Book at Bedtime

I haven't been sleeping too well this week; not that I'm looking for sympathy - it's a first world problem after all - but I am curious as to why some nights I'll slumber contentedly in Hypnos’s warm embrace while others I'll be half awake, tormented by scrappy, disturbing dreams and longing for oblivion. It's not as if I don't encourage sleep: my conscience is currently clear and I do make an effort with 'sleep hygiene' routines such as avoiding coffee after noon, winding down in the evenings and dimming the lights in the bathroom while I brush my teeth - that sort of thing - so it's hard to identify a consistent cause of sleeplessness. However, for this week at least, I'm pinning the blame on Kevin.

Whenever I finish a novel I take it to the charity shop for re-cycling, only to find that I can't leave the place without scanning the shelves for other novels that look interesting, or authors I've been meaning to read. Usually I walk out with a purchase, which means that I'm constantly replenishing an un-planned, self-populating reading list: which is how, this week, I came to be reading Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin, a mother's disturbing account of events leading up to the mass-murder perpetrated by her 15 year-old son, Kevin. And no, I haven't seen the film.

It wasn't so much the horror of Kevin's deeds that unsettled me, as the questions raised by the 'reading groups' which are posted on the flyleaf, especially the enigma of his motive and the nature-versus-nurture argument about how his personality was formed. Resolving this last has been the life-work of many academics and philosophers but without, so far as I’m aware, a definitive conclusion. I’m inclined, however, to the view that society shapes our behavioural patterns or, to put it more poetically, “we are a landscape of all we have seen”. As for the motive, well it’s a work of fiction and it cleverly leaves us guessing on that point – which is exactly what I was doing when I should have been sleeping. Now that I've finished the book I think it would be wise to select the next one using criteria such as “entertaining” and “non-challenging”. That will surely send me off.

Another tried and tested way to get off as soon as your head hits the pillow is to exhaust yourself physically, thereby inducing a positive soporific state by tiring you beyond even the possibility of mental exertion - which includes reading. Now that spring has touched down ever so lightly, it brings to mind the time when I used to have both an allotment and a garden to tend. Those long hours of digging, lugging and bending always sent me to bed tired and, with nothing more taxing to consider than a planting-and-weeding maintenance schedule, sleep was guaranteed. Nowadays I am the curator of just a few tubs and pots in a courtyard and my physical gardening activity is perfectly described as "pottering". Likewise, with my miniaturised maintenance schedule, I suffer no serious anxieties concerning crop failure or Japanese knotweed invasion. Instead my concerns are relatively minor. Will the begonias reappear this year? Should I get some ericaceous compost? Does my buxus look too big in this tub?

Kevin, it seems, had no interest in gardening or any form of activity (other than target practice) but I suppose he, like any other teenager, slept copiously regardless. Maybe he would find it more difficult later, in prison, if he ever developed a conscience. But I, for one, shan’t be losing any sleep over that.