Radio insomnia

It’s 2.43 a.m. Unable to sleep, you reach out into the night for company: literally. Out goes your arm, towards the radio on the bedside table, and you grope for the ‘on’ button. You bring the radio close to you: a hard, cold, rectangular cuddly toy with an aerial instead of ears, and you turn the volume down as low as you can so that it won’t wake your sleeping companion, if you have one. When a radio is this close to your eyes, you see two of each of its parts.

If Radio 4 is your daytime listening, you’ll find yourself in World Service Land at this time of the night.  The first sentence you’ll hear will be something like, ‘The group is believed to have carried out a number of attacks in northern Nigeria.’ Or, ‘Sierra Leone is in the grip of an epidemic.’ Or, ‘The sticks were half-covered in blood: they’d been used to beat the people to death.’

The reason you’re wide awake in the first place is because you’re an anxious type.