..interval between, might be more ‘natural’ than trying to compress sleep into the one eight hour stretch. I seem to recall hearing on a radio program that the segmented pattern of sleep might been preserved in the ritual of monastery life but otherwise the tradition has slipped from modern society’s collective memory.
Having said that I’ve noticed that I’m prone to waking up about half-way through the night and occasionally I’ve actually watched an hour or so’s telly before going back to bed for another three or four hours, so I’m inclined to believe that there’s something in it. It’s quite possible that we’re collectively missing an opportunity for some creative contributions to our daily lives. For example, how often have you emerged from a dream in the middle of your sleep and thought ‘I’ll remember that in the morning’ and, of course, you never do.
Apparently ‘interval’ sex is better too – a French 16th century manual advised the ‘best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but ‘after the first sleep’, when ‘they have more enjoyment’ and ‘do it better”* – the catch being that both partners have to be awake for full enjoyment.
When you’re struggling to get to sleep before an early flight is the last time you should be experimenting with yogic breathing or trying to achieve nirvana, but that’s exactly the time you’ll try it – and it inevitably fails or actually makes things worse. This doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea in the scheme of things, but that you shouldn’t wait till you’re desperate for sleep before attempting the technique.
Although I find valerian a useful sleep enhancer, it won’t defeat travel anxiety for example, and from my admittedly limited personal experience I wouldn’t recommend the enormous range of commercial and prescription sleeping drugs to put you to sleep either. Perhaps a dose of painfully acquired Nothingness is the way to go after all?

A couple of mornings ago I searched through my CDs to find a musical alternative to the usual diet of ABC Classic Radio I’m in the habit of providing for my partner and myself over breakfast - mostly for myself I have to admit,
I found what I considered to be just the thing and put it on the CD player and did some wonky kata with it playing in the background while waiting for the porridge to mature. I informed my paramour that breakfast was ready. Ominously, the first thing she did upon entering the room was to turn down the stereo before sitting at the table.
We munched our breakfast in silence, me curiously apprehensive, she suspicious, until I announced that the CD in question was the first in a series of recordings of rock groups from the ‘60s and ‘70s I was presenting daily at the breakfast table and could she identify the group in this particular case?
Her expression told me a multitude of things, one of them being, ‘Do I have to?’
She took pity on me and put on her thinking face while she listened to the track.
‘Is it the Masters Apprentices?’
It wasn’t the Masters Apprentices, but I had to concede it was an inspired guess. Listening to the Yardbirds on the Raven compilation CD (Yardbirds – Over, Under, Sideways, Down) as I went through my morning routine I’d been thinking they were reminding me of somebody. The bloody Masters Apprentices – yes, of course!
I’m sure my NZ band, The Chants, did at least half-a-dozen Yardbirds’ tracks, beginning with For Your Love, (actually a Graham Gouldman song - Gouldman wrote Bus Stop for the Hollies and was later to join 10CC), which featured the invisible presence of Eric Clapton who was with the band for a couple of years. Actually, the band boasted the presence of the cream of British guitarists with both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in the line-up at various stages. I know Jimmy Page was in the band I saw at Festival Hall in 1967 (a glorious all-sorts package show with Johnny Young, The Mixtures, The Walker Brothers and Roy Orbison). I seem to remember the Yardbirds broke up shortly after the Australasian tour – and I wasn’t at all surprised given that half the band had opted for bell-bottoms and the other half straight legs. Musical differences – pah!
Apart from clashing couture there was always a tension in the Yardbirds between their own predilection for the blues and their producer’s insistence that they produce something poppy, hence For Your Love, which was the final straw for Clapton. Page fashioned the band for his own purposes and in the later years you can hear intimations of Led Zeppelin loud and clear.
That’s not to say the Yardys never produced anything worthwhile in either arena. Over, Under still sounds incredibly inventive today and has all the typical Yardbirds’ musical elements with a predominant guitar motif and a contrasting minor key sequence. Shapes of Things is equally inventive but with its naïve socially conscious lyrics could just as easily have been a Masters’ track. I can hear more than a faint echo of The Yardbirds in most of the Masters’ output and they coincidentally enjoyed similar status in their home countries, with perhaps the Masters shading the Yardys in the chart success dept.

Which brings me to the recent passing of Jim Keays. I really only got to know Jim a little bit in his latter years and he struck me as a genuine lover of the musical genre he helped pioneer on the charts here in Oz. I was privileged to be in the audience at his last gig, which is the rock music equivalent of a gunslinger dying with his boots on. I hope I can go with equal dignity when the time comes, but we don’t really get to choose, do we?

* Wikipedia of course..