Fast Fiction: Night Singer
Is the man singing in his sleep? Richard Mallinson tells a puzzling vocal tale.
'There've been complaints,' said the owner of the flats.
'What about?'
'Your singing.'
'Singing?'
'Yes, they say you sing in the night and keep them awake.'
'Sing? I can't sing. I couldn't bloody sing to save my life.'
'That's not what I've been told . . . Apparently you start at midnight with Goodnight, Sweetheart, followed by Bless This House, We'll Meet Again, Bridge Over Troubled Waters and You'll Never Walk Alone, ending with Morning Has Broken (which of course it hasn't). They say you've a great voice but, well, it's a question of timing, isn't it?'
'This is absurd ... It must be a prank, a send-up ... I can't sing, I tell you ... I've never sung a bloody note in my life.'
'All I can think of,' he said, stroking his beard, 'is that you sing in your sleep - so you don't even know that you're singing.'
'But then I'd dream I was singing, wouldn't I? Isn't that so?'
'Oh, no, no ... You see, there's something called the distended cordon of somnolence which allows vocal activity to take place in vacuo, if you follow me. I have a feeling that - '
I glared at him. 'How do you know all this?' I snapped.
