Feeling Like a Kid Again

In which The Author relives a childhood nightmare

When I was six years old, the Tutankhamun Exhibition came to London.

1972 was the fiftieth anniversary of Howard Carter’s discovery of this most famous of Egyptian tombs (which I why I can date it so accurately.) The full collection toured the world, and stopped off at the British Museum on its travels. Soon afterwards, I was the recipient of a lavishly-illustrated hardback book about the mysterious boy-king and the treasures intended to accompany him on his journey to the Duat.

I can’t remember which of my aunts and/or uncles bought it for me, but I’ve got a feeling that it was either Auntie Sylvia from Kent, or Josie J. and Bill from St. John’s Wood. I can’t imagine it was Auntie Maggie or my godfather Denis – the various gods and goddesses depicted would have broken the Second Commandment in their eyes. (Sadly, it’s too late to ask any of them to clarify this part of the story.)

I was too young to read a great deal of the text, of course. While I appreciated the generosity, in retrospect it should probably have been kept in a cupboard for ten years or so before it was handed over to me. Over the course of time, the colour plates worked their way free of the binding, and the pages soon followed suit. It fell apart many years ago, which is a real shame, as it would be quite a collector’s item these days.

Even so, it sparked my life-long fascination with Ancient Egypt: its history, culture, religion, and civilization in general. After all, what’s not to like about a society with a fertility goddess – Hathor – who (according to a magazine article which Vicki F. once showed me) was invoked with narcotics and music? As Vix herself said, Hathor was the Goddess of Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’Roll.

My first tattoo was the Eye of Horus, and I have the god Thoth tattooed on my right shoulder. (I had to think about that, so Rhian very kindly checked, attracting a few odd glances in the Prince!) I also have little statuettes of Thoth, Isis, Hathor and Anubis on my bookshelves at home. Oh, yes – that Anubis, the jackal-headed guardian of the Underworld.

When I was a kid, I was terrified out of my mind by this fellow, I can tell you! I’ve no idea why. After all, I didn’t know anything about the deity’s associations with death and damnation at the time. I think it was just the shape of the head, those great bloody ears, and the detail around the eyes, that freaked me out. I remember that there was a full-page black-and-white photo of him in the Tutankhamun book, and I memorized the page number so that I could skip it when I was leafing through. Even now, some four decades later, it still gives me a chill to look at it…

When I was 35 years old, and in the middle of my very brief involvement with Australian Emma (see From a Land Down Under), I bought the Anubis figurine from Rebel Rebel in Cardiff. I decided that it was time to confront my childhood head-on, and treated myself to it one lunchtime. It was the first of my small collection. It’s actually a candlestick, but I’ve only lit the candle a couple of times. To have his shadow flickering around the walls would cost me even more sleep than I lose already.

A few years after my first encounter with Egyptology, during the autumn of 1975, the BBC broadcast a four-part Doctor Who story called ‘Pyramids of Mars.’ The opening couple of minutes, where a white-suited Englishman discovers a long-buried Egyptian tomb, struck an immediate chord with me. I was immediately back in the era of the great discoveries I’d read about. He and his native bearers enter, only for the Egyptians to flee at the sight of the Eye of Horus. Dismissing their leader with a snarl of ‘Superstitious savage!’, the Englishman enters the inner chamber and is struck down by an unseen force.

The scene cuts to the interior of the TARDIS, where the Doctor and Sarah are chatting about his extended life-span and his Time Lord past. Instantly the ship is hit by some sort of force, and a terrifying face appears in mid-air. The TARDIS comes to rest in an old priory (the site on which the UNIT base was built) where mysterious and terrifying events are about to unfold…

This particular period of Doctor Who, with the great Robert Holmes as script editor and Philip Hinchcliffe as producer, is noted for its leanings towards Gothic horror. This story, written by Holmes and producer Paddy Russell under the pseudonym ‘Stephen Harris’, was turned into a novel by Terrance Dicks, and I’ve still got the Target paperbacks edition on the shelves at home. It fits alongside ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ and ‘The Brain of Morbius’ as a sort-of homage to the great horror films produced by Universal Studios. The walking mummies were genuinely scary when I watched it the first time round, as Bob Holmes had intended. Even when the Doctor revealed that they were actually cleverly-disguised robots, they were still fearsome foes.

