It’s too hot to sleep so I took it outside — but everything in the garden is far from dozy

My neighbours are yelling. “It’s too darn hot, I can’t sleep,” one exclaims to a flatmate. The reason I’m in prime position to catch this Kiss Me, Kate refrain is that I’ve camped out in our garden for the evening. “You’re lucky enough to have a garden, aren’t you?” my editor asked, earlier in the day. “Well, you can tell us if it’s hot enough to sleep outside in it.” Lucky me.  

Obviously, I’m uncomfortable. Who isn’t? The heatwave is sending daytime temperatures to 37C. Even the official photograph of the Queen welcoming the new PM was upstaged by a Dyson fan working overtime. It’s still 24C at night so social media is aflame with aspirational vows to “sleep out in the garden” — but is it practical? My bed for the night is a deckchair, with a pillow and a cotton sleeping bag; a set-up that looks as if I’m waiting overnight for a film premiere. I borrowed a tent but forwent the full backyard camping (bamping?) set-up. My bedroom is a furnace, and, smugly, I chalk this up as a win. 

By 10.11pm the daylight has gone so I bring out a standing lamp from the living room to read by, using an extension cable. It’s a big lamp. “You’re quite weird, aren’t you?” says my friend and neighbour Ben, who has just got back from the office and is wondering why light is beaming from the next-door garden. An upstairs blind slams shut. By 10.55pm, it’s clear that earplugs would have been wise. I can hear the murmur of an A-road, the roar of a plane passing overhead every two minutes (I counted them, like sheep) and the claps and wails of a neighbour trying to expel a “f***ing huge moth” that’s landed on a pillow.

I persist. The moth is trapped under a glass but police sirens have taken up the slack. I’m too alert — I can hear fans blaring in bedrooms through open windows — and decide I’ll feel like less of a creep if I plug in my headphones. This is made all the more urgent as I finally work out what the human grunting noises I can hear are. 

At midnight, I see a shooting star. If someone spots a falling star in the skies above Peckham and no one is around to Instagram it this is hard to back up, but still it bursts across my vision before petering out. 

By 1am I fall asleep but the foxes started copulating. I don’t fall asleep again. I feel exposed, despite the fact that my cat, Hiccup, has decided to keep me company. My 2am brain hasn’t stopped whirring. “Will I hear my alarm in the morning? Is it going to rain? Might my career be going in a very wrong direction? What was that scrabbling along the garden fence?” 

I come to the conclusion that, as an adult, I’m still afraid of the dark. At 3.11am, someone starts singing Down Down Baby loudly, possibly a lullaby, possibly for fun. So I head back to the furnace that is my bedroom. Yes, it’s hot enough to sleep outside but no one else got the memo. The city’s wide awake. At least now I have peace.