Anyway to bed, alone *sniff* Oh, actually..I can open window…& no snoring..& no grumbling about me hogging the duvet. Scratch the *sniff*

Sadly, I have to announce that J and I have not been sleeping together for the last week.

Now, before we are flooded with messages of support and texts saying "I always knew he was a bad 'un" from our friends.......

OK, before J is flooded with messages of support and texts saying "I always knew he was a bad 'un" from his friends.

Let me explain.  This has nothing to do with the health of our relationship, our commitment to each other or the relative level of attraction we are feeling for one another.  All of these remain at the top of their tree, thank you very much for asking.

No, marital bed excile is a consequence purely of the relative health of our sinus'.  

The degree to which we are bunged up, both suffering from the ubiquitous cold we appear to have shared with one another since later 2009.  Strangely, that coincides with the adoption of our first child.

Coincidental surely?

So, rather like the Queen and Prince Philip, we kiss one another good night on the landing and retire to separate bedrooms.  Thus ensuring that we both have a fighting chance of getting a good night's sleep undisturbed by the hideous grunting, snorting, moaning of one another's snoring.

Snoring is an iniquitous thing isn't it?

I only snore when I have a cold apparently.

J does it a bit more often, but not majorly.

Our main bedtime argument comes over opening the window.  He suffers dreadfully from cold hands and feet if a window is open in the bedroom at any time where the nighttime temperature drops below 20 degrees.  

I, on the other hand, have slept with a window open ever since  I can remember.  My Mum was a fresh air fiend.  We would have windows open in the middle of winter when I was a child.  Given that this was in the days before central heating, I developed my immunity to frostbite at an early age.

J's antipathy to have a bedroom window open (and his consequential frozen extremities) are probably as a consequence of his scooping the duvet under him and sleeping on top of it.

My love of having the window open is encouraged by my penchant for rolling myself in the duvet, sticking the pillow over my head and only letting my nose show from underneath the mound of cotton and duck down.

On those rare nights when J is away at a conference, I have been known to go to bed as early as 9pm in order to luxuriate snuggled in my duvet, with the window open, feeling the cool breeze on my face (or more appropriately, my nose).

I had a short lived relationship with a chap who snored incessantly. And loudly. Very loudly.

It was hideous.

The sleep deprivation began to affect how I felt about him within a very short period of time.

What made matters worse was that the onus for dealing with the problem was placed on me.  

Had I tried sleeping pills? He suggested.  How about getting some ear plugs?  What about regularly going to bed 20 minutes early in order that I was asleep by the time he came to bed and therefore less likely to be disturbed by the snoring? 

That last one was really conducive to a long term, healthy relationship!

Anyway, even if I did get to sleep first the snoring was SO loud. SO intrusive. SO ghastly I could be assured of being woken and facing the choice of a sleepless night or an uncomfortable one on the sofa.

Suffice it to say that relationship didn't last long.

I have one mortal fear.  That is of turning into my father, Grumpy Deaf Grandad as I get older.  This is of course for a number of reasons.

I think I am safe over fears of being as anti social or pessimistic as he is.  I have inherited my Mum's character.  I've also inherited her sense of humour thank goodness!

However, my Dad does snore. Horribly.

We found this out when he came to stay with us.  It was on the first of a few days after my mother's emergency hospitalisation, in what would become her terminal stay in hospital.

Lying in bed on the first evening he was with us J turned to me.  

"What's that noise?" He asked.

"I don't know.  It sounds like an animal in distress." I answered.

We got up and began to search the ground floor of our house.  Realising quite quickly that the noise was coming from the guest bedroom, situated on the ground floor directly beneath our own.

"It's Grandad's snoring," J shouted, outside the guest bedroom door.  We didn't need to worry about making noise ourselves.  He's deaf.  He'd never have heard anything anyway.

We returned to bed, snorting with laughter, as my Dad's snoring droned on.  The sole humorous point in an otherwise long, sad and worrying day.

The other problem is, I hate sleeping alone.  In fact we both do.  Despite the moans over the window.  The childish scraps over who is hogging more of the duvet (the lump lying on top, or the one wrapped in it).  We miss one another being in bed.  It's been a very long time since either of us slept on our own, let alone with anyone else.

So inevitably, we wake, miss the other, and go and get into bed with the missing partner.  

The visiting half then falls asleep.

Begins to snore. 

So the person whose bed the visitor has invaded then has to get up and move to the original bedroom they occupied. 

Our children both suffer from frequent nightmares and disturbances.  It's therefore not unusual for them to wake and come and find us in the night.  It's been quite amusing watching their confusion as, arriving in our normal bedroom, they find me in bed where J had been in the middle of the night.

Our colds have been dissipating over the last 48 hours.

Who knows, we might be getting back to normal tonight.  Just so long as I get up there first and manage to open the window before `j gets a chance to lock in closed!