Beware The Spaceman

Author: Barry Gibbons

  • Series 2, Post 2: Sleep Paralysis

    Nightmares are not much fun as discussed in the previous post. For me at least, nightmares led in part, to a fear of the dark and going to sleep. Yet sleep is inevitable unless you have insomnia but that’s a whole different subject in which I have no personal knowledge. Sleep though is weird, your body and your brain both go into this standby mode, but it is in no way certain they will enter or exit this mode together. Welcome to the fresh hell that is sleep paralysis.

    With nightmares there is the guarantee that you will wake up from them and while disturbing there is the relief that you have escaped into the waking world. What if instead you awake and the waking world is not what it appears to be? What if you wake from one nightmare into another, far more frightening and real. This happens to myself on the odd occasion, thankfully not regularly enough to be a permanent feature in my life. In my experience sleep paralysis comes in two forms.

    Firstly like I said, waking from one nightmare into another. In the second nightmare my eyes are usually wide open and I am able to see the room around me in a first person perspective but not able to move. Then out of the corner of my eye I will see a gigantic spider dropping from the ceiling onto my face and I will be powerless to do anything about it. This dream will be so vivid and powerful that I will usually wake up immediately and check the bed for the offending arachnid. I have a pathological fear and hatred of spiders that is so longstanding that I can’t remember how or why it began. Perhaps this is why my visual hallucinations take the form of a spider. For others it can be shadow people or alien abduction, the possibilities are literally endless and terrifying.

    Secondly and far more common for myself, will be the sure and certain knowledge that I am suffering an episode of sleep paralysis. In this scenario my mind is awake but my body is asleep. I am fully conscious while my body is either cutting off the blood supply to a limb causing it to go numb and die, or I am suffocating and unable to change my resting position. Most of the time this dream happens in some natural environment where I am partially buried and struggling for breath. In this one I am desperately struggling to move to free myself and live. The dream ends when I wake up and find there is nothing wrong whatsoever.

    As a post script to this post I’d like to add another dream. Only once have things gone the other way. In this dream I was falling out of the sky, with the ground rushing up towards me. It’s not unusual for me to have this dream, and sometimes I wake with a sudden sense of inertia. This one time though I didn’t wake up, I felt every inch of hitting the ground and knowing that I was dead. It disturbed me for years and I still wonder why I would put myself through such an awful event. I’d like to know if anyone else has actually died in their dreams and if anyone has a theory as to what it means?

  • Series 2, Post 1: Nightmares


    “These dreams go on when I close my eyes, every second of the night I live another life
    .”
    – Bernie Taupin

    Never a truer word was written by Bernie Taupin rightly celebrated as one of the 20th Century’s greatest lyricists. For all my life I have lived a dual identity, one in the waking world and another when I’m asleep. My waking life is consistent and orderly but my dreams are fractured and dysfunctional. Sometimes this makes my dreams exhilarating but on other occasions it is terrifying. The worst part is that more often than not, I’m not in control of my dreams. Rationally most dreams can be explained as the mind replaying something which is relevant to the waking world. Then there are the other dreams, ones born out of the abstract part of another dimension. You know the ones I’m talking about, they have no rational explanation.

    If you combine a dream that has no rational explanation with one that you are not able to control, add in an unpleasant scenario and repeat this dream every night for over a decade you have the perfect storm. This is the purest form of a nightmare, my very earliest nightmare involved frogs. I actually quite like frogs, unlike my beloved great aunt who had a morbid phobia, but in this particular scenario they were my nemesis.

    The nightmare was always played out the same way in the same exact place, like a broken recording of an event that was physically impossible. My childhood bedroom was on the upper floor of my parents house. It was next to the stairs but separated by a narrow landing which served little purpose except to throw light into the stairwell from an offset window. My bed was pushed up against a plasterboard wall which separated my room from the landing. The walls of my room were wallpapered with a series of cartoonish vehicles on a plain white background. It was the late 80s-early 90s and typically restrained in the British middle class fashion. The carpet was a magnolia mid-length pile with a hole burnt into it by a spotlight which had fallen over while switched on.

    In the waking world my bedroom was redecorated several times, but in my dreams it always reverted to its original design except for a few “additional” features. The window handle had disappeared meaning it was sealed shut, the door was off its hinges leaving just the frame, and the bookcase next to the bed slid back to reveal a hidden compartment. In reality the compartment was impossible as it would be the aforementioned landing space. In my dreams the bookcase would slide on its own accord, opening up a black void behind.

