And do you have a duvet or blankets?

I have a duvet and I have just got my wafer thin summer one on because I was soI kept going hot. I do.

And pillows do you have special pillows?

Two, not too fat ones. Actually there are six pillows on my bed. don’t laugh. You know, it is a habit you know, both sides and I have them for reading. But the minute I am going to sleep then I take off the bit fat reading pillows as I call them and put them to one side.

Do you take them with you when go away?

Oh gosh no I wouldn’t have any room for them. There is lots and lots of pillows on my bed at [town] and if I am at a hotel then I will ask for more. And they always say yes. And when I go up they are all there. I ask for three, sometimes as many as three more. Yes.

Okay so you’ll go up to bed and make preparations for bed, and then you are doing your crossword?

Hm, and he’s reading his library book.

Okay.

So he might have gone to sleep before I do. He always says it doesn’t matter if I’ve still got the light on. But if he’s still got the light on, I can’t sleep. So if I’m nice and sleepy that’s all right.

So ideally you’d like, you’re happy to carry on doing the crossword and havehis light out but not the other way round, so you can get to sleep?

Yes.

And then how long did you say it takes you to get to sleep?

Well if I’m sleepy quite quickly, but if I have to put the light out, either because it is very late when we’ve gone to bed and by that I mean we’ve been out to friends and it might be midnight and I’m wide awake if we’ve been out.

It does get a bit hot in our bedroom as well and neither of us like being hot, I mean we are very lucky that we both like the same things. So even in the winter we use the summer duvet, a very, very thin summer duvet and in the summer we can’t even stand the duvet a lot of the time so when we had that spell a couple of weeks ago we just had a sheet and I will occasionally put a blanket over the sheets. But we are always warmer than other people I think.

But then you mentioned that, so your alarm goes off at 7?

Yes, sometimes I get used to hearing the alarm and I go back to sleep again. I find that sometimes.

You do go back to sleep again?

Well occasionally yes. I sort of doze. So I don’t really get up properly till about half past seven.

Okay is there a reason you set your alarm. Is there a reason like you feel like you need to set your alarm?

Well what happens I turn the radio, it is the radio that comes on, you see so I listen to that if I can hear it but probably I won’t have my hearing aid on so I might not be able to hear what he says. I might only hear a few words.

But why is it you feel, what I am interested in is why you feel you need to be up at 7 or awake at 7?

I don’t know. I feel a sort of conscience I suppose. it’s, I am probably more a puritan background I suppose. It is sinful to spend all the time in bed!

I mean overall night for you to get up in the morning what time do you get up?

Oh I get up in the morning well I have a routine. I have an alarm and I must be asleep because I’m woken up by the alarm.

The alarm wakes you up?

Although I’m coming round. You know, your body gets used to the time, somehow I suppose. But I’m not reliable without the alarm because several times when I’ve forgotten to press it to make it live in the evening. I have woken up because I’ve overslept and I look at the clock and I’ve missed, because I go early morning swimming.

Oh right.

And so I just get up at quarter to seven. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, but on, unless there’s a problem on Wednesday I don’t do swimming I got to the cardiac gym class. And that doesn’t start until an hour later. So I have an extra half an hour so I change the alarm and I wake up on the alarm, the alarm goes just the right time. In other words, although I get up quarter to seven pretty well every morning, I don’t get up at quarter to seven unless the alarm goes. And there if it is a quarter past seven I get up and of course on the weekends I don’t get up as early as that. But you automatically I would say we wake up about eight. If I was left there, Saturday morning. Unless we are going somewhere then we set the alarm again and neither of us will wake up if we don’t have the alarm. In other words, if you left us there, we’d sleep, well we wouldn’t sleep forever, but you would just go on sleeping.

So you are getting about, on the days when the alarm goes, you are in bed for about eight hours. How much of that would you say actually is sleep?

Well I go off to sleep very quickly. Or I think I do. And I must do. Yes. I mean if I set the alarm, I read, I look at the alarm clock and put the book down and with means I am not aware of myself or as I say I don’t lie there or anything like that I have literally gone out. Last night, we always have friends round on Thursday and we were chatting away here and they are supposed to go by eleven and they went out the door at quarter to twelve. Well I just went up, and it was a miracle that I actually got in the bed before I was asleep, that sort of thing. But in terms of a natural waking without an alarm on the weekends I would come round by eight. Then you might realise that you’ve nothing particularly to get up for and [my partner] is fast asleep and so I’ll just doze and sometimes I just go straight off again and then [my partner] will get up and come down and make coffee and then come back and say aren’t you getting, you know, so it varies but I would say that if we have no alarm our natural waking is between eight or half past eight.

Well we’ve got alarms but, and this is the absolute truth, we never need to set it unless we’ve got to leave at three or four in the morning to catch an aircraft and the other strange thing is that wherever we’ve been in the world. Whatever the time clock, we wake up at the same time locally as we would here.

Okay so even if you were in America you would wake up at the equivalent of what would be 6 oclockish here?

Exactly.

So you’re not reset your clock?

No.

How extraordinary.

And because we both realise we are doing this independently it isn’t a kind of trick or something, you know. My husband never sets the alarm if he’s got to get up at a particular time. Even if I say well shouldn’t you do it just in case. don’t need to he will say.

And he always wakes up?

Yes.

