THIS week's column comes in a visually enhanced format. We live in a visual age, so it has been decided the words shall now have a picture to go with them.

The illustration is perhaps not the prettiest available, but it helps to get the ball rolling.

The chap asleep in the photograph is not any number of things. He is not, it is safe to assume, being used to advertise modern bed design for a Sunday supplement; unless planks are the latest design statement. He is not settling down for a comfy night in one of York's nicer hotels.

No, he is sleeping during the recent squat/invasion of the Bonding Warehouse in York. Other than that, little else matters. For it is the slumber that concerns me.

Our page guest finds his way here thanks to this newspaper's electronic library, which contains all sorts of random delights. Type in the word 'sleep' and this is what you get, alongside multitudinous droopy-eyed images.

All of which offers a circuitous route to this week's subject - the benefits of sleep, especially an afternoon nap. The other day researchers called for beds to be installed in workplaces after a survey revealed that the moment before sleep is the best for having ideas. All our brightest ideas come when we are about to nod off.

The survey also discovered something mildly astonishing: most British adults say flashes of inspiration rarely come their way while at the office. So there we have it - working and thinking don't go together. Psychology professor Richard Wiseman was hired to carry out the research by, of all the organisations, the East Of England Development Agency.

Quite why this body should wish to know these things is a mystery, but idlers and sleep-snatchers everywhere should stop yawning for a moment to sleepily sing the praises of Professor Wiseman's work. Truly, this man lives up to his surname. His study concludes that our minds are at their most creative when we are relaxed and free from the pressures of everyday life, such as, perhaps, coming up with an idea for a weekly column.

So, next time inspiration turns a little sluggish, the solution will be obvious. All that has to be done is to ask the editor set up a bed for me somewhere in the Evening Press building. A quick nap will set the creative ball-bearings clanking. The only difficulty lies in how to frame the bed-in-the-office question.

Sleep is, of course, a serious matter. Too little can send you mad; and if I pick, purely as an arbitrary example, the five-hours-a-night Margaret Thatcher, then you will understand that no harm is meant.

Too much sleep can turn your brain to cottage cheese, although most people these days seem to get by on too little rather than a surfeit.

As for the doze, this is surely one of life's simple but great pleasures, so long as it takes place at home and not while sitting at the desk. Weekends or holidays nearly always contain a treat nap for me. And it is true that all sorts of good ideas occur at the moment when lash meets lash. They just don't always seem to be there when I open my eyes again.

Prof Wiseman's study says something important about stress and creativity, and if I go just go for a zizz I may be able to work out what it is. Having good ideas is the key to productivity and usefulness at work; but working doesn't encourage you to have good ideas. There seems to be a gap here. Perhaps our sleeping mind talks more sense than our waking mind. There may be something in this. It is true the relaxed mind comes up with all sorts of splendid notions. The trouble is, only the stressed-out awake mind sorts them out and makes them happen.

It's a forty-winks sort of a puzzle.

Updated: 16:13 Thursday, September 09, 2004