GOT TO pick daughter up from school. She'll be ready to come out by now. Get a move on for Chrissake. My feet are stuck on the pavement. Can't walk any more. Take off your shoes, you can still get there. Jesus, it's getting dark, she'll be on her own, waiting for me, getting panicky. RICHARD GILLISwrites.

Snap.

Ok, here we go again. 3am. What you do in the next few minutes is crucial. Muck it up and you'll be up for hours. You can do this. Tell yourself this is just a quick break. There's still time, get off now and tomorrow isn't ruined. Focus on your breathing, in out, in out . . . should I get a drink? Don't be stupid, that's storing up trouble. Don't make a fuss, just relax your eyes, concentrate on the contact of your back against the sheets.

What was it the acupuncturist said? Every two hours of the day is a window, with its own particular significance. Three to five relates to 'things unresolved'. Do I have something I need to deal with? Maybe I'm suppressing something.

Is this helping? Go back to breathing. Count down backwards from 300. Keep the front of your brain occupied with boring stuff. Control your wild mind, let your subconscious take over, shut out the noise.

Wait, which bit is the front of my brain?

Cut it out.

This pillow is getting hot. Nearly time to turn it over.

Not yet, wait for it, do it now and you'll have nothing to look forward to.

Done it. God, this is fantastic, how does it get so cool?

This is not working. Got to do something constructive.

Don't think about work, we'll be here all night.

Too late. Is there a feature in this? The science of sleep. It's perfect, it's got everything: zeitgeisty, democratic, lots of ways in.

They walk among us, we talk to the living dead. Better still, anger management, tips to deal with fatigue rage - real people discuss why insomnia ruined their lives. Like that woman who knifed her husband for knocking his teeth with his spoon when he ate soup. She blamed his snoring for keeping her up.

Got it. The business of sleep, a user's guide - 10 ways to 40 winks.

We'd need some research to fatten it up, add a bit of gravitas. 'Falling asleep at the wheel responsible for 65 per cent of car accidents.' No, that's too much gravitas. Maybe lighten the mood: 'One in three suffer sleepless nights, say Ireland's bedmakers.' Or a saucy angle: 'What we get up to at night - and it ain't sleep.'

Cut and paste the Forbes piece from last year, "The Sleep Racket". They called it the '$20billion industry'. Great made-up figure, bet that got picked up on Google News.

We could take it on a stage, our hero reports from the frontline: inside the herbal medicine industry, or we go in search of a 'smart' mattress, living with a snorer.

Could make a fuss of the stat that Americans are buying 60 per cent more sleeping pills than five years ago. Go highbrow, what this says about America in the 21st century, according to Professor Heinz Beanz at South Dakota University.

Throw in a vox pop from Grafton Street, to keep it Irish. Take it niche and get into how much the drug companies are spending on advertising sleeping pills.

Then there's the technology angle: The curse of the 24/7 generation, why being 'always on' is costing the Celtic Tiger €25 billion a year in sick pay. Sidebar - talk to a few execs about using their Blackberry in bed.

The effects of sleep deprivation on small- to medium-sized businesses. The most important eight hours of the day; why a bed in the office will add more to productivity than a gym ever will. From there, get into the whole Buddhism Lite thing, the rise of eastern philosophy, from green tea to meditating at your desk.

It needs a celebrity angle, lists of famous insomniacs: Napoleon, Thatcher, Groucho Marx, ask the picture desk for a Heath Ledger shot, or that woman off Coronation Street who. . . 265, 264, 263 . . .