The House of Terror! Or Unresolved Psychological Issues.

After four weeks of getting up before 6am, I think my brain is finally rebelling at the lack of sleep I've afflicted it with. For the last few days the nearest I've got to working on Bad Apple Bone is writing strange, incomprehensible notes in my notebook; they often says things that a few hours later make no sense to me, such as "Herded by dogs!" and "mouth leaf". Mouth leaf? Next week I go back to my more usual work shift where it doesn't matter so much that I am entirely unable to go to bed before midnight, and hopefully with a bit more sleep under my belt my writing attempts will make more sense.

On another subject entirely, I was pondering yesterday about my grandparent's house. They moved there when they were a youngish couple, and most of my aunts and uncles, and my mum, were raised there. I lived there myself from the age of about 5 or 6, to the age of about 10 or 11, when my parents split up. It's a very significant place to me, the house that I dream about most often, or if I'm writing a story, I tend to instinctively shape the house I'm writing about around that one. My nan lives there by herself now.

I was thinking about what might eventually happen to the place, in a good few years time. I couldn't imagine people other than my family living there, but it seems quite likely we would sell it, with the money being split between my nan's children. What if one of us moved there though, I thought. I tried to imagine moving in myself, or just sleeping over there to help sort the place out, staying for perhaps a week in my old room.... and I was seized with a feeling of almost supernatural terror. I honestly could not bear the thought of sleeping in that house again.

And this is weird, because I have no particularly bad memories of my nan and grandad's house. If anything, I was very happy, because my grandparents were there, and the place was often filled with most of my extended family too, on visits and friday night card games. So why on earth am I so alarmed by the idea of sleeping there? To be fair, I am often reluctant about going round there now, and rarely do, but I've always thought that was due to the weird sense of vertigo you get from visiting the place you grew up; everything is smaller than you remember, and distorted.

So I'd like to know if anyone else has experienced similar feelings. If you can still go to the place you grew up, is everything still cosy for you, or is it a little strained? If you are unable to get there these days, what do you think about going back?