My friends’ five-week-old baby was raising Cain this week, and, as I consider myself something of a baby whisperer, I offered to help. I cooed, I cuddled, and I caressed, rocking and swaying as I did so. All to no avail, I’m afraid. My powers are waning. His parents told me that pub chatter was the only thing guaranteed to soothe him. This, I was told, is something one can access any time on the internet. And sure enough, there it was on Spotify – “British pub chatter”. It’s a fascinating listen. You can hear a bar bore in full flow. You can’t quite hear what he’s saying but he’s identifiable as a bit of a bore from the cadence of his relentless speech, conveying enthusiasm and certainty. It’s also clear that no one is paying him much attention. Yes, it turns out that the sound of someone not being listened to has an unmistakeable sound of its own.
Also on the same EP – yes really, an EP – is a track called “Inside a British pub”. I’m not sure why this would differ greatly from “British pub chatter”, but it was a little louder, with conversation more of a group activity featuring more multiple voices in competition. “Babbling tavern chatter” wasn’t much different, although it did feature a wheezy laugh that may have been a cough. Finally, there was “Relaxing inn”, which had nothing to distinguish it from the other three. It was a bit like listening to an album by a band whose music you’re not into and therefore each track sounds the same.
These sounds were familiar and comforting, but far too interesting to get me off to sleep. I tried them for my next nightly 4am wide-awake-for-no-reason episode. I couldn’t help eavesdropping, trying to work out what was going on. So I reverted to my go-to-sleep inducer: From Sleep by Max Richter. There are seven pieces in one hour; I’ve never got beyond track two, Path 5 (delta), whatever that might mean.
It turned out that the title From Sleep is a reference to another longer work called merely Sleep. Being a devotee of Mr Richter, I downloaded the real thing. It is an astonishing eight hours and 24 minutes long. If you’re not asleep after that lot, either your insomnia is beyond control or Sleep isn’t doing what it says on the tin. Great work, Mr Richter, but the abridged version does me just fine.
For many people, audiobooks can have the desired soporific effect and strike you out cold in less than a couple of minutes. I suspect this happens to those who were read to sleep as kids, and the feeling is too hard-wired to shift. For some reason, audiobooks have the opposite effect on me; I tend to be so absorbed that sleep will never come. Until now.
For years I kept a copy of the most boring novel ever written next to my bed, to switch the light on and read if things got really desperate. In the early hours of this morning, away from home without my trusty Penguin Classic paperback, I had a brainwave. Could anyone, possibly, have attempted to record an audiobook of The Golden Bowl by Henry James? Surely not. But they have! Juliet Stevenson, no less. I was concerned that the brilliance of her delivery would render it less soporific. I needn’t have worried. Not what she intended, I’m sure, but it is the solution to all my nocturnal issues. I doubt, frankly, that I’ll ever make it beyond the first chapter, but it’s still probably the wisest purchase I’ve ever made.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
