Today In West Yorkshire

Note my neighbour's car almost entirely buried in the little carpark adjacent to our houses... Fortunately I parked mine on the street, knowing snow was coming, and having observed problems in the carpark before, though not quite of this magnitude.

Drifts

Thirty hours of snow and wind and still it flies past the window, still is sighs in the chimney. Massive wave-shaped drifts in exposed places, no snow to speak of on my car in the shelter of the house.

The sleep adventure continues. Averaging less than four hours all week I was taking sleepiness to a whole new level, and not just in the evenings. Fortunately yesterday the blizzards closed our school so I got a very welcome day of rest. A bit two-edged though as I was falling asleep reading, falling asleep in the bath, falling asleep doing the sudoku, falling asleep colouring, falling asleep watching programmes on the iPlayer. The only antidote to stand up, move about, dance. Then last night my body rebelled and I developed vertigo around 10.30. Not acute, but enough to tell me it was time for bed. I went at 11.30, an hour before my 'sleep window' and slept! 5.5 hours at this point seems a treasure trove of repose. The vertigo is still here, but not too bad this morning, and I am a little less abjectly exhausted and at least not sleepy just yet. Beginning to take this thing into my own hands. I think 11.30 will be the new bed time as 5.5 hours in bed was running me ragged with sleep deprivation, far far worse than when simply suffering from insomnia and that can't be right. 6.5 hours I can work with.

Restricted

Started sleep restriction last night - bedtime 12.30, get-up time 6.00. Every day. Got about three hours' sleep, if that. Idea is to reset body clock, and only be in bed for sleeping. Idea is you get out of bed if you're not sleeping and go somewhere else until sleepy.

Too tired to write in sentences. Too tired to comment at this stage.

Cooking Delia's fast roast pork with rosemary and apples, cider and creme fraiche. Tending a fire. Taking it one hour at a time. Half past midnight seems a long way off.

Dimming

Push my face into the pillow and force me to sleep
you know you can flatten me on the bed
and squash me to sleep
Blindfold me and stop my ears
kick me over the edge you know you want to
into the pit of forever into the dimming
dream

Obvious

Well, who'd have thought that signing up for a sleep improvement programme could entirely ruin one's sleep pattern, damaged and fragile as it already was? But that is what happened. From Saturday night, all the way through until Thursday night, my sleep average was around 4.5 hours a night. Believe me when I tell you this is not enough for a day's work, and yet and yet somehow I do cope, I do see all my clients, and I do believe (and I don't think I'm deluded) the work is good enough. Then I come home and crash, in all senses of the word (well maybe not all senses, but more than one). It makes life a little limited, keeps the old flu cough alive and well, and there are moments and hours of great physical and mental misery, especially the hour in the car on the way home, especially the bits sitting at red lights.

Anyway, then on Friday night I slept about 6 hours. And last night about 8!! Praise be to the dozy little pyjama-clad god of sleep. I thought I'd lost the ability to have anything one could accurately call a night's sleep.

So yesterday I undertook (or underwent) Sleepio session 2. Nothing much to report really, it was a series of blinding glimpses of the obvious. However, let's not be too scathing, it is always good to be reminded about caffeine, exercise, relaxation and so forth, though I do agree with some of my fellow travellers on the Sleepio website message board, that being told to make your bedroom dark, quiet and comfortable seems a little unnecessary and just a tad patronising. Do those clever CBT doctors not realise they are addressing seasoned insomniacs here? Too hot, light or noisy a bedroom, or too lumpy a bed might possibly be a problem you'd have eradicated at some earlier stage of the game, when you first began to wonder if there was anything obvious you could do to improve your sleep.