    The space was not empty but filled with hundreds of glove puppets in the form of frogs. The glove puppets spilled out of the space like a mighty flood that I tried to hold back by sliding the bookcase back into place. I usually woke up from my dream before discovering whether I was successful or not. This unpleasant feeling always followed me after waking, and for a time I dreaded going to sleep knowing this dream was coming.

    Over time this dream faded into the memory of a nightmare. Occasionally I still think about it but my brain has never been able to process its origin or its meaning. Perhaps there was neither, it was a self perpetuating fear of nightmares. I still have nightmares but I cope with them better. What I now dread is not being able to sleep enough or sleeping too much! Doubtless this fear shall also pass in time.

  • Timewarped – Series 2: Nyctophobia (Autumn 2026)


    Nyctophobia, “are you afraid of the dark?” If so you also have Nyctophobia. Except a phobia is an irrational fear and I would argue it is perfectly reasonable to be afraid of the dark; just like a fear of polar bears is reasonable on Svalbard. The dark isn’t as scary as what lies within it. It’s the vulnerability of tiredness and the unknown in the pitch black. In this series I will tell you personal stories which have given me just cause to fear the gloom. The key thing to bear in mind is that we cannot allow our fears to control us, especially Nyctophobia because the night is as unescapable as the day.

  • Award Season VI: Assassins’ Creed Valhalla

    100% Complete Presented by: Microsoft, in 2024, via my X-Box One Series S

    I have played most of the Assassins’ Creed franchise but none gave me as much pleasure as Valhalla. There are some who say that this installment was bloated with side quests and completely missed the point of stealth combat – but for me that was the best part of the game. I played mirage afterwards and it wasn’t a patch on Valhalla. I love a good collectathon, trying to get all the trophies in order to get that magical 100% complete.

    Valhalla might not be a true Assassins game but it had all the elements I look for in a game. I was able to play as a single character – Eivor which could be a man or a woman if I remember. There was a little bit of personalisation available but then your character develops through the game. I liked the style of combat, as blunt as it was, I liked the variety of weapons which were for the most part period correct.

    Being an English man, I could see where the game developers had to cut corners in order to make the game work. It wasn’t meant to be a faithful recreation of the period but had enough elements to satisfy my nerdiness. There were sections of the game that seemed beyond me, but if that happened I could usually find a way round until I did complete the quest.

    This is the only game where I have ever completed it to 100%. In the early days of the NES there was virtually no chance of it. Game Over meant starting back from the beginning, back before the punishing level that finally felled you. Then with Lara Croft’s adventures, there was the chance to save the game but inevitably I’d end up saving in a place where I got stuck in a no win situation. With modern games, each step of the way is saved – so you only go back to before the big nasty came and put you in your place.

    Completing the game is only a question of time but the real difficulty is completing the game to 100%. Do all the side quests, collect all the collectables, & then do the secrets. There is a sense of satisfaction from getting all the minor trophies, especially when you can see how rare the trophy is. Collecting them is also in the pursuit of that rarest of trophies – the 100% complete.

    If you manage to achieve this as I did in Valhalla, then you can say to yourself “I’ve completed the game” and on to the next one. Beyond a virtual trophy there is nothing more than the personal satisfaction of knowing that you have done everything the game developer wanted you to do and more. So the challenge is then to start all over again with a new game.

    I end the ‘awards season’ with this anecdote not only because it is the most recent and brief, but because it highlights a problem with life. If you focus your life on the pursuit of awards then life will inevitably get in the way. Awards are somewhat for looking back on the times that you have achieved something meaningful. They are like nicknames, you can give them to yourself but they aren’t as meaningful.

    This introspective gaze stops you from seeing everyone else around you and living in the moment. With each one of these awards, the award itself wasn’t the focus of the memory but everything that happened leading up to that award. If you play a video game for the pursuit of a trophy then you aren’t focused on the true magic of the game. It isn’t about succeeding but the interesting ways in which you get diverted and fail. Thus it is with life.

  • Awards Season V: My Gala Medal Collection


    Presented by: myself to myself, in the early 2010s, on the town green


    Here’s an interesting question, if you present a medal to yourself do you truly deserve it? No, probably not but I don’t really care, they are my medals and it’s only a bit of fun. Now sit down comfortably and I shall tell ye the tale of how I ‘won’ them.

