Sleepwalking and Me. A Selected History.

How strange it is to find yourself in two places at once.

2014. Fall asleep on the 18.06 from Victoria to Brighton. Somewhere near Hayward’s Heath I stand up and shout, ‘Eagle, there’s an eagle!’ to the surprise of my fellow travellers.

2011. I stand on the box at the foot of the bed and grab hold of the lightbulb overhead. I wake my girlfriend and explain that our ship will be sunk if she doesn’t help me hoist the mainsail.

2009. Every night for three weeks I convince myself that I am in bed with a stranger. I stumble around the room, apologise, put more clothes on.

2004. The night before the wedding. There is no wardrobe so I hang my suit from the curtain rail above the French window. Two hours later, certain that there is an intruder, I tackle my suit and wake with a nosebleed.

1999. In a badly-maintained student house in Birmingham I wake up with a section of gas pipe in each hand. I have pulled apart the pipe that runs along my bedroom wall and now the house is filling with gas. I wake my friends and we wait in the street in our pyjamas.

1996. I’m invited to stay with a friend whose mother is an interior designer. The room I’m given is full of valuable artefacts from around the world. An African mask becomes a hired assassin in my imagination. I swing a fist and break it.

I could go on.