Upfront

AH, SLEEP. Simply put, I need more. In the absence of actually getting more sleep, I am going to reflect on it with the zeal of a person dying of thirst in the desert, or a voter looking for political inspiration from the revamped Fine Gael website. Deep down I know satisfaction is unlikely but I will keep trying anyway, a dog after a mythical bone.

These days I find myself fantasising about slumbering in the style to which I was once accustomed. I am talking about glorious 10-, 12- or 14-hour stretches, sometimes only waking with the gentle gnaw of hunger pangs or to the sound of somebody, somewhere doing the hoovering or, on a very good day, the smell of bacon turning crisp under the grill. I was never one of those people who felt half a day in bed at the weekend was half a day wasted. I was recharging my batteries. I was pressing the refresh button. I was, okay, fair enough, indulging my inner sloth, but it felt so good it couldn’t have been bad.

Did I appreciate it at the time? No, I did not. I took it for granted. Even when I was pregnant people said to me with mind numbing regularity: “Make sure you stock up on sleep because that’s the last you are going to see of it.” Like I was a camel who could store zeds. Like proper sleep was going to become extinct, as unlikely to bless my life again as a unicorn. I didn’t believe them.

I remember, it feels like years ago now, my sister who has three children would ring me on a Saturday morning at maybe 9.30am. My first words to her after I unglued my eyes would be: “You’re up early.” When you are free to sleep or stay awake as you please, it simply doesn’t occur to you that there are people in the world who no longer have those choices. Now, when I call a friend at 10am on a weekend, having been up for five hours, the yawn in her voice makes me ache with nostalgia.

I could blame the children. But I won’t. Much of my constant weariness is self-inflicted. “Go to bed earlier,” my mother keeps saying. But I do go to bed early, I explain. I go to bed and I bring my laptop and my notepad and my pen and my glass of wine and the pile of books I really should read but can’t get around to, and my phone, of course. It’s like a poor man’s Amazon HQ in my pit.

The books are the worst. Piled up there, a leaning tower of edification mocking me from the bedside locker. Books that everyone else has already read twice. Let the Great World Spin, Netherland, the flipping Life of Pi. Once in bed, I do everything but sleep. I’m downloading movies and checking my email and catching up with newspapers. As the night goes on, the snoring figure beside me comes to represent everything I am missing. At around 1am, I’ll accidentally on purpose poke him in the ribs, but he just snuggles in to what he thinks is me but is actually the laptop. Just five minutes more, I tell myself. Five minutes, that’s all.

To add to the bedtime distractions, I recently discovered apps. Truly, how did humankind survive before they were invented? There’s this one where you can practise throwing scrunched up balls of paper in a bin, and a cat that repeats everything you say, and an evil game called Angry Birds which transports the player into a black hole where there is no time or reason, and then it’s 2am and one of the children has decided it’s time to get up.

I wrestle her back to sleep and then eventually drift off. What seems like minutes later, I will hear the patter of another pair of feet tottering in the dark to our room.

“Good morning dad,” she says, barely even giving me a glance. She has learnt her lesson well. She knows that lump over there (me) is not fit for anything approaching fun. So she bypasses me and drags her da out of the scratcher. She is off downstairs without a backward glance. I can hear her explaining the situation to herself as she goes downstairs. Mammy sleeping. Mammy having lovely nap. Mammy lying down. They seem to think I am Rip Van Winkle. Chance would be a fine thing.

Have a night away, says my mother. Get a lie-in. I don’t want a lie-in though. I want seven lie-ins in a row. I want a fortnight of lie-ins. I read them the story about Sleeping Beauty and when it gets to the part about her pricking her finger and conking out for 100 years I realise I am jealous.

Try a hot bath after dinner, my mother says, followed by hot milk. I’m not convinced. Surely there must be a Sleep app. If not can somebody please invent one? Thanks.

THIS WEEKEND: Róisín will be deciding whether she can write a novel in one month using the kit given to her by a friend for Christmas. On balance, she thinks probably yes, but a really, really rubbish one.