PERHAPS it has something to do with the years of getting up and down all night to deal with crying babies.

The constant bed-hopping. The worry of how much it's going to cost to get four of them through university. The mid-life crisis.

Whatever's causing it, I can't sleep. I've tried everything: listening to whale noises on tapes; breathing exercises; eye-ball exercises; and counting more sheep than have appeared in all the rounds of One Man And His Dog.

It's no good. I lie awake, listening to my wife snoring gently. Eventually, I get up, switch on TV, read the papers (again), watch a resident barn owl hunting in the garden, listen to the church bell mark the hour...one o'clock... two o'clock... three o'clock... four o'clock... five o'clock... six o'clock... and think I'm the only person still awake in the world.

After 48 hours of hardly any sleep the other day, I was desperate. So desperate that if someone had said streaking through the town centre would guarantee six hours sleep, I'd have whipped my clothes off in a flash.

I couldn't think straight at work so I went for a walk through the shopping centre to grab a sausage roll for lunch - and there it was in big black letters in the window of a Chinese medicine shop: "Insomnia Solved."

I had nothing to lose: "I've got terrible sleeping problems, can you help me?" I pleaded with the girl at the counter. She suggested a consultation with the 'Professor' who proceeded to take my pulse, check the colour of my tongue, and ask lots of questions, translated by the girl assistant who spoke better English.

"Professor recommend acupuncture, massage and natural remedy," she said.

"How much?" I asked.

"£30 acupuncture, £20 massage, £25 natural remedy."

"I'll have to think about it," I replied.

"Professor very worried - he do it for you now," insisted the girl. Apparently, my tongue was a very bad colour.

"I need to talk to my wife about it first," I protested.

But the Professor's assistant was very persuasive. Somehow, don't ask me how, I found myself in a treatment room out the back. All I can say in my defence is that I hadn't slept for 48 hours.

"Roll trousers up above knee and lie on bed," said the girl. She left and Professor entered: "Take shirt off, take trousers off," he instructed. I did as he asked and, as I lay there in my boxer shorts, he started sticking pins in my feet, legs and abdomen before leaving me on my own for a while. Professor came back, removed the pins and announced: "I give you free massage - take all off."

"Everything?"

"Everything. Relax."

I'd only popped out for a sausage roll!

But what the hell. Like I said, I'd had no sleep. Suddenly, hot oil was being expertly rubbed into me, from head to toe. "Get dressed," he said when it was (literally) all over. Back at the counter, the girl showed me the bottle of pills the Professor had prescribed, and I wrote out a cheque for £55, thinking that my wife was going to kill me.

Having finally picked up my sausage roll, and returned to the office, my colleagues were intrigued by one of the ingredients listed on the bottle of pills - 38.44 per cent Semen Zizyphi Spinozae.

"Blimey - it's tiger semen," one of them announced after checking a Chinese medicine web site.

"Tiger semen?" I choked on my sausage roll, spitting flaky pastry all over the desk. "Apparently, it has secret, ancient powers for encouraging drowsiness," he said.

It was a whole week before I discovered that Semen Zizyphi Spinozae has nothing whatsoever to do with tigers and is just a herb. It was their idea of a little joke. But, believe it or not, I've started to sleep better - now that I've stopped lying awake worrying about the poor bloke who has to collect the tiger semen.

ON THE ROAD

THE Dad At Large Roadshow snaked all the way up the A68 to Hexham and beyond to the tin hut village hall next door to The Rat pub. A meeting of the Beaufront and Anick Women's Institute was in full flow and all the talk was about Patsy Little's garden chairs.

Patsy, branch treasurer, had put the three garden chairs in the WI car boot sale at Hexham, where they were bought by a man with an eye for a bargain.

A fortnight later, Patsy happened to be visiting another car boot sale at Corbridge and there was the same man, flogging her garden chairs. A few days afterwards, Patsy's husband shouted for her to come upstairs and look out of the bedroom window. There, in next door's garden, were the garden chairs:

"I could have just thrown them over the hedge," giggled Patsy.

Next door neighbours Sheila and Brian Lowdon invited Patsy and her husband round for a barbecue the other day. "We sat on our own chairs," said Patsy. "But we haven't got the heart to tell them."

MEANWHILE, Beaufront and Anick WI's speaker-finder Liz Cutler recalled the time she and her husband were keeping the flame of romance burning. Her son Paul, aged three, knocked on her bedroom door and shouted: "I just wondered if Daddy had finished with you yet?"

SOME time later, Liz had to break some bad news to Paul - his pet tortoise Willem (he couldn't pronounce William) had died. "Willem's gone to Jesus," she told him. "Well can you tell Jesus's mummy to buy him his own tortoise and send me mine back," replied the little boy.