It’s very nice to go travellin’…sometimes

Picture: British Airways

There are plenty of pithy quotes about travel, and I could be somewhat pretentious here by referencing the Taoist saying that "the journey is the reward”, but I’d prefer the kernel of Robert Louis Stephenson's oft-truncated "for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive", which says much the same thing. Because it just isn’t. Fact.

In the last three months I’ve spent a lot of time in the air. In fact, I’m writing this on my way back from Dubai on a trip that comes only a week after returning from a visit to Los Angeles. Ooh, get him! And, yes, I am aware of my extending carbon footprint... And there's even more to come. Over the course of March and the beginning of April I traversed some 7,000 miles of continental Europe on a tour of cities where my company was staging a series of customer events. All but 300 of those miles were conducted by plane, which meant that many - if not most - journeys required dealing with those [mostly] alpha male road warriors who spend much of their working lives plying these routes, hogging the overhead luggage bins and generally acting like utter cocks. Many are quite senior in their companies, spending their days in dull business review meetings, looking at pie charts and spreadsheets and barking out instructions and percentages. In other words, they are used to getting their own way in general, which leads to a sense of entitlement when they board a plane while flashing their high-tier frequent flier status (the coveted ‘gold’ level that opens up the perfumed gardens of first class lounges and the ‘priority’ boarding group - the one that gets them to their seat before the rest of us plebs, taking a provocative age to fold their raincoat neatly into the overhead bin while belligerently blocking the aisle to prevent the remaining 30 rows to fill up). At this point I have to confess that I, too, have tasted this nirvana. I’ll confess to the occasional upgrade that has propelled me to the front of the boarding queue. However, this is a double-edged sword: on the one hand you’re seated smugly with your carry-on wheelie case stowed and a hot towel with which to freshen up, but on the other hand, your remaining passengers troop past with barely concealed contempt, casting you the skunk-eye as they go.

If your only experience of air travel is an annual excursion to a beach somewhere then you’ve actually been spared the worst of it. I don’t mean that to sound elitist, but even enduring passengers who’ve been downing pints of Stella since 4.30 in the morning at the Gatwick bar are a mild irritation compared with the passive-aggression of some regular business travellers. That’s right, the armrest-hogging, stow-my-bag-sideways-in-the-locker, hover in front of the boarding aisle as if that makes actual boarding happen sooner, types who demonstrate my long-held belief that travel really does bring out the worst in people. As I am often reminded, it doesn’t really matter which class you fly in (“we’ll all get there at the same time”). Well, in principle, yes, though that doesn’t stop the pushy types who rush from the back on landing and bundle past those trying to exit their rows like cars filtering into traffic. I know that some of these serial bargers might be desperate to make a connecting flight, but the experience of many of my recent journeys has been somewhat different. “Gits,” we shall call them.

© Simon Poulter 2019

Two of the journeys in my burst of travel in March were by train, and I have to say, they restored my faith in the old locomotive. In the early days of living in Paris I used the Eurostar to get back to London for the weekend. But the prevalence of delays caused by everything from trackside fires outside Gare du Nord to illegal immigrants in the Channel Tunnel rendered the Eurostar anything less than the romantic notion of Jason Bourne-style city-to-city travel. However, recent trips from Zurich to Milan, and Milan to Lausanne reminded me that it's not at all a bad way to travel. Being the Swiss railway, the trains were punctual and comfortable, even in second class. And what better way to travel than watching lakes, snow-capped mountains and quaint chalets passing by the window? And not a single scrap for overhead locker space. Notable, too, was the absence of turbulence, or Storm Gareth which contrived to bugger up my journey into and out of Amsterdam.

So, if you haven’t taken this on board so far, travel isn’t all it's cracked up to be. It’s a refrain I’ve found myself repeating a lot in recent months, as friends have commented on what seems like near-daily Facebook posts of “Simon Poulter is travelling from Airport X to Airport Y”. And there is now some scientific evidence to prove this point. Researchers at the University of Surrey and at Sweden’s Linnaeus University recently published a report into the “darker side of hypermobility”, that group of people - which I suppose must, now, include me - who travel a lot, mainly for work and end up inducing both envy and disdain from their social circles for the never-ending updates which, perhaps, suggest a veneer of ‘jet set’ (in old money) glamour. Underlying this, however, is anything but glamour.

The study found that frequent travel bears three types of risk: physiological, psychological and emotional, and social. The physiological is, essentially, jet lag but unbeknownst to most who succumb to it with their travels is the fact that spending extended hours crossing oceans, continents and timezones speeds up the ageing process and raises the risk of a heart attack or stroke. And that’s on top of deep-vein thrombosis, absorbing strangers’ germs (and not necessarily from airplane toilet seats - your tray table is a proper little germ farm), and exposure to levels of radiation for some frequent flyers that goes well beyond regulatory limits on the ground. Add to that, a lack of exercise and poor diet, and you’ve got a cocktail of lethality.

The view from seat 68K
© Simon Poulter 2019

The Surrey/Linnsaeus study then found that business travel takes its toll psychologically and emotionally, especially when you combine the isolation of often travelling alone and separated from loved ones with work stress (especially managing e-mail and incoming demands while on the move). A study of World Bank employees found that there was a three times-higher likelihood of frequent business travellers making insurance claims about psychological mistreatment. Finally, the study also identified a social impact, in particular, the creation of ‘war brides’. Most business travellers are male (the French hotel group Accor found in a 2011 survey that 74% of Asian business travellers were men), adding pressure on partners who remain at home, especially with children. There was even evidence that friendships suffer, as frequent business travellers prioritise immediate family when they are back on home soil.

Even factoring in that those who travel abroad for work the most tend to be in the upper echelons of the corporate ladder, and are therefore more likely to be compensated for it, being part of the “mobile elite” is not all champagne flutes at 39,000ft. Well, it might be for some, but for the vast majority of us, compressed into an economy class seat by corporate travel policies, and racing to catch connecting flights because the company travel agency found the only routing that was ‘in policy’, spare a thought for the mounting expenses backlog and the utter dirge of truly awful airline food. And take pity on us - well, me in particular - who’ve succumbed to the reality of air travel, which, perhaps more than any other form of organised movement, seems to generate a sense of entitlement, regarding professional and social achievement as that nirvana of over-inflated privilege, the airline lounge, and who regularly put up with the vagaries, the ageing plane fleets and the penny-pinching contempt of pledging unstinting loyalty to one airline over another to get in there. Have pity.

