Recently my pal Mae and I dropped in to the travel agents to book ourselves a sunshine holiday, but after only a few minutes chatting to the travel assistant Paul, we couldn’t help but notice that he looked rather bleary eyed.

“Looks like you could do with a holiday yourself,” we teased.

“You’re right,” laughed Paul as he took down some particulars of what we were looking for.

“The wife woke me up again at 5am.”

Mae and I didn’t really want to know what Paul and his wife got up to at 5am however…

“Five?” We repeated.

“Why on earth is she up at 5am?”

“She gets up at the same time every morning to feed the dog.”

“Oh my.” I was surprised.

“Isn’t that’s a bit early to feed your dog?”

“Too right it is,” he agreed.

Mae and I looked at each other as he began to scour the internet for our holiday.

“First she puts out a bowl of water,” he explained as he clicked away on the keyboard.

“Then a bowl of dog food.”

We were now more interested in his wife’s break-of-day goings on than our potential holiday.

“And the second she puts the bowls on the kitchen floor she whistles and shouts ‘here boy, here boy.’

Still typing away he continued.

“She also makes all these funny noises to entice to dog into the kitchen.”

I felt obliged to confirm that we were indeed hearing this story correctly.

“And does the dog eat the food at that time in the morning?”

“Naw of course not,” laughed Paul.

“Because we don’t even have a dog.”

My pal and I started at each other for a moment until we were interrupted by our eager travel assistant.

“So how about Tenerife?”

“Never mind Tenerife,” I butted in, curious to understand how this woman could feed a dog she doesn’t have.

“Do you dog sit then?” I surmised this must be a temporary situation.

“Naw.”

“The wife sleep walks and believes we have a dog, but we don’t.”

“Now let me get this right.”

Mae couldn’t believe her ears.

“Every morning she gets up at 5am and feeds an imaginary dog?”

Paul looked at us as if we were daft. “Yep, that’s what I said.”

“So what happens after she’s fed the imaginary dog?”

“Not a lot.” Paul sounded very matter of fact about his wife’s peculiar antics.

“She claps it for a few minutes, orders it back into its basket, and climbs back into bed.”

“Gosh.” Mae and I were astounded.

“She gets confused if she sees the bowls lying about,” explained Paul.

“So when she gets back in to bed, I get up and tidy everything away.”

Despite the very bizarre conversation, our holiday was eventually booked and excitedly we headed out to celebrate the fact that sunshine and sea was now on the cards.

Standing in the pub, we got chatting to a crowd of guys and couldn’t help but relay the story of the poor woman’s sleepwalking activities and her imaginary dog, when one of the guys chipped in.

“Joe here suffers from night terrors,” Stated Jim as he pointed to his pal.

“Isn’t that right Joe?”

Joe shrugged but said nothing, and as Mae and I weren’t quite sure what night terrors were, we kept silent too.

“For the last twelve years he has woken up through the night screaming.”

“Really?” This sounded serious.

“Yep, screaming like a banshee.”

“He tosses and turns and breaks out into a cold sweat.”

“That’s a shame,” we sympathised.

“Something really terrifying must trigger it off., I reckoned.

“You’re right.”

Jim the joker laughed.

“You obviously haven’t seen Joe’s wife!”

The whole group was in an uproar at the expense of poor Joe and his wife until Joe turned the tables on his pal.

“Well Jim, you’re wife’s a big bit of a lass, isn’t she?”

Jim slurped his pint and nodded as Joe continued.

“She gets up through the night, eats a full pizza and half a loaf and apparently cannae remember a thing the next day!”

“Isn’t that right Jim?”

Sheepishly Jim attempted to explain.

“She suffers from a sleep related eating disorder which means she eats whilst she’s asleep and has no memory of it when she wakes up.”

“Apart from the tomato sauce and greasy butter slapped round her face,” Joe had gotten his own back.

On the train home we attempted to sum up our day.

“Well I never expected that when we went to book a holiday” Mae chuckled.

“Neither did I Mae.”

“Never mind sun, sea and sangria.”

“We got an imaginary pet, a gargoyle wife and a secret pizza!