FALLING ASLEEP

Well then. Looks like we made it through Day 604, the Friday of Week 137. Brilliant, he says clasping his hands together. Now, what's next?

A little snooze, apparently. I collapsed onto my bed and fell asleep. I like the process of falling asleep. I like how all the sounds around you go muffled, how your mind wanders aimlessly and how the world seems better if you process it with your eyes shut. I like the way your breathing slows right down and everything just seems to melt into a candyfloss world of dreams.

Yes. It would be nice if I could do it when I'm supposed to - such as, at night time for example. It's half an hour into tomorrow and I am still fancifully awake. It seems I accidentally gave myself a power nap and now I'm wired up like a Christmas tree.

I've tried all the old tactics. I spent ages working on a theory that simultaneous events are meaningless because time is measured by how fast light can travel. I had a little chuckle to myself when I realised that that was kind of Einstein's thing a hundred years ago. Obviously space and time are related.

Then I tried figuring out how long it takes data to beam back from the little robot we recently attached to a comet. It turns out to be about half an hour. Hooray.

Still awake.

Another thing I quite like about falling asleep is that feeling of actually falling. It's as though your head loses all ability to figure out which way up you are. Sometimes when I'm really tired I lie there and feel the room spin around me like a spinning top. As it spins, I close my eyes and imagine I'm caught up in some sort of tornado, or tied to a roundabout or something. Though, that last one is weird enough to jolt me awake.

Horrible that, isn't it, when you jolt awake half-way through falling into sleep?

The worst time it happened to me, I woke with a shudder as the car bounced along the rumble strip. I have never driven that tired since - it's just not worth the risk. I had had two cans of Red Bull on the M5 at 1am and by the time I got past Bristol, the 'wings' had turned into lead weights. I drove really carefully all the way along the M4, all the way off the Junction 12 roundabout and halfway into Calcot at about 20 miles per hour, when I saw a car explode into a flash of blue light behind me.

Thankfully, the little light on the breathalyser went green that night. I hadn't actually drunk any alcohol but for a minute, my whole life was in the hands of a couple of electronic circuits doing a chemical analysis. I decided there and then that I would value sleep more highly.

I think maybe I'll give it another go. Typing in front of a luminous screen at ten to one in the morning probably isn't helping.