JOHN MARTIN'S TALES

Is it just me? I’ve started playing mindfulness recordings that promise to ease me into sleep.

But sometimes they have the reverse effect because it’s very hard to sink into sleep when you’re roaring with laughter.

EXHIBIT ONE: The soothing voice tells me to blow air into my legs, then let them float off into space. Then I’m told to do likewise to my arms, and I realise then I can’t even wave them goodbye. Next my head. Fill it with air and let it drift off like a hot-air balloon. “Now relax your whole body.” At this point, it was bleedingly obvious to me I didn’t have a lot of body left to relax.

EXHIBIT TWO: “Don’t listen to this sleep mindfulness session if you are driving a car.” That really cracked me up.

Sleep used to be as easy as riding a bike.

I even remember a time when you didn’t even need an app to tell you that you hadn’t slept well.

You just rubbed your eyes and thought: “What a lousy sleep that was!”

To be fair, you had probably woken up in the waiting room of a train station or on a mate’s sofa because you had drunk too much the night before to drive home.

Thankfully, I have banished overnight stays in uncomfortable positions.

But I haven’t quite shrugged the need for sleep.

And at 65, it’s becoming harder to come by too.

How’s that work?

In my 20s, I’d stay up drinking coffee till 3am, sleep until nearly noon and STILL get eight hours of interrupted sleep.

Now I go to bed uncaffeinated at 9pm, get up at 6am/7am/8am and rarely get anywhere near eight hours.

Once in a while I come close. But my sleep app records I actually woke up five times so the eight hours of slumber occurred over the space of 11 hours.

I’m impressed the app can tell me how long I spent in REM, deep sleep, light sleep and times awake.

I’d be more impressed though if it could record the dreams I actually had.

Playback, rewind, fast forward. In full techno colour and stereo sound.

Is that what a pipe-dream is?