Features

Frequent traveller: Waking nightmare

23 Mar 2011 by BusinessTraveller

In which our correspondent explains why, when it comes to jet lag, no snooze is bad news

Before we begin, let me state for the record that I don’t have a problem sleeping in strange beds. Some may assume that is the result of a misspent youth, but actually it is more down to a survival instinct – when you’re used to crossing time zones on tight schedules, you get used to grabbing shut-eye when and where you can. Which means I’m equally as able to nod off on board or on a motorway-inn mattress as I am under the finest 400 thread-count linens.

But sometimes, despite whatever finely honed tactics you may employ, you can’t stop the beast that is jet lag from crawling into your hotel bed, wedging two matchsticks between your eyelids and cackling as you toss and turn like a child having a nightmare about the bogey man – as I found out on a recent trip to the Far East.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t done all the right things. I stayed up despite feeling tired so I could get on to local time as soon as possible. I went easy on the wine at dinner, knowing from painful experience that “a little nightcap” will not knock you out but have you waking in the middle of the night with a parched mouth and a banging head (especially if, like me, your tipple of choice is a gin martini). And back at the hotel, I even put the Crackberry at arm’s length in favour of a relaxing bath.

So it was with a certain smugness that I climbed into bed at 11.30pm, all set for a good six-and-a-half hours’ kip – less than the recommended eight, but more than that practised by Maggie Thatcher and Paul Daniels – and slipped off into sweet dreams.

And then, at 12.30pm, I woke up. A bit unexpected, but I put it down to bumps in the night, adjusted my pillow and waited to drift off again. And then waited some more. For some reason, I just couldn’t fall back to sleep – no wonder, really, given I’d jumped several hours ahead and my body was out of whack but, as I say, I like to think I’m quite used to this lark.

At 2am, after tossing and turning around the bed like an athletic newlywed, I was starting to get properly vexed. The alarm clock mocked me with its super-sized red LED display glaring into the darkness, so I reached out and turned it towards the wall. That only created a satanic glow against the paintwork, so I stumbled out of the bed, grabbed the suit jacket I’d slung over the chair and threw it over the offending object. In doing so I walked slap-bang into a footstool and took a chunk out of my leg.

Staggering back into bed with my shin throbbing and my head hurting, I lay down once again, praying for oblivion. Beyond exhaustion now – or “overtired”, as the kids in the Vauxhall Zafira ad would say – I stared unblinking into the night, black in the knowledge that the longer the insomnia lasted, the worse I would feel the next day. The back-to-back meetings I had scheduled all day to make the most of every waking hour (my travel department is still operating with that delightful “turn three days into two” mentality) now loomed ahead not as the challenge I normally thrive on but as a sleep-starved endurance test.

At 3am, feeling defeated, I got up to do some work. God only knows what deal I might have signed the company up to as a consequence, but I figured if I set my mind to something else for a while, I might be able to shut it down afterwards for at least a couple of hours.

It didn’t work. Back under the covers by 4am, I tossed about some more, sweating profusely like a woman of a certain age (and before you ask...). My mind roamed wildly around somewhere in the margins between delirium and hallucination, the spreadsheets I had just been scouring swimming in front of my subconscious.

Desperate now, I began to contemplate downing the whisky in the minibar, resisting purely because breathing alcohol on to the Asian client first on my list would go down even less well than presenting my business card the wrong way around. Instead, I lay stock still for a while and, in a nod to my childhood years, counted some sheep. I’d gone through every woolly mammal in New Zealand and Wales combined before giving up with a pitiful bleat.

At about 5am, just as I was contemplating getting up – it was going to take a lot longer to fill in the crevices with my make-up bag this morning, after all – without warning, I finally fell into dreamless, blissful sleep.

And then the alarm went off.

Picture credit: Benjamin Southan

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