Ian McMillan: Sweet dreams aren’t made of noises in the night

I’ll tell you what I was dreaming about, readers: it was the same dream I’ve had, with slight variations, for more than a week now. In the dream I’m sitting in the house reading a book (I know, I have exciting dreams) and suddenly there’s a knock at the door. An insistent rhythmic knock that goes on and on even when I open the door and there’s nobody there. The variations of the dream include me reading the book and hearing tap-dancing on the ceiling, me reading the book and becoming annoyed that somebody is clicking two soup spoons together in the kitchen, and me reading the book and being unable to stop myself banging the cover in a repetitive fashion.

Then, yesterday morning, the tapping / banging / knocking /clicking in the dream became so loud that I woke up. It was early and the room was dark. But there was the noise, the infernal noise like the heartbeat of a tiny robot or a pebble rolling around in a tin. I thrashed around in the bed, trying to locate the source of the sound. It’s the time of the year for big spiders and I had a sudden terrifying thought that there was a Grimethorpe Nippy Spider between the sheets: that’s that rare breed that only exists in Grimethorpe that makes a constant sound by jamming its jaws together rapidly and repetitively. I switched the light on.

My wife was away with our grandson in Cleethorpes so I was alone in the house. I picked up a tin of deodorant from the side of the bed to spray the Nippy Spider with if it attempted to nip its way towards me. The trouble was, given this deodorant’s advertising campaign, once I sprayed it me and the Nippy Spider would be surrounded by lots of female Nippy Spiders in small bikinis. I put the deodorant down.

Suddenly, I located it. I located the source of the sound that had been giving me a pounding soundtrack to my dreams: the clock, the new clock. The flipping clock! I picked up the deodorant and sprayed the clock for no other reason than to vent my frustration. It ticked defiantly. You see, the old clock had packed up and we’d got another clock out of a drawer and put a battery in and at the time I’d thought “That clock’s got a loud tick” but I hadn’t realised it was like lying in bed next to a mobile disco. I remembered why we’d put the clock in the drawer in the first place, years before.

So I relocated the loud clock. To the dustbin. Don’t tell my wife. Back to sweet dreams of the cast of Tenko in the chip shop. Do you want them wrapped or open, Bert Kwouk?