For most of us insomniacs the night is no gift. Even if we’ve done our best to follow a sleep-inducing routine, we may not fall asleep or stay asleep. Many of us sleep soundly until two or three a.m. only to awaken and lie tossing and turning until morning.
What psychotherapist Philip Carr-Gomm proposes in his latest book is a six-step program to cultivate better sleep. Based on the latest sleep science and tested through his sleep clinic, he offers understanding and relief. I’ve been following Philip since he was Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, a position he held for thirty-two years (1988-2020). I participated in his sleep clinic a few years ago, so was pleased to see the outcome of his studies appear in the form of this book.
What Philip proposes is a shift in our attitude toward sleep. Those of us who suffer from insomnia know that lying in bed worrying about all the things we have to do tomorrow and how wretched we’re going to feel, is the absolute worst thing we can do. The shift is this: Think of the night as a magical time when “the conscious and unconscious minds, the ego and deep self can cooperate to give you the fullest possible experience of life” (20.)
Sleep is not time wasted nor is the time we spend trying to sleep. Rather than suffer, we can transform it into a magical time using a set of tools and techniques. What occurs at night while your body is at rest is: healing, problem-solving, creativity, inspiration, and spiritual development. What Philip outlines in this book is a way to encourage and allow that shift in consciousness so the magic can happen.
His work is both scientific and spiritual. You will learn about your body but also about your mind and spirit. What does he suggest will lead to a generally good night’s sleep.
Spend time daily with Nature. Communing with trees, plants, and animals and spending time in the sun helps put our Circadian rhythms back on track.
Address your stress levels through daily practice: mindfulness meditation and visualization, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, sophrology, or yoga nidra. Philip has studied these practices and leads weekly meditations on “Tea with a Druid.”
Tend to your emotional life in whatever way works for you (counselling, journaling, dealing with your stuff, etc.)
Part 1 of the book is structured in six steps. Briefly:
Stop fighting and reframe the night. If you can’t sleep, then rest and meditate. This alone will induce a shift in consciousness. Something that I’ve researched myself is how meditation lowers the speed of our brainwaves from beta (jumpy, monkey mind) to alpha and theta (a blissfully creative state.) I use this technique to write novels.
Tune in to your personal sleep story, your patterns and nature, and your chronotype. Are you a lark or a night owl? When is your optimal bedtime?
Understand the body and how it’s affected by various substances. Here, Philip provides his opinions (based on facts) about what works, what might work, and what doesn’t work.
Create a sleep-inducing setting.
Experiment with techniques. He describes thirteen methods to either send you to sleep or into a creative mode.
Explore rituals and routines that work for you.
In Part 2, Philip answers most every question ever asked regarding sleep.
All in all, The Gift of the Night is a step forward in sleep consciousness. If you find one or two things that help you personally, it’s worth the cost. For me, it’s visualization and binaural beats; for you it may be hypnotherapy, EFT, or a daily yoga practice. Note that if you purchase the audio edition, Philip will read the book to you in his soothing British voice. For a sample, join him for “Tea with a Druid”—live-streamed every Monday at 8pm UK time (noon on the Pacific Northwest coast)—for a conversation and meditation lasting 20-30 minutes. You’ll be in the good company of hundreds of druids from around the world who meet together in the sacred grove. You can find recordings of over 250 of these programs on his YouTube channel. And you can read or listen to interviews here.
One more thing. This lullaby from the Highlands of Scotland is one of the most beautiful and relaxing pieces I’ve ever heard. You can listen to it here. It’s called “Healing Sleep.”
Over the holidays, I discovered this used book in our local bookstore and decided to read it. This is the kind of story one can call delightful. It was written by Edith Nesbit who wrote under the pen name E. Nesbit. Her biography says: “She was a mischievous, tomboyish child who grew into an unconventional adult. With her husband, Hubert Bland, she was one of the founder members of the socialist Fabian Society; their household became a centre of the socialist and literary circles of the time. The chaos of their Bohemian home . . . was regularly increased by the presence of their children and numerous friends, among whom were George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.
Like Mrs. Barnstable, the mother of The Railway Children, Edith was a published writer, and a good one. This Puffin Classic (first published in 1906 and this edition republished in 1994) has several full pages of pen and ink sketches that are remarkable. The writing voice reminded me of C. S. Lewis and the children of the Pevensies. Since the Chronicles of Narnia weren’t published until the 1950s, I can’t help but wonder if Lewis read and liked Nesbit’s books. Perhaps some of the Railway Children adventures rubbed off on him.
