A calm bedtime story for when you wake in the night and can't get back to sleep, set in a little clock shop above the harbour at siesta hour. A small brass clock has been left outside Tiempo Honesto before the shutters went up, with no name and no note, ticking steadily and perfectly backwards. Señor Tiempo checks it over and finds nothing wrong with it at all, only a maker who meant it. Prince Freddie sits beside the workbench through a long golden afternoon while the hands move the other way. A slow, warm story about something being very good and very strange, and not needing to explain itself.

Prince Freddie is a small dog in a flat gold crown who lives in a sleepy village on the Spanish coast, where the days are warm, the sea is always close, and nothing is ever in a hurry. These are unhurried sleep stories, written to quiet an anxious mind and soften the end of the day. You are not meant to reach the end.

No ads, ever. How to listen: lie down, dim the light, and let the words do the walking. If you drift off before the last line, the story has done its job.

Follow Prince Freddie Sleep Stories for a new story to fall asleep to. Read the written stories at stories.princefreddie.com and find everything at princefreddie.com.

If Freddie has helped you sleep, a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts helps someone else find him.

If this one ends before you do, there is a longer telling. The Settle, Night 24, is the same story told twice, slower the second time, 27 minutes over a steady sea, with an ending you are not meant to hear. Ad-free, and the first seven nights are free. settle.princefreddie.com

Every story is written by the Prince Freddie studio and read by a calm synthetic voice.

Press play, and let the day settle.