FOOTNOTES

[1] Actually, it couldn't happen. We always make sure we've locked the door at night.

[2] Although it would probably have to wait until the latest news of Manchester United's attempt to sign Cesc Fabregas.

[3] See last week's column.

Twitter: @teddyjamieson

Most nights I sleep like a log. In fact I sleep like a log that has been heavily sedated and placed in a sensory deprivation tank. I'll wake up in the morning and J will say: "Did you hear the thunder last night?" Or: "Daughter number two has had a terrible nightmare," and I have to plead utter and complete ignorance.

The fact is Penelope Cruz could walk into my house in the middle of the night in a state of undress because of a sudden overwhelming passion for a middle-aged man with middle-aged spread who sounds vaguely Scottish (it could happen)and she'd end up going next door to see if Billy was in (1). The world could end in the wee small hours and I wouldn't know until Nicky Campbell told me during the 7.30am news on Five Live the next morning (2).

Now and again, though, I'll have a night where sleep is as elusive as a good Johnny Depp movie. I will toss and turn for hour upon hour, longing for my normal comatose state. I can't turn the light on as J's sleeping patterns are the opposite of mine. When she does go over she sleeps like a frightened dormouse that's bedded down on the edge of a sheer cliff surrounded by a troupe of half-starved tigers who have a hankering for dormouse fricassee.

So, in short, I can't turn the light on.

Where does that leave me? Spending a sleepless night remembering all my failings. They're not major failings, I suppose. I mean, I haven't killed anything, apart from the odd pigeon (3). But if I fail on quality I make up for it in quantity. And so every little mistake I've ever made (and given that I'm careless and lazy and insensitive and stupid, there's no shortage of them) will loom up like Kay Burley at a royal birth.

I end up agonising about stuff that should have been put to bed 30, 40 years ago. I will start to squirm over things my 12-year-old self did (like stealing my mate's Marvel comics. And then lying about it), or recall my crass, insensitive comment in 1989 when I learned that one of my colleagues in the bookshop had lost her job (something along the lines of "Bloody hell, I'll have to change the rotas now"). And other stuff I'm certainly not going to tell you about.

By 4am on such mornings I'm all too aware that I'm an inadequate failure of a human being who deserves neither quarter nor sympathy.

And then I fall asleep anyway. And when I wake up I will have managed to bury my failures deep enough once again. I like to think that shows that I am psycho-logically stable.