The whale in stripped pyjamas
Yawn. How did you sleep last night? Well, a sleep so deep you were alarmed by your alarm clock this morning? Are you reading this well refreshed and rested? Or did you spend yet another night tossing and turning. The sheets gathering and twisting around your restless legs, you're too hot, you're too cold. How can you possibly sleep with that car alarm/fox barking/birdsong! Then there's that eternal night time question that has long plagued humankind: to pee or not to pee? If you get up now you risk accidentally tricking your body into thinking it's time to get up, or creating some dreaded bladder routine in which you are doomed to always awaken for a 2am trip to the smallest room. Do you even really need to go? No, just relax, go to sleeeeeeeep...no, actually you can't possibly be comfortable with a full bladder and if you aren't comfortable you shan't sleep, best go. It seems a lot of people are having trouble sleeping round here and because we like to be of service to our loyal readers we have shared our tricks to get us to sleep. So don't go dropping off whilst trying to operate that heavy machinery...
1. The best ways to cure insomnia often involve the willing and enthusiastic co-operation of another individual. It's a lot tougher when you're all alone. I tend not to suffer insomnia, but with all the travel I do I seem to spend half the year trying to force myself to sleep when my body thinks it's the middle of the afternoon, just because I need to get some shut-eye before hitting the track to work in the morning. Red wine and cognac are a good combination - not in the same glass, mind. I wouldn't recommend getting drunk, as that's rubbish sleep, but just enough to feel a little woozy. Other stand-bys include loading up a selection of cartoons I've seen before, at a very low volume. Something about the murmur of voices in the background (with no need to worry about plot) helps me nod off. And if that fails? There's always A Tale of Two Cities. After 23 years of trying, I've yet to make it past page 14. F1 Kate
2. When I couldn't sleep when I was a teenager, I assume due to the eternal hormonal trauma of that era, I would lie the opposite way round in the bed. I think this slight shift in being in the room in a different way made EVERYTHING seem different and apparently change was all I needed for a bit of a snooze. In summer the cooling alternative to this was to lay on my bedroom floor with a sheet over me. Corpse style! Squeamish Nicola
3. I don't really have any magical techniques to solve insomnia - usually i just pull the pillow over my head and harumph until I fall asleep. However, for the purpose of this FF I decided to crack down and do some research. Apparently the Elizabethans believed that rubbing the soles of your feet with Dormouse fat was the perfect cure for insomnia. So there you go - next time you can't get to sleep just track down a dormouse! Gareth
4. I have always had trouble sleeping. All my life the only time I have ever been able to sleep past 8 is on holiday, but suggesting you spend all day swimming in the sea to get enough sleep is about as practical as suggesting you snooze under your office desk. If I am sharing a room with someone I get extremely cross should they dare to selfishly fall asleep before me and then have the audacity to snore. That is plain showing off. I am not sure why I wasn't good at falling asleep as a child but I know that I find it hard to sleep now because I cannot stop thinking. Of course you can't stop thinking, but I can't stop having ideas, worrying and generally distracting myself from sleep because jotting thoughts down on a notepad in the early hours is about as relaxing as the notes are legible. I finally discovered that listening to audio-books means not only do I drop off a lot quicker, but if I wake up I can work out, by the progression of the plot, how long I have been asleep! Meaning instead of being frustrated at my wakefulness I can calmly tell myself I have had an entire Bleak Expectations episode's sleep. In fact it tends to work a little too well and I keep falling asleep at exactly the same point of the story I am trying to listen to... Squeamish Kate
5. My mum taught me a technique when I was very young that I only remembered when I re-encountered something similar in hypnotherapy and then yoga. The basic idea is guided relaxation. Start at your toes and imagine them relaxing. As a kid I would literally imagine them going to sleep - disembodied toes wearing little nightcaps and tucked up under a duvet, with zzzzzzzs coming off them. You do that until you can't feel them any more and then move up - I would do my arches, heels, ankles etc. It probably says something about me that more often than falling asleep I will either forget what I'm doing and start thinking about something else, or fidget and wake myself up. But I feel duty bound to suggest you try this approach before you go for my back-up, which may or may not be a large glass of whisky. Squeamish Louise
2. When I couldn't sleep when I was a teenager, I assume due to the eternal hormonal trauma of that era, I would lie the opposite way round in the bed. I think this slight shift in being in the room in a different way made EVERYTHING seem different and apparently change was all I needed for a bit of a snooze. In summer the cooling alternative to this was to lay on my bedroom floor with a sheet over me. Corpse style! Squeamish Nicola
3. I don't really have any magical techniques to solve insomnia - usually i just pull the pillow over my head and harumph until I fall asleep. However, for the purpose of this FF I decided to crack down and do some research. Apparently the Elizabethans believed that rubbing the soles of your feet with Dormouse fat was the perfect cure for insomnia. So there you go - next time you can't get to sleep just track down a dormouse! Gareth
4. I have always had trouble sleeping. All my life the only time I have ever been able to sleep past 8 is on holiday, but suggesting you spend all day swimming in the sea to get enough sleep is about as practical as suggesting you snooze under your office desk. If I am sharing a room with someone I get extremely cross should they dare to selfishly fall asleep before me and then have the audacity to snore. That is plain showing off. I am not sure why I wasn't good at falling asleep as a child but I know that I find it hard to sleep now because I cannot stop thinking. Of course you can't stop thinking, but I can't stop having ideas, worrying and generally distracting myself from sleep because jotting thoughts down on a notepad in the early hours is about as relaxing as the notes are legible. I finally discovered that listening to audio-books means not only do I drop off a lot quicker, but if I wake up I can work out, by the progression of the plot, how long I have been asleep! Meaning instead of being frustrated at my wakefulness I can calmly tell myself I have had an entire Bleak Expectations episode's sleep. In fact it tends to work a little too well and I keep falling asleep at exactly the same point of the story I am trying to listen to... Squeamish Kate
5. My mum taught me a technique when I was very young that I only remembered when I re-encountered something similar in hypnotherapy and then yoga. The basic idea is guided relaxation. Start at your toes and imagine them relaxing. As a kid I would literally imagine them going to sleep - disembodied toes wearing little nightcaps and tucked up under a duvet, with zzzzzzzs coming off them. You do that until you can't feel them any more and then move up - I would do my arches, heels, ankles etc. It probably says something about me that more often than falling asleep I will either forget what I'm doing and start thinking about something else, or fidget and wake myself up. But I feel duty bound to suggest you try this approach before you go for my back-up, which may or may not be a large glass of whisky. Squeamish Louise
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