None of us can stay awake. On that much my friends and I, over a bottle of Chateau de Rare Night Out, were agreed.

In our twenties, sleeping was something you did in the odd moments when there was nothing more interesting going on. In our thirties, we started to see the wisdom in banking a good eight hours and even the odd early night from time to time.

Now? We sit down, we fall asleep. We have no say in the matter. Forget the books we are trying to read, the Netflix series we really, really want to watch, even the online browsing of John Lewis (or whatever your taste runs to – JL is my last surviving Happy Place) we’d like to do.

Women lose sleep in the way they lose lots of things - and instead lie there and worry about our failures because they spend so much time trying fulfil so many more roles than men in a day and know they are judged on all of them (file image)

None of us can stay conscious for more than ten minutes. Husbands and partners have been taught to wake us up after set times because it won’t happen naturally. We’re not napping, we’re out for the count.

Why should this be so? Obviously, although none of us is officially even peri-menopausal yet, our narrowed eyes light on hormones as the main suspects. But it occurred to me later that the real culprits lie closer to home.

It occurred to me at midnight, in fact, two hours after I’d first gone to sleep and the culprit was very close indeed – just settling into bed next to me. He had crept with what I think he believes is feline grace up the stairs. I woke to the sound of thumping feet, laboured breathing and pictures being knocked askew on stairwell walls.

Then he came in, yanked his clothes off with more effortful huffing and puffing than I produced during labour, and climbed into bed while I shut my eyes tightly against the brightness of his phone torch sweeping like a prison searchlight across the room.

I waited while he got himself comfortable, expelled the various forms of wind he evidently saves up for my night time delectation, and eventually fell back to sleep. Four hours later, the snoring begins and from then till the alarm goes, I am woken every 40 minutes or so by the human fog horn next to me who must be pushed on to his side to buy me the next stretch of relative tranquillity.

Thee number of times when men wake up shivering because someone has taken all the blankets or are disturbed by snoring are minimal. Men barrel in, disturbing our rest – even if they are trying not to – because they move through life never properly being taught what it is to put yourself out in the service of another’s comfort or ease (file image)

I never hear of men losing sleep in this way. And there are many other examples. I don’t hear of men waking up shivering because someone has taken all the blankets. I don’t hear of men lying awake running through their successes and failures as a parent/employee/friend/responsible citizen and resolving to do better next time before going on to compile tomorrow’s to-do list, complete the family’s weekend plans, and squeeze in a few minutes to worry about the state of the world more generally and maybe a little cry over accumulated woes, before their mental cacophony dies down enough to let them drop off.

Women lose sleep in the way they lose lots of things – getting through a world that isn’t designed for them. We lie there and worry about our failures because we fulfil so many more roles than men in a day and know we are judged on all of them.

We do the planning because if we don’t, no one else will and life will descend into chaos and become even more stressful. And men barrel in, disturbing our rest – even if they are trying not to – because they move through life never properly being taught what it is to put yourself out in the service of another’s comfort or ease. It is exhausting, at every level.

I have much more to say – a detailed set of instructions for how to turn under the duvet without taking it with you (you’re two separate entities! It can be done!) for a start – but I am, of course, too worn out.

Homeopathic hogwash The chief executive and the national medical director of the NHS have written to the Professional Standards Authority to urge against the reaccreditation of the Society of Homeopaths. Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, has written to the Professional Standards Authority to urge against the reaccreditation of the Society of Homeopaths They say it gives a veneer of scientific respectability to the practice and encourages people to think its treatments are equivalent to medicine proper – offering chancers golden opportunities to prey on the gullible. I couldn’t agree more. Homeopathy (see also crystals, magnet therapy and all the rest) is scientifically bunkum. At best, it fills the parts that Western medicine cannot reach – a practitioner who helps you by having time to spend with you, to listen to your problems, to be a shoulder to cry on, to treat you as special, perhaps, in a world that otherwise neglects you. At worst, it hands you little bottles of tap water while bleeding your bank account dry. Advertisement

Who's the victim?

