Day 6. I woke up for that last time this morning, telling myself it was probably 4 a.m. Pitch dark, of course, and quiet, as it usually is around here. No milkman to wake me up in Auxelles Bas, though there is the chance of a rooster or a donkey. 

The day before after the night before, I’d recorded the diary in Sleepio, which awarded my night a score of 2.5/10 for sleep quality. One thing this diary has taught me is that, although I feel dissatisfied with the amount of sleep I’m getting, it is in fact the quality of my sleep that is the bigger problem. Not enough deep sleep, perhaps, but also too many wakes, and when I do wake, too many times when I don’t just roll over and go to sleep.

The rattling cough doesn’t help. It’s hanging around my chest and my ribs and head both ache from the violence of the coughing. So the roll-over-in-bed move is always accompanied by a helpless, strangled hack. Also, too many trips to the loo. I tried to knock myself out a bit last night with an extra glass or two of whiskey, plus some kind of tea drink supplied by our herbalist of a neighbour. But more trips to the bathroom seem to be part of this virus in any event.

I also made myself stay awake for longer the night before, because going to bed too early is a rookie move, really. 

So it was that I woke several times in that silent dark, and used my phone screen to light my way across the hazards of the bedroom floor to the bathroom, where I barked and hawked and peed. One of the wakes was at half-past midnight; the next two hours later. So it really could have been four in the morning, but it was, oh joy, five to six.

Five to six!

And Sleepio  awards me a doubled score of 5/10 for sleep quality. The triumph for me is that, although I did in fact wake (three times) at around four in the morning, it was never for long enough to be awake awake. But those three thick red dots at that time do show how hard my body tries to wake me up at four o’clock. They are the adversary: the three-eyed face of my enemy.