It's 1.40am, I have to wake up in about 4 hours, and these things are keeping me from sleep...

- The annoyance I feel when I hear the cliched phrase "be afraid... be very afraid."

- The annoying habit of people in the media c.1996-1998 saying "what he/she/they want, what they really really want" in a reference to The Spice Girls' first hit song.

- The moment when the beer starts to taste bitter.

- The fact that we always go to bed feeling awake and get up feeling shattered.

- The thought that once we are dead, that's it, for all eternity.

- The culinary perfection that is rice pudding.

- The joy to be had holding your hands under the bathwater at such an angle that they resemble the stumpy mitts of a dwarf.

- That Miyamoto Musashi stoically contemplated "The Way of Tea."