Oh, but to slip into sleep as a contented hound must do

As Shakespeare wrote in his play, As you would rather like it, back in 1624.

I think we all must suffer the annoyances of insomnia from time to time, or regularly or even almost constantly - if you happen to be like my dear mother. I could always tell from my first glimpse of her on a morning if the day was likely to proceed with her being wracked with grumpiness. She coped ok most of the time and would brighten considerably after a first creosote mug of tea but it was always a problem wish I wish she could have solved.

Currently, Mark and I have periods of insomnia which don't match each others at all. He will start sleeping as his head nears the pillow whereas I usually ruminate on some event of the day for a while or for hours if I don't manage to divert the thoughts with attention to my breathing. This often works but if a persistant niggling thought suddenly developed into something worthy of worry, that's it for a calm and restful night's sleep. Whereas, Mark often wakes at about four thirty - five/five thirty has somehow become alright - reads, makes bread (hurrah!) and does his worrying then.

Going somewhere else always breaks these sleep, or rather, non-sleep patterns, the sea being the best, but not overly practical, unless we move to the coast, but then we'd probably get acclimatised and all the patterns would reform and going away to somewhere else like a forest cabin would become the getaway, and so on.

I've tried natural, herb based remedies, mild-ish sleep, non-prescription pills, and full on sledge hammer tablets, non of which worked and the latter two gave me stomach upsets and heart palpitations. So, what does work - for me? Not eating too late in the evening, no caffeine-y stuff after about four, no looking at emails after late afternoon - in case of something angst inducing - and on a positive note, audible meditation and audio stories. Meditation does certainly work, especially the music-less ones that concentrate on slowing the breath and the nervous system generally, but to get into the right state takes some time and I prefer to use meditation now during the day at some point. The audio book is now my go-to sleep aid which works almost without fail.

I did have a few months of listening to Will Self's Book of Dave as I found his voice lulling, even though parts of the story are certainly nightmare inducing, but then the kind person who put it up on Youtube took it down again - possibly spooked by this one listener prodding the story into life several evenings a week.

So, the current favourite - The Secret Garden, read by Steven Garnet (Red Fox Voice). I hope he wouldn't mind me advertising this as a sleep aid but it totally works - for me. His reading is remarkable, the accents spot on, the pacing and tone, truly excellent. I know the story well from my childhood so enjoy all the characters, visual impressions of the garden, house and windswept moorland. That's the thing. It has to be familiar to assist sleep, the story known well so that the words act as a warm cocoon. A new story would be too engaging to encourage sleep and the subject, obviously, is important. American psycho or  The Road, probably wouldn't work . . .

 

Unknown stuff

While sitting in a café recently, I took out my laptop to do a bit of editing and noticed they advertised Wi-Fi free - being in French this actually means, free Wi-Fi, or weefee, with the accent. I thought I might as well check an email or two and logged on.
The list of surrounding weefees was extraordinary - about thirty different 'types' from Orange to Chez Felix or wherever it was that I was sitting. How can you escape all this, if you want to? Difficult. There is a man who lives in a village near us who has apparently spent thousands on 'Bacofoiling' his entire house and himself such is his angst, or perhaps very real fear/reactions to this peculiar air-born, invisible . . . thing.

                                        


Being a bit of a luddite myself I can understand the worry over something that has crept into our world insidiously and taken over our waking, and sleeping hours.
I still regard Microwaves with a certain amount of suspicion, and all phones with what I regard as a healthy disregard. Phone = useful device with which to contact or be contacted by people in a situation where information needs to be relayed: 'help, I have driven into a ditch,'  'can you remember to get more cat food,' and more importantly things such as: 'my neighbour's house appears to be on fire.' Most other yakking, checking how many Likes one has or playing Discontented Slugs, or other latest App drivel seems, to me anyway, a tad alien. Hm!
Anyway. WiFi. Mark, being an occasional insomniac like myself, read a report somewhere recently that suggested turning off the device at night was likely to promote better sleep - possibly common sense, but good to be reminded of such things, just as people need to be reminded that perhaps sleeping with their phones under their pillows might not be a good plan (arg! Why would you do that?)
So we did, turn it off, and . . . yes it could be total placebo BUT, I do sleep better - deeper, longer and with even more bizarre dreams than usual (a good thing, I think). I used to wake up at the slightest sound: a dog's collar jingling downstairs, a cat prowling over gravel outside, now - nothing.
It was as if I had been on standby not really OFF; ready to receive information streaming from our small white box downstairs: celebrity hair, Donald Trump's latest verbal gifts to the world, recipes, junk emails from Uncle Amazon; people inviting you to invest in their money-laundering ideas, tweets, reminders, Waitrose wine (how the F did I get onto their list?) gadgets, maps, reports . . . and so on.
The brain needs sleep: big, wide, profound sleep to repair itself and the body, and anything that can be done to assist this is of huge value - just a tiny switch- click-off; maybe it doesn't have any real effect but if one's mind can perceive it as an aid to total night time obliteration - great!
I read this morning about a Dutch study on growing cress placed next to wireless routers. One set of plants in a room with no routers, and another placed between two routers - result, the cress close to the radiation didn't grow . . . mm.
Anyway, just for saving energy alone, everything should be turned off that is normally on standby, and all chargers removed from plugs even when connected to devices; it all adds up to higher bills, general electricity waste and more stuff bombarding our already sore brains.
Goodbye, off to put this onto shutdown, not sleep.

