On Sleepwalking

You may have read such tales about young Sam as 'In Which I Make my Mum Proud!' or 'Being Felt up by an Indonesian Transsexual' or my favorites stories of my Peter Pan-esque friend The Artist to be found in my archives such as 'Under the Bridge' and 'The Artist and the Moped' (The Artist always was much better at making a fool of himself than me). Well I think I will add this one to that drunken teenager collection:

Throughout my childhood years and well into my university years, maybe up until the age of around 22, I was plagued by bouts of sleepwalking. I know what you are thinking - but I have to tell you that the sleepwalking was not always alcohol induced. Ok, it was alcohol induced most of the time, but not all of the time.

When I was very young, maybe 7 or 8 years old I suffered one of the first sleepwalking incidents that I remember. My parents were out and we had some poorly paid babysitter at the house looking after us. Imagine her fear as she saw me walking down the stairs into the living room, I don't respond to anything she says and then proceed to plonk myself down on the sofa and go to sleep.

There were very few incidents following that (or at least I didn't remember and nobody else was around to remember them) until I was well into my late teens. This somehow happened to co-incide with the period in my life when I first met my friends Caffrey and Carling.

Once in my second University year when I lived on Belle Vue Road (incidentally the view was rubbish) in Little Woodhouse in Leeds I had a pretty bad experience. It was the middle of winter (January or February I think), and it was freezing. I had gone to sleep, not under the influence, wearing  pair of tracksuit trousers and nothing else. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the middle of the street (woken by the biting cold), frozen to the core with absolutely no clue where I was!

It probably took me a couple of minute at least to orientate myself and work out that I was only one street or so away from my house. I was still in a daze when walking back, and I don't really remember it. All I remember is being in the front garden of the house, thanking the lord that at least I had some form of clothing on, only to be confronted by our locked front door (it had shut locked behind me). 

With no doorbell to the relatively large house, and me occupying the ground floor bedroom (it was one of those awful student house where they convert the living room so that they gain get one extra bedroom and one extra student's rent), I had to spend the next five minutes throwing  an old mouldy tennis ball I found at my housemates window, who incidentally was apparently entertaining a young  lady that night and wasn't best pleased by being disturbed.

Over the next few years (particularly in my third year and masters year) there were a few incidents of me walking into my house-mate's bedrooms. Generally, it seemed I would just hover in the doorway and switch the light on, then they would tell me in no uncertain terms to bugger off, and off I would tottle. There was also a bad incident (I have no memory of) when I was around 22 and after a night of heavy drinking I woke and mistook my mums bedroom for my own in my mums house and tried to get into the wrong bed, I was once again ushered on my merry way.

But we have to rewind a few years to hear the two worst sleepwalking incidents of my life, to when young Sam was but a mere 1st year university student and '£1 a drink' at the Dry Dock caused him some heavy nights:

In my first year I stayed in Lyddon Hall at Leeds University. Lyddon was a horrible old hall of residence which was full of misfits and weirdos who apparently couldn't get into any of the proper halls. It prided itself on being the oldest hall in the University, which meant it was falling apart and smelt of sewage. The most unfortunate thing about Lyddon was that it was all male (oh how I wish I had read the application form properly!) and I was in one of the cheaper shared rooms where I lived with an Irish guy (actually he was from Nottingham but claimed to be Irish) called Collins.

Collins and I got on pretty well apart from on one fateful night in May 1999. We used to go down to this horrible club in the Merrion Centre called Ritzy. Thankfully Ritzy is closed down now as it was biggest crap hole I had ever known in Leeds. Anyway in Ritzy on a Tuesday night was an event called 'CocSoc', that is 'The Cocktail Society' (Universities being the place of clubs and societies and all). At 'CocSoc' one could get 'cocktails' for some ridiculous amount like 3 for £1. That is, the kind of cocktails which are served with a ladle out of a bucket.

On this particular evening it was my birthday and a bunch of guys from my halls decided to treat me to the Dentist Chair Treatment. The dentist chair treatment, much to my surprise consisted of me sitting down and leaning my head back (in a pretty much similar style to a dentists chair surprisingly) while all of my friends poured their cheaply obtained 'cocktails' straight down my throat.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I arrived about 8pm, left at around 10pm because I was too drunk and Collins was tasked with escorting me home. Apparently I sang 'I'm Irish, I'm Irish, I'm an Irish Faggot' at the top of my voice to the tune of the Irish national anthem all the way up Woodhouse Lane. I, of course have no memory of this.

That night Collins awoke in the early hours of the morning to a vision. Next to his bed was a sink which we both shared, and hovering over the sink, was a still sleeping and standing me - poised and ready to relieve myself into it.

Not wanting to wash himself in a soiled basin he grabbed me and directed me toward the door out of the room where the toilets were. Apparently I spent a number of minutes grasping for the door handle but actually grabbing the hinge side of the door and wondering why it wouldn't open until Collins finally opened it for me and ushered me out.

Collins then realised this to be a mistake almost straight away. For the room that we were in was on the 1st floor and I had gone out into the stairwell and decided it might be a good idea to do my business through the banisters directly onto the floor below. Apparently there were still people up and about down there, but that's just here say and rumour. Collins spent the next few minutes trying to wash evidence of my discretion with cups of water. A thankless task as I remembered nothing the next day!

Another night in the same year I had another sleepwalking event. I knew absolutely nothing about the it until the next day when being served my awful weekend breakfast (at the weekend you got some additional rubbery eggs and soggy bacon on top of usual rations at Lyddon Hall). Everyone was looking at me a bit wierdly in the  queue for the food. Particularly a Mexican guy who's name I forget and a friend of mine from Liverpool. 

I didn't know why. As far as I knew I had gone out for a perfectly normal night out in the Observatory (another hole) by the train station in Leeds centre and then had gone to bed. A far as I was concerned it was a better night than most as I had actually made it to the dining room for breakfast in the morning, something that I rarely did at the weekend.

My little Liverpudlian friend delighted in telling me the tale of the young meek Mexican guy who had being playing pool in the common room  all evening. He had retired to his room (which stupidly he had left unlocked) at around 1am. Much to his surprise he had switched the light on in the tiny cell-like room, tried to get into bed and been confronted by some slumbering drunk, oblivious to the world.

Scared he had gone back down to the common room and got my bolshy Liverpudlian friend who had accompanied him back upstairs and helped drag me back to my room. Apparently I was completely incoherent and couldn't even utter an understandable word during the march back.

The daft thing it that, not only was my room in a completely different building around 500 metres away, but the Mexican guys room was at the very end of the corridor on the 3rd floor of the main building. I obviously slept walked all the way down the road, into the main building and up three flights of stairs. Obviously at that point I must have got tired and looked for the nearest unlocked room in which to rest my weary head. I would have had to use my swipe-card twice to gain access, so I must have had a little sense with me!