    My hometown is a town by medieval charter. It had a population of around 2500, and sat next to a working military base. The town had two claims to fame; the base had been used in the film the Dambusters, and Queen Catherine Parr had once been lady of the manor. Everything in the town was within a 10 minutes walk of my house, it was the place that I worked, shopped, & worshipped. I didn’t know everybody in the town personally but I knew of them.

    The town has a Town Council, and I in the late 2000s – early 2010s was a Town Councillor elected by the townsfolk. Sure the election had 14 seats and 15 candidates but I put my all into that campaign to win as many votes as possible. I wanted to prove that I was dedicated to the Town and making it the best to live, work, & play. It mattered to me because this was my hometown; the place that I had grown up and I wanted to give others the same opportunities I had.

    My proudest achievements were the annual Summer Gala and the Winter Festival. The twin events the Town Council hosted each year. It was important to me that these events were free and a magical extravaganza for young and old alike. For this reason I ended up playing Santa Claus for 3 years on the trot – despite my fear and dislike of children. The Winter Festival was easy, tried and tested over many years but the Gala more of a hotpotch of different bygone ideas.

    In the 80s and 90s in summer months the town had a Gymkarna, a Parade, a Strong Man competition, a Tea Party, an agricultural show, and a fair. By the 2010s only the Gala, the agricultural show, & the fair had survived. The Gala combined a sports day with a fundraiser for local groups and charities. Groups had gazebos around the edge of the green while the central portion was cut and marked out for races. To keep the event from feeling stale, each year was given a theme and as a council we looked to see what more we could do.

    In my tenure we had a medieval reenactment, we had a race up and down the three hills in the town, & we even considered a soap box derby. However, we decided that the latter was wildly dangerous due to the steepness of the slopes. During the medieval reenactment I acted as MC for the event and was in charge of handing out the medals. This is when I got the idea that I should also award myself medals.

    I didn’t compete in the hill race but as I had walked the route previously, I considered that enough to get the medal. Then during breaks from my duties, I tried out all the various events for which the medals were awarded. After each event I hung another medal around my neck. I looked like a medieval olympian by the end of the day. The medals themselves were only plastic on ribbon but the weight did feel quite nice.

    When I got home, the medals hung around my judo trophy for a while then slowly migrated to the bottom of my treasure chest. One day they may see the light of day again but when and if they do – then I can tell people not of my great sporting prowess but of the achievements I made in bringing joy to my community.

  • Awards Season IV: ScoutEx Shield


    Presented: by the District Commissioner,
    the ScoutEx Show,early 1990s


    The ScoutEx Show Much like sports, shows were a big part of my life growing up. My grandparents exhibited at shows, my parents exhibited at shows, and according to the old newspapers my brother and I exhibited at shows. Shows meant prizes and prizes meant trophies. So if that meant entering a category on behalf of your son or grandson, so be it. The judges must have thought I was some kind of child prodigy.

    I grew up a little, not a lot, but just enough to enter what would become a foundation stone of my childhood. The Scout Movement was many things to me, and sometimes these are too complex to put down in words. I thrived in the structured format, however I found it difficult to connect with the other boys. On the other hand it was one of the only times I have ever felt a real sense of belonging, and being part of something bigger than myself.

    We weren’t just a bunch of Beavers, Cubs, & Scouts – we were a unit, a troop, a group. Together we were strong and we were bold, one of the best in the district. It was like a football club or a form at school – but maybe even more than that. These were people who I went on holiday with, regularly and out of choice. We were family, and I genuinely felt bonded with them. There is a small part of me that still feels that way, which is difficult to reconcile when you neither see nor talk to them.

    Perhaps in the future I might tell you more of the things we used to do in Scouts but for now – every year as a group we’d enter ScoutEx. The Scouting equivalent of an agricultural show. It was held in the local civic centre and had a wide range of categories to enter. All of them involved making something but that something could be a stuffed toy, a picture, or a bread loaf. Months were spent prior to the show at scout meetings and home preparing entries for the show.

    All entries were individually ascribed to a particular scout. A scout could only enter their age range categories and only enter one item per category. In this way scouts competed against each other – even if they were part of the same group. Yet like F1 there were also prizes at stake for the troop with the most overall points as well. For example my personal tally was usually about 5-6 1st, 2nd, or 3rds. However, that would then be added to the troops overall score, to produce the winner of the ScoutEx shield.

    My troop was always very well represented at the show, but we had our fierce rivals in the sea scouts. It wasn’t unusual for us to win the ScoutEx Shield but it also wasn’t a given. In all my years of Scouting I was privileged to lift the Shield for my troop only once. The moment was captured by the local newspaper, but unfortunately I had decided to strike my “signature pose”. This is a look that I deeply regret now, as I look like Mr Bean pulling a silly face.