A more interesting development is that I have sworn off alcohol for the duration, since not only did Sleepio point out, but I also know from experience that drinking it is not at all sleep-friendly less than four hours before bed. Might make you sleepy at first, but then body goes into withdrawal in middle of night, and zip zap you're awake. Or in my case you're just awake and hot and awake and hot (and that was one glass of red wine last Saturday night). If I miss it too much I'll take up drinking at lunchtime. Seriously though, I hadn't had more than three glasses of wine since I got flu at the beginning of February, so I'm more or less weaned anyway, and have regularly stopped drinking for spells throughout my life. I like it, it just takes a while to get round to it. As so often in my life, on important matters - my body has spoken.

Another week on the sleep diary, and in theory addressing my 'negative thoughts' with something called a 'thought checker', which goes something like this:

1.My thought

2.This makes me feel...

3. A more accurate version

4. This makes me feel...

I will once again attempt to lay off the scathing tone, because there are moments when this sort of thing has its uses, when the thought is for example 'oh god, I can't sleep, and I will be such a wreck tomorrow and everything is going to hell in a handcart'. Which clearly makes me feel helpless, miserable, angry and anxious. I won't bore you with parts 3 and 4, but you know sometimes a blinding glimpse of the obvious is just what we need if we're not too darn sophisticated to take it in. 

Sleepio

The somnolently challenged amongst you may be interested to know that I have signed up for an online sleep improvement programme based on CBT techniques - called rather charmingly Sleepio!

I have fallen back into an old pattern of struggling to sleep on the nights before getting up early for work, averaging about four hours on these nights. I just about (but at a cost) manage to work adequately, but only really because I finish early and know I can then come home and lie down... I am fairly sure it was the impact of sleep deprivation on my immune system that contributed to my falling prey to such a vicious flu. From which I am still recovering, and the cough comes back when I get tired... The rest of the time sleep is usually adequate but with blips, and hormones are also a factor as I move from peri-menopausal to officially menopausal... Hmm. Time to do something, I decided this week, feeling pretty desperate. I have never wanted to resort to drugs, although I would if there was nothing else, so enter the darling psychological therapy of our times. Online! How 21st century can you get?

Every week I have a 20 minute online session with 'the Prof' - a cartoon character about two inches tall with a dog called Pavlov... Week one of the programme involves nothing more challenging than filling in a daily sleep diary, which gives you a picture of your 'sleep efficiency' - how many of the hours you spend in bed you are actually asleep. Expressed as a percentage. There will be relaxation techniques, and a tailored programme to improve the sleep efficiency, by limiting the hours spent in bed. There is also an online community of fellow travellers, which of course I've already joined. Last night, despite the fact that it was Saturday, I slept really badly, maybe four hours. Partly I was overly aware of the sleep diary I'd be filling in in the morning. Ho hum. I'll keep you posted.

Non-Leap

The end of February - always a bit like being pulled through a hedge backwards for me, and this year I even look a bit like that, having missed the moment for a much-needed haircut over half term, what with being ill and my hairdresser being something of a vortex (a major component of turbulent flow), and not appearing to me a useful part of my recovery process.

February stumbling towards March as only February can. These unmistakable harbingers of spring, the snowdrops and crocuses, the busier birds, the increased light - mingling uneasily with the temperature, the ice  in the puddles, the snow along the field sides. As a time for suicide it always strikes me as a moment, when if only he could have waited just a little longer, everything might have begun to look different. Or who knows, maybe the early breath of spring was more than he could bear.

The elusive spring and the elusive 29th disappearing together forever hand in hand.

Often I don't even think about it that much (last year yes this year not so much) but then my body feels it in the season, in the light, in the approach of another phase of our lives, another arrival at the end of winter. And the calendar always goes on about it - the truncated month looks so different - I get paid sooner, the date and day in February is echoed by the day and date in March in these non-leap years. And for some reason there are always suicide synchronicities - Sylvia Plath all over the radio this year. And I always find myself worrying about someone close to me killing themselves - unexpectedly, needlessly. I am thinking about other things, but my father's death is always nibbling at the edge of consciousness, a counterpoint to the rest.