Last night, to Battersea and the launch event for the newest addition to the Metropolis stable of magazines, Rise, which I'll be writing for at some point. In a couple of hours, in fact, I'll be wandering off to Clapham's Northcote Road to speak to the fine array of food vendors for an article for that very mag. But it'll be a weary man who hauls his minidisc around SW11 this morning.

I'm usually very, very good at sleeping. I can sleep virtually anywhere, at any time, but last night was horrendous. Everything conspired to keep me firmly awake. is busy packing for his move north of the river this weekend; this entailed him washing various garments in the newly repaired Bosch Classixx 1000. Normally this wouldn't bother me, but I had earlier sampled some Chicken Methi from the local cafe-style Indian restaurant, forgetting that anything containing fenugreek not only strips my body of all moisture but also makes me sweat profusely into the early hours, exuding an exotic odour. I meekly got up and asked if I could turn it off; generous cove that he is, he agreed. Back to bed. The wind outside picked up alarmingly, and ripped across minute holes in the surrounds of the double glazing, creating a choir of particularly vile sounding panpipes. Jenny was oblivious to all of this, having encased her head in concrete before retiring. So I lay there, with the same Prefab Sprout song (“Technique”, in case anyone is interested) (no, thought not) spinning endlessly around inside my head and leaving me highly acquainted with all its intricacies. I got up, sat in an armchair and started reading a manual for some music software – guaranteed to droop the eyelids – but no luck. I was disgustingly, repulsively awake.

In these situations I tend also do that clock watching thing, which doesn't help one bit: at 2.30am, thinking, OK, well, if I get to sleep now, I'll get 5 hours in, which isn't too bad… then at 3.30am doing the complex maths again, and feeling slightly more distressed. By 4am I wondered if I was ever going to be tired again. I turned on the TV. Basketball. Yawn. I'll watch it. But no good; the speedy dashes down the length of the court had me transfixed. I tried motor racing. By which I mean I tried watching it on TV, not donning a crash helmet and getting into a Lamborghini. Still no luck. Even the combined efforts of QVC, Ideal World and Yes 661 shopping channels couldn't stop my brain from ticking noisily.

In the end I remembered that if I'm on a train, listening to music, it's music by my own band that sends me off to sleep. Whether that's because I'm so familiar with it that it causes me to drift into an other-wordly appreciation of its merits, or whether it's just boring old toss, well, I'll let you be the judge of that. I put on the new Free French album, and after about 3 songs was sleeping soundly. “A Place Of Our Own” is released on April the 25th: I can highly recommend it for all insomniacs.