When do you go to bed, then?
Recently I’ve started to be a little less of a night owl and started to be in me scratcher by 11pm. Since the age of 16ish I have been a post-midnight wooden hill climber but going to bed an hour earlier has made me feel a bit more perky the next morning.
I know adult people that are in bed asleep by 9pm and I know I wouldn’t be able to do that.
As we’re all rock n rollers from way back, I sense we are largely creatures of the night. Or are we?
It took until I was the wrong side of 40, and some fairly nasty health issues, to figure out that going to bed on time made me feel less tired in the morning. Really, who knew?
Anyhow, the telly goes off about 10pm, in my cot with a book by 10:30pm, asleep by 11pm.
Nowadays, I’m struggling to read in bed without my specs on – must book an optician appointment.
If I go out past 11pm, say to a gig, it takes me two days to recover.
Going to gigs knocks me out too, and it can be nearer midnight before I get home from a London gig. I’ve got gigs 3 nights in a row in a couple of weeks so it’ll be interesting how I hold up!
I’m usually in me kip by 9:30 pm then I read for an hour or so before lights out. I used to retire for the day as early as 8:00 pm when I was climbing out of bed at 5:00 am to take advantage of the early morning light for painting purposes. I got into the habit of rising early when I was caring for my Mum. The Aged P was an early riser so I had to get up at the same time or slightly earlier to make sure she was safe and had what she required to start her day. I’ve slowly broken that habit in recent years. I drag myself out of bed a whole hour later now at 6:00 am.
I’m up early at 6.30 and I tend to keep late hours. I got used to walking the dog late – about 11.30 or so – and even though he doesn’t want that anymore now that he’s old, I still stay up till midnight or thereabouts, sometimes to watch an episode of something that my wife would have no interest in, Severance last night for instance. I try to sleep on till 9.00 or 9.30 on a Sunday, but that can sometimes result in a headache.
10. I sleep fitfully and I need more than 7 hours until I get up which would be around ….now
Sleep is all over the place, a legacy of working erratic hours and days for nearly 40 years. Now I’m not as busy, not before 10pm and if I can stay awake longer then I sleep better. Despite not having had alcohol for a couple of months, I’m not sleeping noticeably better although my blood pressure has dropped about 10 points. On non work days, I’ll wake any time between 7.30 and 8.30am. Hotels are even worse and I wake more than usual during the night.
By 11, rarely later than midnight even at weekends. Like fents I find that a late night at a gig or whatever puts me off my top rhythm for the next day, but as I almost always wfh it just requires an extra coffee (and maybe a nap after finishing work).
Generally anywhere between 11 and midnight, although usually the midnight end of the scale. I tend to be up about 6.30 – 7am (no alarm, just wake up around then and go for a swim) and so I usually get about 7 hours a night.
I sleep fairly solidly during the night and am usually out for the count shortly after my head hits the pillow. I cannot nap during the day though, unless its really exceptional circumstances – always makes me feel terrible.
I never hit the sack before midnight. All of my family are nightowls and we’d have no hesitation messaging one another at that hour. I think I’ve always been so inclined. My wife and kids are all usually asleep by 9.30 or 10 so it’s just me and the cat. I enjoy those two hours or so listening to music and relaxing. I do my Wordle, Quordle and Phrazle after I hit the pillow. I find it helps to clear the mind.
Depends what time Mrs L wants to go up, but it’s generally between 10 and 11. We always watch some TV drama together at 9, and the intention is usually to go at 10, but stuff like loading the dishwasher usually means it’s nearer to half past. She gets up at 5.30 every morning for either some cold water swimming or the gym, whereas I get up at 7, usually (but not always) having managed to drift off again. Another difference we have though is that I love a nap in the afternoon…she hates it, especially the feeling when she wakes up.
As Gatz, by 11, rarely later than midnight even at weekends. I usually wake up around 6 but stay in bed dozing until 9. I also have a siesta for an hour or so after lunch. I love sleeping, love being in bed. One of my favourite things. In the winter I use an electic blanket, which is heavenly.
