Every night, for the past ten days of our family holiday to Majorca, I have been enduring a torture so unique I sometimes wonder if I haven’t accidentally found myself in an episode of SAS: Who Dares Wins.
After an exhausting day of playing with children in the hotel pool, not to mention the sandcastle-building on the beach (such is the competitiveness of some of the parents here that only full-scale palaces will do), I head towards my bed convinced this will be the evening I finally sleep the sleep of the dead.
I’m so tired, so heavy-lidded… surely this will be the night my head hits the pillow and I am out like a light?
Teeth brushed, face washed, night cream slathered on my skin, I retire to bed with ear plugs, my silk eye mask, and the melatonin that I stocked up on at the local farmacia. I kiss my daughter and my husband good night, get into bed with my book, read until my eyes feel like lead, reach for the bedside lamp, and just as I begin to count sheep… my feet begin to do the river dance.
Up until this point, they have been motionless on the mattress. But as soon as the light goes off, they strike up the kind of jig that wouldn’t look out of place during the early weeks of Strictly Come Dancing. Up and down my toes go, my calves flailing around under the sheets in a style that scores zero points from my husband, who lies in bed next to me wondering what Michael Flatley has done with his wife (or, at the very least, the bottom half of her).
Like an estimated five to ten per cent of the population, I suffer from restless legs syndrome (RLS), a maddening condition that causes creeping, crawling sensations in your legs and feet, followed by the urge to move them, mostly at night when you are trying to get to sleep.
I first developed it in pregnancy, just over 12 years ago (it is thought that RLS can be caused by hormonal changes, iron deficiency and circulatory issues, though most causes are said to be ‘idiopathic’, which means there is no known reason for it).
But if I had hoped that giving birth would relieve me of the condition, I was very much mistaken. Like the emergency C-section scar across my lower abdomen, my restless legs syndrome has stuck around stubbornly ever since, almost always getting worse when I go on holiday.
Is it the heat? The light linen sheets Europeans favour over duvets? (I’ve found that my feet and legs like being wrapped in a 15-tog duck feather and down duvet that is clearly redundant during a heatwave.)
Obviously, I can’t pack my acupressure mat, a sort of bed of nails that I like to use when the RLS rears its head in London. Standing on this strange medieval contraption for a few minutes usually does the trick, and has me off to the land of nod in no time.
Or perhaps it’s the excess of vitamin D from sun exposure that causes my holiday RLS. In the dead of night, unable to do anything other than pace around the room while desperately searching ‘immediate rls cures’ on my phone, I’ve read on various message boards that this could be one possible cause of the condition. Then again, others suggest a lack of vitamin D is the problem, not to mention an imbalance of dopamine and a deficiency in magnesium and a lack of iron in the brain.
Indeed, nobody really seems to know anything about RLS, other than that it’s as irritating as JD Vance’s motorcade taking up all the disabled parking spaces at the Cotswolds’ village farm shops. I’ve tried everything: stretching, painkillers, magnesium butter slathered all over my feet and legs.
I’ve read that codeine does the trick but, given I’m in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, that’s not an option for me.
And so it is that whenever I go on holiday somewhere warm, and the sun dips below the horizon, my body is gripped by a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation. From my torso up, every part of me wants to be fast asleep in a lavender-scented flotation device. But from the waist down, it wants to be at a nightclub, dancing to Pump Up The Jam until the early hours of the morning.
The only thing for it is to get up and pace around the hotel room, like a woman possessed. The cold stone floor provides the only relief for my jiggling feet, though it’s hardly a comfort to my husband and daughter, kept awake by my lunatic marching. Eventually, I do collapse, zombie-like, my body completely depleted of energy after its middle-of-the-night dance session.
Whatever the cause, we know for sure that restless legs syndrome is a sleep-stealing, sanity- snatching torment suffered by millions. Indeed, I am amazed nobody has come up with a solution to it yet, given how widespread and insomnia-inducing it is. I will kiss the feet of anyone who finds a remedy, truly I will.
But in the meantime, I suppose pacing wildly around the bedroom until the point of collapse will simply have to suffice.
I want to shop, not make a citizen’s arrest
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, has announced that the public should tackle shoplifters instead of expecting officers to deal with the petty criminals.
‘The idea that this is just a job for the police… I think that makes for a very poor society,’ he announced.
So now I have to be prepared to make a citizen’s arrest when I pop out to get my pint of milk? Yet another reason to stay in and order everything online instead.
Phone detox is handy excuse
Figures show that seven in ten of us will attempt a digital detox this summer, swapping scrolling for more wholesome activities.
I love the idea of switching off my phone while on holiday, and frequently try it, with limited results (as my Instagram quite clearly shows).
Still, it makes for a good excuse if you’ve forgotten to get back to someone – simply reply four weeks later explaining that you’ve been on a break from your phone. Works every time!
Why Taylor and Travis are my perfect showbiz couple
Taylor Swift has announced her 12th album, The Life Of A Showgirl, on her boyfriend’s American football podcast.
Said boyfriend, Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, has appeared on the front cover of GQ (out August 19), standing in a swamp holding a giant Birkin bag in one shot, and a live alligator in another.
I know there are rumours that their romance is a ‘showmance’… but who cares if the couple are fake given that they’re adding this much joy and entertainment to our lives?
All addicts know first coffee is the best
The mood-boosting properties of coffee are limited to the first two and a half hours of the morning, a new study says.
As a caffeine junkie, I’m not surprised. Like all addictions, from alcohol to cigarettes to drugs, the first moments of consumption are the best, with everything afterwards a futile attempt at chasing that initial high.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said teachers have the right to ask pupils to call them by the gender-neutral honorific ‘Mx’, instead of Mr, Mrs and Miss.
I’m right behind the move, but could they give us lessons on how to actually pronounce the title first?
