The Wall Street Journal is obsessed with sleep. Recent headlines have included “Why We’re Not Sleeping” last November; “Why Are You So Tired?” last September; and “How to Sleep on a Plane” last March. But it’s their latest that is keeping me awake.
“The Hottest New Bedtime for 20-Somethings is 9pm,” it declared on February 1. “They are seizing control of their bedtime routine,” it added, before shocking us with: “Many young professionals prefer turning in early on a Saturday night.” Twentysomethings, turning in early on a Saturday night? And not even in groups? What madness.
Saturday night, you may recall, is a “going out” night, a night to sing: “Saturday night, I feel the air is getting hot, like you baby.” A night you’d hope to experience something a bit more exciting than nine and a half hours of sleep.
How dispiriting. How disappointing. How short-sighted of them.
I have found 9pm is not a great time to go to bed. In summer, the children will still be playing in the street. You can’t berate them with a “there’s someone trying to sleep”, as that implies you are an old person.
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At 9pm, you’d still have to wait for an hour and 40 minutes for Match of the Day to start.
At 9pm, if out, you should be telling the waiter to come back in a few minutes as you haven’t even looked at the menu yet. “The night is but a pup,” you might say to your glamorous companion.
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And if you are planning on being “out, out”, you should still be contemplating whether to start with a salty rim or to stick to beer for pacing purposes.
Not so for the goody two-shoes twentysomethings. The “I’ll sleep till I’m well rested” brigade are finding solace in saying “no” to parties, clubs and bars. So much so that, in New York, the “matinee dance party” has become a thing. What fresh horror is this? Strangely, I attended some of these once. Mind you, we called them “the children’s disco”, as they were afternoon discos that we brought our very young children to. Hell? Yes.
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It also reminded me of Jerry Seinfeld’s parents’ retirement lifestyle in Florida. Restaurants there, to accommodate the vast number of retirees, had introduced the early bird menu. This was fine as long as you wanted to eat dinner at 4.30pm. Leaving in time to avoid traffic, this involved “going out for the night” at 3.30 in the afternoon. You’d be home, done and dusted before the evening news.
It will come as no surprise to hear that there are as many books about sleep on The New York Times bestsellers list as there are on all the other “lost arts” — tidying, hygge, death cleaning, etc. And, implicit in all of them, is the notion that sleep is something we are no longer very good at.
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I’m not buying it. I’ve had some of my best sleeps after I nodded off with a screen in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. I was “sleep hungry” on these nights, a modern way of saying “tired, after a long day”. You can’t be sleep hungry if you’re only up for 14 hours.
It is part of the goody two-shoes twentysomethings mantra that “nothing good happens after 9pm”. To this I can only say: “Au contraire, my well-rested friend.”
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March 1991, for instance, at a Dublin nightclub. It was well past nine, past midnight in fact, but being young and not sleep-obsessed, we’d just arrived. Suddenly there was great excitement. A group of men whom we’d all just seen on the news had arrived.
At that exact moment they were probably the most famous people on the planet. It was a week night, the club was half empty. This crowd looked happier to see a nightclub, drinks and people than anyone we’d ever seen. They joined our table. A wondrous, unforgettable night followed.
Would I have met (most) of the Birmingham Six if I’d earlier “seized control” of my sleep routine? Answers on a postcard please.
