Let’s do this together COMMUNITY CORNER

It’s probably my age, but recently I’ve been waking up in the early hours of the morning and having trouble getting back off to sleep.

I read somewhere that people in the Middle Ages used to go to bed at 7pm and then rise for an hour or more in the middle of the night to do some work – so perhaps I’m supposed to get up and start twisting flax on my spindle.

With there not being much call for making yarn for my girdle these days, I’ve been trying the Calm app on my phone instead (other apps are available).

If you ignore the meditation sessions, which are mainly Californian dudes with top knots by the Pacific Ocean living their hashtag “best life”, then the sleep stories are just boring enough to get me snoozing again.

I’ve often wondered what it takes to be a writer of the sleep stories, some of which are read by famous actors like Peaky Blinders’s Cillian Murphy with his dreamy Irish lilt.

I imagine the editor of the app sending back the stories to the authors with notes like: “Sorry please redo – this story is far too exciting and will keep our listeners awake.”

Or the best ones that get accepted and authors are told: “That is simply the most tedious story I have ever heard. I was asleep before my he… zzzzzzz.”

The tales need to be evocative and meandering as you’re supposed to be back in land of nod before it finishes. I once tried to stay awake for a whole 35-minute sleep story only to find absolutely nothing happens at the end.

Sometimes I like to listen to the soundscapes on the app, like the soft pitter patter of rain, but a few of them are a bit triggering.

The sound of a babbling brook makes me want to go to the loo, and the eerie song of a humpback whale has me worriedly checking under the covers for sharks.

But my favourite is the sound of a cat purring, which makes it the perfect bed companion alongside my pug Boris – and no mutilated gifts under the bed next morning.

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.