Bump In The Night

As a child I was scared of my own shadow. Things that went bump in the night left me a quivering wreck and as I got older, I didn’t like sleeping in the house by myself. It used to creak and squeak and sound like someone was walking up my stairs, and I would convince myself that someone was watching me. I have always had a very overactive imagination!

So it made me laugh today to find out that my sister and I are not so different after all. She lives with our mum who is away for a few weeks, and Little Bean was telling me that she worked herself up so much last night that she couldn’t sleep. She had to do a few walks around the house to check all the doors and windows were locked, and when she had eventually slowed her breathing down then air freshener went off and scared the life out of her (another reason why I hate air fresheners!) I said she could sleep at my house tonight.

We have all done it, haven’t we? It didn’t help that when we lived in the cottage we would leave the back door on the latch during the day. It had a Yale lock, but also a regular handle lock, and if it got inadvertently closed you wouldn’t know the Yale wasn’t on, but anyone could let themselves in. And I regularly kidded myself into believing they had. Ex-boyfriend was often send down the stairs with a baseball bat to report that yes, he had left the door on the latch, but no, there were no thugs helping themselves to my Lighthouse Family DVDs. In fact, in the area we lived in it was more likely some old aged pensioners might have settled in for the night to play some rummy (orhaving a go on the Wii)

It’s a totally unfounded fear, as neither I nor the younger version of me has ever lived in a house that has been broken into. Touch wood (yes, I am a little superstitious) we have been lucky and always felt safe in our homes. But the overactive mind wanders to people shimmying up drainpipes and letting themselves in through open windows, and it goes off like a steam train without the brakes on until you have the mafia eating their dinner in the dining room.

Has your mind ever played tricks on you?