I can't get no sleep

This morning a doctor placed a camera inside my nose. I'll be straight with you - I'm not confident of an Oscar.

The reason for this investigative documentary-making was to try and get to the bottom of some nagging problems. In fairness, most of the nagging has come from Katie. It's the only way she can get me to go and visit a health professional. Like most men, I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to this sort of thing; we chaps tend to wait until a limb is hanging off by its final tendon before making an appointment with the doctor.

But this time it was different. I'm not very good in bed.

I'll rephrase that. What I mean is that I'm not very good at the sleeping part of the bed equation. Apparently, what's meant to happen is this: you go to bed, lie down, close your eyes and sleep deeply for eight hours. On waking, you feel refreshed. Small birds and woodland creatures caper around you as you shower under a waterfall, singing brightly.

This is not the case for me, by all accounts. I can do the lying down bit. Closing eyes, I can do that too. I can close my eyes with the best of them. But it all goes somewhat pear-shaped after that. I'm not entirely sure what happens, but me and Mr Sandman are not close acquaintances. Generally I tend to hover around some shallow form of wake/sleep hybrid, making strange noises redolent of faulty plumbing and, according to my long-suffering bed partner, forgetting to breathe.

I'm no expert, but I suspect breathing is quite important.

As a result of my night-time perturbations, I seem to spend most of my time out of bed interacting with the world as if it's under a blanket of fog. Ooh, it's tiring, this life, isn't it? Meetings are the worst. Put me in a meeting past 1.00pm and I'll need to be stabbing myself with a pen under the table to avoid pitching forwards headlong into the chocolate digestives. People can see you're half-asleep, but they're invariably too polite to say anything, even when you're wiping biscuit crumbs from your eyebrows.

So the doctor was having a look this morning to see if I had any obvious obstructions. I was wondering if perhaps there was an errant pice of Lego from the early 1980s, perhaps. But there was nothing obvious. The doctor did say that losing weight might help. I've been here before, folks.

The next step is to go and have a sleep study. This is where I go and sleep - or try to do so - in a hospital bedroom while they run various checks on me. At least Katie will get a good night as a result.

Now if you don't mind, I need to prepare myself for bed. Well, you never know.