• Sleeping Wide Awake

    Six

    The unknown intrigued me as a kid – the supernatural, UFOs, anything unexplained. The real world was just too concrete. There had to be something more, something that transcended even imagination. My cousins were like-minded. Whenever we got together for birthdays or whatever (and with such a big family, there were lots of occasions), we’d talk about this stuff endlessly. I loved it, loved these conversations, but come the night, I would struggle getting to sleep. Talk about ghosts? Well, I was sure to see them. Hauntings? My bedroom would be unveiled as a hub of poltergeist activity just ready to emerge. Demons? They’d be coming. I would lie there…

  • Sleeping Wide Awake

    One

    I always worry that death will be a restless sleep, that there won’t be peace, but a constant tossing and turning trying to find something that’s always out of my capacity to achieve. I’ve had sleeping difficulties all my adult life, so when I wake now, I’m unsurprised. I don’t know the time. My clock radio has an LCD display – I bought it years ago for specifically that reason: LCD numbers don’t glow in the dark, and don’t remind me of the time. That’s just one of the sleep strategies I’ve learned. Most of them don’t work. Nothing works for everybody, and, for various reasons, my head’s particularly resistant.…