'Talking in Your Sleep'

How's this for spooky? Apparently, I sleep-dialled my honey this morning and carried out a sensible 40-minute conversation of which I have no memory.

As far as I'm concerned, I woke and got up as usual at about 10 am after an intense dream, which didn't involve honey. After I'd been over the road to Smileys' cornershop for fags and the paper, I dialled him as usual at our customary time at 10.30 am my time, 2.30 am his- the time when a lark on one continent and the owl on the other coincide. He tells me that we'd just hung up a half an hour previously. Apparently I'd carried out a sensible, apposite conversation- maybe a little groggy, but nothing unusual for me- of which I have total amnesia.

All I remember of last night is that I'd turned in early after a dinner of pesto and tomato salad with Swedish rye bread and butter. I'd woken at 4 am with a thirst and brought through a big glass of milk before going back to bed, vaguely registered the R4 early morning theme (love it or loathe it) and the Sunday hell of the god-slot, just like any other Sunday. I dozed on till the Archers omnibus theme woke me properly at 10 am, and I pulled on clothes to visit Smiley's cornershop for necessities.

So what really happened? On the one hand, denial takes over, but the objective clinician would probably diagnose an episode of REM behaviour disorder (RBD) when automatic acting-out took over while sleep masked the memory. Since I've no history of RBD, this will likely pass without intervention, and I'm not worried about an ongoing pathology.

It's a little thrilling to have exhibited an interesting benign disorder. It's true I've been having the most intense dreamlife recently, waking with bizarre imagery every morning. This week, I've been Rod Stewart's girlfriend (after I watched/listened to a Cream docu), navigated an underground 3-D tunnel maze (after watching 'Life In the Undergrowth' and reading Atwood's Penelopiad), and at least twice endured horrendous sleep-lab nightshifts. In one, I had to introduce a chest-drain (a surgical procedure I'm not qualified to do) and in another I was called in for a monitoring session that involved super-glued intra-cerebral electrodes, which is not normal practice. That was the one preceding my awakening yesterday.