Insomnia

Of course I'm writing this  insomnia  blog in the middle of the night. Why wouldn't I? Finding myself awake at 3 a.m. when all is dark and still, except for the owls...

night mover

... I type through the early hours in an otherwise silent conservatory by the glow of an anglepoise lamp, sipping a glass of cold, lactose-free, semi-skimmed and wondering just why owls - who are remarkably well-equipped to hunt at night - ever developed their unique physiology in the first place. Why become nocturnal? Was it because they couldn't sleep? Did they say 'Fuck it guys, you know what? We'll embrace the dark and stay awake all night!'? I'd like to think so.😉

Their specialised adaptation as night movers and hunters includes their ability to fly silently, and to see and hear in the dark with exceptional acuity; (that's my word of the week). 

Their feathers act not only as camouflage, they are also covered with a soft, velvet-like structure that dampens sound. Their wings are large, meaning they can glide and don't have to flap very often, plus they have baffles along the leading edge of the wings that breaks up the turbulence which is the major component of noisy flight. Their prey simply cannot hear them coming. 

They locate their victims first by sound. Unlike human beings with our symmetrical ears and stereophonic hearing, owls have ears that are located asymmetrically in their skulls and thus they can locate sounds in three dimensions, not just two. This affords them pin-point accuracy when detecting the position of a target mouse or vole, even in complete darkness. 

But their night vision is also extraordinary. Their enormous eyes are specialised to collect what little light there may be. Those eyes are so large in fact that they have lost the muscles that normally allow eyes to move around in their sockets, which means they must turn their heads if they want to vary their field of vision. As a result, they've had to develop the ability to swivel their heads about 270 degrees in either direction (compared to our 90 degrees left or right). 

Finally, as with cats' eyes, they have a tapetum lucidum behind each eye, a reflective surface that bounces light back to the photosensitive cells, allowing them a second take to detect differences in light even at very low luminance. Wow, owls...    

... though of course there are other predominantly nocturnal animals, quite a list - in fact well over a hundred creatures who prefer the hours of darkness to the day. They include the black rhino, cockroach, dwarf crocodile, great grey slug, honey badger, nightingale, paradoxical frog, raccoon, sugar glider and woolly lemur. But I'm not concerned with any of them. I'm only thinking about the owls...

Owlswick wallpaper by Sandersons

...and wallpaper (see Snowy above, £63 per roll - not found in the house on the strand, I hasten to add); and cranking up the Saturday night imaginarium to devise this flight of fantasy, a sort of baffled nocturne, to fit:

Owl Paper

Since I let your shape escape in pricking night,

I shouldn't be shocked if the ghost of a screech

teases my disoriented ears, or the merest sense 

of a velvet swoop nearly makes me duck down.

Owl paper, over cracks where darkness seeps in,

decks these bedroom walls and although I know

that in this eery stillness of nocturnal pitchblende

the only thing really moving is my mind, I howl...

...and turn on the light. You're branched as before

in your oak tree, beaky, big-eyed and swivelling

to regard me curiously, with just a hint of disdain.

But how to explain a scatter of pellets on the floor?

To close out on theme, here's a musical bonus from Principal Edward's Magic Theatre, a band I was very fond of in my teens, so much so that we engaged them to play a charity May Day gig at my school when I was in the sixth form. This song comes from their debut LP. Just click on the title to play it: Enigmatic Insomniac Machine

Thanks for reading, sleep soundly. S ;-)

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Insomnia - Goodnight

According to my husband who is the only person to know this, I am fast asleep as soon as I’ve wished him goodnight. If only I could stay that way until morning. About an hour later, I’m awake, needing the bathroom and this is the pattern through the night, every night. Most times I’m immediately off to sleep again, sometimes not. The nights of waiting for everyone to be home before I can settle properly are long gone, thank goodness.

It doesn’t take much to spook me. Our neighbourhood is quiet, so the slightest sound outside puts me on full alert and I lie still, listening, worrying about someone on the prowl, tampering with doors and cars. I dare to peep but I can’t focus straight away and I’m scared of being noticed, if there is anyone. I’m on another visit to the bathroom.

I wonder if I heard a noise downstairs, or if the toilet flush just sounded like it was something. I rush back to the safety of the bedroom before anything looms out of the darkness. Sirens, there’s always bloody sirens, even at silly o’clock. I’d love to know what’s going on, or maybe it is better that I don’t. I’m safe and cosy under the duvet.

I’m falling from a great height. There’s a loud bang before I hit the bottom of wherever I was going to land. I don’t know if it was a real bang or if I was dreaming. I’m awake again, but paralysed, listening to silence. It sounded like a car crash. If I’m meant to know, I’ll find out. Stay still, stay safe. Go back to sleep.

Disturbed again. This time my coughing wakes me up. I’m coughing due to acid reflux. And coughing makes me need the bathroom again. I sip some water and sit up in bed for a few minutes playing Tetris or Block Puzzle on my phone. I can settle again now that the coughing has stopped.

Insomnia, maybe it is, or maybe not. Night after night is like this. I don’t fit into any recognised category except having a sensitive bladder, a result of surgery. I’m not aware of stress or anxiety. When morning comes I’m dead to the world, in a deep sleep which probably started around four a.m.

Here’s Philip Larkin,

How to Sleep

Child in the womb,
Or saint on a tomb –
Which way shall I lie
To fall asleep?
The keen moon stares
From the back of the sky,
The clouds are all home
Like driven sheep.

Bright drops of time,
One and two chime,
I turn and lie straight
With folded hands;
Convent-child, Pope,
They chose this state,
And their minds are wiped calm
As sea-levelled sands.

So my thoughts are:
But sleep stays as far,
Till I crouch on one side
Like a foetus again –
For sleeping, like death,
Must be won without pride,
With a nod from nature,
With a lack of strain,
And a loss of stature.

           Philip Larkin, 1922 - 1985

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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