I was usually in bed at 9, a legacy of when I had to rise at 6 and be on the road by 6.30. Even when I could set the alarm for 7, I still kept to early bed on school nights, and didn’t/wouldn’t go out at nightlikewise, mon – thurs.
Now I have retired it is usually about 10.30. The wife is a night owl, so rarely am I ever up later than her, but quite like it, if I am, watching illicit stuff on the telly. (Music docs!) I wake up around 6 still, can’t shake that, but don’t bother getting up until maybe 8, often then writing/reading/listening downstairs in my study, still in my dressing gown until herself emerges.
I do like being in bed!
And, seeing as “what time do you have yer tea*is likely the next question, increasingly earlier, like the old folks do, round about 5.30 pm. Other meal, the only other meal, is around 11.30, and is muesli and kefir or toasted sourduff, for a change. Marmite or fancy peanut butter.
*West Midlands, so tea, not dinner or supper. Or the drink, for that matter, as that is Satan’s spit and I do not allow it in my mouth.
We sometimes go to bed between 8 and 9pm and watch tv for about and hour and a half. If I go to a gig it’s about 11.30 to midnight and it makes no difference either to the quality of my sleep or what time I awake – usually 6.30 to 7am. Tyhe quality of my sleep is not the best – I often wake between 3 and 4am – rarely for more than 10 or 15 minutes but it is irritating. Thankfully I do not wake for a pee in the middle of the night which considering my age (68) I am grateful for.
Since retirement I have taken to having a brief nap most days sometimes even just for 15 minutes. Unlike others on here it doesn’t make me feel like crap. It is something I have done periodically since I was a teenager when I have had the opportunity.
It is impossible to lie in after 8.30 in the morning even if I aim to do so.
Since I got an Apple Watch I’ve been monitoring my sleep more carefully. I used to have a Garmin which gave you a sleep ‘score’ which bore very little resemblance to how I actually felt in the morning. It’s rather irritating to be told you had an excellent night’s sleep when you felt really crap. At least now I get a pretty accurate record of deep sleep, REM sleep, awakeness etc which pretty much explains how I actually feel.
I try to go to bed at 10:30 latest and am usually up around 7:00 am.
Actual bedtime doesn’t tell the full story because I often (usually?!) fall asleep watching the TV in the living room. In order that I don’t end up with a bad neck/back at 2am, I have an alarm set to wake me up to go to bed which is around 10:30. I’ll always be up between 5 & 5:30 whether I set the alarm or not and even after jet lag, it only takes about a week to get back there apparently naturally.
Circadian rhythm:
Idiot box silenced and sent packing at 9 p.m.
Up the apples and pairs.
Stare at the crossword for 15 to 20 mins then lights out.
Wake around 6 – sometimes a quarter of an hour before, sometimes after, depends upon the dogs.
Turf dogs into garden for a pee. Boil kettle.
Get dogs back in (rattle the Mini-Markie box).
Back to bed, pick up crossword and scribble in the answers that have gestated overnight.
Read for half an hour with tea and muesli.
Showered and good to go by about 8.
Rinse and repeat.
I need lots of sleep for some reason, and always have. These days I’m in bed by 11 generally, although not totally out of the question to be up until midnightish if we are watching something. I hate getting up early, and I’m there until 8.30-9am if I have nothing special to do, sometimes later if we have had a late night. Can easily doze off around 2.30pm for an hour so in the armchair too!
If some of you call yourselves nightowls, I guess I must be a vampire…
When working, or if I have an appointment for something, I try to go to bed at 4am, but truthfully it mostly get to be 5am until I’m in bed.
When not working/no reason to keep an appointment, I reluctantly go to bed at around 7 or 8am.
I sleep for six hours, so usually get up at 11 or 12. It used to be seven hours of sleep, but I don’t need that extra hour anymore.
I’ve been a creature of the night since birth (no wonder, perhaps, since I was born in the middle of the night), but as a small child I was simultaneously an early bird, but I grew out of that as a pre-teen. I hate going to bed, and I love being up at night when it’s quiet, dark and my brain is able to use 100% of its capacity. I’m more creative and I don’t risk getting interrupted by others. Bliss!
