THINGS can cast a deeper shadow after dark, in the wee small hours in your bedroom. And it’s not just the wardrobe that I’m talking about.

All those little niggles that in the cold light of day can be seen for the molehills that they are, somehow take on volcanic properties after midnight. As you lie, tossing and turning, they grow into Mount Vesuvius – towering, deadly, and sure to blow at any moment.

Did you really send that email? And if you did, did you say the right thing? Did you send it to the correct address?

If it’s not work that’s on your mind, matters closer to home can keep you wide awake and brooding. Did you bring your purse in from the car? Did you lock the door? And most of all, did you leave the oven on, because it’s boiling in this room?

Curious worries, these last ones, because however much they may be preying on your mind, it somehow seems impossible to get out of bed, go downstairs and check.

I think sometimes self-preservation stops you. I mean, if you put your mind at rest over these particular problems, what might be lurking in the subconscious, waiting to get on your nerves instead?

If you’re like me, you’re much more likely to get up to let the cat upstairs, in the hope that the purring generated by this unexpected privilege will soothe your shattered nerves.

What you haven’t bargained for is that cats sleep for 16 hours a day, and your moggy has had his beauty sleep already. So as you lie groaning, your darling substitute child is prancing up and down the covers, drenching you with its sodden fur and dropping God knows what from in between its filthy paws. And how is it that cat claws can pierce the most solid of duvets?

The official advice when all this happens is to give up on sleep for a while. Get up, make yourself a cup of tea, read a book to take your mind off things. I’m sure this may work for some people, but personally, when I’m awake at 3.17am, my eyes already feel like red-hot pokers are being rammed into them and the notion of opening them makes them smart all the more.

The radio seems a more attractive idea, given that you don’t have to put the light on. I often feel that the lull of World Service voices will waft me off to sleep, but nine times out of ten, before I know it, I’m mulling over the irrigation problems of an African state or the human rights situation in another.

It’s true these are genuine, serious concerns, concerns which I should think about and which overshadow my petty day-to-day fretting. The trouble is, such thoughts plunge me into guilt and shame, so I spend the next hour navel-gazing about my own shallowness and brooding on the fact that I will never do anything to address it.

Eventually it is too much to bear, and the radio gets switched off. Thankfully, the old, original worries have fled and if I try to think about something else they may just not return.

Think about the day ahead instead – plan for it. Will I get to the gym at last today? Will I ever lose that last ten pounds?

One thing is certain. I’ve slept so little tonight that I must get my eight hours tomorrow.

Surely.