Morning, sleep well? I never do. I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m always surprised when I can’t sleep at night but I shouldn’t be. My days are a relentless rollercoaster of adrenalin and anxiety, trying to plough through a to-do list that never ends. Why do I think I can just do all that and then lay down and gently drift off?

Sleep has always been tricky for me. Even when I was a teenager, I can still remember lying awake for hours, listening that orchestra of the night. The central heating gurgling, the milkman clinking and the sound of the foxes having an orgy behind the bins.

I got chronic insomnia as a kid. I used to fear going to bed, I started to hate it, like it was a real person. Deliberately trying to derail my life, pressing mattress springs to the surface or sagging in the middle. Having insomnia as a teenager isn’t great. I mean I had my whole life ahead of me, and how can you follow your dreams if you’re always awake, it’s impossible.

As I’ve got older, things have got better, but I still think that sleep is one of those parts of my life I will never get right. Whenever I’m watching a film and a couple, normally in a post coital embrace, will happily lay there for hours, one of them falling asleep on the others chest, I’m always baffled. Haven’t these people got a decent pillow. I mean it’s a tough call, a soft supportive surface that’s good for your neck, or two nipples, a rib cage and an ear full of armpit?

Sleeping is about relaxation, but how easy is it to do that in this world of chaos in which we live. Some people trying and connect with their spiritual side, channeling their inner peace. My wife drinks herbal teas, we’ve got a cupboard full of them. They are called things like, “Inner peace” and “Tranquility” it’s basically heroin for the middle classes. She’s also got ones called “Energy” and “Vitality” I often switch the tea bags round and see if she notices. I don’t think she has, although there was that one night where she got up for a wee and then spent an hour just dancing with a glow stick.

Wayne Rooney listens to a hoover as a constant white noise to help him sleep. It works but I think it’s just a plan to make Coleen do all the housework. I like the shipping forecast. I’ve never been on a fishing boat in my life, but I like to pretend I am. It helps me drift off sometimes. Only problem is I often wake up in a cold sweat after having a nightmare about fishing quotas and cod stocks.

Some people buy windchimes which have to be the worst example of cultural appropriation I can think of. They are fine if you’re living on your own ranch in the middle of nowhere, but not when you’re in a semi-detached in Milton Keynes. They claim to be trying to ward off evil spirits and presumably, replace them with a load of pissed off neighbours.

Mobile phone companies are now selling mindfulness apps. They are offering a solution for the anxiety they’ve helped to create. Brilliant. That’s like McDonald’s selling gym passes. I can’t fall asleep now if I haven’t got Stephen Fry’s voice in my ears. Which annoys my wife, because she has to sleep on the sofa, he’s a big lad.

I grind my teeth too. Some people use drugs and alcohol to medicate against the stresses in their lives, I prefer to grind it out through my own face. Eight hours every night, giving my face a workout. Another year of this and I’ll have a jaw like Desperate Dan.

“How did he get that panel show!” *grind*

“How did they sell out the palladium!” *grind*

The dentist has said I’m grinding my bottom teeth away. Like the coastal erosion on the cliffs of Scarborough, in about ten years they’ll be nothing left, I’ll be trying to eat a Twix with two sets of gums, not able to chew, just having to tenderize it like a piece of steak.

I remember she looked at the bottom row of my teeth and said:

“Do you grind your teeth?”

“I don’t know I’m asleep?”

“Has your wife noticed?”

“I’m not sure, she’s asleep too?”

Then she said:

“Well there is certainly one thing we can do”

I thought:

“You come round for a sleepover?”

She gave me a gumshield, which isn’t a great look is it. Nothing kills off romance quicker than having to pop out a gumshield first. Mind you I suppose it’s better than the other way around, having to put one in. You might as well have a bell on the headboard and a referee in the corner. We do have a bucket in there, but that’s just for Jemma to be sick into on Valentines day.

Recently we went to buy a new mattress, something we haven’t done for years. Jemma and I were both getting bad backs. Having a bit of mild soreness is one thing, but when you’re struggling out your bed with the posture of a cashew nut, bent up like a pyjama cladded Quaver, something needs to be done. I wanted to try it in person this time. You spend a lot of time sleeping. It’s like shoes, you have to be comfortable. You wouldn’t do a Duke of Edinburgh in flip flops would you?

They say, never go food shopping when you’re hungry, I say never go mattress shopping when you’re tired. I’ve been falling asleep to the same sentence on my kindle from 2019, so this was always going to be a high risk day.

It’s a strange day out buying a mattress. Wandering around a showroom, waiting to lay on various beds. You have to queue up and let other couples try them first, it’s like a theme park, they may as well call it Mattress Kingdom! It’s so surreal, everyone still has their shoes on, with handbags dangling off the sides.