Johnny Boy would have loved it - Sarah Jane Morris' sweet little mysteries

There is an inherent danger to covering the work of a unique artist: there’s good reason, too, why few successfully (or even at all) carry off imprints of music by, say, Bowie or Queen without sounding like a bad Wednesday night in a suburban karaoke club. For fans (and purist fans in particular) of the original performer, the notion of any form of emulation is fraught: too close a copy and you dismiss it as "so what?"; too outré and you creep close to sacrilege.

Riskier still is if the covers are of a deceased legend like John Martyn. Even his own myriad reinterpretations of his greatest songs didn’t always land well, although that was part of his unpredictable appeal - regularly reworking material to suit his mood, be it acoustic, electric, funked-up, reggae-infused, jazz-influenced, or whatever.

His gargantuan, 17-CD posthumous Island Years box set served testament to this, with its plethora of alternate studio takes and live versions which showcased Martyn's restless reinvention - many the result of what touring approach he was taking at the time (i.e. on his own, with mucker Danny Thompson, or with jazz and rock band backing). So step forward bravely, Sarah Jane Morris and her album project Sweet Little Mystery, which brings her incredible contralto voice together with regular guitar collaborator Tony Rémy, along with Tim Cansfield (acoustic guitar), Henry Thomas (bass) and Martyn Barker (drums), to reinvent some of Martyn's songs in a respectful but rarely (if at all) emulatory way. She is not the first to do this, of course: such is Martyn's appeal that plenty have done so before, most famously Eric Clapton's version of May You Never on 1977's Slowhand album that probably - and sadly - did more for Martyn's bank balance than many of his own albums. In 2011, two years after his death, the lovingly-curated compilation Johnny Boy Would Love This produced an eclectic array of tributes from committed fans like Beth Orton, David Gray, The Cure's Robert Smith, Beck, Lisa Hannigan, Paolo Nutini, Snow Patrol, Bombay Bicycle Club, Morcheeba, fellow folkie Judie Tzuke and Martyn's oft-collaborator and pal Phil Collins.

So what does Morris bring to the table? A huge amount, actually. Martyn was labelled many things during his career, largely because he dabbled in many things, but jazz seems to be one of the roots to his canon. Indeed, having started out in the folk clubs of Glasgow, before migrating to London and clubs like 'Les Cousins' (which artists like Martyn, Ralph McTell and others mistakenly thought was named after a bloke called Les Cousins...) he discovered saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders' album Karma, turning him onto modern jazz. From here on in Martyn worked on textures, especially with his voice. "There's a space between words and music and my voice lives right there," he once explained. The album Solid Air, now revered as the godfather of chillout music, and its follow-up One World, could easily have been regarded as jazz, even through the weed-wooze that they conjured. Which is where, kind of, Morris comes in, with a voice that, in her 60th year, is richly reminscent of Nina Simone or Sarah Vaughan. Married to Rémy, Cansfield and Thomas's guitar and bass work, and Barker's understated drumming, it produces corking versions of my Martyn favourites, like Couldn't Love You More, Sweet Little Mystery and I Don't Want To Know.

Picture: Juliet Matthews

In a live performance at London's Purcell Room to launch the album, Morris and band even put in a rollicking version of Solid Air. Given that this song, a paean to Nick Drake, is, in its original form, as stoner-friendly a piece of music as you will find, the brisk and lively application here is refreshingly inventive. Johnny Boy would certainly have loved it. Closer - but not too close - to the original was One World, easily my personal Martyn pick, with its poignant "To take our place in one world, to make our peace in one world" stepping closer to the original, while Fairytale Lullaby (which recently turned up in a particularly bucolic edition of Countryfile) ambled closer still to its foundation, with its now somewhat outdated proto-folk, Arran sweater-wearing, finger-in-ear lyrics about goblins, elves, pixies and "the magic dancing wood". Taken out of that era and the folk club context, Morris delivers it with a playful earnestness.

The entire Sweet Little Mystery project is clearly a work of heartfelt love for Martyn's music by Morris, and in a stage show directed by the comedian and activist Mark Thomas, there are video inserts featuring interviews with Eddi Reader (with whom Martyn collaborated on a TV performance of the southern blues classic He's Got All The Whisky), fellow Glaswegian and cohort Jim McKnight, and Martyn's sister, Julie Ann. Indeed, these three interviews underscored my fascination with the big man himself: Martyn was born on September 11, 1948 in Beechcroft Avenue in New Malden - a 30-minute walk from the house where I was born. As a young boy (then Iain David McGeachy), his light opera-singing parents divorced, with his father taking the five-year-old John to Glasgow, while his mother remained in the Kingston-upon-Thames area. Now, considering that no one famous ever seemed to hail from my neck of the woods, the discovery that my musical hero John Martyn was born a mile or so from where I came into being 19 years later was a revelation. In interviews - few and far between, it must be said - Martyn would skip between broad Glaswegian (increasingly slurred as life's excesses took their later toll) and a more southern English accent. There are videos of him on YouTube performing in the 1970s with what could be considered a Mockney voice. So to see his two worlds collide in these interviews - the obviously Scottish McKnight and Reader, and Martyn's Kingston-raised "little sister" - provides a delightful set of interludes that also reveal the "grace and danger" that not only titled one of his most acclaimed albums (and a band his nephews play in today), but was his trademark.

Few Martyn tributes have ever abstained from referencing his occasionally appalling, substance-driven behaviour. Indeed, the consensus has always been that his 'danger' and self-destructive nature lead inevitably to his untimely demise at the age of 60, ten years ago this year. But I've always chosen to dwell on his grace, the sometimes impossibly, hauntingly beautiful songs like Go Down Easy and Head And Heart that led his first wife, Beverley Kutner, to remark that he put so much emotion into his music that there was rarely anything left for anyone else. Sarah Jane Morris's Sweet Little Mystery captures much of that emotion but, rather than focusing on the sometimes mawkish nature of his music's beauty, brings it to animated life. If only the same could be done for Martyn himself.