The three children: Roberta (Bobbie) who turns twelve, Phyllis who seems to be around eight years old, and Peter who turns ten, have all sorts of adventures after their father mysteriously disappears and they have to move from London into the countryside. They are suddenly impoverished, so their mother spends long hours writing and selling stories in order to make ends meet. With all kinds of free time at Three Chimneys, their new cottage, the children make friends with the locals—particularly Perks the Porter and the Station Master. They also befriend a wealthy and wise old gentleman who regularly rides the train and helps them solve the mystery of their father.
Things I loved about this story:
The trains of course. Who doesn’t love the old fashioned “Harry Potter” trains winding their way through the English countryside.
The innocence of it all. The children were allowed to roam free and get into mischief, as I did as a kid. This was a time in which a man could kiss a young girl on the cheek in the spirit of friendship and gratitude and not be maligned for it.
The writing, so clear, detailed, and descriptive.
“There was a cake on the table covered with white sugar, with ‘Dear Bobbie’ on it in pink sweets, and there were buns and jam; but the nicest thing was that the big table was almost covered with flowers — wall-flowers were laid all round the tea-tray — there was a ring of forget-me-nots round each plate. The cake had a wreath of white lilac round it, and in the middle was something that looked like a pattern all done with single blooms of lilac or wallflower or laburnum” (73).
The strength of character in all whom we meet.
Frank discussions about the differences between boys and girls, and corrections made with regard to stereotypical statements. (The doctor is somewhat old fashioned.)
A film of this particular story was produced in 1970 and the trailer seems quite true to the book. Apparently, the children returned recently in another film: The Railway Children Return (2022). This one concerns a different group of children and is set in 1944, when the children are evacuated from Manchester to East Yorkshire because of the bombings.
Thank you, Miss Nesbit for bringing your stories to the world.
Please no. This might well be my favourite Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery. Book number fifteen in a succession that spans twenty years of the characters’ lives, also reads as if it may be the last. The way things land between Dr. Ruth and DCI Nelson both romantically and professionally, leads them on a new trajectory and Griffiths confirms, it is the last book “for now.” I can’t imagine what it’s like for her to say goodbye to these characters.
When the last remains of Emily Pickering, a young Cambridge archaeology student who disappeared in 2002, are discovered walled up in a café, Ruth is called in to investigate. She gets involved, though she’s busy at UNN, her own university, as the archaeology department for which she is the head is about to be closed down. Naturally DCI Nelson is involved as well as the charming DCI Clough, as it’s happened on his patch. Then our old friend, Cathbad, who nearly died in book fourteen and is suffering from long Covid disappears, leaving everyone devastated. The usual players are involved, along with Ruth’s new sister Zoe, and there’s even an unexpected and timely cameo by an old victim.
Ruth and Nelson struggle with the intricacies of their longtime relationship, given that it’s coming around to Father’s Day and he has two families: the first who seem to take precedence and the second, Ruth and their daughter Kate, who get Nelson time when he’s willing and able. I found myself wanting to bat them both upside the head a few times. Nelson can be thoughtless and Ruth indifferent. The combination leads to romantic stasis, which is why old David, her colleague at UNN archaeology thinks he has a shot.
I think what really draws me to this series besides the archaeological and mythological references are the small towns and cities in the north and east of England, some of which I’d like to visit because of Griffiths’s descriptions. Norfolk, where Ruth lives on the Saltmarsh and King’s Lynn which looks particularly charming, Lincoln and Durham; as well as Blackpool, a northwest coast town billed the UK’s favourite playground. Grimes Graves, a Neolithic flint mine is a creepy setting in this story. I’ll take a pass on climbing down one of those shafts, even though Griffiths’s made the decent herself.
One day, I’d like to begin at the beginning and reread the whole series in order. Why hasn’t this series been picked up for TV yet? Don’t you think it’s about time?
If you’re a fan of British cozy mystery author Elly Griffiths, you’ll know that she’s been writing one Ruth Galloway archaeological mystery each year for over a decade. This is book fourteen. When the pandemic hit, she had to make a decision. Do I set this story in the current reality or not? It’s a decision many authors faced and will continue to face as we move through history. As no-nonsense as Ruth, Griffiths decided to not only to set it during the pandemic but to make it a kind of homage to plagues and isolation. I admit that I found bits triggering at times as I followed the characters through the horror and hassle of the opening weeks of the plague in Britain, February 2020.