    Teamwork as they say makes the dream work. I was victorious in a number of categories, but it was the troop’s group effort that sealed the win. Our names might now be lost to history, but I am proud of what we achieved.

  • Award Season III: Judoka of the Year (Runner Up)


    Presented by: the local Judo club, in the early 1990s, at the secondary school gym.


    My family were devoted sportspeople, everyone is now too old and knackered but back in the day; my father was an excellent rugby unionist and cricketer, my mother was squash and tennis fanatic, my uncle was a ten pin bowler, & my brother was a footballer. Then there was me, the black sheep of the family. I tried all kinds of sports – but I lacked the temperament for them, I was too fantastical and competitive.

    We played tennis on the courtyard at home, but without a net and white lines there was too much cheating and I smashed my racket into the ground. I was a substitute for one game of football at my local club, I came on in defence and we went from 8-1 up to just barely scraping a 8-7 victory. My head was full of drama and the idea that in the next match the other team would be looking for revenge. A five-a-side tournament was organised at the primary school, and I was goalie for our team. I let a few goals in, but I couldn’t handle the criticism or the deliberately hard shots taken at me.

    Badminton I fared a bit better in, that was organised in the primary school gym and I got a proper racket, shoes, and shorts. The problem here was that it never really went anywhere. I don’t even recall if I won a single match. It was around this time that the upper school was advertising a judo club. We were all obsessed with the Power Rangers so naturally martial arts was very attractive. The reality was very different from what was in my mind, but I loved it.

    Everything was very ordered, from the formal style of the classes to the hierarchy of the grading system. Tabs and belts were awarded for the completion of certain levels of competency, which was judged on exam nights. I flew up the ranks from a White Belt no tabs to an Orange Belt three green tabs. The most difficult thing for me was learning all the Asian names for the moves, they sounded so similar. Because of the rapid rise I jointly received the runners up trophy for Judoka of the Year for our little club. I didn’t mind sharing because it was with my best friend and we were genuinely on a par.

    I often wonder what might have happened if I had stayed with Judo, I guess in the end my CMT would have meant I’d have to give it up anyway. My ankles would have become too weak. However, there were two parts to the end of this story. Firstly Judo is an expensive sport, which gets more expensive when you start the level of the Cata courses. The courses required travel and it all became too much work if you didn’t have what it takes to become the best.

    So if I had shown such promise in the early stages, how did I know I wasn’t going to go far? Our club entered a local competition, and I was part of the team. Paired up with people of the same size and ability – something became abundantly clear. I couldn’t actually win a match; I didn’t lose either but I spent all the time circling around and around trying to do the same move.

    When we were training, your partner allowed you to throw them, but faced with an actual opponent things were too difficult for me to stick to the rules of competition. I left the Judo club, but kept the text book at home and flicked through it from time to time. At the turn of the millennium I was introduced to professional wrestling and then mixed martial arts. I’d have liked to try them, but the CMT had already taken its toll and it was too dangerous for me to compete. Still I have the trophy in my treasure chest as a reminder that there once was a time when I was joint 2nd best.

  • Award Season II: English Trophy

    Presented by: Darren Bett (Weatherman), about 2000ish, at School Awards Evening To make us feel more special than we already did, my School hosted an awards evening for the year that just left. Which was hosted by none other than TV weatherman Darren Bett, who I’m sure used to be called Betts but that’s another story. The event was also photographed and appeared in the local newspaper so we felt like minor celebrities by the end of the week.

    We were constantly fed a diet of “you’re the best yeargroup this school has ever had” and “you can do anything you set your mind to”. This was the latter part of the 90s and flattery was the order of the day, heap the child with enough praise and they might just fly the nest. Going to college was almost a given, and from there the Universities were waiting to grab their money’s worth out of you. It didn’t really matter if you had a plan for what you were going to do with your life, just get as good of a qualification as you could.

    I never did anything useful with my degree despite my best efforts. There is an old proverb “Man plans, God laughs”. Life has a twisted sense of humour and that’s where we draw full circle back to the Awards’ Ceremony. Dressed in my best blue jumper, it wasn’t a suit and tie event. Once again this was the millennium and it was smart casual attire. We sat in the main hall, facing the stage on tiered seating brought out specially for the event.

    I really thought I was in the running for an award; remember I had been stuffed with all these praises – even though I was an average student at best. It amazes me looking back that my Autism wasn’t picked up as a child, all the clues were there.

