How do you sleep at night? It’s a question often levied to those with dubious scruples, but given the state of the world today, it also applies to the best of us.

A recent UCLA-led report concluded that sleep is as important to our wellbeing as food, giving our brains a valuable window to repair the neurological damage we sustain every day during our waking hours (really). The good news is that a change of pace over the past year has resulted in some of us getting more shuteye. France was an outlier here, with its citizens spending an average of an extra 20 minutes in bed in 2020 (equivalent to a total 41.48 winks a night, assuming that’s what they were up to). But when it comes to sleep, as with many things, it’s quality not quantity that counts.

“Good quality sleep is measured by how quickly you fall asleep, the ability to stay asleep and spending most of your time in bed asleep rather than awake,” states The Sleep Council. But, as its data shows, not all of us are getting it in bed: 43 per cent of respondents to a recent survey said they were finding it harder to kip at night, while three-quarters reported anxiety impacting on their sleep.

Whether you’re nodding in agreement or just nodding off, sleep is something we all have to do – no matter how, or when, we do it. There are all sorts out there, from the sweet dreamers to the tossers and turners. But whose bed do you sleep in? Find out below. Just remember: if you snooze, you, er, win.

You can feel the floorboards moving even before you reach his bedroom, while car alarms are triggered outside on the street. But the doorway is the event horizon, the point of no return. Beyond this threshold, all matter is sucked into his orbit. Not even light can escape the yawning cavity that is his mouth. While this super-dense body is dead to the world, for others, sleep is impossible – clinging on to fittings is the best you can hope for. It’s not so much a snore as a constant siphon of air into his gaping mouth. How can he possibly fit more into his maw? And with that, he snorts, splutters and turns over.

There were four in the bed and the little one said, “Roll over”. Well, not so much said, more screech into your ear while choreographing an MMA-inspired urban dance routine. The older one, meanwhile, is vocalising the philosophical quandaries that come to him at 4.37am on a Tuesday morning. Such as: “Was Batman bitten by a radioactive bat?” And: “Was Ironman bitten by a radioactive iron?” And: “I’m hungry, can I have a bagel?” Perhaps a more pertinent question would be: how can the smallest person in the house take up most of the bed? Or even: how many more times will you be booted in the most sensitive region of your body before daybreak? They say parenting is more about gardening than carpentry, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider nailing boards over their bedroom door at night. 

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Well, he’s certainly something, sprawled diagonally across the bed, snoring through the air, wearing just his pants and the duvet like a cape. The power of flight is the stuff of this eye-masked avenger’s dreams, but that doesn’t stop his physical body from swooping and diving through the wee hours while his sidekick gets kicked in the side. He repels pokes and prods, deflects elbows and, when jabbed, loudly emits a defensive gas. In his head, he’s making the world that little bit safer; in his bed, he’s forcing his other half to sleep on the sofa.  

It used to be that push notifications from news sources only pinged when somebody important passed away. Then 2016 came along and everyone died. In the years since, he’s spent his nights bathed in blue light, working his way through a terminal churn of despair, second-screening while half-watching BBC Parliament. He’s followed drone strikes and elections, hurricanes and pandemics. He’s seen economies collapse, Brexit negotiations ebb and flow, and climate change unfold in real time. He’s shared memes until he became one, like Sad Keanu, Ant-Man and the most despondent Baby Yoda rolled into one. He was the fly on the wall of the fly on Mr Mike Pence’s head. He’s established which Disney Prince, Hogwarts house, even which Twin Peaks character he is (the Log Lady), and is summoning up the courage for a TikTok challenge. Last week, he completed Wikipedia. Empires have fallen and he’s still no closer to falling asleep.

What have you done? Other than woken up in a state of sheer white panic, ensnared in a whirlpool of saturated sheets. Despite three-and-a-bit hours’ sleep, your eyes are wider than your sockets should allow and your body is so perpendicular that it makes bolts look slapdash. Given the look of fear on your face, it’s perhaps a blessing that you’ll never be able show it in public ever again. Will that person, whose name escapes you now, ever forgive you for that random, inconsequential thing that you did 17 years ago that has, from nowhere, crawled out of the darkest recesses of your mind and lodged itself front and centre in your cerebrum, haunting you across the decades. And will they even remember? What is certain is you won’t sleep again tonight.