Time travel: The Church live in Santa Cruz

© Simon Poulter 2019

Before Amazon, home delivery was a rare event. In fact, I can only remember one occasion in my youth when the doorbell rang and a van driver was standing outside, having wheeled up to the front door a large cardboard box. I was, at the time, living back at home, having returned there from Shropshire after LM, the magazine I joined after leaving school, had gone bust in May 1987. Although I was managing to eek out some freelance work with Smash Hits and Record Mirror, I was officially unemployed. Signing on. So when this large box arrived, I was baffled. Not blessed with a great deal of money, I was hardly going nuts with what was then termed ‘mail order’. Curious, I opened the box and sifting through the polystyrene packing chips I unearthed a whole pile of vinyl records. Carol, the receptionist (whom, I suspect, secretly fancied me) at LM’s publisher had deemed me the lucky recipient of loads of albums that had continued to come into the magazine’s office from record labels, long after the title had folded. For one reason or another, most of this delivery was from Arista Records, and included disco diva Taylor Dayne's unlistenable debut album and an equally iffy release from Aretha Franklin. Also in the pile, however, was a record that, 31 years later, would have me drive for over six hours from Los Angeles to hear it played live in its entirety.

That album was Starfish by The Church, the Australian band once tipped (or is it cursed?) as “the next U2”, and sometimes compared - not unreasonably - with the likes of Echo & The Bunnymen, tropes generated inevitably by a propensity for "ethereal and shimmering"™ guitars drenched in reverb, delays and other effects. Throw in “the 80s” and The Church became part of an Australian invasion (which wasn’t anything like it, but you’ve got to remember this was a time when there were Minogues and various Neighbours on the loose, not to mention Midnight Oil and, if I stretch the antipodean theme a little too far, the Kiwis Crowded House). In customary rock journalism manner, The Church were hard to pin down. Starfish was their fifth album, but not having heard their previous four, it brought me to their sound afresh, and I was particularly drawn to the album's soundscapes, something I'd always liked about progressive rock (I was, then, and still am - suck it up, naysayers - a fan of prog, that genre maligned for the misconception that it's just 20-minute keyboard solos and songs about elves, when in fact Bowie and the latter-stage Beatles were as much prog as anything else). In other words, music that transported you away from the contrite and the conformed, and made you listen a little more, appreciate the instrumentation, wig out even.

Picture: The Church/Facebook

Starfish did just that, and last Friday evening, at the stupendously art deco Rio Theatre in California’s Wigout Central, Santa Cruz, The Church played it in its entirety on the penultimate leg of a US tour to celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary (OK, 31st now). I’ll admit, it was a bit of a punt: the logistics of getting from Anaheim (where I’d been at a work event) to Santa Cruz, a 372-mile drive away, notwithstanding, I'd last seen The Church four years ago at the tiny New Morning, an obscure jazz club in Paris, and had been left somewhat underwhelmed. The evening had been let down by lead singer and bass player Steve Kilbey being decidedly worse for wear. Having succumbed to heroin addiction at the end of the 1990s, it was unclear as to whether he’d relapsed or had simply smoked something before the gig to leave him so unsteady and slurred.

Thankfully there was no such indisposition in Santa Cruz as Kilbey and fellow founder member Peter Koppes (co-architect of that signature guitar jangle), along with longtime drummer Tim Powles, second lead guitarist Ian Haug of Powderfinger, and guitarist/keyboard player Jeffrey Cain of Remy Zero launched into Destination, Starfish’s opening track. The long-held convention in rock is that, when playing live, you must avoid peaking too soon. That would be almost unavoidable in playing Starfish sequentially as the album’s second track is the song that really landed them on the map, especially in the US: Under The Milky Way.

Remembering playing the album for the first time that Tuesday morning (quite why I recall it being a Tuesday, escapes me, but by luck or judgement, Starfish was the first out of the Arista pile), it’s hard not to resort to predictable expression when describing Kilbey’s mellifluous vocal and wonderfully understated vibe. No wonder Under The Milky Way remains their signature and, equally, no wonder it ended up in that other totem of the 1980s, Miami Vice. Michael Mann’s music curation on that show had good form when it came to picking songs with atmosphere, be it In The Air Tonight in the opening episode (Sonny Crocket driving his Dino down Collins - get it? - Avenue), or Peter Gabriel’s Rhythm Of The Heat, so Milky Way and, in a another episode of Series 5, Starfish’s Blood Money, fitted the show's aural aesthetic with polished ease. The thing is, though, that Starfish is such a seminal album, and while Milky Way might be a highlight, the sequence does not diminish, even after the commercial peak of its second track. Produced by legendary Los Angeles session guitarist Waddy Wachtel and Greg Ladanyi (who'd worked with Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Fleetwood Mac and Don Henley, amongst others)], the album as a whole invited a sparser sound than The Church's previous outings, drawing on the sort of ambience that indeed made The Joshua Tree so evocative of the desert U2 were trying to eulogise.

Three decades on, Starfish in its entirety is still a complete delight to indulge. The album's original production treatment was so transportive, and yet live at the Rio, no less evocative, albeit with an edgier nature, powered by the band's live complement, especially the guitar interplay between Koppes and Haug, and the use of 12-string guitar to give a Byrds-like chime to Antenna. Lost and North, South, East And West bore a epic soundscape, while the album’s second hit single, Reptile, punched epically as, arguably, the stronger of the two cuts to have graced the Top 40.

Picture: The Church

Touring a classic album in its entirety is a risky proposition, though one that has gained considerable heritage vogue in recent years, as bands leverage work that casts the nostalgic fan back to where and when they first heard it. I have no particular desire to return to who I was in 1988 when that box turned up on my doorstep, and despite my relative disappointment the last time I saw The Church live, the proposition of listening to Starship being performed from start to finish, was too strong to resist when I discovered that they'd be playing relatively close to where I’d be in California. This time I resolutely wasn’t disappointed. Actually, my respect for the band was only reinforced, especially after the intermission when they dipped into their near-40-year canon of 26 albums to play a further 12 songs including the Bowieish Another Century from their most recent studio recording Man Woman Life Death Infinity, the REM-like Constant In Opal and the deliciously rocking Sealine, before ending with The Unguarded Moment, which dates back to their 1981 debut, Of Skins And Heart, and Miami, the epic, hazy track of beautiful, shimmering guitar work that closes Further/Deeper, the 2014 album that led me to that somewhat off-key gig in Paris.

