Goodnight, sleep tight.

You’ve probably seen some of this - over the past week there’s been various surveys published about sleep patterns and bedtime habits:

Apparently we no longer go to bed and read a book, nor say our prayers (HA!). The most common things to do before getting into bed is to plug your mobile phone in to charge and whilst in bed it’s to surf social networking sites (presumably on a laptop, although I suppose you could set up a hard drive, monitor and keyboard on your bedside table) or to listen to your generic mp3 player.

This BBC survey also had the average bedtime as 10.30.

This is, of course, whilst simultaneously being a nation of either a) binge drinkers gurgling mid-week alcho pops at happy hour prices until we’re caught on CCTV either puking, fighting, or hitching our skirt up and squatting down in an alley for a piss. Or b) middle-class folks who chung back a bottle and a half of wine every single night until our livers melt. Both of which take time, unless, of course the wine’s actually ingested by an intravenous drip whilst we sleep.

Factor in that we also, allegedly, have the longest working hours in Europe and spend too much of our time in front of the television and who the hell is able to get to bed consistently at 10.30?

When I worked for my last job I would, typically, go to bed about at about 11.30 and be asleep by midnightish. More or less. If, I was just going into the office and not further afield I would get up at 6.30. Okay, 6.36 to be accurate - I had a very precise, rigid morning routing. No snooze button for me. My commute took me between fifty-five minutes and an hour and five minutes, so I’d arrive sometime between 8.20 and 8.25.

I always thought this was pretty typical - although I’ve just noticed that the front cover of the Observer’s Review section (oddly enough) says that an average London commute is one hour and twenty-four minutes. Hpmh. Thinking about this (and to prove my point) had I tried to arrive for 9.00 then it probably would have take an extra fifteen or twenty minutes because the trains get busier and busier. With a lot of London businesses not starting until 9.30 it was pretty quiet around 8ish.

I dunno.

I could stretch this. I know lots of people who do really stupid commutes. I once met a guy called Barry who lived on Merseyside and worked in Leicester. Mind you, he only went into the office on a Wednesday and presumably spent the rest of week getting there and back, sleeping and working in his car.

In a round about way I’m getting to the point.

At the same time another survey was released saying that the average person gets less that six hours sleep a night. My question is - who are all these poor sods getting up at four in the morning every day?

(My second question is who keeps commissioning these surveys and for what purpose?)

Anyway, the bedtimes habits stuff was quite interesting. I confess I’m pretty average. The last thing I do before getting into bed is put my phone onto to charge, although as the on-off switch is broken it’s essential it doesn’t run out of battery. It did die about a month ago and I had to resort to trying to prise underneath the switch, to trigger it on, with a kitchen knife. When that, unsurprisingly, didn’t work I smacked it hard down on my knee and miraculously it blooped back into life.

My knee hurt, mind.

Once in bed I do often read. Although as I spend a large part of the day reading fiction (my own, other students, extracts given to us by tutors, various other books and short stories) my bedtime reading tends to be lighter. It’s currently 1,001 Films You Must See Before You Die which does have the drawback of weighing about five kilos and being rather uncomfortable to balance on your chest.

I’m not sure what Beck does because, again, it appears that we’re pretty average.

Apparently most couples now go to bed at different times and many actually sleep in different rooms. Presumably the noise of an xbox or those badly insulated earphones on an ipod have now replaced snoring as the leading sleep disruptor.

However, there’s a slightly different reason for our different bedtimes.

Beck, frankly, struggles to get out of bed in the mornings and, anyway, always finds that she does her best work late a night. It’s almost as though it takes several hours for her brain to wind itself up. So often she’ll work to midnight and beyond and then get up at nine, or later.

Meanwhile, my brain’s been battered into submission by eight years of 9 till 5 (oh that would’ve been nice) and so, despite now only have a thirty second commute from the eating table to the writing table I’m still up at seven and often working by eight. I also work, I think, pretty late. Usually till 8 or 9, but I’ve never been able to do what Beck does and just stop dead and go straight to sleep. I need to let my mind calm down. So I have to stop and read for few hours or watch a film or something - often accompanied by an alcoholic beverage.

That’s another thing I can’t do that Beck does. She quite likes a glass of wine or beer whilst working late. Anything I try to write after a drink always seems… too relaxed?

Now this has been going on for years, one way or another, and its by no means every night. Sometimes we go out. Sometimes we even go out together. On the odd occasion we’re just ready for bed at the same time.

There’s always going to be exceptions: this week Beck’s had residency and exhibition applications to do late into the evenings and had to haul herself out of bed earlier than me to get to Essex to run school workshops. About twice a year I have a lie in. But we’re talking averages and typicals here.

We’re out of synch and it’s difficult to get back in without either one of us changing our habits.

Do we need to?

Actually, I suspect we possibly do.

I think going to be bed at the same time and living to a similar pattern’s quite important in a relationship. We’re more likely to be doing things together before going to bed, we’re more likely to get up at the same time, more likely to need to eat at around the same time each day. All these things are important parts of communicating with your partner.

And it also helps with… Well, you know what.