WHEN people use the phrase "I don't know how you can sleep at night", I always presume the target of their venom is, say, a murderer or a Manchester United fan.
I am neither of those things, though the former is a possibility for the future, yet on the odd occasion when my shut-eyed activity has been queried, I have usually answered that I don't.
It's not a recent problem, either, but something that stretches back to my childhood.
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As a five-year-old, after being made to go to bed at an already later hour than most kids, I still could not sleep. I would read by bedside lamp under the sheets and would regularly sneak out of my room and sit on the stairs listening to the TV my parents were watching.
Indeed, a visiting school doctor once determined my early lack of growth to be due to sleep deprivation. "He's always on the landing listening to the Sweeney," my mum said, which was untrue. My lack of height was never the fault of John Thaw and Dennis Waterman as I didn't particularly like the programme. Preferred Minder.
In my early teens it was more likely to be football that kept me up, then came drinking, which didn't cause sleep disturbance as such, but keep me out of bed altogether.
Then it was worry about exams, whether or not I would ever get a job, the future in general. After that, it was mostly worry about the present that kept me awake and has been ever since - except for the noises in my head.
I have tried sleeping pills, cups of cocoa, natural remedies, drinking more, drinking less, not drinking at all, listening to mind-numbing whale music etc. None of it works.
The only thing that actually guarantees a decent kip is public transport.
I've often noticed people asleep on the bus, suddenly jerked into recognition that their stop is approaching and others blissfully unaware that they are enroute to unfamiliar territory.
I once found myself alighting from a bus at the same place I had got on it, the only thing being it was about 5am and I had started the journey around three hours earlier. So what happened there then? I had obviously nodded off.
On Saturday I was in Manchester sampling the glühwein at the Christmas markets and, after visiting several pubs as well, boarded the train back home, only to find myself hearing the announcement that the next station was Darwen. I had fallen asleep, as had my partner and brother, and we had missed our stop, causing us to spend a further £15 on a taxi back to Bolton.
Perhaps the solution to falling numbers using public transport is to market buses and trains as a cure for insomnia, and run them through the night. Imagine it, thousands queueing up to get a good sleep on the train, waking up just in time for work, refreshed and ready to go.
The only problem would be they would have to throw in a few pre-trip drinks and you would have to find your way back from whatever town or city you woke up in.
On second thoughts, I'll book another appointment with the school doctor.
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