I have not been having a great sleep recently, which is unusual for me as I am an 8hrs a night sleeper, and I have my routine down to a tee.

I don’t usually over-sleep or under-sleep, but recently my pattern has been interrupted, and I have not been sleeping well.

There is no reason for the poor sleep. I don’t feel stressed or overtly unsettled. But for some reason, I am having a pattern of restless nights of sleep.

The result of this is all the usual stuff; tiredness, a hazy sluggishness and a lack of energy for exercise. In addition, I am eating a lot of food, and my concentration is a significant bit off.

I decided to have a further look into the effects of a lack of sleep, and one thing that came up was the loss of the ability to empathise with others…

“One study found that those who are sleep-deprived lose the ability to properly recognise expressions of anger and happiness in the faces of others.”

That explains why I didn’t quite notice the full expression of the cyclist that I crashed into on my cycle through the streets of Beijing. Of course, he shouldn’t have stopped that quickly in front of me, but my reactions would have been quicker if I had a decent night’s sleep.

In the end up it was cool because we checked that all was ok and we parted amicably. My takeaways from the crash were to get more sleep so that my reaction times improve, and as always – Chinese people are so respectful of others!

Even when they are hit by a sleepy Scottish person on a peddle bike.