Bite me

I didn't sleep well Saturday night. I'll put this down to two reasons; the first being that I was clearly in the midst of an epic sugar rush courtesy of drinking a big mug of Milo into which I had melted two candy canes left over from Christmas while watching an eight episode Gilmore Girls marathon, and the second being that someone was texting me through to about three in the morning so every time I did start dropping off some loud-ass vibro-phone action shocked me awake. I was totally doing that dozy "uh! Oh, phone…!" thing that people do in movies.

This got me thinking, though, about how much I generally take a good night's sleep for granted these days. My bed is awesomely comfortable to the point that if I sit on it to read (for some reason I rarely read downstairs on the sofa) I inevitably start dropping off after about 15 minutes or so. I think the worst night's sleep I've had at Sparky Towers was a couple of years back when I read the book Zodiac and, massively freaked out, I woke up at about two in the morning literally frozen in place because the book had scared the tits off me and I thought Zodiac was in my house. Seriously, I could not move for several minutes, which was a bit disconcerting because my face was snuggled in the pillow so much that I feared I might suffocate. 

I digress. 

Back when I lived with Sparky Ma and Pa, however, things were a different matter entirely (Zodiac aside). My bed there (a single - *however* did I sleep on something so narrow!?) was horrifically uncomfortable due mainly to a massive spring sticking up out of the mattress in the general lower back/crotch area depending on how far up the bed I shuffled and on which side I was lying. Either way it was very uncomfortable come the morning.

When I was much younger, though, in the days before the spring, I often had great difficulty in getting to sleep, and who the hell needs psychiatrists, I'll tell you why:

Dracula.

Yes, I was scared that Dracula was going to pop out of my parent's room and suck my blood (remember this was in the days before vampires were all cool and sexy like in Angel and, um, Twilight…).

And why was I so petrified of Count Dracula? Because some doofus at Ladybird Books had approved a kiddy version of Bram Stoker's tale and I'd bought it (well, I suspect Sparky Ma bought it at my insistence - I was awfully good at getting things bought for me, I'm ashamed to admit), and holy-shit-I-just-found-a-picture-of-it-on-eBay-and-it's-every-bit-as-scary-as-I- remember-it-being! 

Anyway, so yes I had a 'child's' version of Dracula. Actually I remember the day I got it. Sparky Ma had taken Big Bro and I to Hounslow, which was a horrific thing to do in the first place because Hounslow is an absolute dive, and a trip to Hounslow usually meant we were being taken to the dentists. And let's not forget the time we went there and the stupid bus driver shut the doors on my pretty pretty face as I was disembarking. Sorry, I digressed again; where was I? Oh yes. Dracula. So yes, we were in Boots the Chemist in Hounslow, and for some reason in addition to toilet rolls, toothpaste, bubble bath, and lady necessities they were selling Ladybird book and tape sets - y'know, the ones where you got a book and a tape that told the story so particularly lazy children didn't have to bother reading along and could just look at the pictures and drool on the pages while a tape droned on in the background. I can't remember which one Big Bro chose, but I imagine it was far more sensible and less psychologically damaging than a read-along-to-Dracula story book. And for the life of me I can't imagine why I chose Dracula. It was 1984 for Christ's sake and I was seven.

That afternoon, and I distinctly remember that it was a lovely sunny day because even I thought it was semi-retarded of me to be sitting inside listening/reading Dracula when I could've been out playing in the garden, I sat down and managed to get through the entire traumatising story in one go. The result of this was that for years after I would not sleep with my back to my bedroom door in case Dracula tried to come in (I'm guessing for some reason actually seeing him come in the door to viciously suck my blood was preferable to not seeing him come in the door to viciously suck my blood), and I would always sleep with my duvet pulled up tight around my neck. Even in the middle of summer.

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An aside:

*Knock knock*

Whoever could that be knocking on my door? Oh look, it's Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychiatry. Dr. Freud, do you have anything to add?

*Freud twiddles moustache* (I'm assuming Freud had a moustache. He seems like the sort of person who would have a moustache. And definitely a moustache that was twiddleable)

"Yes. You are f**kin' nuts young man."

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Anyway, I was sufficiently freaked out to the point that I never read the book again; the tape befell an altogether different fate, I seem to recall; I have a feeling that after one handy application of sellotape the story of Dracula was ready to be erased forever in favour of something from the Top 40 on a Sunday afternoon, specifically a song by Billy Joel, I believe. 

The upshot of this is that I'm a) pretty sure after 24 years I'm actually over the irrational fears instilled in me by a scary-ass children's book, and b) really, WTF was Ladybird doing publishing horror stories like that for kids? They certainly don't do anything like that now (although Chicken Licken sounds somewhat dirty), nor, I expect, would they be allowed to. That said, in their defense a little Googling does reveal that apparently Dracula was aimed at 9-12 year olds, so really I've only got myself to blame.

Again.