    History was and still is my favourite subject, so out of all the subjects I was ‘entered in’ this was the one I thought that I would possibly get an award in. I was wrong.

    At the end of Primary School I had to sit an 11+ exam, which I passed with flying colours, but the closest secondary school was a comprehensive who took in everyone anyway. By the time I took my SATs in Year 9, my performance had plummeted.

    Secondary school was a very difficult experience for me, I didn’t fit in there. Also I was terrified of my family finding out that I was struggling with my homework. My solution was to do as much as I could at School and then make excuses for what I couldn’t get done. This approach severely damaged my learning and my grades, it was and is a terrible idea.

    The subject that suffered the most was English. I really enjoyed writing, but my spelling was poor and my grammar was worse. When it came to literature, I couldn’t get my head around literary criticism, I treated everything at face value. For this reason I started in the lowest set for English heading into Year 10. This meant that the highest grade I could get was a C, which was also the pass mark. Even then it was going to take a monumental effort to get there.

    My mother, who was a teacher at another school, did extra work with me at home using phonetic spelling books. The head of English and my form tutor, also took me aside for extra lessons during break times. An eccentric man, foreboding and genius at the same time – it seemed he was more suited for the stage than a comprehensive school. With all the effort that was put in the result was a C in Language and a D in Literature. Which was good enough to get into college, where I was able to study the Sciences and History.

    English was the worst of my grades, the best being an A* in Dual Award Science.

    Therefore it seemed a twisted sense of irony that it was the English Trophy I was awarded at the ceremony. I couldn’t understand why I’d been awarded for my worst result. It is only while writing this that I’ve come to realise that the grade was not the result. The result was achieving a pass from such a low starting point. That is what I was awarded for, not a C Grade. Sadly, you only got the Trophy for a year – but at least I have the newspaper clipping of me holding it standing next to the now BBC lead weather presenter Darren Bett(s).

    .

  • Award Season I: A Chief Scouts Award


    Presented by: Sir John Mason MP, in the late 1990s, at an awards evening.

    For those who don’t know, the Chief Scout’s Award was the highest achievement in Scouting at the time. Oh and I should introduce myself – I’m Barry and I’m living with Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease (Type II). The special painkillers I take have a couple of side effects, tiredness & memory loss. Sadly, this has left gaps in my recollections. So any story I tell should be taken with a pinch of salt.

    Despite being in Scouting for over a decade and going on countless camps, I never felt that I truly earnt that award. In order to get it, you had to fill in the various pages of the Scout Book, an A6 sized pocket book with a green & gold cover. It was simple and elegant, when a task had been completed it was recorded in the book. Complete enough tasks and the badge was awarded. Each badge had its unique design & place on the uniform. In the end, get enough badges, and your uniform resembles a patchwork quilt.

    When it came to the Chief Scout’s Award I was already nearing the end of my tenure in Scouting. I had become the Senior Patrol Leader for the Troop, whose numbers had dwindled to just three. It felt like the award was almost given to me because of my years of service, rather than something I actively earnt. Half of the activities were ticked off retrospectively. It left very few tasks to be completed for the badge and none of them were very taxing.

    By the time the paperwork had been completed, I already had one foot out of the door. It was decided that I wouldn’t continue into Venture Scouts, they met too far away and were significantly older than me. They did more adult activities. This award ceremony was to be my swan song. Scouting had been my life for most of my life at this point and now it was over.

    This was a bittersweet moment, a recognition of the pinnacle of my achievement. There was continuity too, because I had already achieved the highest awards in Beavers & Cubs. Yet there was to be no more, and I was bitter about that. The highest achievement, had just been handed to me – both physically and metaphorically. I still remember the underwhelming feeling of Sir John putting that badge in my hand. Someone I had no knowledge of at the time. I was just one of many getting an award that night, it didn’t feel special enough.

    Then when it did come to my final day Scouting, there was no pomp or ceremony. It was the lesson that I needed to learn. I always felt that I was “special”, deserving of the adoration of others. I based my self worth on the opinions of others, and measured it in achievements. Retrospectively I understand why and don’t think badly of myself but it’s not me anymore.

    Being Autistic I have had to learn things about myself and the world that perhaps others take for granted. The only meaning that awards have are the ones that we ourselves ascribe to them. Awards are not qualifications. I’m still learning, still yearning for a sense of achievement; but occasionally I have a moment of clarity that it is better to live the moment than treat it as a task which might lead to a future reward.