Sounds like my daughter!
Those long uneventful days of COVID. “It’s four pm, shall I start cooking?”.
Five years later, unless we are going out (shock and horror) tea is now all done by six latest. Two or three hours of telly, bed by 930 latest. Scroll through phone for an hour or so, lights out by 1030. Somewhere around 630 in the morning, wake up, have long pee then make a nice cup of Yorkshire Gold. Another day in Paradise lies ahead …
I work permanent early shifts, by choice. The earliest one of these at my depot is a 0330 start; that requires the curlew of my alarm to go off at 0145. Needless to say, I am a morning person. Fortunately, I am very good at managing my sleep. I will aim to go to sleep 7 hours before the alarm and I have the useful ability to talk myself into feeling drowsy at the appropriate time. I have a bedside table piled with unread books, as, once I am in bed, I can turn the light out and be spark within 5 minutes.
But on the half of the days of the year which are not school nights, I can happily stay up til midnight and beyond, with apparently no ill effect, as I have just done at Warwick Folk Festival last weekend. But I am someone who can snooze at any time of day; my lexicon includes the words ‘pre-esta’ for a nap before lunchtime, ‘naperitif’ and ‘nappetiser’.
Normally in my pit by 9.30 p.m. Read for an hour until lights out at 10.30 then listen to a bit of Just a Minute or some other radio comedy in the dark for 15-20 minutes, then out like the proverbial light.
Creature of habit me Sunday to Thursday in bed by 1030 (after watching the BBC News) and up at 630.
Always did to make sure I could get washed, watered, and fed before heading out the door to work. And even now I’m not commuting every day, I still get up at the same time and now find myself starting work around 7am.
Friday & Saturday … probably in bed around 1am and then getting up around 8am (I know, it’s not healthy – 7 hours kip after booze is not going to help my arteries, heart, or general mood)
11.00-11.30 weeknights; 12.00-12.30 weekends. Me and the Mrs usually wrap the day up with a sitcom on one of the streaming services.
Quality of sleep? Fine if it wasn’t for my bladder.
Weekdays the pre-bed process starts about 10:30, with reading (paperback first, then Kindle when Mrs Moles wants the light off) from about 11:00. Asleep by 11:30, Today programme at 7:30. If insomnia does strike then a queued up series of In Our Times does the trick. Fifty minutes of sonorous Melvyn and academics on the neutron, or Logical Positivism sends me right off usually in 10/15 mins. Weekends around midnight.
Decided to be a teenager again, sometimes wake at ten. May wake early morning do my crosswords wordle etc then turn over and hey ho it’s ten.
When I was working I’d sometimes wake in the early hours of the morning and not get off back to sleep as my mind was talking to itself, I’d go in the other bedroom and read for hours then finally get off. I’d get home from work luckily a five minute walk home and get an hour and a half kip till about 6:30 in the evening. Sleep pattern was all over the place. Been away this weekend and had good and bad nights.
Bed I think now.
I worked shifts for most of my life, so my sleep has been all over the place, over the years. I did 5.30 am starts for years, but wouldn’t go to bed until about 11.30. Knackered getting up at 5am, but I was younger then, could shake off the tiredness easily, and promise myself I’d have an early night, which of course I never did.
I then did nights for over 10 years, getting to bed at 7am, and getting up about 1pm, with a doze in the evening before leaving for work at 9.30pm.
Since I retired last year, I like to be in bed by 11pm, and usually get up between 7-7.30am. I daren’t doze in the day, as I’d never sleep at night. My days of staying up and watching a film to 1 o’clock in the morning are long gone, I just couldn’t do it now if I wanted.
If you want a good read about what the lack of sleep does to your body, I can highly recommend Why We Sleep by Mathew Walker, it really is an eye opener, pardon the pun. Anyway, I must go as it’s five minutes to bedtime.
Nights – that’s the killer, literally. If managed badly, they reduce life expectancy. Fortunately, I have mostly avoided those.