2767

This was the number of times I wished I was asleep last night, or thereabouts.
We all have terrible nights, and I know on a scale of human disasters, they are nothing when we have a soft bed to sleep in and four walls surrounding us; but last night must have been in my top five, or even two.

It was so farce-like I have to write it down while it's fresh in my mind; it could be useful, or at least it needs to be documented, for my own personal record of Stupid Nights I Have Known.
We have all been suffering from some flu-like thing over the last week; the residue of which, in my case, has taken up residence in my lungs like a dusty old crow, rasping and fluttering.
The night before last I slept for about an hour between bouts of coughing and kept Mark totally awake too. So last night in order to protect the main bread-winner of the household (and because of the fact I quite like him) I opted to sleep in the spare room.
Snuggling down with a hot water bottle (one of about three things I like about winter) I told myself that this would be a good and restful night filled with that sort of rich, thick, blanketing sort of sleep that we only, as adults, achieve very rarely, due to worry over bills, too much caffeine, snoring loved ones etc.
I had just dropped off, when Mark entered the room: "Ezra's been sick." Flung hot water bottle aside and went to join in the mopping up, soothing of boy etc.
Back to bed, hot water bottle positioned, many layers drawn up against the general fridge-ness of that particular room, and the coughing started. That little twingy tickle that you try to ignore: maybe it will just subside. No – full on donkey noises for five minutes: tried sleeping on back, front, sides and finally sitting up, head lolling as if on a train. Nope.
Eventually, I discovered a sort of nonchalant style that seemed to work. If I put all the pillows in the room in a stack against the headboard and then lay against them as if trying to stop a fence collapsing, I could nod off; almost as if I had to pretend to my own body that I wasn't really trying to sleep. What's that about? Surely elements of me should be taking an interest in keeping me going, not providing sleep deprivation torture.
Anyway it worked for at least fifteen minutes, then the runty dog got out of his bed and announced that he would like to go and bark uselessly at mysterious things in the garden. This is always a mild form of Russian Roulette: does he really want to go out to have a pee/poo? or does he just want to run around the house like a mobile tripod asserting his non A-dogness.
I left my nest and let him out so that he could bark, a LOT. Then on his return, shoved him in his bed, wrapped him up and went back to my bed, refilling tepid H W bottle first.
I was just wandering around a flowery summer market when violent footsteps overhead broke the images. Abandoned bed again, this time considering for a moment whether whatever was going on upstairs might just settle down then I remembered Mark's mad schedule in the morning and went upstairs. He was standing, looking bleary, in his tartan pyjama bottoms and a top that has a skull and the words Protest on it. "Ezra's been sick."
Forcing the Mark-cormorant (will explain another time) back to bed, I cleaned the bed, boy, linen, etc and went back to bed.
The fence-leaning thing no longer worked, so I sat up and did some editing until all the words fused into one: Insomnia, then eventually drifted into a light sleep, to be woken by Runty dog, again. This time I bundled him up and said: 'stay in your dratted bed you small annoying rat', or something more lurid.
So, the bed, yes . . . tried the leaning thing again, but as I was cold now, had to keep making tiny adjustments in the bedding: cover the foot there, oops, neck exposed, where are the tissues . . . just a tiny stretch . . . shit, covers all slump to the floor. Flopped them on again, then . . . what was that small clicking sound? I can't sleep with dripping taps, was it a tap? when I filled the HWB did I leave the tap dripping? SHIT. Right . . . into the bathroom. Nope tap off, clicking still going though. I looked around, wrapped in a towel, really cold now: nothing.
Back to bed. Total exhaustion. Did slip into some weird dream about an old lady coming to stay in the B and B and wanting to know if she could hire a gun. Woke up abruptly (quite good, as the dream was annoying) and the dog was prancing about again.
I looked at the clock: 5.00 am, As we seem to have to get up at 5.30 at the moment anyway, I thought I'd make some tea.
Discovered he had woofed in order to let me know that he had DONE a poo but he wanted to go outside to tell everyone else about it - kicked him out and went into the kitchen to get cleaning stuff; stepped in a lake of dog wee and, nearly, a large offering from Big Dog.
Cleaned everything, told the dogs and the cat to F OFF and went back to bed with a large cup of tea and dozed fitfully while Brian Rix, a vicar and a large-breasted woman chased each other around the room.