I'm fortunate in that I've never suffered much from insomnia, but I do recognise the distressing difference between being tired and being sleepy.

For instance, as I write this it is 0440 PST and I've been up for half an hour already. I would usually get up around five of course, but I was woken much earlier than that by a nightmare featuring Rimmer from the Red Dwarf series. Rimmer was being chased by someone called Big Dave for monies owed, although it was not clear whether Rimmer actually owed the money or whether Big Dave just liked beating people up under some pretext. The scary thing about it was that Rimmer was being moderately brave, or at least decisive, and that he was trying to save his friends by gathering up essential items to repair the starship and get away. Saving a lathe was apparently particularly important.

Why this was all going on in the back garden of my grandparents' old house in Charlebury, I do not know.

I'm still trying to decide if this dream had some particular significance. Thinking about it, I always identified most with Rimmer in the series since I recognised a lot in his character which echoed (albeit rather amplified) my own. His Self-Loathing Beast was resonated especially well... And the chasing could signify any number of things going on at the moment which I am, not so much avoiding, as just not thinking about. Christmas, for instance. Or the impending takeover of my employer by IBM. Or just work.

So I was awake, and I came downstairs to play a little on the PS2. Turning on the telly I was mildly amused to see a caption "Comment From London", but for some reason it was Simon Bates doing the commenting!

That woke me up. Nothing more scary than an obsolete purveyor of schmaltz offering aphorisms about the weather to the American public at four o'clock in the morning.

Posted by Dunx at December 10, 2002 04:58 AM