Barry in for rude wake-up call
THE numbers are in and we have confirmation – Townsville is riddled with well-slept psychopaths.
An article published this week by the Sydney Morning Herald, rehashed by Vice and now regurgitated by yours truly has blown back the covers on Australian sleeping patterns.
At first glance, the prognosis looks pretty grim for us here in the true capital of North Queensland.
Data derived from alarm clock app SleepCycle revealed Cairns residents woke up in a worse mood than any other city in the country, with a selfreported happiness rating of just 53.12 per cent. Here’s the kicker. Of the 21 areas included in the study, Brownsvillians were the most jubilant upon prying open their beady little bloodshot eyes with a whopping 68.29 per cent on the jollity scale. Just slow down there, Townsville. Your high horse has a bung leg. First off, it takes a special kind of sociopath to wake up with any more exuberance than a resigned twinkle in the eye. That’s especially so when faced with overwhelming evidence that the day will bring nought but shame and misery.
To unpack this mystery I called up Townsville correspondent Barry Boofhead, for anonymity’s sake, who on an unrelated note became a minor celebrity as a primary schooler for eating rocks.
What, pray tell, did the self-flagellating residents of that dust-busted dive have to be optimistic about?
“Because it is just a better place to live. Also, the people are nicer. Makes for easy living,” he reckoned (edited to remove the trademark 11am slur). “That’s all there is to it.” Poor Barry blindly accepted the results of this egregious blight on scientific rigour without question.
The study failed to take into account an important algorithm whereby morning happiness is relative to bedtime satisfaction.
Were it to quantify the gripping depression that surely overcomes Townsville’s downtrodden population as it scrubs away the day’s degradation and airborne dirt particles, offsetting it against the misplaced glimmer of hope that fades as dreams of a better place are revealed as just that, dreams, the results would be telling. Nine out of 10 scientists agree. Here in Cairns we hit the hay thoroughly buoyed at what the day has brought, and it understandably takes some time to fire up the cylinders and remember we are not living in Townsville – that it was just an unpleasant night terror.
There was, however, some half-de- cent data to come from the admittedly shallow study-of-sorts.
The average Cairns person (who had enough nocturnal difficulties to warrant downloading a sleep monitoring app) spent 7.34 hours in bed a night, called it quits at 10.56pm and woke at 6.51pm.
It is pretty well spot-on for my dozing habits.
We were also pretty high on movements per hour, fourth highest in the country with 61 rolls, twitches and absent-minded scratches per night.
My girlfriend will concur that I am a rampant wriggler and chainsaw snorer, so she no doubt scores even lower in the catnapping stakes, poor thing.
I have taken to using weird adhesive strips that traverse the nose’s bridge in an effort to open the airways, all in the vain hope of reining in the evening grunts to a manageable decibel. Here’s hoping. The Vice article smugly declared those lucky enough to live in Cairns were “the worst morning people in Australia” and “Townsville, apparently you’re the best”.
Hardly. It just seems a shame to have to squander potential glorious waking hours in pointless slumber.