However, the true terror (for me, anyway) was only revealed in the concluding episode, when the evil Sutekh was unmasked – literally. He might not have had the head of Anubis, but to my nine-year old eyes he might as well have done. The original model for Set, the murderous brother of Horus in the Egyptian pantheon, Sutekh plans to destroy all life in the Universe. Only the Doctor and Sarah stand between him and the end of everything.

Since I knew that nobody would have the good taste to buy it for me as a Xmas present, I treated myself to the DVD. I watched it last night, for the first time in nearly forty years. Time hasn’t been kind to it, to be honest. Some of the effects are risible when we look back from the vantage point of huge budgets and high-tech CGI. The script is melodramatic in places and some of the acting is awfully stagy.

However, there’s lots of good stuff there too. Tom Baker gives an intense performance throughout, and there’s a chilling scene when he shows Sarah the possible consequences of letting Sutekh loose upon the Earth. The incidental music is extremely atmospheric, the direction carries the story along at a cracking pace, and above all there’s spirited dialogue, genuinely frightening adversaries, and some beautiful laugh-out-loud moments. That’s the true spirit of Doctor Who, after all.

The weirdest thing about the whole experience of watching it again, though, was this: last night, when I had a bath before turning in, I left the bathroom door slightly ajar. I was nine years old again, afraid that Sutekh (or even Anubis himself) would materialize behind my back. When I went into my bedroom, I even made a point of putting my bedside lamp on before I turned the main light off – just in case he appeared in those few seconds of darkness. Isn’t it odd how the things which terrified you as a child come back when you least expect them to?

There’s a strange postscript to this, as well. One of the bondage websites to which I subscribe shared a photograph this week, of a woman in an elaborate leather outfit, and wearing a hood in the shape of Anubis’ head. I was scrolling through it and stopped in my tracks when I saw the picture. As I told you in Behind the Mask, ordinarily I’d have been incredibly drawn to a picture of a woman with her head covered. However, that one attracted me and frightened me in equal measure. It was a beautiful image, and I couldn’t help wondering how much a mask like that would cost to make. Maybe it would be a cool fancy dress costume for me next Halloween – just as long as I kept away from any mirrors…

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Dream Topping

In which The Author contemplates a good night’s sleep

In recent months my chronic lack of sleep has reached the stage where it’s gone way beyond being a joke. The trouble is that I’m locked into a vicious cycle, where insomnia leads to depression and depression leads to insomnia. There doesn’t seem to be any way to break out of this endless loop. My sleep pattern has been fucked for years, and it seems to be getting worse. In fact, the last time I had any decent, uninterrupted, restful sleep was under general anaesthetic at Llandough Hospital (see Déjà Vu.) I’d give anything to relive that state, to be honest.

The daily two-hour-plus commute between Aberdare and Cardiff was where the rot set in, I think. Almost inevitably I’d fall asleep on the train on the way to work and/or on the way home. I was also justly famous for my lunchtime power naps, which is when the situation really became serious. They would fuck up my night’s sleep even further, because I’d been napping in the day – which all the experts say is a cardinal sin. Once I’d established that pattern, it was almost impossible to change it.

I can almost certainly get by with only three or four hours’ sleep a night. It came in handy when I pulled that all-nighter proofreading Josie’s thesis a couple of weeks ago (see Meanwhile, Deep in The Author’s Subconscious…)

On the other hand, there was an episode of The X Files about a guy who’d been surgically treated in a Black Ops programme so that he could go without sleeping at all. Unfortunately, the procedure turned him into a homicidal maniac. (Mind you, Margaret Thatcher claimed to need only a few hours’ sleep every night, and she was a raving lunatic by the time she stood down as Prime Minister. Truth is stranger than science fiction.) The CIA and other shady organizations around the world are alleged to use sleep deprivation as a means of torture. It’s a classic brainwashing tactic, as anyone who’s seen Michael Caine in The Ipcress File will know.