Ten-year-old Kate is home, bored, doing school online. Nelson’s wife and young son are away looking after her mother. There are pandemic references: the evening clanging cheer to front-line workers, masking or not, grocery cues, empty shelves and the stocking of staples including toilet paper, lockdown laws, social distancing, two-metre walks out-of-doors, office staff on rotation and working from home, learning to Zoom, teaching from home, loved ones taken away to hospital and the grief of those quarantined and left behind who are not permitted to visit, references to plagues past, and the feeling of never being able to escape the fear and isolation it conjures.
Griffith’s strength is her ability to weave in these facts in a kind of matter-of-fact way, so they never overpower the mystery, which concerns healthy women who appear to be suddenly committing suicide. One woman is even found in her bedroom with the door locked from the outside.
Griffiths’ books are always gently packed with tidbits and meaningful symbols. The title signifies, not only the isolation of plagues in general, but how our “killer” operates, locking victims in total darkness. As is always the case, Nelson and Ruth end up tangled in dangerous climatic scenes of discovery.
Nelson, who’s living alone while his wife’s away, comes calling on Ruth until his grown daughter arrives home, needs her daddy, and he goes running off. That’s Nelson, protector of all and burly man of guilt. Ruth takes it all in her stride, even the discovery of her mother’s lifelong secret—a secret that will come to affect her present moment in a big way.
One thing that bothered me: I came away not understanding the killer’s motivation. He had the means and opportunity but the motive seemed lacking. Perhaps I missed something.
One thing I loved: the “Who’s Who” character pages at the end of the book. My favourite character is Cathbad and, true to form, the druid shaman embraces the pandemic by offering Zoom yoga classes every morning to his children and friends.
Don’t let the pandemic setting deter you. Just be aware that if you start fretting about going out in public, you’re likely triggered. We live in a different time now and this too shall pass.
If you’ve read or watched The Girl on the Train, you’ll know how Paula Hawkins likes to mess with her character’s minds. Published in 2021, the slow fire that’s burning could refer to any of them, as all of these characters carry emotional wounds from past traumas.
There’s “The Girl Who Got Away,” but not unscathed, when she and her friend skipped school one day and accepted a ride with a predator.
The woman who was struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run at age ten and bears more than physical scars.
The woman married to the story-stealing writer who lost her little boy and never recovered. And her sister with her own troubled son.
The old woman who no one sees but who sees it all.
Hawkins connects them all and situates them in the same community. She even provides a map. At its core, this is a murder mystery that begins with a vicious killing on a canal boat in London. Intelligently crafted, the author keeps us guessing as she skips between scenes from her characters’ pasts that reveal possible motivation, flaws, and ferocity.
Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for fifteen years before writing fiction. This training is evident in the structuring of her novels; as well as her fascination with people, their humanity, and their personal stories. She grew up in Zimbabwe but has spent the past thirty years in London. A Slow Fire Burning is a quick read, excellent for summer, and likely available at your local library. That’s where I found it … on the “Hawk” fiction shelf.
Griffiths’s latest Ruth Galloway archaeological crime mystery sends us forward in time as well as backward. She’s now Head of Archaeology at North Norfolk U and her daughter, Kate, is thirteen. DCI Nelson, Kate’s father, and the love of Ruth’s life, is still living with his wife and helping raise their three-year-old son (although his parentage is questionable if I remember correctly). But, that’s the kind of guy Nelson is. But hey, come on, don’t you think it’s time you lived your truth, Nelson?
There’s plenty here for readers who enjoy unravelling a murder mystery along with Nelson’s crack detective team, while delving into the lives of old familiars—Ruth & Nelson, Cathbad & Judy—and there’s a new archaeologist in town, David Brown, whose enthusiasm and connection with The Night Hawks make him suspect, and Ruth terribly annoyed.
The Night Hawks are a group of amateur archaeologists and metal detectorists, who wander at night searching for prize loot buried under England’s soil. They discover a Bronze Age hoard along with a three-thousand-year-old body on the beach, and nearby another body—a man recently deceased. Then they discover a bloody scene at a spooky farm house that appears to be a murder-suicide carried out by the husband, a scientist who’s not a very nice guy at all. Add to this soup, the legend of the Black Shuk, a giant black dog with red eyes that prowls the vicinity of Black Dog farm where the alleged murder-suicide occurred, and you’ve got an up-all-night-read brewing.
ellygriffiths.co.uk
One year, I’ll read this whole series from beginning to end again. I’d love to see this series come to television. Producers, please.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkNoPrivacy policy
