Why sleep is my number one priority - and socialising can take the backseat

A good night’s kip is vital for protecting cognitive decline as we age. Photo / 123RF

My name is Victoria and I’m a sleep addict. There. I’ve said it. And if you think that sounds sad and that I must be missing out on a million and one life-enriching experiences that happen only after dark as a result, you are probably right. But I don’t care.

And now it looks like I’ll have the last laugh, at least according to a new study by UCL scientists, published in the Lancet Healthy Longevity journal, which highlights the need for sleep to protect against cognitive decline as people get older. According to the study, middle-aged people who do not get enough sleep are less likely to see the benefits of exercise when it comes to protecting against a decline in skills such as memory and thinking.

If that is true then I will be in good shape. Much to my husband’s chagrin, I am firmly of the view that nothing good happens after 11pm at the weekend, and after 9.30pm on a school night.

In fact, getting into bed then, at the same time as my 13-year-old son turns in, feels to me like the biggest treat I could give myself. I almost cringe to write these words, which would once have triggered in me a massive eye-roll, but sinking my head onto a crisply ironed cotton pillowcase spritzed with lavender pillow spray is a moment of such delicious surrender I can think of little to rival it.

Because I absolutely love that feeling of waking up from – ideally – eight hours of deep sleep, I prioritise the chance to do that above most other things. That includes watching TV; sitting passively in front of a screen getting slowly more tired (because your body is telling you it needs to sleep) feels counterintuitive, and a total waste of time.

I also prioritise sleep above socialising. If I meet friends for dinner, I’ll always peddle the 6pm nana-booking, calculating when I’ll need to leave to get my full sleep quota. I am, frankly, aghast if anyone has the temerity to suggest an 8.30pm dinner and will probably just decline.

I absolutely love that feeling of waking up from – ideally – eight hours of deep sleep. Photo / Getty

I am the first to leave the cosy fireside circle on summer camping trips with friends; that smoky, rum-soaked moment when the stars are out, the kids are cosily tucked up, and the adults are relishing the prospect of chatting into the night. Apart from me, that is. I’ll be so full of envy for the slumbering kids that I’m counting the moments until I can quietly slope off to our tent to enjoy that blissful drift to sleep, lulled by the sound of hushed chatter.

I have always marvelled at the politicians – Donald Trump tweeting at 2am – and high-achievers like Helena Morrissey and Martha Stewart, who famously hardly sleep at all. Frankly, I do not know how they manage being awake for so long each day.

By the way, this is all in stark contrast to the almost pathological fear of missing out that defines my day-to-day life. But, despite being powered mostly by FOMO, I am the one standing firmly up as soon as is reasonably fitting at any soiree and saying, “well, goodnight then”, even when my fellow diners are on the brink of late-night revelations and delicious gossipy exchanges.

I am the one who is weak with relief at the well-mannered friends who start exchanging “we should leave” glances at 11pm, just as my husband is getting out the Suze and Lillet Blanc to make white negronis (while I am wondering how rude it would be to politely excuse myself from my own kitchen).

To be clear – I don’t want the party to stop. I just don’t want to be part of it.

I am the one standing firmly up as soon as is reasonably fitting at any soiree and saying, “Well, goodnight then”. Photo / Getty Images

I was a night owl once. My first newspaper job, a couple of decades ago, was in New York and my shifts ended at 1am, which didn’t phase me at all. It was a long, hot summer and the penetrating heat of the day only began to subside at midnight. After work, the night felt young and we’d hit a seedy nearby dive bar called Smiths then bar-hop until 3 or 4am. Over three years in New York, I was practically nocturnal and had so many late nights – and so much fun – that maybe that is how I know that sleep trumps FOMO every time.

That is not to say that I always achieve the perfect eight hours. I’m as at risk of an interrupted night as the next midlife working parent. I just know that I do better after a good night’s sleep; sunnier mood, sharper concentration and somehow mentally more balanced. It also means I can get up at 6am to start the day, do some exercise, get stuff done.

If someone had told 20-something me – carousing, garlanded with a pink feather boa at the Groucho Club, where time famously stands still – that midlife me would fetishise an early night in the same way as others might relish the perfectly made martini, I would probably have felt something akin to pity.

I just know that I do better after a good night’s sleep. Photo/Getty.

But things change. Motherhood seized whatever habits and inclinations defined the old me and put them through a spin cycle. Sleep became the holy grail, to be valued above all else. It soon became clear that if I wanted any time to myself then an hour in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, is way more valuable than a bleary-eyed blur at night.

And now, it turns out, my antisocial habits have been thoroughly vindicated – by scientists no less. I’ll be thinking of that this evening as I close the curtains, spritz my pillow and turn my light out, just as most of you are on the cheese course.