No doubt like me you absorbed with your mother's milk stories of hospital patients being roused from slumber by officious night sisters in order for them to take their sleeping pills.

So you will appreciate my irritation as a resting partygoer at being shaken awake around five this morning to be told (by it has to be said an employee of our national health service) that it was time to go to bed. He promptly took over the spare room, where I imagine he is snoring his head off as I write, leaving his hostess and myself to continue dozing as best we could on the settee. An hour or so later she gathered enough will power to wriggle free from the sofa and shuffled off towards her own sleeping quarters.

My sleep now broken twice I left her applying a late but no doubt essential coating of cold cream and struck out up Easter road dreaming of breakfast. Tesco being unaccountably out of fresh croissants at 6.20 on a summer Saturday morning I am toasting some stale bread as I inhale the wholesome odour of fresh Cuban coffee.

Good morning and good night.