On Saturday morning Leftwing Idiot reported that my longest tic-free period in the night was fifteen minutes. Sharing a tipi with other people and disturbing their sleep had been my biggest worry about the weekend, but over the last few days I’ve perfected a recipe for sleep.

For me, the tricky thing about sleeping is staying still enough to get to sleep and maintaining that stillness long enough to sleep deeply. Camping was particularly tricky because I often bang my head repeatedly as I go to sleep and the hard ground was less forgiving than my mattress at home. Here’s the full list of ingredients for the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years:

Abundant fresh air
Liberal drizzle of alcohol
Double dropped diazepam
Dose of melatonin
Sleeping bag
One weighted blanket folded over legs
Head pinned to the floor by a friend

=

Several hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Some of the elements of this recipe are not sustainable long-term but sleeping well meant I could really enjoy the fantastic company and amazing setting of the hag do. I arrived home this evening feeling relaxed and happy.

As I was getting into my sleeping bag last night I said:

“I’m ready to join the national squirming team now.”

This is still very much the case.