Kevin Page: In the land of nod winning the Olympic 100m gold medal with ease ...

Dozing off and waking to an Olympic podium finish, not once but twice. Photo / Getty Images

The other night Mrs P and I settled down in front of the telly as we waited for another winter to end.

It had been a fairly typical day for us. Work. Walk the dog. Tea. Clean up. Complain there was never anything good on the telly, but then watch it anyway.

Sort of.

The programme in question is a western that has caught the eye of Mrs P and her gang, presumably because of the romance between the young and pretty school teacher and the dashingly handsome lawman.

It is named When Calls The Heart or something similar and, apparently, it has such a following a new series is planned. Groan.

Call me old fashioned, in a John Wayne-was-my-hero kind of way, but all I see is a very non-western series where nobody swears, the streets aren't made of dust and the cowboys are clean, tidy and well, just darn "nice".

Did you hear that noise? It was John Wayne turning in his grave ... pilgrim.

Anyway, with such sacrilege being dished up it was little wonder my attention span diminished considerably after the first 10 minutes – presumably when a cowboy walked into the local tearoom. (That's right. A tearoom! In a western!) - and I dozed off.

Actually, I might have fainted in shock. I'm not sure.

Anyway. I'm sure you get what I mean. One second I was there, the next I was in the land of nod winning the Olympic 100m gold medal with ease.

Eventually, though, the Olympic flame was extinguished, along with my 40 winks, and I woke to find my beloved on the couch next to me, sound asleep. Trying to catch flies. If you know what I mean.

Now I don't know the physiology behind it, but within three seconds of me waking and staring at the sight before me, and just as a smile started to creep across my face, she sensed I was looking and woke up.

Naturally, we went through the "you were asleep; no I wasn't" discussion before both finally admitting we were tired and When Calls The Heart was most definitely not calling us that evening and we would retire for the night.

Next morning, as I waited for my coffee at Wild Bean, I raised the subject with some of the other regulars, herewith known as the Coffee Collective.

I have to say I have always understood that as one ages the body requires less sleep to repair and rebuild. Certainly in my case, I can go to bed late and wake up early without too much trouble, so I was a bit surprised with what had happened.

Others in the collective had similar experiences, but the general consensus was if you are tired your body will tell you it's time to sleep.

Actually, that came from a doctor. Well, I think he was a doctor. He was smart-casual dressed, drove a nice car and seemed to know what he was talking about. I suppose he could have been a plumber on a day off, but for the purposes of this story I'm going with doctor.

So.

Later that day I'm in with my real doctor getting a flu jab and I'm relaying the sleepy saga.
It would be fair to say he was busy and perhaps not as invested in listening to my tale as much as I would have expected.

So, as I sat in a comfy chair in the nice warm waiting room for the mandatory 20 minutes after I was stabbed – just in case I start frothing at the mouth and/or going doolally – I wrote a mental complaint note.

And that's when it happened again. I dozed off and went back to the Olympics.

This time I was awoken by another patient sitting the mandatory 2m away giving it a rather loud "Ahem!"

Embarrassed, I muttered an apology and scarpered back to the safety of my car.

Luckily, I'd won only a silver in the Olympic 100m final that time.

Imagine how embarrassing it would've been if I'd won another gold and thrust my arms into the air in triumph as I crossed the line.

• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to news@whanganuichronicle.co.nz (Kevin Page in subject field).