Every time I mention the problem to my GP, I get the usual list of suggestions to try and help me relax. None of them work as a long-term solution. I’ve tried every trick in the books (and believe me, I’ve read a few of them) in my relentless quest for eight hours’ sleep, but to no avail. Here are some of the Top Tips you’ll find in every self-help book on the subject of insomnia:

• Have a nice warm bath.
  Yes, that usually helps me unwind all right, but on rare occasions I’ve unwound so much that I’ve almost dozed off. Waking up in a bath of lukewarm water doesn’t do much for your sense of well-being, believe me.

• Have a warm milky drink at bedtime.
  Okay, and then I’ll have to get up at least twice in the night because I need a piss. It’s hardly going to be at the top of my ‘to-do’ list.

• Don’t do anything stimulating, like watching a film or reading an exciting book.
  I wonder what they’d recommend as an alternative. Anything starring Bruce Willis in a white t-shirt is probably off the menu. Maybe I should try chick flicks or the novels of Jeffrey Archer for some mind-numbing entertainment instead.

• Practice some relaxation exercises and/or visualization techniques.
  I’ve tried a couple of self-hypnosis tapes over the years. I gave up with the first one (which was a freebie from a rep in work) because the guy’s voice was so incredibly annoying. The other one worked for a very short period – in fact, the exact interval between the end of the recording and the cassette player switching off with a loud click. (Note to manufacturers: surely it’s possible to develop some sort of ‘sleep’ system, whereby the machine turns itself off silently…) I’m not sure whether I’m suggestible enough for these techniques to be effective, to be honest.

[A digression: About two years ago there was a comedy hypnotist at the White Lion, and I decided to go along to check him out. C— came with me, but she bottled out of taking part, as it was the work of the Devil, apparently. Anyway, the guy invited us to join him on the stage, and then asked us to perform a simple visualization exercise. During this preamble he walked behind us and touched us on the shoulder if he felt that we’d ‘gone under’ enough to take part in the show. I was one of the lucky participants.

However, while he was putting us well and truly into the trance state, something distracted me and the spell was broken. I felt a bit exposed on the stage with everyone else (there were about eight or ten of us altogether), so I had to play along for a while.

After pretending to be sunbathing on a very hot beach, riding a horse in the Grand National, and doing various other daft things, I decided to come clean. I told the guy that I’d been fully conscious throughout the whole thing. He didn’t believe me, and told me that I was still under the influence. He warned me that when the music started, I’d join the rest of the group in dancing to a disco era Bee Gees song. Sure enough, he started the music and I stayed perfectly still.

I looked him in the eyes, said, ‘Told you,’ and walked back to my table. A few minutes later, Kev confessed that he too had been making it up as he went along.

The truly bizarre part, however, was that my friend Maria, who had been seriously put under the ‘fluence, had re-enacted some ballet moves she’d learned as a child. When we told her about it afterwards, she had absolutely no recollection of the past forty minutes or so. Even when Dai B. showed her the video he’d taken with his phone, of her springing around the stage like Dame Margot Fonteyn, she was still none the wiser. Weird…]

• Don’t drink tea, coffee or alcohol before bed.
  Well, I don’t drink tea or coffee anyway, and this is now my twelfth alcohol-free day. (Not my twelfth day ever, I hasten to add – I’ve signed up for Sober October along with a couple of friends. The idea is that people sponsor you to spend a booze-free month for Macmillan Cancer Support. I haven’t bothered getting sponsors, but it was a good excuse to have a break.) It hasn’t made any difference at all.

• Try resetting your body clock by force.
  Been there, done that. About eighteen months ago I managed to stay awake all day, all night, and well into the following afternoon in an attempt to force my body clock back into sync with the rest of civilized society. I took Stella for her usual afternoon stroll into the Country Park, and when we returned to the pub I settled down to read the paper. I woke up about an hour and a half later on the bench seat, with my jacket over me and Stella lying at my feet. Rachel told me later that I’d nodded off ‘like Gaz on a bad night’ (see The Power of Suggestion) and she’d covered me up in case I felt cold. I was wide awake all night as a result. My uplanned mid-afternoon nap had thrown me right back to Square One. That was the end of that idea.