When I was still working I used to make myself go to bed by 1am and I’d usually wake and get up at around 5am to leave for work at about 7am. Often I’d doze for an hour or two early evening, after my evening meal. That was generally enough sleep for me. It used to sometimes annoy me that I’d still wake up at 5:00am on Saturday or Sunday when I wasn’t working. When I had to take my turn for a week of night callout duty, it played havoc with my sleep pattern.
Strictly no alcohol from Sunday evening to Friday evening in those days, unless I was out at a gig where the bar was in the same room as the music. That was my practical rule in later working years to avoid having to go to work with a hangover.
Now I’m retired I still rarely get to bed before 1:00am but quite often I’ll be up until 3-4am and sleep in a bit later in the morning. I still usually wake at around 7am.
I’ll often kip for an hour or two on the sofa in the afternoons, if I don’t fall asleep in my chair in front of the computer, that is.
My alcohol intake is a bit higher since retirement, but it’s spread more over the week rather than only at weekends like before. I allow myself two beers maximum at gigs that I drive to, or part of the way to, which is most of them. I will have the odd large G&T when at home for the evening. Regular Friday night Zoom sessions with mates will involve a few beers or a bottle of wine being drunk. Once in a blue moon we might hit the single malts on a Zoom session.
Being out late on gig nights doesn’t affect me adversely except that my back sometimes doesn’t take kindly to standing gigs. Most of the gigs that I go to are seated.
In bed and asleep by 9.10 most nights. During the week, we’re up no later than 6, and possibly earlier at the weekends during the summer.
What do we think about TVs in the bedroom? I know lots of people do this but we have never done it and I don’t think we ever will. I don’t even like having airpods/earphones, so those soporific, soothing ambient things are lost on me.
When I manfully survived my isolation during COVID, I would have audiobooks and podcasts on a speaker but I’d invariably conk out and then not know at what point I left it. I can barely make more than a few pages of a book, so it takes me ages to read one.
I will be very honest with you – I’m what they call a “doom-scroller”. Afterword, Scrabble, Wordle and then perhaps the BBC or anything that piques my interest – and then whatever nonsense Facebook “reels” gives me. I can do that for quite some time.
No TV in the house, let alone the bedroom.
As a recovered insomniac… bedrooms are for sleeping in, not for watching telly.
Mrs F reads a Kindle in bed and even that is bad enough, especially when the tiny speakers play audio.
One of my pet hates is the appalling sound quality of phones and suchlike. Mrs F listens to audiobooks on speaker phone around the house – the crap frequency response and compression makes everyone sound like a robot. It really grinds my teeth, and I have to retire to the garage for an aural balm.
We have a tv in the bedroom but it’s used if I want to watch football and nobody else does or in the morning at weekends. Hardly ever at night once in bed.
We’ve never had a tv in the bedroom and never will – I don’t get that at all. I may very occasionally watch something on my ipad in the morning, maybe catching up with the cricket from down under, but that is rare.
Never had a tv in a bedroom. A couple of hours of tv a day is more than enough for me. I prefer to read before sleep, a practice I’ve indulged in since childhood.
I’m the same but I do love the luxury of a brew and an episode of whatever series we’re watching in bed on the rare weekend that we aren’t running around after the kids and before the dog gets a walk. Especially if its raining.
Me too. A TV in the bedroom! Never allowed in my house when I was growing up, pretty sure Mother viewed it as ‘common.’
I’ve never wanted to watch TV in bed. Even in hotel rooms the pretty ubiquitous TV will be off once I’m in bed.
At home I have a pair of speakers from my music streamer under the bed. I will quite often have music playing quietly while I’m in bed, but it’s purely intended as background for sleeping through.
I try to go to bed about 10:00pm which is an hour earlier than I used to. I find I get more sleep as I wake up at around 6:00am whatever time I go to bed.
I will sometimes go earlier if I am tired. If I start feeling dozy whilst watching the hour or so of telly that Mrs LB and I will watch at the end of day, I will go up. Ignoring dozy invariably means I will struggle to get off to sleep if I stay awake through it.
I have definitely adopted a routine of sorts which works better.
