Sleep - the cure all and Brafield-on-the-green.

Some time ago, when the children were growing up, we lived, what seemed, miles away from anywhere. We lived in a little village in Northamptonshire (above) called Brafield-on-the-green; I think it was around four miles south east of Northampton and about sixteen miles north west of Bedford.

I caught trains to London from both railway stations and then it was about one hour into London via Bedford and a bit longer from Northampton; the journey might seem ideal on paper but in real life it was a pain in the arse – especially when the journey was just for a five minute audition.

But life in Brafield was very peaceful and the children were brought up in, what their memories seem, idyllic conditions. They had to travel the four miles into Northampton when they left their village school in Brafield for the big wide world on the big bad bus as we couldn't always take them there and bring them back home in the car.

The kids in the village were children of farm workers and were raised up as country lads and lasses with a knowledge of the countryside and were not necessarily 'street wise.' It was strange for me to go from my life in a village, where I would brew beer and wine and even baked my own bread, to the metropolis of London with my work in films and TV and my time away in the theatre in other cities of the UK.

Once in a while youths of the village would knock our door carrying a few dead rabbits they had shot and offering them to us very cheaply. We never bought any preferring to buy our rabbits from the market in Northampton which had been skinned and dressed and ready for our stew. I can't believe how expensive rabbit is now from the butchers here in Los Angeles compared to what it was back then in Northampton.

The house we lived in had three bedrooms but was rambling with lots of nooks and crannies, a big walk in pantry and a Rayburn cooker/oven, with a kettle of water always on the go and which kept the house really warm during the cold winters. I remember one really cold snap when we were, more or less, trapped in our houses for a day sitting by that Rayburn, reading The Guardian whilst the kids played in other parts of the house or into the one hundred foot garden to make a snowman.

We had an abundance of cats which came and went frequently particularly when they were killed on the main road that split the village between the middle and working classes. We lived on the working class side of the village and it was strange to have a middle class family, which is what we reluctantly were, in with the working classes. That part of the village has slowly become middle class now, I hear, so I can imagine what it's like with the use of coasters, doilies and fish knives catching on.

One cat we had was a beautiful big white one called Flossie. She was a clever cat and would manipulate the door handle and let herself into the living room from the kitchen. Then she would settle herself on top of my stereo unit, or even one of our laps, and sleep.

We didn't have a cat-flap so the cats would jump onto the living room window and meow then we would let them in.

One night Flossie jumped up on the window ledge and she looked in distress. When I let her in I could see she had been shot. Obviously some kid was taking time off from hanging around by the telephone box (which is what the kids of the village did in those days) and shot her; the pellet had lodged around by her hip. She ran passed me and jumped onto the top of my stereo unit and cleaned the wound; then she went to sleep.

She seemed quite comfortable so we left her and she slept till the following afternoon; when she woke up she seemed fine so we left her and didn't bother to take her to the vet. The pellet stayed in her hip for the rest of her life which ended some time later when she was killed on the main A428; she was the last one of our cats to die that way run over by some vehicle or other.

What cured Flossie that day was sleep; sleep has been the greatest cure since records began and an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the U.S. population suffers from insomnia and is considered second only to cigarette smoking as dangerous for your health. It has been linked to a variety of health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and chronic pain.

When my wife had pneumonia recently she slept for days; the body knows what it needs and it induces sleep to cure – why then can't anybody sleep when they are in hospital?

I know – I have a strange way of making a point!!

A friend of mine left hospital last week and was glad to get home to get some peace. The nurses, doctors, ancillary workers, orderlies, auxiliaries and even the security people talk and move about as if it's the middle of the day. Patients have the TV on full blast, call out loud for the nurses and the para medics even take patients home on the middle of the night.

My friend was dropped home in an ambulance at 10:45 pm last week. When she queried this with the para medics, they told her it was nothing; they took people home all through the night.

What kind of sense if it when the greatest cure for nearly everything is sleep that the people running hospitals keep you awake.

I rest my case.