h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Given the number of people who die in their sleep, that's a life-saving strategy.

RF

What you need, then, is a family with Winter Vomiting Virus. That's what's kept me awake these last five nights.

Lots and lots of cramp related stuff. In particular, having your thighs cramp up is horrible because there are no other muscles strong enough to counteract them.

I wish to relate a tale of a former colleague and his "Sleep" injuries. Said colleague goes out one night, is very succesful and manages to bring home a new willing lady friend to share his bed with. Well, they play "Ladies and Gentlemen" and both fall fast asleep..........in the morning, the new lady friend brings him a cup of tea and sporting scratches on one side of her face and one black eye.

It turns out that said colleague had had a dream......that he was in a Forrest, and a wild badger runs at him biting and scratching. He of course retaliates, little realising that the "Badger" in his dream was actually the new girl that he was giving a pasting to.....

She never held it against him and from that day to this he is known as "Dances With Badgers"........

When I was a child I used to often find bruises on my legs and not know how they had got there. My nan used to come to stay every weekend and slept in the room on the other side of the wall where my bed was. She used to hear strange banging noises, so I can only presume that I used to roll into the wall, or kick it.

Not injury related, but my other grandmother is not very mobile at all - uses a zimmer frame and walks very slowly - but my grandad reports that she frequently has a running motion while she sleeps. It's very strange as there's no way she could run while awake, but she seems to have little trouble trying when asleep!

My cousin fell out of bed and landed on a pint glass that was on the floor. She severed the artery in her leg and lost several pints of blood! Fortunately, she wasn't sleeping alone and her bedfellow was able to call an ambulance; otherwise she may well have bled to death.

This is a lesson to us all. Return your pint glasses to the bar after use.

RF

A few weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night with sore palms and wrists.

I get up, have a glass of water and go back to bed. About 10 minutes later, the police are hammering on my door. Apparently my neighbours had called them because they'd heard very loud hammering on the walls and me screaming my head off and were so concerned they called the cops.

I've also woken up with a dislocated shoulder on a few occasions.

Thank God for that, RF. For a minute I thought the lesson was going to be that we should use those horrendous plastic pint cup things.

I woke up this morning with my duvet wrapped around my neck and all the blankets that had been on top of it wrapped around my feet