3.37 a.m. Again!

This is a time I have come to know very well over the past few years.

Whether I retire to bed at 10.00 p.m. to read for a while, or crawl under the duvet at midnight, age and an insistent bladder stir me during the night. And the time is always the same.

The habit of a physical requirement is not the real problem however. The problem is returning to the comforting enclosure of sleep.

I have a trick that I have used for years. I only open one eye. It doesn’t matter which, but one eye only. It doesn’t work. Never has, but I still do it.

And so, each night, i return to bed, close my eye, and am greeted by a version of the inside of a tornado. Just about everything – work, friends, enemies, programmes watched, politicians, dictators, dicks – swirl around in a vortex of silent shouting, screaming, whispering cacophony.

The trick is to single out one thing to concentrate on. To grab one slice of life, one person, one circumstance to focus thoughts. To push the rest back and down and silence them.

But it is not always easy to pick one that will relax and calm. There are many swirling elements that contain real or imagined worries, concerns, fears. Magnified by the silence and darkness of 3.37 a.m.

There are so many real or distorted memories of errors, regrets, mistakes, misguided and misjudged decisions. Each one shouting silently for justice, punishment, retribution.

And so the battle ensues between the thoughts that disturb and those that give balm. And as, over the years, I have never been able to dismiss the many moments of regret, of error, of the wrong word or action, for many hours on many nights they win.

For hours, in the dark of the early morning, they are revisited and re-accusations are made and guilt reconfirmed.

Eventually, a comforting moment will emerge to calm the swirl, and rest returns, and sleep re-emerges.

But it is not all bad. Because, although the nights may be a constant battle – from 3.37 a.m. onwards – the days are being slowly converted to a more contented life.

And as this slowly seeps into the memory banks for the nightly battles, perhaps the balance will shift, and calm will begin to win more nights, and there will be more sleep.

Till then, 3.37 a.m. will continue to be a presence.

and before you ask, it does shift with summer time and autumn clock changes. Spooky eh?