When I was a young boy one of my very real memories is of me lying awake and hearing on the landing my Mum and Dad arguing and my Dad saying, ‘you’re too soft with him’. Words like that. ‘He shouldn’t have a light on’. My Mum had left the light on in the bedroom because I was scared going to sleep. And he was saying no. And I remember every night it was like a compulsion lying on the left side, I still do lie on my left side and my ear on the pillow and I could hear, and you do probably get an audio sensation in your ear, it was like a hissing, and I knew when that started that I was going to have a nightmare.
Oh really?
It could be auto suggestion or whatever but it can happen to me.
So you had lots of nightmares when you were a youngster as well?
Yes, and there were two types of nightmare. One was that I got out of bed and I looked downstairs and there’s the front door and the letter box and that letter box would open and there would be two green eyes. That doesn’t sound that bad in the light of day but for me it was terrifying. And the other one, and this recured into my married life/adult life was blackness and of me walking along the road coming to this big old house and going looking through rooms knowing that there was some being or other somewhere in that house and why did I do that. And I was terrified and I would wake up in a cold sweat.
So that was a recurrent nightmare as well?
And that one actually carried on, there were probably periods when it didn’t happen but I can remember that it carried on into our marriage didn’t it.