You may have come to the end of this post and found yourself still none the wiser about The Church. Albums, from Of Skins and Heart through to their most recent Man Woman Life Death Infinity, may have passed you by; even mention of Under The Milky Way might only register as something you might have heard once. But consider this: legend has it that it was a 1982 Church gig in Sheffield that inspired Johnny Marr, Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke to form The Smiths. I guess the angle must be in the jangle. In Santa Cruz, a city which proudly retains its hippy vibe (with the surfers and smell of legal weed to go with it), those frugging wildly in front of the stage at the venerable Rio Theatre demonstrated that, with any band of a certain vintage, there’s an audience to be found who will embrace their own histories and the memories that go with them without prejudice. For me, it was a long drive to travel back 31 years but, heck, it was worth it.

Like two bald men fighting over a comb: Man United versus Chelsea

The jokes have started early. Rumours coming out of the US that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is making or has made a bid to buy Manchester United have been met with gags such as “Amazon buys Man U, and immediately delivers the title to their neighbours”. What a sad state of affairs, then, that arguably the biggest football club in the world, with a history as storied as any footballing royalty in Europe, like Juventus, Real Madrid or Barcelona, should be such a source of ridicule. But, then, Chelsea - their opponents today at Old Trafford - aren’t exactly all that far away, themselves, either. Not that I’m suggesting for one minute that The Blues should be considered in the same company, history-wise, as their Mancunian rivals, but it is curious, going into today’s encounter, just how many parallels exist between the two clubs, and not just the shared experience of José Mourinho as manager.

Watching the Manchester derby the other night, I genuinely felt sorry for Ole Gunnar Solskjær - super-sub in his playing days at United and effectively brought in off the managerial bench in December to become, first, caretaker manager at Old Trafford and, since the end of March, permanent head coach. For a rival fan, Solskjær in his day could infuriate with his ability to be brought on by Sir Alex Ferguson late in a game and score the kind of vital goal that secured United’s imperious reputation in the 1990s and 2000s. But since Ferguson retired, that reputation has proven unmaintainable. On Wednesday night, however, the genuinely likeable, articulate and intelligent Solskjær looked crestfallen as Manchester City first broke the deadlock with Bernardo Silva’s 54th-minute strike, and then sub Leroy Sane’s low shot a few minutes later to humiliate David De Gea. It was a game that bluntly symbolised the power shift in Manchester: United, still retaining an army of vastly expensive players (Luke Shaw earning five times more in a week than a teacher of ten years' standing earns in a year...), some of whom there only by entitlement, up against a similarly enriched City line-up coached by Pep Guardiola, justifiably the most admired manager of his generation. City may have bought their way to the summit with Sheikh Mansour’s Emirati riches, but that’s the way it goes. You can no longer stand on ceremony in modern football, as United are finding to their cost.

Compare them, then, with Chelsea. Until Roman Abramovich came along in June 2003, buying Chelsea on the back of their final game of the 2002-2003 season, in which Jesper Grønkjær dramatically volleyed in to beat Liverpool 2-1, thus securing Champions League football for the following term, the club’s legacy was, to be fair, patchy. A single league title, in 1955, a couple of FA Cups and the European Cup Winners Cup twice since 1970 was all they had to offer, with a veneer of glamour generated by a celebrity following in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When away fans sing “where we you when you were shit”, I know exactly where at Stamford Bridge I was standing. Without, though, trawling over the Abramovich era in depth, Chelsea in 2019 are in a weird place: an owner rendered indifferent due to his visa problems (and contemplating offers for the club); a stadium overhaul on permanent hold; a string of successful (and some less so) but short-lived managers since 2005, with the jury out on the current one; the prospect of a UEFA-enacted transfer ban and a squad in desperate need of overhauling, including some highly-paid European stars approaching the point when the club’s policy on over-30s means that they will be frustrated in being offered a contract of longer than 12 months. Throw in the inevitable loss of a star player (Eden Hazard), and the chance that the currently injured starlet Callum Hudson-Odoi might also leave in the direction from where his head has been turned by German club interest, and you see a club that could fall apart in football terms…as well as corporate terms. The turbulence building up around Chelsea is not all that far removed from the mood in camp at Old Trafford.

So, with the fight between Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United for third and fourth spot increasingly looking like two bald men fighting over a comb, with all four dropping points as easily as they win them, with just three more fixtures left in the season, the encounter today between The Reds and The Blues, is a real head-scratcher. Chelsea, of course, have been a nightmare this season with their visits to North-West England, their fixtures with Everton and Liverpool highlighting a mental inability to play the second half with anything like the intensity of the first. But, then, you have a Manchester United that has struggled to convince ever since Solskjær was announced with crowd-pleasing intent as the club’s full-time manager at the end of March. And that includes last Sunday’s abject, 4-0 capitulation to Everton at Goodison Park.

Today’s game may just prove to be a damp squib: two beleaguered (relatively speaking) teams, drained mentally and spiritually, trying to summon the energy to win a hotly-contested Champions League spot at the arse end of a season where two other teams are outperforming everyone in just about every dimension. By contrast, go back 11 years and United and Chelsea were meeting at the Luzhniki Stadium in the 2008 Champions League final. Two English teams at the very summit of European football. One, a team with a sainted reputation in world football, the other, an arriviste outfit managed by an unlikely champion-in-contention, Avram Grant. While it may have been decided by John Terry’s unfortunate slip on the penalty spot, these teams were a credit card’s width apart in terms of talent. Today, they might have the talent, but that talent is doing little to justify such a tag.

Both teams today are managed by individuals yet to prove their case, though in fairness, the likeable Norwegian in the red corner has only had a month or so. Both, though, are painfully and obviously lacking the leadership figures that made them each a different proposition in Moscow in 2008. Then, United had Rio Ferdinand, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Edwin van der Sar and Nemanja Vidic, while Chelsea had Terry, Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack. And today? As much as I like César Azpilicueta as a right back, he has been made Chelsea’s skipper by default. He’s not a leader on the pitch, being somewhat anonymous at a time when Chelsea’s players need a kick up the backside. For Azpiliqueta, read Ashley Young in the exact same situation at United. These are, of course, isolated, individual problems out of the many more that exist for United and Chelsea. When you add them up, the great portent of today’s fixture starts to diminish. Quite a bit. Yes, it will be an encounter between a couple of prize fighters, albeit prize fighters who’ve lost their punch and with it, their fear factor. And that’s why it could be a downright let down.

