A strange midnight experience

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The other night I was really tired, I was going through a phase of waking up in the early hours every morning and not being able to get back to sleep, and then on top of that I had had a long drive. In the evening I was struggling to keep going, so decided to go to bed at the unheard-of (for me) early hour of 9 pm. I went to bed and fell asleep straight away. But then I woke while it was still dark. I felt as though I had been asleep for quite a while, so I thought it would be around 4 or 5 am (it starts getting light around 5:15 at the moment), but when I checked the time it was still only 1 am! Obviously waking up after only 4 hours was even worse, so I fervently hoped I could get to sleep again. First I just lay there trying various relaxation tips, but to no avail. Then I thought that, since I was alone, I could look for something to listen to. I don’t normally take my phone to bed with me, but decided to make an exception this time as I could use it to listen to the radio and I didn’t have the use of anything else. That also gave me access to a range of digital BBC stations I never normally listen to - in fact have never even heard of. First I tried BBC Radio 3 (classical music); I thought that might soothe me to sleep. But they turned out to be playing some symphony that kept varying in volume - one minute it was so quiet I had to strain to hear it, then the next there would suddenly be a burst of loud music. That wasn’t very soothing, so after a bit I decided to try something else. Next was CBBC - radio for little children. That had some supposedly sleep-inducing sounds, I think it was supposed to be heavy rain. That didn’t make me feel sleepy either. So I had another look and found BBC Radio 1 Relax. Radio 1 (the regular station) plays pop music but I now found that there are also several other ‘Radio 1’ versions. In the middle of the night I found that this one was playing strange noises that sounded to me like someone eating celery very slowly close to a microphone. That was downright weird! Finally I went back to good old Radio 4, which at that hour was playing a selection of BBC World Service programmes about current affairs. The talking eventually lulled me to sleep. In the morning I wondered whether I had dreamed all those weird noises! But the joys of digital radio meant that I could look online to find the schedules of the different stations and play the parts in question again, to see whether I really had heard those sounds or just imagined them all! Turns out the celery eating (or whatever it was) was in fact so-called ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) - sounds which some people claim trigger a physiological response and are supposed to be relaxing. In fact there are various YouTube channels devoted to this where some creative people make a good income from making weird noises! Didn’t do anything for me though, I have to say. Is anyone else a fan of ASMR? Copyright Fleura 2022. All rights reserved.