And you said if it was 3 or 4 in the morning, what happens if they needed to have a variation from 6, say 5, or 7. Would you automatically wake up?

Well that’s when we’d set the alarm for safety but I can’t remember a time when either of us have needed to listen for the alarm to get up and catch a plane. We are sort of half there. And probably don’t really switch off if we know we are getting up as quickly as that.

That’s interesting. If you’ve got a deadline in the time you have to get up are you aware that it impacts on your sleep. Say you are worried about missing that

Well I think that’s why I always want him to set the alarm. But I think in general we are not worrying about it. We both are always saying to other people when we discuss this with friends, we wish we could sleep later.

I am a bit like the late Winston Churchill, I confess I do have magazines, paperwork, all sorts on my bed because it is a double bed.

So you spread all that around while you are working?

So they are all spread around on my bed. So it is not tidy.

So you go to sleep with that lot on you?

Yes. I sleep on one side and on the other side I have got papers and the magazines and the book and various bits and bobs. And then the thing is ready to do in the morning when I wake up.

Ah. And they don’t fall off?

In fact it is my office. A bedroom office. They do fall off sometimes and you wake in the night like crash something has fallen off.

So you sleep on that same side?

Yes. I was reading Joan Bakewell sleeps in the middle of her double bed.

And you sleep on one side?

I sleep on one side because I have always slept on that side you know, in the marital bed and wherever I sleep I sleep on a particular side.

Okay that is interesting. You have got all sorts of fun going on there!

A bit eccentric to say the least!

The other thing I like to ask people is about the layout of their bedroom, and how the layout of the bedroom affects how they sleep. You have got a television and a computer, all that stuff in there, but it seems to me, and correct me if I am wrong now. But I have got this perception that for your bedroom is about getting your sleep, and though you don’t necessarily get it, the fact that you are turning everything off and consciously not taking distractions in there?

I suppose so. At the back of my brain yes, the bedroom is a place to rest and sleep. But I have got used to the fact that it’s also my cubby hole for my entertainment and sleep, but the two don’t clash. There I sleep. There I play. And the two don’t really. I mean if [my wife] comes in and I am watching a programme usually it is on tape, isn’t it, so I switch it off immediately she comes in, if by chance I have been watching something.

Right. So the two wouldn’t clash?

They wouldn’t.

You mentioned you had a television in your room is that right?

Yes.

So is that something you’d watch in bed every night?

No. If I’m watching something down here and I think I should be in bed I go and get myself ready for bed whilst sort of watching the end while I’m moving around and then I might just watch the end, but normally if I try to do that it sends me off, you know, watching anything sends me off to sleep.

So even in bed you might fall asleep?

Yes.

And does the television stay on then?

Yes, sometimes it’s about quarter past one and I hear this noise.

So you have to get up and turn it off or

Yes. I go straight back to sleep.

And what about the radio. Do you have a radio?

I like the radio Sunday nights. There is lovely music. And Sunday nights I try and be in bed at eleven to listen to David Jacobs Music Hour. So that’s till midnight.

And that’s Sunday night. So you’re awake listening to that till midnight?

Well if I’m really tired and say one more piece and I’llbut sometimes I have to wake up and just switch that off.

I was listening to what you were saying about if you are having a bad night you have ways to deal with it, you have strategies you do, and you mentioned putting the television on. Going on the computer. Do you have a computer in your room?

Oh yes, well my husband sleeps upstairs now because I don’tthe main bedroom is upstairs and there is no way I can, you know, impose that on him, so I have my, I have my special bed in my study. We are very lucky here. He has got an office and I have got a study and I have my bed. It is my cosy little den and it is untidy and I love it and so it is all in there, within two or three seconds reach. So it is all there. I have got the television in there, the computer in there and my CD player in there and I just use whatever and it usually, whatever I decide to do will send me off to sleep again.

So you have the television on. At what point – what is the trigger for you to say right I am going to turn this off and go to sleep?

If I think I have fallen asleep and I am saying to myself in my mind, well this is ridiculous, turn it off and go, you know, turn the light off. Or that is it basically or if I am reading often you fall asleep when you are reading. So yes, you do. So that is it basically really.

So it is about you are waiting until you are almost falling asleep is that it?

I certainly don’t climb into bed, turn the light off, put my head on the pillow and wait to go to sleep, because I don’t know why, nowadays it seems why do that, when you can watch the television. I know they say you shouldn’t have one in the room, but I quite enjoy it. It is company. Apparently a lot of old people say that, their television is their world.

So you’ll wake up in the night and do you do anything before you pick up the book or do you say to yourself, or do you try and get back to sleep, then pick up the book, how does it work for you?

Well first of all we are lucky because we have lights over the bed. [My husband] has one, I have another one and they are both very subdued. So I fish around and find the light, being very careful not to wake him up. Mind you I’m so lucky because I can’t wake him up. It’s lovely. Then I put the light on and then I’ve always got the book within hand. So that’s what I do. I don’t get up and go to the loo. I don’t do this. I don’t do that. That’s what I do, and then fortunately after about a page and a half or three I am like this and I can hardly see a thing and I think goody I’m off. And then I think about what I’ve read. I don’t think about anything else. I think about I’ve read and then within seconds I’m off again and I can do that as I say twice a night, sometimes three times a night when I have a bad night, not a bad night, it feels as if it’s bad, but of course I do get back to sleep again.