• Make love before going to sleep.
  Yer ‘aving a bleedin’ laugh, incha? Like sleep itself, sex is just a distant memory for me. Even the strange erotic dreams I have in that post-REM lucid stage of semi-wakefulness don’t fill the gap. The imagined concept of a thing is not the thing itself. Just dreaming about sex doesn’t compensate for actually doing it.

Anyway, the self-help books are full of useful hints like these and many more besides, However, one major factor isn’t something the medical profession can really help with. I had a very long period of disturbed sleep when I had the impingement in my shoulder, which made it impossible to get comfortable in bed. The intermittent pain in my back isn’t conducive to lying comfortably either. My body stops my mind from relaxing by constantly reminding it that I’m getting old and creaky. The last thing I need is to develop a codeine habit by constantly popping painkillers. At least one of my friends has swapped a heroin monkey for a codeine one by the long-term use of OTC and prescription analgesics.

The biggest problem, though, is probably the fact that my bed is nearly twenty years old. I can date it fairly accurately, because Sam and I went to Courts in Aberdare when I was looking to buy it, and I was still living in Llwydcoed at the time. I bought my house fifteen years ago, and it definitely pre-dates the move.

[A digression: We had a rather unfortunate moment with the salesman when I was trying to choose a headboard. He showed us a couple of upholstered monstrosities, and then pointed to one which consisted of a series of vertical struts with a curved piece across the top.

‘Well, of course, if you’re into bondage—’

He didn’t finish this sentence. Sam and I both collapsed laughing; she blushed to the roots of her hair, and we excused ourselves to Servini’s café for a cold drink to ‘make up our minds.’]

Assuming that the bed itself is at fault, it seemed logical to attack the problem head on. There’s no way I can afford to buy a new one, so this afternoon I did the next best thing.

A number of my friends have waxed lyrical about their memory foam mattresses over the past few years. Once again, they’re a bit out of my price range, but earlier this week B&M had a new stock item: a memory foam mattress topper. It’s the same size as a standard double mattress, about an inch thick, and is designed to be laid on the existing mattress. The advertising material claims that the synthetic compound ‘moulds itself to your body shape’; even better, it’s supposed to retain warmth and help maintain one’s circulation; most importantly, it was well within my budget. I decided to treat myself with the money I hadn’t spent in the pub, and brought it home at about six o’clock this evening.

At the moment, it has yet to top out my mattress. In fact, even as I type, it’s lying on the floor of my bedroom. You see, it was supplied in a vacuum pack for easy transportation, which meant that it was compressed to a few millimetres thick. The enclosed information leaflet says that it should achieve its normal shape within about twelve hours at a temperature of 25° C, but that it will take longer at lower temperatures.

Well, fuck my luck! If I’d bought it last week, when we had our Indian Summer, there would have been a fair chance of my south-facing bedroom reaching optimum operating conditions. As things are, it will probably be tomorrow night (at least) before the drop-scone-thin piece of foam attains its full size. Furthermore, you’re supposed to allow 48 hours before using it, so that any flame-retardant chemical residue can disperse into the atmosphere. That takes us to Monday night. Roll on…

I might as well stay up again tonight, reading or listening to music, or maybe going for the hat-trick and writing a third blog in one day. Last night I forgot to take my Mirtazapine, and I was still wide awake when the dawn chorus kicked off at around five a.m. If I take it tonight, will I get some sleep, or will I just have another batch of weird lucid dreams instead, like the ones I had this morning?

I’m quite looking forward to Monday night, in fact. If the mattress topper lives up to its bill matter, I’ll be a very happy man. If it doesn’t, fuck knows what else I’m going to do with it. There’s no earthly way to pack the bloody thing back up and return it for a refund, that’s for sure.