WSJ

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Wide awake. It's 4am and I'm having the World Service jitters.

A common issue for many Radio 4 junkies, this is today's version:

Sunday afternoon in the pub, takeaway food and too early to bed with The Westminster Hour on the radio. A lackadaisical approach to the sleep function and 5 hours later you're waking up to some crazy World Service program, that often leaves you in a restless insomniac confusion.

And so it was that about an hour ago I'm roused by the collective jeering of the Turkish parliament as they heckled an MP who refused to remove her Islamic headdress in 1996.

This is not the way to be woken up in the middle of the night, especially when you're prone to suffocating anxiety.

Having just managed to avoid the upright, not-a-chance-in-hell-of-getting-back-to-sleep awakeness that can ruin a night, I watered and de-watered and headed back off to sleep pleased that some calming 'world' music had followed the screaming Turks.

Minutes later though, just in that foggy half-sleep, I'm suddenly aware that someone is being throttled at the foot of my bed.

And she's not going quietly.

Actually she's a singer from Northern Canada who's style would have been interesting on 'Later...' but is fucking frightening unannounced in the middle of the night.

The unreasonable dominoing that occurs for me in these situations means however that almost immediately I know that any chance of a peaceful night is bolloxed. Within seconds I leap from issue to issue and in a minute or two I'm knotted up and far too awake for a Monday morning.

And so here I sit and there's even less of a point to this post than usual, and certainly no punchline.

The link to the crazy Canadian, Tanya Tagaq, is here, however. Well worth a listen.

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