In fact, whether United or Chelsea succeed in reaching that coveted fourth spot (and it’s still numerically possible for third to be reached, too), both sets of fans should be prepared for disappointment. Because whenever they play their European football next season - on a Tuesday or Wednesday, or the less illustrious Thursday night - who owns these clubs, who plays for these clubs, who runs these clubs and even who manages these clubs are all, right now big, open questions. To have one of those questions looming might be troubling, but to have all four? That’s an awful lot to have at stake at once.

Heathrow face-off

Picture: Heathrow Airport

I have had my new UK passport for exactly three years, give or take a week. The previous one was starting to fall apart - no great surprise given that I was living abroad, travelling a lot and carrying my passport everywhere as a required legal form of identification in the Netherlands and France.

With my new passport came the magic biometric identification, theoretically allowing me to pass through so-called ‘e-gates’ at British airports, thus speeding up the transit process while reducing the need for the UK Border Force to have expensive human beings checking my document. Except it hasn’t worked that way: from the moment I had the new passport (at a cost of £177 for a rush job), it has failed to work at the electronic arrival gates of any UK airport I've landed at. Passport officers have assured me there’s nothing wrong with it and, yet, arriving at Heathrow, Gatwick and London City, the passport refuses to work. Not even the British airports authority will acknowledge there is a problem, though a quick search online reveals that I’m far from alone. I - and they - are simply the unlucky ones. It’s quite galling to watch hundreds of other passengers breeze through e-gates while I have to queue up, old school, to have an officer look at my virtually new passport and wonder why I haven’t joined everyone else to go through the ‘digital border’.

The irony of all this is that, as a holder of a good old red European Union passport, I can and do freely pass through the e-gates at other countries’ airports. I’ve arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol, Barcelona, Helsinki, Madrid, Stockholm, Zurich and Rome and walked straight through the biometric barriers. A small, but significant victory for Brexit being delayed, perhaps. And, still, no one will admit in the UK that there’s a problem. Other airports have gone further with easing the security process: at Schiphol now new scanners mean that you no longer have to remove your belt (one of the major causes of airport stress for me, given what horror it could unleash…) or take out laptops and tablets from your carry-on. Frankly I find this as big an innovation in air travel as anything else, given that, 18 years after 9/11 we’re still being made to shuffle through departure security in our socks with our trousers at half mast hoping some git hasn’t made off with your out-of-reach MacBook and house keys.

Picture: Heathrow Airport

So this morning I read with interest in The Times news that Heathrow is to install permanent facial recognition technology this coming summer that will mean passengers will no longer have to show their passport at all when departing. It’s long been the case that when taking off the only time you have to show your passport is at the departure gate, along with your boarding pass. I’ve noticed British Airways progressively experimenting with e-gates of their own to speed up the boarding pass check process. The new facial recognition technology will, in principle, do without the need for both passport checks and boarding passes, relying instead on facial biometric identification. The process won’t be without need for passports, however: the £50 million project will require passengers to get their passports scanned and their pictures taken at automated kiosks before then running through the biometric gates.

Heathrow claims the new facial recognition booths could reduce the average passenger's journey time by up to a third, being implemented at various stages of the departure process, from check-in and bag drop to boarding gate. A Heathrow press release says that: "The long-term aim of the technology will be for passengers to be able to walk through the airport without breaking their stride. Passengers have already been trialling the new services in the live operation throughout 2018 and feedback has been tremendously positive." The airport cites International Air Transport Association (IATA) research which revealed that 64% of passengers would choose to share their biometric data in exchange for a better experience when travelling.

Picture: Heathrow Airport

There are, of course, inevitable concerns about privacy with facial recognition. While that might have validity for application in public spaces, airports have to, by need, to be amongst the most secure environments anywhere. Anything which ensures security while speeding up the departure process is surely a good thing, seeing as passing through a hot, sweaty airport while stressed by everything from other people to flight delays is one of life’s least enjoyable experiences.

Heathrow, and when others join it, is playing catch-up, however. “Major American airports already have this [technology] and Asia is light years ahead,” aviation consultant Alex Macheras told The Times. “From the point of view of convenience it undoubtedly works, although customers will have concerns about how their data is protected and airports must be transparent about this.” In the US - which has traditionally been behind the rest of the world when innovating in travel - facial recognition has been introduced for international passengers, in which their faces are compared to a central database. It is claimed that the introduction in the US has halved the time it takes to board flights.

"As our passenger numbers continue to grow, we must look for innovative ways to make it easier and quicker for them to travel through Heathrow with choice, whilst keeping our airport secure," says Heathrow's Customer Relations and Service Director, Jonathan Coen. "Biometrics are key to helping us do that and we are really excited about the biggest roll out of this equipment at any UK airport.  With this technology we’ll be able to offer passengers choice on how they travel through our airport, with colleagues on hand to guide passengers that require it. Biometric technology has been well received by our passengers so far and we’re looking forward to working with our colleagues and the airline community as part of our ongoing transformation at Heathrow, with a focus on enhancing passenger experience."

All well and good, but seeing as I still haven't had any official recognition from Heathrow, the Passport Authority or the Border Force as to why my expensive, three-year-old passport won't work in any of the current e-gates at British airports, I hope the rollout of facial biometrics will be a genuine boon to this passenger's experience, rather than the somewhat irritating barrier my biometric passport has been when arriving in the UK.

Bond is back! Well, he will be...

Picture: Twitter/007

We have known for some time that the next Bond film in the official canon will be the 25th, mostly because the last, Spectre, was the 24th, and also because Eon Productions had been cleverly trailing the hashtag #Bond25 ahead of today’s somewhat slick streamed “reveal” from Goldeneye, the Jamaican house where James Bond came to literary life at the typewriter of Ian Fleming.

In truth, today's event didn’t actually reveal all that much that wasn’t already known or strongly rumoured: Daniel Craig will return for the fifth and final time as 007, Ralph Fiennes will be back as M, Ben Whishaw will again play Q and Naomie Harris will return as Moneypenny. All solid bets there and little different to the days when Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewellyn and Lois Maxwell played, M, Q and Moneypenny against successive Bonds. Perhaps a little surprising, though understandably with no plot-revealing context to explain, is that Léa Seydoux will return as Dr Madeleine Swann, Bond’s love interest in his last outing.

