LIVING, AS we do, in a world that sees danger around every corner, lurking in everything we eat, drink, do or say, it’s sometimes hard to work out where we can go to find ourselves that haven of peace, tranquillity and stresslessness that we all long for, that Nirvana for the tired and twitchy.
Me, I love my bed. There used to be a TV sit-com many moons ago, starring Hywel Bennett as a layabout called Shelley, whose mantra was: “Bed, bed, I love you bed!”
It is, as you can imagine, a slogan that is frequently heard echoing around the woodwork of Brown Towers, when I’m awake enough to be communicating in any kind of intelligible manner.
There is even a technical term used to describe the antics (or lack of them) of folks like me who can go from A to Zzzz at the touch of an Egyptian cotton sheet and who, on Sunday mornings at least, rarely surface before the treacherous bedside timepiece has rolled round again to single figures.
Dysania is the expression you’re looking for if you are prepared to open a bleary eye wide enough or for long enough to consult a reputable book of words – difficulty in getting out of bed in the morning.
Couple it with good old clinomania – addiction to bed – and you have what passes for normality in my universe.
However, just when you thought it was safe to go back under the duvet – or not to emerge from it in the first place – I learn with a thrill of horror and a headline in bold type, of: WEEKEND LIE-IN DANGER!!!
Now, the greatest WEEKEND LIE-IN DANGER!!! in our house is likely to be lying in wait for anyone attempting to eject me from my pit before I am ready to stick an unwilling toe over the edge, rather like getting a very bad-tempered whelk out of an extremely comfortable shell.
But no. it seems that sleeping longer can increase the risk of having a stroke, at least according to a study carried out on 10,000 people from Norfolk.
Very flat, Norfolk, as Noel Coward had one of his characters opine in Private Lives, which may have something to do with the sleeping habits of those within sniffing distance of the Broads.
Any road up, this research appears to flag up a link between excessive sleep and ill health.
Reading further, however, I discovered that there are particular risks for women over 63 but I refuse to despair.
With the in-built optimism of the truly self-indulgent, I reckon that gives me five full years of creative snoring before I have to worry about not waking up in the morning at all.
Time, for once, is on my side it would seem – and there’s more.
Another study indicates that although the beneficial effects of drinking alcohol are now claimed to have been greatly exaggerated, only women over 65 who partake of the odd glass of red every day make gains in health and well-being.
By my calculations, therefore, if I can last out the two years in between 63 and 65 by employing a cunning combination of staying awake and building up the contents of the wine cellar, I’m laughing, if in a somewhat muffled fashion, between the sound-dampening effects of the ever-raised glass and the snuggly pillow.
The concept of breakfast in bed has never seemed quite so appealing…
And, on the principle that things come in threes, it has made me very happy indeed to learn that sarcasm is deeply healthy for the mind and being sarcastic on a regular basis can add up to three years to your life.
So basically, in order to survive the threatening age gap between sleepy 63 and the increasingly booze-sodden delights of 65, I just have to get out of bed every day and carry on as I have been doing for the last five and a bit decades.
Of course, sarcasm is well known to be the lowest form of wit but if you manage both to deliver the ultimate putdown and live longer than the person whom you have handily skewered with your bitter but appropriate barb, I think that comes pretty high up the list of having the last laugh.
My personal favourite example of sarcasm remains a riposte by the great comic legend Chic Murray after he tripped in the street in Glasgow and was asked by a concerned if somewhat slow-on-the-uptake bystander: “Did ye fall?”
“No”, said the great man loftily. “I was just trying to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket.”
Or, as the self-same wit is said to have responded when he was walking home with a bottle of whisky in his pocket and again managed to hit the deck: “I hope it’s blood.”
See? It’s dangerous, this getting out of bed malarkey…