National Stop Snoring Week 2018.

National Stop Snoring Week 2018.

Oh yes! I've been waiting for this week since the beginning of this year. In fact my sleeping patterns have been severely disrupted just thinking about it or maybe I should go to bed earlier. You know what today is or this week. Yes we all know that Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge has given birth to her third baby and fifth in line to the throne and we know that it's a boy. But there are far more pressing issues at hand and we should address them with all due haste because the nation needs to be informed. If  I don't tell you what this week is it may lie heavy on my mind or perhaps that should be a pillow.

For today and this week is National Stop Snoring Week and you know what that means. It's time to examine that age old medical condition which has long been the source of many a sleepless night, deafening blasts of heavy snoring, grunting and much nocturnal disturbance from millions of homes around the world. In fact so distressing has snoring become that nowadays it seems to have taken over from diets, weight loss and keeping fit, as the predominant topic of discussion.

How often have we turned over in the middle of the night after an incessant session of noisy, good old fashioned snoring designed to send the neighbours into furious paroxysms of wall bashing and barely controlled anger? It all seems to start from the nose, travels down to the mouth and before you know it the throat is completely blocked, the epiglottis is totally bunged up, the chest sounds like an old concertina and here begins another night of snoring and driving your wife, husband, girl or boyfriend completely potty.

But this week the subject of topical discourse will turn to  one of those timeless problems that every so often confront us when stress, anxiety, quite possibly depression and any other underlying cause gives us food for thought when somebody mentions snoring. Sleep deprivation is undoubtedly one of those nightmarish scenarios where nothing seems to work, whether it be counting sheep or shifting restlessly about in bed.

So what do we normally do when the lights go out?  Some of us drop into the deepest sleep and suddenly it all happens? One of us will normally vehemently deny that we snore at any point during the night because we're perfect sleepers, paragons of virtue and besides your partner is just as guilty and responsible as you are. Have they heard themselves recently? There follows denial, innocence, insistence that it wasn't me and that it had to be you and then a grudging acceptance that maybe we do but not for that long.

Throughout the decades and years the cures for snoring have been varied and farcical. There are nose clips, sleeping in different rooms for the time being until one of us has finally decided to reach a suitable compromise. Then you trudge into a room of your own, find a comfortable spot to sleep in and hope against hope that even, in slightly different circumstances, nobody will hear you snoring and maybe time will eventually be the great healer.

 Of course the arrangement may still fail and you can still hear your partner blowing away loudly through their nose and mouth and blasting your eardrums quite emphatically. At times the sheer volume and audibility of snoring can be reasonably compared to a low flying aircraft over Heathrow or drilling from a nearby building site. And yet the latest advances in herbal remedies and homeopathy medicine have yet to find some tablet, pill or liquid that can finally silence the nightly brass band.

Throughout the ages sleep has always been one of those peculiarly inexplicable medical dilemmas that no amount of research can ever get to grips with. We plonk our heads on our pillows every night confident in the knowledge that within a couple of minutes we'll all be gently lulled into the most satisfying slumbers but then it just gets very complicated and annoying.

 How to solve a problem like sleeping? You shut out all of those perhaps subconscious concerns and daily worries, blinking your eyes interminably, plumping up the pillows and then just allowing drowsiness to give way to a good night's sleep. But frustratingly it hasn't worked because the mind is still wide awake and the possible becomes impossible. Insomnia sets in and when you next look at your alarm clock it's three in the morning, the radio is still on and you haven't slept a wink.

Having eventually negotiated the one overwhelming obstacle of insomnia you begin to make one of the most horrendous noises ever heard in Western or Eastern civilisation. Suddenly your ribs are rudely nudged and dug, pillows will be desperately flung in your direction and one of you will have to make allowances for their discomfort. So you head for the kitchen, drown your sorrows in tea and resign ourselves to whatever the night may hold.

Snoring of course is one of those highly divisive issues that can never reach the highest seat of governmental debating chambers because those in authority have got far more urgent priorities on their mind. Who cares if you snore? It certainly isn't the end of the world and besides there is a school of thought which believes that if you were to lose a little weight and stop raiding the fridge you might be able to concentrate on the snoozefest without any trouble at all.

So there are you folks. Let's hear it for National Stop Snoring Week. Who cares about the fortunes and welfare of Vladimir Putin, the daily ramblings from a man called Donald Trump, North Korean hot air and childish aggression or even Jeremy Corbyn, a politician who is slowly sinking into some treacherous political swamp, sucked into a dark abyss where only he knows what he's doing.

It's time to get back to the vital news agenda. It's National Stop Snoring Week and how have we criminally overlooked snoring as one of the those crucially important arguments that have to be thrashed out at great length and in some detail. Wouldn't it be good if we could just drop off to the most contented sleep, forget about the rest of the world and then wake up the following morning fully refreshed.

 Then you're reminded that yet again you've been snoring so loudly that it's a wonder the neighbours haven't complained and they'll probably take you to court if you keep making that infernal noise while you're sleeping. National Stop Snoring Week? It almost sounds like some sinister threat doesn't it, some veiled warning that could have dire consequences. But who cares hey? I'm just going to sleep on it?