Home alone with the ghost

Is it possible that your mind can play tricks on you if you spend too much time on your own? Can you go on autopilot and do things without realizing it? Or do I have a ghost?

The bloke has been gone now for 16 days - the longest we have been apart since I moved to Madrid. It was supposed to be only 10, but after the volcano ash from iceland caused a European flight industry meltdown he was stuck in Alaska for an extra week. All being well, he should get back tomorrow.

It wasn't such a tragedy really - at least he got some extra days of snowboarding in. And he had the sense to stay where he had a hotel - some of the poor riders he met out there decided to head for the airports anyway, and spent days sleeping on the floor in Seattle airport.

It's been weird for me having the place to myself for so long. Of course I've missed him dearly, but some bits of it have been great.

I've been able to watch episodes of The West Wing back to back, and I haven't had to watch the news while eating dinner. Why is that bad, you ask? Well the news in Spain always seems to involve either dead bodies or close ups of gruesome road traffic accident scenes. I do not want to watch the camera zooming in on a child's teddy (it always is, for some reason) caked in drying blood when I'm tucking into my steak and potatoes. Puts me right off.

I'm also able to hit snooze as many times as I want in the morning without grumbles from anyone, and I can throw back the covers and turn all the lights on in the room on when I decide to get up.

In bed I'm able to have as many pillows as I want and sleep the whole night through without being woken up. A real novelty. Like all the men in his family, the bloke has sleep apnea. this means that when he falls into deep sleep he holds his breath, then lets it out in a high pitched squeak. Something that earplugs don't stand a chance against.

Not to mention how much easier it is to keep the house tidy - and the fact that I can play Eighties music loudly while I'm doing it, without raising any protests. And sing along.

Still I would trade all this in in an instant to have the bloke back right now. Much as he annoys me (on purpose) sometimes, things aren't half as fun without him. I had this big list of things I would get done while he was away, and I haven't done half of them -

ie. paint my nails, tidy the drawers in the bathroom, learn how to cook lentils, sort out my clothes and give the ones i don't wear anymore to charity, wash the dog, transfer all my photos off my computer and onto the hard disc…

I have watched plenty of The West Wing though and completed loads of levels on Angry Birds - a gem of an app for the iPhone.

But the worst thing about the bloke being away is that I manage to spook myself out thinking about the ghost.

There have been a few weird things going down in our house. twice it's happened to me that I've come into the front room in the middle of the night to crash on the sofa to escape the sleep apnea, only to have the TV turn on for no reason. No, I didn't accidentally sit on the remote control, as the bloke insisted I must have done. The same thing has happened to him since - and he didn't find it funny then.

And there were the flashes in the bathroom - like camera flashes - three in short succession. I was convinced I was having a retina detachment so went to the optician to get checked out, but I was fine. i think they thought i was a bit mental. Maybe I am.

I don't know why all of this got into my head when i was trying to fall asleep, but it did. And maybe I've seen too many horror films, so it's my own fault. I still blame my brother for showing me Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 10, it sent me wrong.

So I shut my bedroom door (to keep out the ghost, naturally) and went to sleep. Except when I got up in the morning, the door was wide open. I'm 100 per cent sure i didn't get up in the night and open it. and the dog couldn't have opened it. So what is going on there?

The same thing happened the next night, but it stopped after that. The bloke says when he gets back he'll set up a video camera and put some talcum power on the floor to see what happens. I'm not doing that though, I've seen how Paranormal Activity ends.