Shackt’d Up

Spook and I have been together for 29 years and married for almost 24. So why would I decide to get shackt’d up this Christmas?
Because we are chronically bad sleepers, is why. Horizontal suggested it. He was fed up hearing us moaning about how little sleep we get each night.

“Do something about it,” he declared

So I ordered a couple of shakti mats for our Christmas. Something, I assured Spook, that we could do in bed together, for about 20 mins, that would help us sleep. This piqued his interest - until……
matching mats arrived in time for Christmas, covered in about 6000 little sharp spikes on plastic discs attached to a slightly padded mat. This is an acupressure mat and is based on the ‘bed of nails’ concept. I lay it out on my side of the bed and with bare back and gritted teeth slowly lowered myself onto it. What a shocker! Once on, I couldn’t move as any slight side ways or up and down movement resulted in an injury - like an attack by a Wildcat, leaving angry raised red lines on my skin. At first it was breathtakingly sharp pain, but quite quickly a raging heat developed all over my back. I’d set the alarm for the recommended 20mins and tried to deep breath into the mat. I was aware that my heart rate seemed to have increased. I ignored the fact that Spook had declined to join me the first 2 nights though he looked on in horror. Apparently he hadn’t noticed there were 2 mats and was politely allowing me extra time before it was his shot.
Very kind of him but by the 3rd night I was on to him and insisted he joined me. His face was a picture as he hit the mat. It is credit to his willingness to try new things that he managed about 5 nights of this. The first night he even fell asleep towards the last 5 mins of the session. Our backs were a mass of tiny pricks on bright sunburned looking skin.
Now to sleep well.
Nope. Not remotely well. We continue to be chronically bad sleepers with a sense of foreboding when we approach our bed for the night. I am on night 9 and Spook is wavering about whether to continue or not. Bizarrely, my body is getting used to the pain and it is much less intense than at the start. I’m not sure how long to keep going without the desired results but it does come with a 60 day money back guarantee.
Spook said “you’re not taking that to NZ with you!!” But I have a guarantee to work through. We leave tomorrow night on the Glasgow bound bus and there’s plenty room in his bag. Unfortunately for him there isn’t going to be plenty of room in our campervan and if I lay the mat across the way we can share!
We are going to visit our daughter, Princess Meg, who left for a 6 week holiday in November 2018 and still hasn’t quite found the time to come back. When I said to her, after 6 months of sharing the house with her apres university, that I didnt think we could live together, she said “yes I know - I’m so sorry” then went off for 6 weeks and has thus far stayed away for about 60 weeks.
I now have less than a month to convince her that perhaps we could at least be neighbours as NZ is a bit further awaythan I’d envisaged.