Failed attempts to re-set my body clock (part 2)

Before recounting what has happened these last few days, Here is a recap of my normal summer wake-sleep cycle and my depressing winter wake-sleep cycle

In the summer time, my sleep-wake pattern is fairly normal. I guess it runs something like this

23.00 - 04.00 5 hours deep sleep
04.00 - 06.00 2 hours rem sleep (assuming it is the normal 2 hours)
06.00 - 15.00 9 hours wakefulness
15.00 - 16.00 1 hour afternooon dip (I leave the office for some fresh air and to wake up)
16.00 - 23.00 7 hours wakefulness ... gently tailing off before sleep


In the dead of winter, my natural pattern is shifted thus...

05.00 - 11.00 6 hours deep sleep. Wake unrefreshed. Never dreaming. Histamine flush?
11.00 - 16.00 5 hours awake but inefficient memory and cognition
16.00 - 18.00 2 hours Extreme sleepiness often with REM (cos I dream & wake refreshed)
18.00 - 22.00 4 hours moderate wakefulness
22.00 - 05.00 7 hours Wakefulness. I transit from wake to sleep without feeling sleepy

So in the winter I am getting two periods of sleep. My feeling is that sleep is delayed (for reasons unknown) so sleep starts about 5 or 6 hours later than normal. I have a feeling that I am woken by a chemical flush of histamines (because of the red flashes that appear on my face at this time). Whereas in the summer my bed clothes are often on the floor when I wake up, in winter they are as neat and tidy as when I went to bed. I concude that my sleep is active in the summer and that I dream and move about. I almost never wake dreaming on those winter mornings and I conclude that I am not getting my REM sleep. When sleep researchers wake people before they go into REM phase, the effect is to lower the cognitive ability of the individual. This is exactly how I feel.

My winter afternoon sleeps are brought on by the sunset and though short, they are refreshing and are often dream state sleeps if allowed to run their course. Thus, it seems to me that my normal summer time morning REM sleep is shifted to the afternoon with the consequence that I am then up all night.

OK. My effort just before Christmas did not enable me to delay sleep and move the sleep start time to midnight. I still was awake at midnight on 24 December. However, When I did get to sleep eventually at 5am I did sleep (not surprisingly perhaps) for 12 hours waking up at 5pm on Christmas Day. The great thing was that I had a long sleep and woke up dreaming, and feeling like I had had a good night's sleep. I had managed to join up the early morning and late afternoon sleeps into a single sleep period starting with a deep sleep and ending ina REM sleep. The only problem was that this sleep was ending about 12 hours later than it should!