sleepy | Suzie Speaks

It’s 4am and I’m wide awake. The Bloke is snoring next to me and Wobbly is asleep between my feet. I’ve just started to hear birdsong, I think.

I hate it when this happens. I feel a little spaced out as I had some really strange dreams last night that scared me a little, so I’ve resorted to blogging to try and calm my brain down. My brain has a habit of constantly processing information in situations like this and I have an unfortunate tendency to overthink things.

I’ve always had vivid dreams that often take place in weird and wonderful locations and I become involved in situations that make no sense with any connection of my actual life. I often remember them the next day and sometimes write them down in an effort to make sense of them. For example, I once had an extremely long dream that I was in the graveyard near the house that I grew up in (that I haven’t seen for nearly thirteen years) and I was under attack from a rather scary army of New Zealanders. I had to convince them that I was one of them or they would kill me. Even more strange is the fact that I’ve never been to New Zealand and don’t know anyone from there. In the same week I found myself hosting a party in the Arizona desert (which I’ve never visited). I’ve had dreams where I’ve been able to fly and breathe under water, I’ve been friends with celebrities, I’ve fallen in love with a man I’ve never seen before, I’ve suddenly become fluent in languages that I can’t speak and I’ve even been on stage, performing in a play that I can’t remember any of the lines for.

A recurring set of dreams that I have involve my job. One of my most frequent occurrences is that I’m in a school that I don’t know, I can’t find my timetable and my computer isn’t working. I am panicked because I know that the students are waiting and I am followed around by an angry member of staff who is yelling at me for my lack of organisation. Another is that I’m in a classroom with the kids and they won’t stop talking.

The worst are the ones in which I lose someone important. These usually panic me and involve phonecalls the next day to check everything is ok.

What about you? Do you have vivid dreams?

It’s currently 7.00am and I am on the train up to Manchester to go and visit my mum. It’s still dark outside, there’s a heavy mist in the air and there are just three of us that are in this carriage. The other two are having a deep and meaningful discussion about life and keep quoting motivational phrases at each other. Normally, I like these sorts of thoughts and must have thousands of inspirational messages saved onto my computer, but at this time in a morning I would rather they shut up, or at least conduct their discussion at a normal volume – Brian Blessed would be proud of their current efforts.

I’m not a morning person. In an ideal world, the very early hours of the morning are when I would be at my most productive, but I’m resigned to the fact that any sort of focus at work would be impossible if I don’t have a minimum of eight hours sleep every night.

Meh.

However, the journey to the station proved to be quite an interesting one. Even at 6am there were still lots of people walking around in their clubbing outfits from the night before and some had obviously started to feel the effects of consuming their entire bodyweight in alcohol. One particular girl was stumbling around outside the station in a dress that was so short it barely covered her bottom. She had taken her enormously high shoes off and had made the intelligent decision not to bring a coat on one of the coldest nights of the year so she was shivering violently. She was alone and looked miserable, so I asked her if she was ok and was she able to get home. She looked at me with a death stare and replied:

“Yeah. F*ck off and mind your own business.”

Nice. As I started to walk away a car pulled up and I heard the girl yelling, “Where the f*ck have you been? I’m freezing my f*cking t*ts off here!”

Classy bird.

The Motivational Speakers and I have been joined by a young Asian woman, who has promptly fallen asleep in the chair opposite mine. Her expression is hilarious – her head is almost on the arm of the seat and her mouth is wide open. She isn’t dribbling yet, but it’s only a matter of time…

I’ve got an hour to go yet, so I think it’s time for some entertainment. Candy Crush, anyone?