Picture: YouTube

With the principal cast assembled with director Cary Joji Fukunaga at Goldeneye, little was being given away about the plot, beyond co-producer Barbara Broccoli saying that: "Bond is not on active service when we start the film, he is enjoying himself in Jamaica, [which] we consider [to be] Bond's spiritual home. We have built an extraordinary house for him, he starts his journey here. There is quite a ride in store for Mr Bond." Beyond that, and the fact filming would be done in Jamaica, Norway, Italy, London and Pinewood Studios, there was nothing more forthcoming. There wasn't even a reference to the rumoured title of "Shatterhand".

In the past, Bond productions have been signalled with a press event at Pinewood, but today's streamed event, fronted by Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo, had a makeshift feel about it, which will not do much to settle Bond fans' anxiety about a delayed film and a script that has only recently had scribbler-du jour Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag fame added to the writing team. The only additional details we could glean is that Rami Malek, fresh from winning an Oscar for playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody, will also appear, presumably as a baddie since he appeared on video during the reveal declaring that he "won't give Mr Bond an easy ride".

Picture: YouTube

Although the reveal, taking place today, April 25, was clearly a clever wheeze by the Bond PR team (“Bond 25, the 25th - geddit?”), the exercise was much needed. After director Danny Boyle walked away from the project, and Fukunaga was appointed some time later, producers Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have had to mount some spin control as an information vacuum has developed. Bond films have, in recent years, been released in November ahead of the Christmas season, but with principle photography only just starting, it’s a safe bet that the pledge today of 25 appearing “early next year” will be closer to Easter 2020. All seemed calm today, but Broccoli and Wilson know that the stakes are high for a film that could have even been out before last Christmas, had Craig been tied down to committing to it sooner, and the directorial situation not become so messy under Boyle (with reported differences of opinion over plot direction including Bond being killed off).

Much has been made of the fact that it will be almost five years between Spectre and 25, with Daniel Craig passing his 50th birthday in that time. Looking lean and buff today during the reveal, his age shouldn’t be a issue for the new film, but given that Bond should, ideally, be played by an actor in his mid-30s, the idea of Craig bowing out with this film is probably the right one, shame as it would be, seeing as he has, against expectations, been an excellent 007.

Picture: YouTube

But if the weight of expectation is heavy on Craig’s shoulders, it’s nothing compared with that weighing on Fukunaga and now-veteran Bond writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who are joined by Scott Z. Burns and Waller-Bridge to deliver the script. You don’t stretch the world’s longest running film franchise to 25 movies without raising the stakes of failure. By and large the Bond canon has been of a high quality (Octopussy not withstanding), and the introduction of a grittier approach with Craig has ensured that his four so far are right up there with the best of those by Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. Connery, in particular, is still regarded as the benchmark: I recently rewatched Goldfinger and From Russia With Love and, despite being the second and third oldest, respectively, they still held up extremely well. But don’t discount Lazenby’s sole outing, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, or Dalton’s brace, all of which took the Bond character closer to Fleming’s literary ideal. Craig may be short(ish), blond and blue-eyed, but he has carried off Bond as a steelier individual than Brosnan’s exquisitely suited smoothie, perfect for an age when Matt Damon’s younger Jason Bourne started to show old Bond a few new tricks.

Overall, though, and despite the pre-production turbulence surrounding Bond 25, Broccoli and Wilson, know what they’re doing and have been doing it a long time. The appointment of Sam Mendes to direct Skyfall and Spectre was a masterstroke that paid off with two gripping, well executed, quintessential Bond films that carried a noirish air about them. Fukunaga has a lot to live up to, and the quality threshold surrounding him is exacting. He has the right cast ingredients, let's hope Wade and Purves’ script, with Waller-Bridge’s help, supports them, and Daniel Craig can leave Bond behind next year in a high. I, for one, can’t wait.

Maurizio Sarri: who's fooling who?

And so a new month rolls around and with it, April Fool's Day. I trust everyone has been having fun enjoying all the pranks. And no, that front page headline you read about Theresa May's government about to collapse wasn't another one.

Neil Warnock, the beleaguered Cardiff City manager, might, on the other hand, argue that April Fools Day arrived a few hours early, as his relegation-threatened side - one which has been fighting against the odds following the morale-sapping Emiliano Sala tragedy - lost to Chelsea yesterday, after the visitors came from behind with a clearly offside César Azpilicueta equaliser, then a Ruben Loftus-Cheek header that followed an incident in which Antonio Rüdiger should have seen red for bringing down striker Kenneth Zohore when through on goal.

As a whole, Chelsea's winning performance stank. I know that's supposed to be the mark of champions, winning despite the odds, but when you get to half time and wished it was the 90-minute mark, having seen nothing to feel in any way accomplished (and paying Sky £8.99 for the pay-per-view privilege), you know you're watching a dreadful game. Cardiff, to be fair, offered little, and sympathy towards Warnock's complaints about yesterday's officials notwithstanding, their looming relegation is sadly inevitable. That doesn't, though, excuse the awful errors of referee Craig Pawson and his assistants. Azpiliqueta and Rüdiger's good fortune masked Chelsea's poor display yesterday, one for which head coach Maurizio Sarri needs to share the blame.

When you win and your supporters still boo you, something must be up. Chants of "We want Sarri out" and "You don't know what you're doing" might be largely reactive, but even the most fickle football fan doesn't call for the manager's head without good reason. Even when Antonio Conte was looking like he was attempting 'death by cop' last season, destroying any value in Diego Costa by sacking him by text and becoming increasingly sulky as the season wore down, the fans were still, largely, behind him. Perhaps winning a league title at the first time of asking helped.

Sarri is still, mostly, unproven. The praise heaped upon him from every grandee in the game for the way he had Napoli playing has largely evaporated, as whatever worked in Serie A isn't in the Premier League. True, Chelsea are still sixth and just a point behind the increasingly Spursy Tottenham; and, yes, that numerically puts Chelsea in with a chance of Champions League qualification. But does Sarri really know what he's doing? Is he really prepared to gamble with the Chelsea future of Callum Hudson-Odoi by publicly admitting that he only watched 20 minutes of his full England debut? To me, that's not a coach trying to apply tough love on a precocious teenage starlet, that's just vindictive grouching. And thus, things continue that way.

