I generally sleep flat in my stomach, often with my arms tucked under me � sometimes sending them to pins and needles. Usually that�s the only noticeable side effect other than the occasional red mark on my arm in the shape of a button from one of my Peter Alexander pyjama tops.

This morning the reverse was the case. When I got out of the shower (not before I got in, you�ll note, because my eyes weren�t open then) I noticed a complete, and still quiet red, hand print on one side of my abs. Or where my abs would be were they actually defined.

It was a perfectly formed hand, which is a surprise not least because I know I had been tossing and turning most of the night.

Between the idiots in the car park of the block of flats next door � loud talking and laughing by many at both 1am and 4.45 am � and the odd dream I had it was a very disturbed night.

The dream was odd for a couple of reasons. First, I remember it, which virtually never happens. Second, it felt very real and I was surprised to wake up with a hand print instead of very red teary eyes and a sore throat from crying. Because I had been crying a lot in the dream. The dream was about the death of my grandmothers. It somehow combined grieving for the death of my grandmother who died more than twenty years ago and the death of my grandmother who, while currently seriously ill, is still alive. As if they had both died at the same time. And it involved a major argument with my Dad, something which I don�t think we�ve ever done, and certainly not during my adult life. Then there was the crying, full-on sore throat inducing sobbing that seemed to go on for some time.

And yet, with all that, I woke up with a hand print which seems to indicate that I was lying in the same place for some reasonably long period of time. Strange.

Oh, and I just looked in the bathroom mirror and the fine outline of the fingers is still on my stomach. An hour and a half after I got up. (Hmm, it�s only an hour and half since I got up and I�ve already been in the office for 35 minutes � got to love living so close to town.)

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Update on the parallel lives of me and my downstairs neighbour. We caught the tram into work together the other day and were chatting away, as you do.

It turns out that in addition to the same general time table and the same glasses, we also have the same job. Hmmm.