As most people know, not being able to sleep for long stretches of time can result in one of two things. The first is a type of clarity were ideas flow and creativity abounds. The second and more common is becoming more and more frightening in appearance and gradually becoming noticeably unhinged. So before you get to this stage (in which you scare small children though you pretend you don’t enjoy it), here are ten potential activities for the wee small hours.

1. Name every crack on your bedroom ceiling then create an elaborate backstory for them.

2. Reorganise all your books, DVD, CDs and clothes by type/genre, then alphabetically, then by how much they mean to you at that precise moment.

3. Try to remember all the lines from an episode of a sitcom you know well (who am I kidding? Of course it’s going to be Friends. It’s repeated practically 24 hours a day).

4. Tell yourself a story that gets more outrageous the closer you get to dawn, when you proceed to call your best friend to tell them this amazing story only to forget it once they stop threatening to cause you pain for waking them up at daft o’clock.

5. Completing every final fantasy game you own then consider putting it on your C.V. under achievements.

6. Build a theory that combines a real life Skynet from the Terminator films with the Mayan calendar saying the world will end in 2012. Of course this particular theory involves Apple computers, they’re new space ship head quarters and Google.

7. Spend ages trying to figure out why you suddenly have a craving for coconut cake only to realise it’s origin is the fact you’ve started using coconut oil as a hair treatment. This is then followed by coming to the conclusion you are a complete idiot for only just figuring this out.

8. Finding every grey hair you have recently acquired and contemplating the side effects of pulling them out (the main one being loosing your power of stating the obvious and sarcastic wit).
8.a Naming each one you found after people you know.

9. Coming up with a superhero name and designing your own costume.
9.a Actually making it then going out to fight crime.

10. Come up with a list of possible things to do when suffering from insomnia but don’t actually do them because the idea of switching on a light or waking anyone up makes you shy away and hiss like a sparkly vampire from sunlight.

by Mhairi McCrindle