Dear LPG, 

I often take a look at your pages and recently found what WD had to say on the subject of sleeping at the right time. I am lucky, I suppose, because I never have problems sleeping, day or night, and quite often do just that. I live alone so, if I can’t sleep at night, I will get up and make a cup of tea, watch a bit of telly, or get started on what I plan to do later in the day. 

The momentary drop of the head and lowering of the eyes gives me away all too often, even when I am visiting friends. I regularly visit a friend who fell a year ago and broke his hip. I know that I can often be the only person he sees all week, apart from his carers, and I try to relieve the boredom by having a chat and watching a bit of television with him. He has family abroad, and they have one of those little CCTV cameras in his room, which I am very aware of, and it does not bother me at all. I often call his daughter while I am there because he can no longer do that, and she sometimes chats to us through the camera itself. 

One day recently, I went for my usual visit and the carers were there when I arrived. I meet them quite often, and they told me that they would be back in a couple of hours before they left us having a singalong with the BBC’s Songs of Praise. I distinctly remember resting my head against the safety bar on his bed before the sound of the front door startled me. It was the carers’ promised return visit. 

I had been sleeping for at least two hours. Some visitor I am… and the embarrassment of getting caught by the carers was seriously overshadowed when I thought of his daughter watching me slumber my way through the visit. It is not an isolated occurrence either, and I seem to do it most when visiting friends. My friend sleeps quite a lot, and he was sleeping when I was awoken, but I dread to think how long he was watching me while I was in my own personal land of nod. Even worse… I know I snore at times! 

I think that the article I read on your pages got me doing a little more than just thinking about how potentially embarrassing my involuntary habit can be, and while I was on the internet, I thought I might as well ask Google what she had to say about it. As you can imagine, I found some varied schools of thought on the subject, but apart from the anti-social aspect, it appears that a little daytime shut-eye is not always as bad for you as you might think. Some say it helps you to sleep better at night, and I also found a study suggesting that students can benefit from the occasional siesta. Let’s face it, the Spanish have been doing it for years. I have a friend who has a strictly scheduled post-lunch sleep session on the days when she is at home, but I don’t think that would really suit me. I seem to have very little control over whether I nod off or not, especially now that I have no job that depends on my being awake enough to do it if I want to get paid. 

I thought that I should share my findings because I have no doubt that there are many other readers who feel exactly the same, although my habitual resolve not to ever do it again only really kicks in after I have woken up from a set of forty winks, and I wonder how many others find themselves in the same situation. 

IB, Kent 

 

 

While a lot of what she found comes from the UK and appears to be designed for people younger than us, IB shares what she found …

 

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