The fog was starting to clear. The sheep were on the move. The farmer must be about. He would be bringing them theirdaily rations of sheep nuts to keep them going through the winter. Julia loved watching them. Fat with lambs, they ran in single file to assemble as a flock in the spot where he would dole out the feed. Some stragglers made up the rear. They were the ones who were going to have twins or triplets. Once they’d eaten, most of the sheep would lie down and chew the cud. It was a sign that they were contented and well-fed. One of them just stood there, staring into space. What was it thinking? she wondered. Did sheep think?
Sometimes she wished she could stop thinking. Turn her brain off. Be more sheep. She was feeling sleep-deprived, having lain awake half the night watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts. It was her own fault. She needed to take herself in hand again. She’d had these bouts of insomnia before.
As an asthmatic child, when she couldn’t breathe, she would cry out in the night for her mother to come, to give her a pill and rub her back. The attack would be over in twenty minutes or so and her mother would leave, telling her to count sheep. She liked to imagine the sheep jumping over a fence one by one, even though it was not in their nature to jump, except when they were lambs. But it was easier to count them that way. She rarely got to a hundred.
Insomnia was a real bind especially when you had to get up in the morning. The more you tried, the less you were ableto nod off. And she’d tried everything over the years: chamomile tea, cutting out caffeine, not drinking alcohol, going to bed earlier, mindfulness, meditation. Nothing seemed to work. Sometimes she’d get up, make a cup of tea, and readuntil she dropped off, but the house was too cold for that in winter. She’d end up turning on the radio to distract herself. It hadn’t exactly been comforting listening to the BBC World Service and following all the trouble spots around the globe.But at least it had been educational.
Since she’d retired, she’d embraced the new technologies. Nowadays she turned on her tablet to watch films, podcasts, and YouTube videos in bed at night. She liked to feel in touch with the world and hear the various analyses about what was going on behind the scenes. Nighttime was her favourite time of day, a time when she could absorb new information, learn something. And what with Netflix, Primeand Sky Atlantic, she was never short of anything to watch. But of late it was becoming a problem. Teenagers weren’t the only ones addicted to technology.
Ever since that unhinged, demented, real estate manfrom reality TV had got into power in the US again, things had gone downhill. He was dismantling the rule-based international order. The whole world was living in a state of anxiety, watching his every move. The number of political podcasts had grown exponentially, and it was getting harder and harder to keep up. She knew missing sleep was an unhealthy habit to get into. Research showed that lack of sleep caused all sorts of health problems. It could even shorten your life. That was something else to worry about.
How could she break the habit? It occurred to her one night that she could only allow herself to fall asleep once she’d found someone or something that gave her hope. Hope that the war in Ukraine might end, hope that there would be a political solution for the conflict in Gaza, or that nations might unite to combat climate change. Something to indicate thatthe world was not falling into chaos and that things would right themselves eventually. It was a hard ask.
All this searching was sending her brain into overdrive. Not only was she over-tired but over-stimulated, making it impossible to sleep. If the world’s biggest brains couldn’t sort it out, how could she? She had been looking for answers where there were none. No one could tell her things would get better. The truth was it could go either way. Better to concentrate on the people and places around her, focus on them. Better to accept her limitations, like the Serenity Prayer said, and stop worrying.
She managed to allow herself to fall asleep that night and didn’t wake up till after eleven. By the time she got up, the sheep had already congregated by the gate and were contentedly chewing the cud.
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