Do you sleep OK? / I bet you don’t get much sleep?

We’re kept awake most nights by the Fringe Club, which is behind the fence, just 30 metres away. It stays open until 3am every night except Mondays, thumping very loud music. Once the music stops we tend to fall asleep within a few minutes while the patrons are still dribbling out of the venue. We wake up each morning once the sun rises above a tall tree and hits us in the face with its full glare - we think at around 9am, so we can sleep about six hours each night if we’re lucky, and then we try to top up with a siesta. Two nights we were so exhausted that we actually slept through the loud music, passing out at around midnight. By comparison, Monday night was very peaceful.

Our beds are not so uncomfortable. The first night was very cold, but each day our sleeping conditions get incrementally better - we were given one sleeping bag, then a second, and then a third, and even an emergency thermal blanket and pillows. Because the material conditions improve incrementally over the 10 days - something more than nothing, and then something more than that - it is the improvements, and not what is lacking, that we notice most, which is a very good way to be!

[Deliverance at the Adelaide Fringe, March 2012]