I ask you: How long can a person go with virtually no sleep? I just ended five straight weeks of being unable to get to sleep before 6am. Well, I exaggerate, a little: There were three nights in there when I was asleep by 4am. I went to bed at a decent time, most of those days, but nothing happened. I laid down exhausted, and instantly was revived by some sort of strange electricity through my body. I listened to aggravating birds twitter starting at 3:15am, followed by a brief silence around 3:45, followed by a full-on chorus of persistent but sonically uninteresting birds going on an on through until full dawn.

Two nights ago I finally took an antihistamine-packed OTC sleep draught that severely dried out my left out so that I've been in blurring pain since. Then I took melatonin, with so far uncertain outcomes.

All through the five weeks, I maintained my exercise routine of twice-a-week "core" strengthening classes, one hour each, and four one-hour aerobics sessions. Those are all painful undertakings at the best of times, but are agony when one is zombified.

Not that I'm complaining.

During this stint I was patient for three weeks, mildly pissed for one, and then finally pissed to the point of cursing volubly, for the last several days.

All this is, of course, a legacy of my ancestry, on my Mum's side. Fortunately that side also confers extraordinary longevity (through all of this my heart rate and recovery remained excellent), so one takes the good with the appalling.