I spent yesterday in a pleasant bank holiday haze, watching tennis and old films and eating scrambled eggs on toast. I was so relaxed that unless you’d been looking closely you might not have known I was awake. “This is how bank holidays should be”, I thought, as I briefly emerged from a doze between sets. “I’ll sleep well tonight.”

So naturally I woke up at 4am in a full-body clench of insomnia and anxiety that came from nowhere and has now dissipated, its only after-effects being a darkening of the circles under the eyes that arrived sometime after university and will never leave. I like to think they add character.

But tired eyes give me an excuse to wear dark glasses when it’s not very sunny, and wearing dark glasses when it’s not very sunny is something I love doing. When I am old I will wear them all the time, even indoors. I don’t remember much about my maternal grandfather but I remember that he wore dark glasses all the time, even indoors, and that it made him look kind of cool and a bit forbidding at the same time. Since that’s a look I aspire to anyway, it all falls into place perfectly.

The other upside to insomnia is that 4am is actually quite a lovely time to be awake at this time of year. The birds were singing and there was no traffic or shouting or loud music to drown them out. The only other sound was the periodic honking of someone’s car alarm, but even that came with a silver lining because it woke up the beloved, and if there’s one thing you want when you’re lying awake in a full-body clench of insomnia and anxiety, it’s company.