To sleep, perchance to dream

Sorry for the pretentious title. I'm on the 6.10 First Capital Connect from King's Cross to Peterborough and it does strange things to you.


After Margaret's nightmare start to the week, I've had my own nightmare. On Tuesday evening, I had a chunk of Stilton cheese (leftover from Christmas) for my tea. It was very nice, still in good condition. I enjoyed it and didn't think anything more about it.


However, that night I did have a minor nightmare. It was one of those weird dreams that doesn't seem to be at all scary, but then it all turns a bit weird and you wake up. I was doing a bit of flying and a bit of caravan towing, then I was walking through this country park (in England I think) with a man and woman I knew but couldn't say who they were, when there was suddenly a pack of wolves chasing us. I said: "leave this to me." and turned to face them. In my best make-a-Spaniel-behave voice, I did the bad dog, down command. Most of them did as they were told, but one came forward and was biting me when I woke up.


Not particularly scary, but I did wake with a start and took a while to get back to sleep.


I think there was a very rational explanation to my dream. Margaret had met the pack of dogs from the windmill on her walk that afternoon. They'd met at the corner of the avenue along Toneham and there had been a bit of a "woof-fest". Margaret had walked on but one of the dogs had broken away and ran back to Margaret to give Holly and Gravel a good woof. I know the dog she was talking about, there is one that's a little more aggressive than the rest (it probably needs castrating). On Sunday, after our walk I'd cleared the snow from the decking and was sitting enjoying the fresh air when he let the dogs out. They all came running down to bark at Holly and Gravel (who love to bark back) and this one stuck its head through the hedge to bark. It was just below where I was sitting and made me jump. All its teeth were bared - I threw a snowball at it for startling me.


I'd clearly had that image in my mind and Margaret's story put it into focus. The catalyst was the Stilton cheese. I'm sure that cheese late at night makes me have vivid dreams. There's an amino acid in cheese called tryptophan which has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep.


Recently the British Cheese Board (what a name!) undertook a study to see if cheese did make you dream. The study - only 200 people - showed that it did and that certain cheeses induced particular dreams.


This all sounds a bit dodgy, but Cheddar made subjects have dreams involving celebrities; Stilton produced bizarre dreams; Red Leicester made you dwell on the past; Lancashire focus on the future, while Cheshire produced no dreams at all.


Try it yourself - eat 20g of cheese 30 minutes before bedtime.


Tom was telling me about some of his nightmares. He's pushed Hannah out of bed a couple of times, so I've got off quite lightly with Margaret (who just wakes up screaming). Tom's dreams have been about mice in the bed (presumably Hannah was shoved out with the mice) and in the other dream he's in a pitch dark room with cat poo all over the floor. He doesn't know where to step and then fireworks start going off and he has to duck down on all fours.


I don't know how Joseph would interpret us lot.