When dreams know better

The other night I'd gone to a friend's house to watch DVDs and came home early (i.e. not the last train) in the hope that I could have a good night's sleep and be bright-eyed for work the next day.

The night previous to that I had gone to bed at 9.30 in the same vain, and still didn't feel happy about getting up in the morning. But this time was weird, mostly because I remember the dream sequence that I was going through while in the process of waking up.

I remember queueing to pay for lunch in a restaurant - sort of like one we have at work, and with the same people serving - before going over to collect it. (For some reason, paying and collecting food were switched around.) As I was queueing for the food, I decided to leave the place for some reason, but as I got through the door, I came running back in to get the food that I'd paid for, not knowing why I'd run out.

That's the point that I woke up and realised that my alarm had been going off beside me for a minute or so, without waking me. I suspect it had alerted my subconscious brain (the running out of the door) but not enough to wake my body enough to be able to press snooze on my phone. Or at least not until my subconscious had collected the food.

Needless to say, I was grumpy when I finally got past the snoozing stage and had to crawl out of my bed.

I don't think I've ever had that in dreams before, when I can link events in the dream to things that actually happened at the same time in the real world. People talk of dreaming about alarms going off in their dreams instead of actually being woken by them, but I don't recall that ever happening to me.

I guess my body is telling me it wants rest. It's a good job then that I'm home for 5 days, and can give it all the rest it needs without worrying about work or anything. Yay!