(Slept in)
Famously, I wake up in full colour with the volume on, (or infamously, if you slept on a couch in one of my many student bedsits).
According to myth and legend, I can banter across the dark, and pick up a conversation at the very point where someone fell asleep, the moment my eyes click open (Can’t everyone?).
It is simultaneously true that I can (could) sleep through a brass band playing a selection of Sousa’s greatest hits while marching through my bedroom. Sadly, while that may have been true at one time – I recall a flatmate having to break into my room to switch off the unbearable alarm which I was blissfuly sleeping through- these days I am more likely to be up with light, or at least the traffic. For a shift worker, this is less than ideal.
For all that, I do like to have a little “morning time”. A second cup of coffee before I move, some small reading over toast. I can rise and leave in minutes, but I don’t enjoy it, and of course my childhood in punctuality nazi land means I hate being late (we hates it…).
About two weeks back my eyes clicked open and – thinking I was ahead of my alarm -started the day in first gear. Unfortunately I was disabused seconds later by atext asking if was getting up at all. I was 25 minutes behind!
I cannot tell you how much that disturbed my equilibrium. I am too old and no longer springy enough to dress as I run down the stairs. I’m also sure I used to be able to brush my teeth and swirl coffee round my mouth simultaneously, another skill I’ve lost.
I can -just – don the shoes, hat and jacket as I sprint for the door, but the empty milk bottles on the step take me by surprise. I know it’s somehow better for the environment, or maybe the cows, but I’m unclear why we get milk delivered while living in the nexus of three supermarkets – actually maybe we get milk delivered because we live in a nexus of three supermarkets?
I save myself and start colecting the skittles from the street, and a truck (Milk-something), pulls up at the door. I cannot just race for the car, I have to delay and actually give the empties to the milkman, and receive, and therefore take in the fresh delivery, but worse, the delivery man wants to tell me about his experience at the last drop where he was attacked by crows – look at the wounds on his head.
My need to run, wars with my ingrained (some would say, begrudged) politeness, all the while cursing that I could not just anonymously avoid this encounter, today, of all days.
Milkman finally hands me the milk and says something like, “Well can’t stand here all day talking….” (I seethe in silence).
I must now drive like lewis Hamilton in the traffic that I should have been 20 minutes ahead of.
I make it, in the sense that I am just in time on the clock, but I am late in my soul, worse I do not get a coffee before I start.
It’s taken me two weeks to recover.
Next Week on IaDL: Music this time really music
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 