Sweet sound of, er, snoring?

Readers' reactions to two recent Irish Times articles which mentioned the perils of sleeping together - including people stealing each other's bedclothes and snoring - brought a new perspective to snoring, a behaviour which is usually characterised as male. The article, in the That's Men for You series (Tuesday, 13th and 20th February, 2007) is part of The Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here. But two readers remembered men's snoring with affection.

Wrote one reader of her father's snoring: "We children loved the snoring. It was the most comforting sound if you woke up from a nightmare....first the nightmare, then the sudden waking...the silence and the dark and then the blissful sound reverberating through the house. You were safe and sound and put yourself back to sleep to the rhythm of the snores.

"The snoring was must useful during the length of my mis-spent youth in which my father was alive. Sneak in the front door..listen..then when the snoring started take a few steps of the stairs, pause in the snoring, pause on the stairs and so on until you were safely in bed. Mother could never hear anything while father was snoring.

"To this day to me it is one of the most comforting sounds in the world...a lullaby in fact."

Another reader, whose husband was "a terrific snorer" who died in his 40s, recalls how the rhythm of his snoring helped their children to sleep through the night. Now, "the nights are particularly lonely for me & it took me a long time before I could even lie on our bed.The girls find the nights so quiet & still find it hard to settle. How much we miss that warm, safe, comforting noise."

As I said, a new perspective.....