Walk this way…

Last night I somnambulated. (Is that even a word?)

Anyway, basically it means I went for a walk in my sleep, which for me is quite a common occurrence. I know I went walkabout last night because a drawer and door were open that weren’t when I went to sleep. Spooky!

When I lived with Shakira Shakira, she was always worried that she would come across me on my travels, eyes glassy, looking possessed. And I was always terrified that she would clonk me on the head with something heavy out of sheer terror.

Thankfully we never met up under these circumstances, but in our time of living together, I found myself in the bathroom, looking in the fridge and halfway out my front door. It’s a most, most odd feeling – waking up, not in bed, no clue how you got there.

One time, when I was a child, we were staying with friends and I somnambulated out of the spare room in the direction that our bathroom would have been at home. Only it wasn’t the bathroom, it was their daughter’s bedroom. And then, I vomited on her head!

I don’t remember doing it, but I do remember her waking me up, whimpering and covered in sick! What a delightful child I must have been.

Thankfully, that seems to be have been a one off, although at uni I tried to climb out of a third-floor window as I thought there was a fire. I woke up in time not to break my neck, ankle and everything else.

Some studies say that sleepwalkers don’t remember anything the next morning – and this is partly true, but I quite often wake up in the middle of something, go back to bed and then remember it clearly the next day.

On one occasion I woke up to find shoeboxes all over my bedroom floor and a big bruise on my leg. I was working in Clarks at the time and the only explanation I could think of was that I got work and home confused and had gone into my cupboard and got all my shoes out and then not navigated the mess and fallen over!

How bizarre!

One thing I am most intrigued about though, is how well I hear when I am sleepwalking. If someone spoke to me, would I hear them? Could I lipread? I guess it’s an answer I won’t get until I meet someone on my night-time travels who isn’t so afraid of me that they clonk me on the head with something heavy.

Perhaps I should warn New Housemate about this…