Watching Hudson-Odoi's face yesterday, as Eden Hazard, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and then Olivier Giroud went on, spoke volumes. If - and it's probably, now, a case of when - he moves to Bayern Munich, and Chelsea and, indeed, the Premier League, are shorn of a prodigious young talent, we will look back at Maurizio Sarri's obstinacy. Yes, we get it - the lad needs to improve his game. Show me an 18-year-old in any profession who's the finished article? But Sarri is in danger of doing to Hudson-Odoi what Conte did to Costa - diminishing his future value to Chelsea Football Club.

Let's face it, the teenager, along with Hazard, will be off this summer. I can't see the Chelsea board having it any other way, knowing that both players have only a season to run on their contracts. Which makes for an interesting summer ahead. Chelsea will no doubt lose their two prized assets, along with others, and I'm pretty confident that Sarri himself will be on a plane to the Stadio Olimpico, where a certain Associazione Sportiva Roma appear to be coveting the tobacco-loving 60-year-old. And, no, that's not an April Fool joke, either.

Too much, too young?

Facebook/Chelsea FC

The sight, on Sunday afternoon, of Theo Walcott coming on for Everton as a substitute against Chelsea provided a curious premonition of the news yesterday that the 18-year-old Callum Hudson-Odoi had been called up by Gareth Southgate to England’s senior squad. Because it seems like only yesterday there was all that brouhaha over Walcott, at a slightly younger age, being included in Sven-Göran Eriksson’s England squad to play in the 2006 World Cup. Even now there is the oft-repeated refrain that Eriksson ruined Walcott by including him and that he was never the same again, which is nonsense as, at 17, he was not the finished article to begin with.

That has been much the same sentiment conveyed on Hudson-Odoi by Maurizio Sarri, his head coach at Chelsea, who has so far refrained from including the exciting winger in a Premier League starting line-up this season, preferring to give him the relative nursery slopes of the cup competitions. Sarri has maintained that Hudson-Odoi still has a lot of development to achieve, that it would be "dangerous" to put too much pressure on him, and that the teenager could only become "top" player a few years from now. This has been a recurring managerial philosophy at Chelsea, a club blessed with an insanely successful academy set up, but one with a ceiling made of inch-thick plate glass.

At Stamford Bridge and at away grounds, there only has to be mention of Hudson-Odoi's name over the tannoy, or a glimpse of him warming up for the Chelsea support to break into "Oh, Hudson-Odoi!", sung to the tune of Seven Nation Army. Like his elder teammate and fellow Chelsea Academy product, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, there is genuine excitement for the youngster. Of course, Sarri is right in that he has a lot of improvement ahead of him, but his pace and confidence is something that clearly Southgate wants to tap into. The prevailing Sarri mood, however, is still 'wait and see'. "He will be ready to be at the top at 22 or 23 years," the Chelsea head coach told the media after Chelsea's Europa League first leg tie with Dynamo Kiev, in which Hudson-Odoi came off the bench to score. "We need [him] to improve without the media, of the pressure of the media, fans, the club," conceding that "His training is really very good." But..."When you have pressure when you are 18 it is dangerous, you can lose the target. The target is to improve. So it is dangerous. This is why I don't like to speak about him."

And so Chelsea are left with a conundrum: develop an undoubted talent by giving him more game time (and higher wages), or let him go to Bayern Munich, as he has indicated he'd like to, to guarantee that game time. "Too much, too young", as The Specials sang, is a valid point, and I do have some sympathy for Sarri's view. But only some. As keeps coming up, in radio phone-ins and newspaper comment boxes, that old adage "if you're good enough, you're old enough" does count. Gareth Southgate might be even making a point to Chelsea's head coach that there is no time like the present. I certainly don't disagree.

It's a pity history didn't repeat itself

It was less than a hour after the final whistle at Goodison Park, in a match that Chelsea lost by a single goal away to Everton, that one of the greatest managers football has ever produced was brutally sacked. Some close to Carlo Ancelotti say he’d been expecting it, but that doesn’t diminish the ruthlessness with which then-Chelsea chief executive Ron Gourlay informed the Italian he was out, in the away team dressing room.

This was the Italian coach who’d won the league and cup double in his first season at Chelsea, who’d brought with him to West London an incredible pedigree from Italy, with scudetti and myriad other silverware during his spells at AC Milan and Juventus. Ancelotti had, it is said, even been seen as the model manager in Roman Abramovich’s eyes, given that he’d regarded the rossoneri as the template for Chelsea, stylish, successful in Europe. And yet, despite winning the Premier League and the FA Cup in his first season at Chelsea, Ancelotti was summarily fired on the final day of the domestic season - for simply guiding the club to second place. By the same token, then, you have expected history to have repeated itself yesterday at Goodison Park. A frankly pathetic Chelsea squandered a second successive league game in hand to remain in sixth place with only the momentum of their Europa League run keeping them in with a chance of playing in the Champions League next season.

I can't, then, be the only one obsessively checking Twitter yesterday evening, or hitting refresh on the BBC Sport home page today, expecting the headline "CHELSEA SACKS SARRI" (and the obligatory tabloid splash, "WHO'S SARRI NOW?". "Clueless Sarri," as The Sun branded him today surely must be reaching the end of the line. Surely, now, it's a case of 'when', not 'if'? I've tried to be sympathetic to Sarri, that implementing his philosophy must take longer than the eight months he's been at the club. And, to offer some benevolence, until the previous Sunday's frustrating draw with Wolves, we’d been beginning to think that Sarri had turned a corner, prompted by that Carabao Cup final when, even what seemed like a predictable team selection (Hazard as a false 9, etc) turned out to be inspiring, defensively frustrating a free scoring Manchester City and pushing them to a 0-0 scoreline after 120 minutes. Even the ridiculous “misunderstanding” with Kepa Arrizabalaga won Sarri extra respect. Momentum in the Europa League, too, has carried positives, as crowd-pleasing and rare appearances (and goals) from 18-year-old Callum Hudson-Odoi, plus better all-round team performances, have given fans the hope that the Champions League next season is a real possibility.

But despite that apparent European momentum, the sharp focus remains on Chelsea in the Premier League, and here Sarri seems to be going down the Antonio Conte route of talking himself out of a job. "I don't know [what happened]," he told Sky Sports after the Everton defeat yesterday. "The players don't know what happened and at the moment I can't explain the change. We played, in my opinion, the best first half of the season and we could have scored four or five times and then suddenly we stopped playing. It is very strange. We stopped to defend and to counter-attack, everything. [We became] another team, I don't know."

