Too many stories

Yesterday, someone I know posted details from their electronic tag onto Facebook of their night's sleep. In this over sharing world the boring details of everyone's lives are constantly in our faces; so much so that I'm surprised that my head hasn't burst with all the trivial facts about people that I'm carrying in it. I am one of those sad people that reads and remembers. I'm unlikely to post the same meme on your Facebook wall everytime it does the rounds just because it's about jam and you work in a marmalade factory. Other people seem to be less cursed than I am.

The thing about this trivial fact, though, was that I just don't understand it. This person had slept for 8 hours and 44 minuites without waking once and only had 8 minutes of restlessness. How? How is this possible? How can you sleep all night without waking up? I would think I'd died if I slept like that.

The problem is that there are too many stories and they always appear between 2am and 5am. If I write them down I can go back to sleep, even though writing in the dark often means that I can't read them in the morning anyway but if I try to ignore them there is no chance of any further sleep.

I think I've always been like this. When I was younger I would have to read the book I had started at bed time. Some books demanded to be read more than others: the Diary of Anne Frank was particularly insistent, I remember and got me into trouble at school the next day for yawning in English.

The stories can appear fully formed or be the seed of an idea and sometimes they come from something that happened in the day.

Last night, it was a murder mystery, with a blackened, shrivelled body found in a box.

 I had been for a swim and sauna earlier in the evening. The swimming pool is a fantastic place to listen to men's conversations as you don't have to try very hard because they are loud and repeat their story at a rate inversely proportional to its interest to the listener. I overheard a man at reception booking his son in for lifeguard training and then I heard him repeat the conversation at least six times. As if that wasn't enough I then heard one of the men he had shared the conversation with tell another man.

The sauna contained one relaxed beardy man. There was a time when a beardy man would have been over fifty and a bit crusty but these days even young men can be hirsute. Normally people in the Sauna are not to be talked to as it's a bit awkward when you are half dressed and sweaty but I had to make an exception.

After about five minutes he began to snore. I sat wondering if it was safe to sleep in the Sauna and how long he had been in there before I arrived.  I debated leaving. I could sneak out and leave him to sleep, which would be preferable to shaking him awake, even if I was culpable in the death of a beard. I stood up and he stopped snoring, it went completely silent; there weren't even breath sounds. It was too late. I couldn't leave. There might already be a body in the sauna with me. Still, preferring not to touch a man in speedos I flicked some water from my drink bottle at him. He snorted, choked and said, "Oh, I think I got a bit too relaxed."

I smiled one of my thin, "don't talk to me" smiles.

Undeterred he continued, "I think I heard myself snore. Did I fall asleep?"

Huffing and sliding further down the wooden slatted bench I nodded.

"I don't think I did."

"That's good, it could be fatal. I wonder if anyone has died in the sauna?"

"I read about a man in the States whose family thought there was a strange black man in their sauna, only to discover it was the charred remains of their father. They are trying to sue the sauna manufactures because they say the timer must have broken. "

Luckily, any further talking was interrupted by the man with the life-guarding son and his mate and we both sat listening to another two recounts of the conversation with the receptionist.