We usually go up at around half 10 then I read for 40 minutes till my eyes are dropping. Never had a TV in the bedroom and even in hotel rooms where there is one I never switch it on. We tend to watch some crap till 9.30 ish then listen to music. I have to have a dark room or I wake up – I have a brilliant “Magic Blind” which is blackout material with suction pads you can attach to a window. I generally sleep badly though – I woke today at 4 and tossed and turned for an hour. Consequently I feel permanently tired and usually have a nap in the afternoon. I can’t remember the last time I got up feeling refreshed and ready for the day.
We have a recurring joke in the morning – ‘”remember those Kellogg’s Cornflakes adverts where they used to leap out of bed in the morning”. Never happens to us.
Bed 10.30 -11 and read until about midnight.
Rarely have problems drifting off and am a very heavy sleeper.
Only problem I have is that when I moved back up to Ireland from
HK 12 years back still had a pretty thriving freelance writing business.
As Asia is seven and sometimes eight hours ahead of Europe, the time
Difference necessitated me being available for clients from 5 am.
While natural attrition and AI have done for my business, the early
starts are hard-wired and I need a 45 minute nap between lengthy
Morning and afternoon exercise sessions with our two dogs
Woke up sometime after two, sciatica playing up took a painkiller still couldn’t get back off. Finally I turned myself 180 degrees head at the feet end of the bed. Straight off to sleep woke at 9:30.
Have always been hopeless at going to sleep. If I’m on a night out, I never want it to end – might miss out on one of those brilliant conversations that can only ever happen at 2am. If I’m at home, I never want to go upstairs – so much to read, watch, listen to, how can unconsciousness possibly compete?
Nowadays, there’s also work. Have developed the unfortunate habit of finding an extra couple of hours in the day by waiting until the kids have gone to bed and hopping back online.
A lot of my work is West Coast, so sometimes 11pm is a more useful hour of the day than 11am. The problem is that when you finish work at or after midnight you need another hour to cool the brain down, and then it’s an early start to get the kids up and ready for school.
I’m trying to get better at all of it. Sleep is super important and lack of it definitely makes me more emotional. I just need to figure out a way to slow my brain down, and maybe develop a bit more self-discipline in this area. On the other hand, there is something a bit magical about the wee small hours.
I would do the “check my email after dinner” thing during lockdown, when my laptop was set up on the dining table. I now work from a cupboard/office in the garage, so it is easier to partition the day. It’s only at the bottom of the garden but, if I’m in the house, there’s no temptation to go back out there, especially when it is raining.
I also – and this sounds bonkers, but bear with me – wear a work-branded polo shirt during WFH work hours. I then change out of it at the end of the work day and into a t-shirt. Again: partitioning.
If I am working from home I am in my underpants …
Yes – I did that too. I didn’t go the whole hog by putting a suit on or anything but during lockdown I did dress for work.
Over here The Chase is on at 5pm, every day – so that was my cue to get changed and finish my work. If I was running behind , I’d have an hour’s grace so that we watched it on +1.
Working with US colleagues can be a bit of a pain with late calls. I used to have lots of 10pm and 11pm calls at one company (East Coast). I worked for a company in Colorado where just so much more aware of time zones and they would do all their European calls in their morning. Much more civilised.
I worked for an Indian company who had a big US operation and calls would start at 5am and stop at 10pm sometimes. I would pick one or the other but not do both.
Between 9 – 10pm for us read for a bit and then put on my Spotify sleep playlist ( over 1,000 of our favourite laid back ish songs ) . Rise about 5.00am where I go downstairs feed the cat and have an hour to myself . Wake the wife at 6.00pm with more tea then we go walking the neighbours dogs ( long story ) back home by 9.00am for breakfast . Used to be a night owl and as mentioned before if we go to gigs and it’s a late night it takes days to recover.
@Bejesus
A 13-hour lie-in for Mrs B followed by a 15-hour walk.
Respect
Ah good spot , it should read 6.00am 🤣
Sorry, couldn’t resist
🙂
Ben Watt’s Spin Cycle playlist is good for chilling out.