Hard on the heels of a study that seemed to explode the idea that humans need anything like eight hours’ sleep a night comes another study claiming that 25% of Britons aged 30 to 50 routinely get by on fewer than five hours.

The first study examined the sleeping patterns of modern-day hunter-gatherers, and found they don’t usually sleep more than six and a half hours. The message is: modern, post-industrial living has not changed sleep duration significantly, so stop worrying.

The second study, conducted by psychologists at Leeds University and funded by a mattress company, found that a quarter of Britons in a key demographic are suffering from the sort of sleep deprivation associated with poor health. The message here is: modern life could be killing you – but maybe you just need a new mattress.

One thing is certain: there is a continuing discrepancy between the amount of sleep we think we need and the amount we’re getting. The idea that we need a full eight hours every night is probably a myth: until the 18th century most people engaged in biphasic sleeping: they went to bed early, woke after a few hours, pottered about for a bit, and then went back to bed.

Over the last few years I have perfected my own version of biphasic sleeping. I get about six hours before I wake up at 5:30am, whereupon I look at the clock and realise I don’t even have to think about getting out of bed for another two hours. If I accidentally wake at 6:30am and discover I only have one hour, I’m gutted.

Then I just lie there, eyes closed, feeling pleased. Sometimes I fall back asleep, but this seems a terrible use of those two golden hours, which are often the best part of my day.

Catch-up meals on the menu

Another recent study, this time from the scientists at Waitrose, found that technology has enabled us to reclaim chunks of family life – specifically mealtimes. Thanks to catch-up TV services and the live pause button, people are eating in front of the TV less often and around the table more often. While I confirm that this is happening in my household to a certain extent – “Pause it!” is now what we scream in place of “Supper’s ready!” – I worry that all this togetherness is storing trouble up in the form of a huge backlog of unwatched TV.

Say what you like about eating in front of the telly, but it’s a form of multitasking anyone can manage – killing off meals and box sets in one go. These day I find myself so far behind on telly that I end up erasing whole series just to make room for stuff I probably also won’t watch. All that lost entertainment, just so I could linger over pudding.

I’m proposing a regular catch-up meal – Sunday lunch, let’s say – where everyone eats in front of the telly all afternoon and watches a week’s worth of rubbish in order to make way for next week’s rubbish. Children would be encouraged to bring along extra screens so they can watch two or three things at once, just to get them out of the way: the whole family sitting down together, no talking allowed.

Bleeding DIY

It’s radiator-bleeding season, the time of year for the only household maintenance task I can execute with any degree of confidence. All this week I’ve been walking around with a special key in my pocket, in case I pass a radiator that might be underperforming owing to trapped air.

“What are you doing?” says my son, finding me crouched by the wall in his room.

“Maintenance,” I say. “Bleeding radiators.”

“Yeah, he says, “Screw them.”