To ride the cushioned waves

Going to bed. This, I think it is safe to say, is something of which I am a fan. I have signed up to its newsletter, I have clicked 'like' on its facebook page, I often think wistfully of it during the day.

And of course, when it happens, it has its little rituals and rules, things that must be done right if I am to sleep right. For instance, there must be a certain amount of tucked-in-ness for sleep to occur in a satisfying nature; and the bed must be suitably geometrical, with the corners of the blankets square with the corner of the bed itself. This is non-negotiable: the results otherwise could include limbs falling out into the cold night air. There should be around two pillows - three strike one as being decadent, and could result in the head being propped up in awkward positions - and most importantly, a certain amount of wriggle time should be factored in before going to sleep. You surely know the deal: the body requires some wriggle before it can truly feel ready for the hard yards of sleeping it is going to do. I don't quite know why this is, but the wriggle really lets you put yourself in all the right positions before sleeping, and test them out, one by one - and sometimes test them out several times over. Of course, some times the wriggle continues for the duration of the whole night, but these are thankfully few and far between.

Sleeping, I am fond of saying, is hard work, and I am a little surprised that people don't acknowledge this truth more often. Why else do we often wake up from sleeping much more tired than when we have begun sleeping? Staying awake before sleeping - you could do that for hours, sometimes even days if need be (air travel is built on this concept); but staying awake after sleeping is much more difficult. It is not just fatigue, either: sometimes you can wake up with black eyes (what on earth...?) or toothaches, or arm-aches - not to mention the fact that you always seem to wake into those dreadful one- or two- or three-day lurgies that lay you out.

This morning I seem to have awoken to a trifecta of afflictions: a kind of scrape on my heel, a sprain in my other leg, and a bad back. I have no idea how, or why, I could have somehow procured these complaints during a protracted bout of sleeping, but it just goes back to what I was saying before: sleeping is hard work, man!

In fact, it's so difficult that I think I might have a little lie on the couch now. You may call me petal and bestow other such epithets of sympathy on me, if you wish.