Listening 6A
Listening 6A
Why do you have problems sleeping?
Well I’m Spanish, but I moved to London a few years ago when I married a British woman.
I’ve been living here for three years now.
I have a lot of problems getting to sleep at night because our bedroom just isn’t dark enough.
I can’t get used to sleeping in a bedroom where there’s light coming in from the streetlights outside.
In Spain, I always used to sleep in complete darkness because my bedroom window had blinds and when I went to bed I used to close the blinds completely.
But here in England, our bedroom window just has curtains and curtains don’t block out the light properly.
It takes me a long time to get to sleep at night and I always wake up more often than I used to do in Spain.
So why don’t you just get thicker curtains?
Because my wife doesn’t like sleeping in a completely dark room.
She says that she feels claustrophobic if the room is too dark.
Ah, yes, some people do feel like that.
Why do you have problems sleeping?
Well, I’m a policeman and so I have to do shift work which means I work at night every other week, so I start work at 10 o’clock at night and finish at 6.00 in the morning the following day.
The main problem is that my body’s used to sleeping at night, not during the day.
So it’s very hard to get used to being awake all night and trying to work and concentrate when your body is just telling you to go to bed.
But isn’t it something you eventually get used to?
Actually no, because I work during the day for one week and then the next week I work at night which means that just when my body has got used to being awake at night then I go back to working in the day and then of course I can’t get to sleep at night because my body thinks it’s going to have to work all night.
The other problem is that when I get home after working a night shift, everyone else is just starting to wake up, so that means that it can be really noisy.
The neighbours put on the radio, and bang doors and shout to wake their children up.
So even though I’m really tired, it’s just very hard to get to sleep.
How many hours do you usually sleep?
Before I became a policeman, I used to sleep about eight or nine hours a night, but I think now I probably don’t sleep more than six hours.
Why do you have problems sleeping?
I have a lot of problems sleeping because of jet lag.
I have to travel a lot in my job and I take a lot of long haul flights.
I fly to New York quite often and I arrive maybe at 6.00 in the evening my time, but when it’s only one o’clock in the afternoon in New York.
So at 5.00 in the afternoon New York time, I’ll be feeling tired and ready for bed because it’s my bed time.
But I can’t go to sleep because I’m probably still working or having dinner with my American colleagues.
Then when I do finally get to bed at say midnight, I find that I wake up in the middle of the night because my body thinks that it’s morning because it’s still working on UK time.
And can you get back to sleep when you wake up?
No, that’s the problem. I can’t get back to sleep.
And then the next day when I have meetings I feel really sleepy.
It’s very hard to stay awake all day.
And just when I’m finally used to being on New York time, then it’s time to fly back to the UK.
And flying west to east is even worse.
Oh! Why’s that?
Because when I get off the plane it’s early morning in the UK.
But for me, on New York time, it’s the middle of the night.
It takes me four or five days to recover from one of those trips.
Gosh, that must be really difficult for you.
Yeah, it is.