Caught Napping

I dozed off yesterday late in the evening, lying in front of our less than trusty stereo system, to be awoken by the ringing of the phone. In truth, I was not so much dozing as deeply asleep, which accounts for the fact that on waking I had no idea what time it was, what day it was or where I was. It took about a minute of conversation with my brother-in-law ringing from Manchester to piece together a picture of what was actually happening. Oddly enough I quite enjoyed the sensation as I was reasonably sure I wasn't supposed to be in work or some such serious location. Also it helped that I've had these experiences before (sometimes panicking that I was somewhere where I needed to be awake) and recognised the condition. Again rather oddly, I don't think I've ever done this when the missus has been around.

Bernard at work was asking for stories of students falling asleep in class, I'm not sure for what purpose, but he was after funny ones. I'm afraid I could only think of the times I've nodded off when I'm not supposed to, which I suppose says something about derogation of duty. When I first started teaching I used to regularly fall asleep going home from work on the bus from Rotherham to Sheffield and have to be awoken at the terminus by a generally gleeful conductor. Fortunately that was my stop so no great harm was done, other than being made to look like a complete idiot. But that in itself was useful as those experiences made me immune to the embarrassment of being seen to fall asleep publicly. Isn't the deeply ingrained sense of embarrassment at being seen to sleep interesting? Keats is very good on this, just as he's very good on sleep in general. A napper himself, I suspect.