And you may find yourself waking up in the night to the sound of a beep-beep-beep. And you may wonder "Did I dream that?" and roll over and for a second listening out for another beep-beep-beep but hearing nothing shut your eyes and drift back to sleep. Only to immediately hear another beep-beep-beep and wake up thinking "Could I be dreaming this beep-beep-beep?" and lying a little longer this time waiting, listening, but hearing no beep-beep-beep. So again drifting slowly back off to slee... beep-beep-beep!! What? And you may find yourself awake contemplating the idea that some ongoing dream, your subconscious has created to torture you with, contains a beep-beep-beep and that every time you close your eyes you sink back into this same dream and the beep-beep-beep contained within it immediately now wakes you up because somehow your conscious mind is now aware and, even in sleep, listening out for it. And you may wonder what kind of circular hell is this? So you roll over and start to concentrate your mind on not caring whether you can hear a beep-beep-beep or not, only each time you drift back off to sleep you immediately hear beep-beep-beep and awake. This happens again and again until you take the perfectly reasonable decision to wake up your wife. "I keep hearing a beep-beep-beep" you say, knowing that she, being slightly more worry-prone than yourself, will take this seriously in case it is in fact the first signs of armageddon. So now you are both listening. Waiting and listening. And you're doubting and thinking "I think I dreamt it" and you're just about say so when beep-beep-beep. And that wave of relief you feel washes over you like a warm summer. She heard it too! We both heard it! It's real. I didn't dream it. And then anger. What the fuck is waking me up with a beep-beep-beep in the night, making me think I'm going mad!? So you're up on the landing standing stock still like some frozen explorer staring into the black abyss of the stair well. Waiting again. Wondering whether a beep-beep-beep could ever stop of it's own accord. You wife wanders into a child's bedroom but you stay still not wanting to miss it. Then it's there. Clearer now. Coming from downstairs. Lights on, bounding down the stairs. Knowing that it won't happen again now for a while but thinking maybe you can spot the culprit anyway. Sure enough, lying on it's side on a shelf, the second cordless landline phone. Out of batteries and asking to be swapped with it's brother in the cradle (it now shares since the first cradle broke, or was broken, you can't remember which).

And so now it's clear that rather than dreaming the beep-beep-beep immediately upon falling asleep, sleep was just robbing you of your appreciation of time and so each beep-beep-beep was appearing to you to come immediately. Just like sometimes you can wake up in the morning with that feeling that actually you just dropped off. And you lie awake thinking about this and feeling relieved and now unfortunately unable to sleep at all because your brain has started inadvertently composing a blog post in this strange kind of style where every sentence starts with "And..." a bit like that Talking Heads song.