There seem to be two schools of thought on the flu that's doing the rounds. You know, the one where you have a sore head, running eyes and a grouchy attitude to autumn. Sleep it off, they say, or fight it on your feet. As someone who needs little persuading to get a little shut-eye at the best of times, I chose the former. But my plans to cuddle in the arms of Morpheus came a cropper. As soon as my head hit the pillow, with timing straight out of a movie - the film version of Dad's Army perhaps - the burglar alarm on the house behind me went off with an ear-splitting whine.
Burglar alarms don't seem to alarm anyone these days, least of all burglars. They are completely redundant now that everyone ignores them. When was the last time you heard somebody say "Golly! A car/burglar alarm going off - I must check if something is being stolen"? Eventually, with the aid of some hideously unattractive wax ear-plugs bought because of the noise in my old flat, and an eye mask, purchased during a Holly Golightly phase, I did manage to get some sleep, but my sleepless hours made me realise that, like breathing, eating and Coronation Street, sleep is not something we think about very much until we're deprived of it. It's something we claim as our right or even our duty - "No, I shouldn't go out and drink schnapps with the Austrian Frisbee team, I should go home and get some sleep."
As children, we moan endlessly about going to bed because it's Not Fair that Everybody Else gets to Stay Up and Have Fun. It's routine, it's normal, it's the slightly boring option, until it quietly slips away and becomes something altogether more sinister.
Any insomniac will tell you just how debilitating not getting enough sleep is; even my own infrequent patches of it are enough to make me very aware of what a dirty fighter sleep can be. If you can't just doze off naturally, nighttime becomes a hugely energetic period during which you wrestle with every inconsequential fact you've ever heard, worry about the cure for cancer, whether you have ingrown toenails and are not getting enough sleep, and try every sleeping position short of hanging yourself up like a bat.
Woe betide any loved one who has the misfortune to be getting a good night's sleep beside you. Soon all your being is concentrated on the sleepy sounds they're making, and the brazen, insensitive, selfish way they're just sleeping perfectly right there in front of you. "Oooh, winner of the year 2000 Mr Perfect Sleeper competition are we?" you mutter to yourself, hopefully just loud enough to accidentally wake him up. Sleep makes demons of us all. When you go out into the day with not enough sleep, you're like a teething toddler, ready to bark out tears or blow up over the most trivial of irritations. Somebody cuts in front of you in a queue and you consider consulting a lawyer or giving it all up to grow flax in the Far East.
For some reason, the tiredness you feel after a night spent awake in your own bed is of a very different nature to that achieved through a night out on the tiles, which often makes the next day like a rather enjoyable game played against the rest of the world, called Behaving Normally. There is nothing playful about insomnia. It makes you a poor judge and a rotten rationalist, navigating the world without a compass. It's no wonder that sleep has become a precious commodity these days, something to be stored up, hoarded and guarded with the ferocity of a bull terrier. It was different back in the 1980s, when we were all just getting into the novelty of working and playing hard and it was the done thing to boast about just how little sleep you were getting.
Maggie Thatcher, the show-off, claimed she only needed four hours and anyone remotely successful pretended they got up at 5 a.m. to spend a few pleasurable hours browsing through spreadsheets before putting in a 12-hour day, followed by a few hours of sky-diving. Sleep, it was implied, was for flaky, wimpish losers.
Inevitably the tide turned as the caring 1990s kicked in. Working hard became a way of life and well-being became the new god. There are terrific demands on our sleeping hours: working late, work-related socialising, work-induced worrying or all the antidotes to the working day. Latenight movies, phone calls with friends, eating out, drinking too much and browsing the Internet all cut into the time we're meant to spend asleep.
All of a sudden, it was terribly chic to care for yourself, and sleeping well and long was a luxury to be prized beyond measure. More cynical observers have pointed out that getting lots of sleep is the new way of displaying your wealth - "Only getting four hours sleep? No thanks, I employ people to get that stressed for me."
Personally, I've noticed friends beginning to tout sleep like a trophy, although this is probably just because we're getting old enough to stop thinking that to miss a party may mean instant death. If you question someone about their weekend, they are just as likely to enthuse about the 12 hours they got on Friday night ("Amazing! I snorted a bottle of lavender oil, drank four litres of camomile tea and I was knocked out till Sunday") as they are to rave about a rave or impart gossip about a party.
A rather trendy designer breezed into a gallery opening I was at last week, and announced that she had just had 18 hours sleep. Everyone looked rather alarmed by this upping of the stakes until she explained she had just flown in from New York; still, we were impressed.
I've always been a great believer in the old sleep thing so I've been very happy that it's come back into vogue of late. However, as with anything that has become a commodity, a certain snobbery or professionalism has begun to creep into our belief in sleep. Not only do we need to get a lot of sleep, but we also need to get quality sleep, consistent sleep and the "right kind of sleep". Power naps are apparently out of favour (a spot of meditation is so much more now) while drug-induced sleep is a definite no-no.
Which is all very well, but it's just one more thing to worry about when you're lying awake at night. Not only are you facing into the day with an energy level that wouldn't allow Lara Croft to look at a tomb with a guidebook, let alone raid it, but you are also going to have to face up to the fact you're a poor sleeper too. Dear me, the thought is so fatiguing, I'm off back to bed.