brother to explain what happened. That radio was my university for 20 years, BBC Radio 4, for a few years when I shared a bed with my brother listening to the radio and the Book at Bedtime was a night-time ritual before we went to sleep.

As you grow older your bedtime is one of choice, you chose for yourself, when you go to bed, however school and work then have a major influence on your sleeping patterns. Imagination also has an effect on your sleep, are you a light sleeper or a heavy one, and do you dream? I’m told I once sat bolt upright in my bed and shouted “Launch the Lifeboats” before falling back down and resuming my snoring deep sleep.

As a shift worker my sleep and my body has been ruined by the need to sleep during the day. I did 14 years of night shifts. 3 days 3 nights 3 off, 3 evenings 3 nights 3 off, 4 on 4 off were amongst the shift patterns I worked. 12 hour shifts too, so that all you wanted was to crawl into bed. When I was still at home my mum would give me breakfast before I’d go to sleep.

It takes a while to get used to daytime sleeping, and waking at 5pm and not knowing what day of the week it is. You have to spend a few minutes processing the fact that it was light when you went to bed and now it’s dark when you get up, everything is reversed. You also feel so tired all of the time, it’s not nature it’s not natural. When the days off come then you have to switch back to normal sleeping times, constant switching back and forth IS bad for your biology. I’m sure my own has been ruined by the years of high switching night shift patterns.

With all this going on you really appreciate your sleep, and you will spend good money on a mattress, I think I spent 200quid 20 years ago for a really good mattress, which is like 600 quid in today’s money. I’ve just bought a new mattress in fact from www.beds.co.uk  as I deserved it. A side effect of my heart bypass surgery is the fact that I’m still restricted as what positions I can sleep in, so I need a really good mattress to support my bulk.

With the mattress you need sheets and pillows, not to mention duvets. Only quality will do, especially if you are married as threadbare bed-ware does not impress the girls. You need soft sheets for the hard battles, to quote an ancient Peter Sellars’ film title. If you are comfy you will sleep soundly and be full of vim in the morning.

The worst shift pattern I ever did involved a 2.30am finish, start at 6pm and finish at 2.30am. I’d walk from the council house to the taxi stand and awaken my driver who then took me home. I’d have a snack before going to bed at about 4 am. There was one side effect of this crazy shift pattern. My wife conceived and we had our first daughter.

Going to bed at 4am really threw my body I slept for a very long time before dashing out at 5pm to catch the bus to work. I was offered a renewal of that contract but I decided my days of night shift working should finish. The night shifts had the last laugh though, because no matter what time I went to bed my body would not let me sleep till 4am, and it took 3 months before my body allowed me to go to sleep naturally.

So all kinds of everything have been my working hours and my bedtime has varied so much, so I really appreciate my Egyptian cotton sheets and my duck pillows, all I need is for my scars to heal so I can move freely instead of gingerly.