I don't think anyone in Scotland would want to sleep next to me

Not my favourite peonies, or a box of those pricey chocolate-covered liquorices that I adore.

He’d made a sweet little smartphone recording, while I was asleep, of my loud snoring. Ah, so romantic, though I don’t blame him for wanting to enlighten me. I have asked him, in the past, to do this, because I wanted to face the evidence properly.

However, I was still traumatised.

This soft-palate-rattling sounded inhuman. If I hadn’t known what it was, I would’ve assumed it was a 1959 Vespa revving its little engine, a toy machine gun, or some Stygian creature reviving itself from a century’s dark slumber to taste blood once again.

This sound started, then stopped, then started and stopped.

It was properly sinister. I don’t know why I expected anything less. After all, he has been complaining about this racket for many years.

There have been mornings, where I’ve risen, refreshed and jolly, for I am an early bird, and he has looked grizzled and crumpled, and has shot me The Look.

“I’m SO tired,” he’ll say.

And I instantly know what I’ve been doing.

I feel like a bad cat, who’s brought in a dead bird at dawn and spread its guts and feathers through the house for its owner to find at 6am.

I feel guilty, though I cannot help it. It’s my instincts! I thought you’d be pleased!

Until recently, whenever I started to rev my nasal engine, he’d yank the king size duvet off me, and I’d wake up in the early hours, freezing and cross.

Still, I got round that by getting myself my own single duvet. Ha! Now, when I snore, he does a practiced double nudge, which lightly rolls me like I’m a sausage on a barbecue, and drags me into the lighter layers of irritated unconsciousness.

Apparently, it can stop the noise for, well, a minute or two.

I’ve told him to go through to the other bedroom, as soon as I wake him, but he must be a sado masochist because he perseveres.

I think it’s the stopping and starting that lulls him into a sense of false hope.

I also think he’s of the old school, where he thinks couples must sleep in beds together.

It doesn’t help when phrases like “sleep divorce” are bandied around, as a term for those who don’t kip together.

I just think, if you’re unconscious and oblivious, who cares where you are. Go sleep in a hammock in Leith Links, if you so desire. I’ll see you in the morning.

As far as snoring cures go, there are some crazy and increasingly sophisticated remedies out there. These include gum-shields, special pillows, nasal strips or the old chestnut that is sewing a tennis ball into the back of your pyjama top.

What, these? These stripy cotton numbers are from the Tartan Blanket Co, no less, and are not to be doctored with inbuilt sports equipment.

Anyway, I know too many others who have tried various snake oils and magic spells, and I don’t think anything really consistently works.

I tried not to take offense when my other half suggested that I try the new trend of mouth taping.

However, even the thought of doing that makes me feel claustrophobic.

After the adenoid incident, I’m probably a bit defeatist about finding a cure.

Or maybe because it doesn’t really affect me directly, I’m being lazy.

Anyway, I’m not going to the GP. This is not a new symptom for me. I’m not worried that I will need an oxygen mask or an iron lung, because I’ve suddenly developed mid-life sleep apnea or something.

I was pretty much born snoring, like a little piggy.

In fact, when I was about eight-years-old, they decided it might help to have my adenoids whipped out, so I had a weepy night on a ward in Edinburgh’s Sick Kids.

Then, I returned home, airways slightly clearer, to snore once again. Can I have my adenoids back? Too late? Oh well, fair enough, keep them.

As a kid and a teenager, I always wanted to avoid sleepovers, because of this annoying quirk.

I would try and stay awake all night, so nobody would experience my shame.

The same goes when I’m travelling. I don’t want to conk out on flights or long train journeys.

I have always been jealous of those who sleep angelically, and silently.

Indeed, my husband is one of those people. He slips under in about two minutes, hands in prayer under his face, like a little cherubim secreted in a bluebell. His mouth is neatly clamped shut and he makes not a sound except rhythmic gentle breathing like the tide rolling in and out.

It’s absolutely sickening.

I either sprawl revoltingly like a squid with rigor mortis, thrash violently for thirty minutes straight, or have arms and legs tightly crossed, like Nosferatu swaddled in its coffin.

He notes that I will sometimes pause my accompanying unconscious rattling sound if I sleep on my side, but my back remains the default, as far as comfort is concerned. I feel like my organs are squashed otherwise. My heart is too big. I’m joking, it’s my stomach that’s the problem..

Anyway, now that I know the full extent of my nocturnal purrings, I may try a bit harder to change my sleep position.

No tennis balls though. Absolutely not.

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