In reply to Ridge:
Re: the 'mental babbling'.
Both the TV and my brain used to stop transmitting at a sensible hour in the olden days.
In the small hours these days my brain's tuning into all sorts of babble.
Some of it's due no doubt to middle aged aches and pains- rather than think about them, there's always a problem or plan to tune into as a kind of distraction therapy.
It's the purposeful thoughts that get in the way of sleep- complex projects- and trying to assuage worries etc so that you can sleep has the opposite effect.
Assuming all the so called 'sleep hygiene' stuff has been attended to, and the anti inflammatories etc, then it's often that trying to re imagine in detail a random day out alone on the hills from start to finish gets me off to sleep eventually.
Failing that, a half or whole temazepam.