‘Sleep is like love. If you have it, you take it for granted,’ reports Wendy Cooper in the Observer Magazine on 24 January 1971. If you don’t, it’s rhythmic rocking or counting sheep for you, though not for Charles Dickens: he made sure his bed faced north, better to boost his creativity as he slumbered.
We spend a third of our lives sleeping, but some feel they still don’t get enough, some (narcoleptics) fall asleep when they eat. Some sleepwalk or, in one case, sleepride their motorbike in the middle of the night.
