What’s the last thing you usually do before you go to sleep? How do you generally spend the twenty minutes or so before you nod off?

Me? I do my teeth, crawl into bed, set the alarm, drink some water, kiss my boyfriend and do a crossword or two. Just a quick crossword, you understand, not a cryptic puzzle. Just a simple crossword or so, published by one of the national dailies in a handy compilation every so often.

It’s a way of defocusing. It allows me to think about something else, and not worry, and tire my eyes (and brain) out. Even though I race through the questions, filling in blank spaces, by the time I’ve done one, maybe one and a half, my eyes have eased shut. I blink for too long and forget to open my eyes. My pen rests on the open book in front of me, poised and ready.

A minute or so later, my eyes open again. A mini-snooze has passed, and with it, the first hallucinations of half-sleep.

Over the past few months, I’ve got into the habit of jotting down the image in my head before I slide down under the covers and turn out the light. I write in the margins of the puzzle book, things which make perfect sense in the context of half-sleep, but not at all in the cold light of the next morning.

A random sample of snippets scribbled in sleepy slanting script:

• Charlie’s dancing hairband in the loft.
• Inspectors arriving on the train - but their hotel is back in Putney.
• Totally absolutely completely understand.
• Is there a difference between a pillar and a column?
• Inconsiderate bitch. Bitch. Botch. Batch. Butch. Why not Betch?
• This is a new story. You did not copy it.
• Time travel in a sleep net with a rabbit and a man.
• I’ll be the movie fine and fen. You’ll be with me forever when I’ll beee.
• Screwdriver stomach.
• What’s the difference between a rosta and a rota?
• Baclava at Lao’s - complaining about a spitball, photos of Katy and others.
• “They are”
• Luigi writing things down; 2 old men in flat caps “que dice Luigi, eh?”
• Quiet airlines, blue crimplene suits, absorb noise, one man in red wants to stand up.
• Ink via nib.
• Hawkeye chasing a man down a concrete corridor with a gun.
• And a picture of a monkey wrench.

In the morning, as now, I look at these scribblings, and have absolutely no idea what they mean, except that perhaps my half conscious mind is quite, quite strange.