Well, if he doesn't know, then who does? Over the last few weeks, as disappointment has given way to underachievement, Sarri has fallen back on his player's mindset, and thus he did the same yesterday: "I think the problem was mental," he told Sky, "so if you have a mental problem suddenly on the pitch the system and the tactics are not enough." This is just not good enough. I rarely support the notion that it begins and ends with the manager, and in most cases where a manager gets sacked, the players should absorb plenty of the blame. But there's something seriously lacking in the motivation department for Chelsea to play as resiliently as they did in the first half against Everton yesterday, and then, defensively, look like puppets with their strings cut in the second half. Not even the replacement of the poor Higuain with Giroud, and the introduction of Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Hudson-Odoi to bolster the attack could compensate for how poor Chelsea were at the back. There may be individual failings, but the manager trains the team and prepares them for matchday, and should select the most effective and motivated combination of players. Sarri's team were anything but in the second half. Which brings the blame game back on Sarri himself.

Given the history of premature, in-season departures of predecessors at Chelsea who failed to come up to expectations, Sarri has probably been under a stay of execution. Perhaps, though, it’s not that much of a mystery as to why he remains: Marina Granovskaia, the defacto Chelsea chief executive, placed a heavy bet on bringing Sarri and Sarri-ball to Chelsea. Abramovich presumably gave his blessing, but the Chelsea owner has been largely invisible over the last few months as he wrangles with the British government over his visa. It's hard, though, to imagine that the Chelsea hierarchy - in whatever amorphous form it currently takes - hasn't or isn't considering a replacement for Sarri. With a two-week international break, it even has the opportunity to bundle the Italian out and get in someone else without too much disruption to either the club's domestic or European programme. The question, of course, is who: Zinedine Zidane is now off the market, Massimiliano Allegri is unlikely to want the job, and Frank Lampard is only in his first season at Derby County. There's the possibility of John Terry, of course, perhaps with former Chelsea assistant coach Steve Holland being prised away from the England set-up. Or the club dives once again into its directory of Italian managers looking for an out.

Whatever happens, it is becoming clear that whatever Sarri has been trying to achieve at Chelsea is not working. Sky Sports have been reporting "sources" as saying that Sarri's future is now, finally, under evaluation by the club's hierarchy. That should have some bearing on Granovskaia herself for placing such a huge bet on the 60-year-old, but if there's one other thing the hierarchy should be evaluating, its why Chelsea should be looking at yet another season in which it jettisons its head coach not much longer after he arrived.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Picture: Royal Philips

If there was one commodity, one seemingly luxury item, I could guarantee myself every single day of the week it would be a good night's sleep. But, as I progress through the novice slopes of my 50s, a night where I'm out at 11 and awake again next morning, unbroken, appears as elusive as a sane resolution to Brexit.

I can, so my girlfriend attests, go to sleep quite quickly after head hits pillow, but it is rarely the last movement before waking again at the preferred hour. Not wishing to take things too far into unpleasantness, there is usually at least one trip to the smallest room in the house, before returning to, apparently, slumber. Travel isn’t helping. By the end of this month I will have travelled to Barcelona, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Rome, Zurich, Milan and Lausanne (having dodged brief visits - and long flights - to Tel Aviv and Dubai), with individual overnight hotel stays in each city. Sounds luxurious (and in the case of Barcelona, possibly the best hotel bed I’ve ever had the pleasure to snuggle up in), but, alas, not a solid night's sleep in any. No matter how Egyptian the cotton, or how high the thread count, I just can’t relax. Travel weariness might catch up with me, conking me out for an hour or two at a time, but I’m too easily awake, briefly, searching for the optimum sleeping position (a choice of: 1. on my right flank; 2. my back; or 3. my left flank). It's not insomnia per se, just a lack of proper, deep, uninterrupted, out-for-the-count, lost-in-the-depths-of-Bedfordshire, giving it the full Z, sleep. Over-the-counter sleep aids bought easily in American supermarkets don’t seem to help, either, even contributing to the frustration of sleeplessness by being ineffective. You just lie there thinking about the pills you’ve taken, rather than being blissfully asleep.

So, in this month of almost perpetual takeoffs and landings, check-ins and check-outs, and a generally disturbed pattern to my nocturnal doings, it’s somewhat ironic that today should be World Sleep Day. Yep, there's one of them, too (though I have to confess that I’m a little more excited about Record Store Day next month). To mark this day-of-days, my former employer, Philips - which is less about consumer electronics, these days, than healthcare - has published the findings of a global study into sleeping habits, and not of the usual "he hogs the duvet/she takes up too much of the bed” kind.

Surveying adults in 12 countries to see how they feel about sleep, the results come worryingly close to my own sleep issues, showing that people are increasingly concerned about the impact on their health caused by poor sleep, but also their frustrations at the pursuit of a quality night's kip. Though not giving an immediate explanation for the finding, Philips reports that 44% of adults say their sleep has worsened in the last five years. The obvious culprit may well be the use of smartphones and tablets close to lights-out, a point of blame recently cited as the reason for sleep issues amongst teenagers, due to the blue light such devices emit which strongly inhibits the production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Addiction to such devices isn't, however, limited to teenagers.

Getting off to sleep is one thing, but the quality - and therefore, restorative effects of good sleep is another thing. Eight out of ten adults would like to improve their sleep, according to the Philips study, with 77% recognising that sleep has an enormous impact on general health, including a growing awareness of chronic sleep problems and sleep deprivation and a high correlation to medical conditions such as depression, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, neurocognitive disease and even cancer. More than three-quarters of those surveyed said that at least one recognisable condition impacted their sleep, be it insomnia (37%) or snoring (29%).

So, as my month of almost perpetual motion continues, I'll try and apply these top tips from New York-based sleep therapist Dr. Ross Levin: 

• Limit alcohol consumption.
• Give yourself at least an hour to wind down before going to bed.
• Disconnect from electronics and keep them out of the bedroom.
• Keep regular sleep/rise times within an hour day to day.
• Never cancel social/work obligations in anticipation of staying up late.
• Keep a sleep diary.
• Get morning sunlight.
• What you think about during the day affects how you sleep at night.
• Try not to obsess about your sleep – people who don’t sleep well think about sleep all day long. People without sleep problems just go to sleep.
• Talk to your doctor if you’re concerned about a sleep disorder.

Night-night.