You hear their review, a little window into their lives:

“This won’t be good for your back John, way too saggy”

“Swap sides Julie, you don’t sleep nearest the window”

It’s absolutely fascinating. Some people were encouraged to roll over on their side, some laid on their backs, one woman laid on her front, face down. That was disturbing, who choses that as a sleeping position? Face down, airways blocked by a pillow. That’s not sleeping, that’s smothering. She shouldn’t listen to the shipping forecast at night, she’d think she was drowning at sea.

We had an assistant with us, she was showing us all these options. She asked us what mattress we were looking for. I said that I’d always fancied a memory foam, my wife said two singles, which was unnecessarily cruel.

There were so many to choose from, it was overwhelming.

“What do you think of this one? This has gel in it, this one is on offer, this is a best seller?”

We didn’t care, we were knackered. I just wanted her to leave us so we could have a proper sleep. I was so tired, I’d have laid across her desk if she’d have stuck a pillow on it.

I might suffer from insomnia at night, but you catch me in the afternoon during a sugar lull, I can sleep anywhere. I sometimes volunteer to take my daughter to her after school classes just so I can have a nap. I don’t mind paying for that direct debit, it’s worth it, even if I have been woken by an angry violin teacher banging on my car window and shouting, “do you want your child back or what?!”

In a recent survey most married couples have said that they’d like separate beds. It was good enough for the Queen and Prince Philip so why not for us? It’s not normal to sleep together. In our house our daughters have their own rooms, able to spread out, in total comfort. We’re squashed in together, breathing into each other’s faces and we pay the mortgage, it’s not right?!

I think if you did have separate beds, in separate rooms, the problem is, we would regress. We’d become teenagers again. She’d come down to your room, you wouldn’t hear her knocking because you’ve got Limp Bizkit blasting out at full volume. She’d open the door, choking on a cloud of Lynx Africa, she’d make her way to you, across a carpet of crusty socks, crunching like autumn leaves. Then she’d have to make love to you in a racing car bed, under a Toy Story duvet. Then at the end, if that wasn’t bad enough, your Mum comes in to ask if she’s staying for tea.

The night after you’d go down to her room, but she wouldn’t even let you in, because she’s too busy talking about Robbie Williams and having a pillow fight with her best mates.

The difference between the respective sides of a bed tells you a lot about the differences between you as people. Jemma’s side is so neat, you can barely tell she’s slept in it, it’s like she’s steamed those sheets open like an envelope.

Geometric lines, her kindle placed neatly next to hear glass of water, which is always on a coaster. She wakes up exactly where she fell asleep, pinned in the centre like the filling in some ravioli.

My side, chaos. It’s like a hedgerow on the side of the M6. I once found sand in there. I’d not even been near a beach! My pillow is awful, I’ve not changed it for years. Once I find a good pillow I like to stick to it, literally! It’s not bedding anymore, it’s evidence.

The world of mattresses is high tech now. They use 3d scanning technology. We had to lay on a simulator and see a picture of ourselves on the screen above. This simulator measures your body, maps out all the pressure points and recommends the perfect mattress. It could either be soft, firm, medium or the one we had suggested, “bloody expensive!”

They recommended a mattress to us….£2500?! The assistant said, it’s got springs in it’s got foam, it’s got gel…I said:

“Has it got cocaine in it love?!”

I don’t want a mattress I have to put on my house insurance! I’m putting it on my bed, not through private school! 

She said it’s been tested by over 10 million sleepers, I thought, well we don’t want that one then, it’ll be knackered, where did you get that from the Premier Inn?! It had something called, “Anti Motion Transfer Technology” in it. Which is a sculptured support system, to respect your partner’s sleeping space. We’ve already got that, it’s known as “Jemma’s Elbow”.

The assistant told us not to worry as we can pay for it in instalments. No thank you! The last thing I need when I’m trying to sleep is worrying about paying off the thing that I’m sleeping on!

I may as well be sharing my bed with a loan shark! 

It’s hard to recreate the conditions that a mattress will be used in isn’t it? It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and you’re laid on a bed, in full daylight opposite a carpet right, it’s not exactly lab conditions is it?

If they want people to buy these mattresses they need to let you experience a real world test. Put someone next to you who when they are in a deep sleep, just stops breathing for no reason and you think they are dead.

Then bring in someone who’s internal temperature could melt the polar ice caps? Just lays there generating heat like Iron Man. They are hot to the touch and love to roll over in the middle of the night and stick a sweaty breast to your back, like a suction cup on a window pane!

Then the final test, let you drift into a deep restful sleep. One that carries you away into another dimension, a beautiful sleep, like a God or a baby in the arms of its mother. Then, just before you hit the real REM phase, they bring in a child who shakes you awake and tells you that they’ve pissed the bed.

Sleep well, no chance mate, not even on a mattress worth two grand.