Almost two months to the day after she killed 19-year-old Harry Dunn when her car, allegedly travelling on the wrong side of the road, collided with his motorbike outside an RAF base, Anne Sacoolas agreed to be interviewed by Northamptonshire police. Good of her.

Northamptonshire Police have handed over a file on the death of Harry Dunn after interviewing Anne Sacoolas in the United States. She pleaded diplomatic immunity and fled across the Atlantic after being accused of killing the 19-year-old motorcyclist in a collision. She has since been interviewed at her home in the US

Charlotte Charles, left, mother of British teenager Harry Dunn, arrive at Union Station in Washington, on October 15 to meet Sacoolas

The interview took place in her native US where the wife of an American spy fled claiming diplomatic immunity. According to Chief Constable Nick Adderley, she wanted ‘to be personally interviewed by officers…in order for them to see her and the devastation this has caused her and her family’. Ah, yes. The poor, devastated… culprit? Really? Sacoolas has much to learn about what devastation really means.

Yesterday, for the first time, I saw someone use their – I want to say Apple Watch? Is that right? – to pay their way through a Tube turnstile. I followed them for about ten feet in wonderment, like a medieval peasant in a strange future world...

An employee demonstrates the new Apple watch inside the newly renovated Apple Store at Fifth Avenue on September 19, 2019 in New York City (file image)

Proof nothing trips up Amal

Amal Clooney nearly trips on a cobblestone street in her heels and manages to catch herself from falling

It's a reverse-Cinderella. Amal Clooney has her prince already but lost her shoe as she was leaving a gathering in Manhattan last week. Cobblestoned streets and high heels undid her, as they have undone many a lesser woman before her. Unlike the rest of us, however, Amal, left, still looked irritatingly elegant.

I applied for a ticket refund from the train company after my (ruinously expensive) journey was delayed by 92 minutes. They said No. I said Yes and wrote more emails, sent more pictures of my ticket, then wrote some more, increasingly furious, emails.

They gave in (which is to say, with a poisonously bad grace recognised my wholly valid claim) and paid in full. I’ve never felt a thrill of achievement like it. Now I feel capable of anything. Depose tyrannical leaders around the globe. Find a decent plumber. Hell, I might even sort Brexit next.

A NEW Amazon series about serial killer Ted Bundy is in the works. He would be thrilled. Reason enough, surely, not to do it.

A general election is upon us. I have literally no idea what to do. Magic Grandpa Corbyn? I do not believe in him, I’m afraid. Boris? A binbag full of bully-flavoured yogurt in which I have even less faith. A. N. Other who stands no chance and amounts to a wasted vote? Is the Monster Raving Loony Party still around? It’s starting to look like the sanest choice.

...actually, scrub that. As I clear the house of Halloween detritus and try to calm tired and tantrumming young, let the record show that in the forthcoming Election I will vote for any party that promises to outlaw this festival of tat, sugar and children fibrillating with over-excitement. Any party at all.

With the general election around the corner, the pressure is mounting on trying to figure out which politician will secure our votes. The vote is stuck between Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is a binbag full of bully-flavoured yogurt, or Magic Grandpa Jeremy Corbyn

Simon Cowell has cancelled his 60th birthday party at short notice, citing ‘scheduling conflicts’. Hmm. Possibly. But it sounds to me more like time has caught up with him and he’s suddenly realised what we ordinary mortals have known since we hit 35 – that nothing compares to staying in. Especially not going out.

Pyjamas instead of glad rags. Tea and toast instead of cocktails and canapes. Netflix and sofa instead of dancing and taxis. God, it’s lovely. Cancelling plans is the biggest rush I know. FOMO – fear of missing out – has been wholly and irrevocably replaced by JOMO: the incandescent joy of doing so.