For three nights last week I didn't sleep. 

Not the troubled, tossing-and-turning kind of not sleeping that is unfortunately familiar to me, nor the sweaty, tangled half-sleep of the current heatwave. Just no sleep at all. After two nights of this I had a thought. 

Was it the full Moon? Indeed it was. Last Thursday was July's buck Moon, so called because male deer (bucks) grow their antlers at this time of year.

I am not remotely woo-woo in any matters apart from this full Moon business. My eyes glaze over at the words 'horoscopes' and 'star signs'. Any hint of discussion about Mercury in retrograde and I'm out of there. But the full Moon is another matter.

I am 100 per cent convinced that it affects the quality of my sleep. And it's a completely different sensation to just not sleeping.

It's as if there is a barrier that prevents the mind flipping to sleep which has nothing to do with being worried or overly concerned about things. It's not the 2.56am anxiety run. It's simply that sleep is not on the agenda.

There is some scientific evidence that the Moon does affect us physically, and messing with our sleep is one aspect of that.

The strange thing about full Moon sleeplessness is that it has little to do with being tired earlier in the day.

I dozed off frequently on those three evenings as we watched the last episodes of the fifth series of Yellowstone (yes, late to the party) as they came to their gripping conclusion. 

I dozed off mid-afternoon, attempting to deal with new nightmarish, quarterly tax filing (completely understandable) and I crashed out for a full 20 minutes once I got into bed with the light on. But after midnight, forget it.

The next full Moon is August 28, when I hope to be on the Greek island of Symi. It's also a blood Moon, a type of lunar eclipse that makes the Moon appear orange or red. This time around I plan to abandon attempts at sleep and sit out, staring at the red ball in the sky above the Aegean.

It makes more sense than another night fruitlessly battling indomitable lunar power.

Having lived through the chaos of nationalised industries in the 1970s, I was broadly pro-privatisation. But I've changed my mind. The other day we received a final gas bill for our now-dead mother of £2,346.23 from British Gas.

It was a simply ludicrous sum. In the last few months of that bill there were at most one or two gas stove rings used for her care and nothing else - about £50 a month worth of usage.

This is not British Gas's first time of sending wildly overstated bills, and getting them to amend the error has taken countless hours of frustration. How people who don't have the time and resources I do manage to deal with them I don't know.

Of course they're not the only culprits. I need hardly mention the words 'Thames Water', but I am going to - a company that regards £4million in bonus payments to senior managers justifiable after years of chaos and which has imposed a hosepipe ban due as much to hopeless infrastructure as the lack of rainfall.

And then there's the railways. A recent, two-hour train journey in southern Italy was taken in splendid comfort with air-conditioning and free water for the princely sum of €25 (£21.50), arriving at a tiny local station bang on time. 

Compare this with the nightmare of a recent GWR weekend journey to Cornwall where the previous train was cancelled and it was standing room only for hours of the journey west. 

Surely things can only be improved?

Fat jabs might make you slimmer, but they remove so much of the pleasure of food.

I can't imagine what life would be like without looking forward to eating. 

At this time of year, planning picnics and suppers in the garden, trying out local restaurants abroad, ordering an Aperol Spritz and club sandwich poolside, are reasons to be alive.

I wonder what's happened to the appeal of the all-inclusive buffet as an inducement to book holidays or hotels now so many people have decided that eating is no longer a great pleasure?

Not all of us are so afflicted, thankfully. 

The other day a friend sent me her recipe for the delicious tomato galette she had served to us at a summer supper but forgot to include the crucial information that the pastry had to go in the oven first. It was a quite extreme omission but she is far from alone in not giving a correct recipe.

I rely on several professional cookery writers - Diana Henry and Nigel Slater are favourites - whose recipes always work. But when I am tempted to follow one from a restaurateur it is almost always a failure.

Writing recipes is a skill, owning and cooking in restaurants another. I suppose it's similar to expecting architects to be builders. 

Invariably, their designs are splendid and they can create beautiful homes and offices but when it comes to asking them how to lay bricks, forget it.

Should you get the opportunity to see Wham! 10 Days In China in a local cinema, don't miss it. It's way more enjoyable than The Odyssey.

You don't need to be a Wham! fan (I'm not) to be entertained by this documentary following their tour as the first pop band to perform in the country. 

Crazy 1980s fashion, a fevered crew of tabloid press following them, desperate for drama, and George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley trying to win over an audience that had never been allowed to stand up and dance.

It's filled with delicious moments. There's also a film within a film since the original, but unreleased documentary, was by the late Lindsay Anderson who hated the band and only wanted to promote the communist agenda of China.

It's Spinal Tap for real with ra-ra skirts and perms.