All my efforts at trying to fall to sleep last night were futile for a long time – I couldn’t do so because I kept thinking of falling, and how late it was. That always makes it worse.

I tried to think of nice things (as advised by Maria in “The Sound of Music”) and, instead of “Raindrops on roses”, I envisioned Sacha Distel singing “Raindrops keep falling on my head…). After that little surprise (I never think of Sacha Distel in the daylight hours!) the lovely film “Falling in Love” (a more modern version of “Brief Encounter” – but with a happier ending – starring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro) came into my mind. But that didn’t send me to sleep for I was soon thinking of Marlene Dietrich singing “Fallink in love again…. can’t ‘elp it….”. It’s funny what comes into your mind at two in the morning when you can’t sleep – isn’t it?

In this instance perhaps it wasn’t so very strange though; you see, on my way to bed an hour and a half earlier I had noticed a downstairs light was still on and, in my haste in the dim light, I mistook the bottom step for the floor and I went flying, or falling, to be precise… I went to bed, not with a nice hot water bottle, but one of those frozen bricks that are used for keeping food cold.

Now, after a painful day of hobbling around – I can’t say which is worse, my left knee or right ankle – my feet are up on a chair as I write this blog post. Chris has gone to bed ahead of me, it’s late and now I’ll close. It’s so late that I expect not to be disturbed, as last night, by all the racket in my head and I hope to fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.