The story so far: a freelance writer and editor for 20+ years, I jumped ship in April 2015 from bricks and mortar to live on a historic narrowboat – currently permanently moored in a busy marina in greenest Staffordshire.
Saturday 25 April, 9.30am, 13 degrees, cloudy
In my month and two days at the boat, I’ve developed a strange pattern of broken sleep. Whilst I’m going to bed earlier (midnight: gold star to the night owl), I’m waking up in the wee smalls, and sleeping only intermittently after that until it’s time to get up. I’ve started checking the time when I first come to and it’s 04.04 or 04.14 or 04.24. I find this strange.
I’m a sensitive sleeper, yes, but my problem has always been a difficulty in falling asleep. Once I’m there, I’m pretty unshakeable. I can dream through electric storms or miss the chap tiptoeing in to say goodbye before work and leave a cuppa. I never wake up early of my own volition unless I can help it. The only times I’ve seen the dawn (except by necessity when catching a plane,) are when I’ve stayed up all night. When I have catch an early plane, I normally stay up all night anyway because it’s less painful.
So what’s going on? I’ve read that waking at specific hours of the morning – i.e. when you’re not intending to get up – signify different issues or medical conditions. From memory, I think 5.00am means depression or extreme anxiety. A few years ago I was, for a while, that 5.00am person: unhappily awake. Unable to ravel up the sleeve of care. Trying not to drown.
But now is bouncy, bonny even. Before the move to the boat, my ability to sleep was improving and I was proud of it. On occasion, needing to catch up – on a whole lifetime of sleep deprivation! – I pushed the boat out (couldn’t resist that) and went for nine. I was proud of my growing ability to do zeds, to relax from tip to toe.
Sleeping here, or sleeping so lightly here, my system seems to be permanently aware that there’s a porous membrane between the inside and the outside world, and thinks it and I need to stay alert. My system in its wisdom is divided between feeling we’re sleeping half-rough, whilst, at the same time, knowing we’re sleeping smooth in cuddly duvets. Perhaps it’s on semi-alert for a fight or flight situation all night long.
Then there’s the traffic which I hear and which disturbs at night: it’s like a rumbling ghost walking abroad. Asleep (or trying to sleep) in our narrow, narrowboat beds, our feet point to the mecca of this main road, like underground skellington feet all pointing the same way in a churchyard.
The Canada geese don’t help either and, whilst spring is here, I’ll blame them. We’re moored in what feels like a mating pool. They start their yapping, yelping, yowling early doors and are clearly unperturbed by the invisible shotgun I raise nightly (round 04.04) at their beaky little heads.
Perhaps though the geese have just come to this particular spot to loiter and so cause 1,001 sleepless nights, as in a fairytale. It’s a protest against their brethren having had their feathers plucked for our duvets, our pillows. And they’ve decided to pick on me… It could be that mornings and I are going to have to get acquainted.
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