Writing for life

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 24/10/2007

Once upon a time I used to look forward to getting up early.

I used to love the serenity of it all. There’s something curiously liberating about being the first one up and about. Pretty soon the house would erupt into the inevitably manic hubbub of morning: everyone rushing for showers, breakfast, school lunches… but for now it was time to savour the calm before the storm.

I’d sit at the kitchen table, with a steaming mug of fresh coffee and a section of the newspaper, and simply enjoy the peace. I might even open up the laptop and churn out one of these columns, make a start on a longer article or catch up with some e-mails before the kids were up and about. Sometimes I’d renege, and opt for a lie-in, but more often than not I’d choose to get up early.

The astute among you will note that all this is written in the past tense. That’s the way things used to happen. Not any more. These days I lie under the duvet like a useless lump of lead. My conscious mind urges me to get up but my subconscious overrules. Five more precious minutes it implores.

Five becomes ten, which turns into twenty and so on. Before I know it the pitter-patter of not-so-tiny feet indicates that the girls are up and about. It’s breakfast time, and I drag my weary carcass out of bed, mentally berating myself for not getting up earlier.

So what’s happened to make getting out of bed so difficult all of a sudden?

That question prompted me to do a very silly thing. I Googled “getting out of bed” and suddenly was inundated with offers from gurus, quacks and possibly the occasional genuine sleep deprivation expert, all of whom promised to transform my life and cure me of this very serious ailment. Guys… I just want to get up a bit earlier… that’s all! No syndromes, no incurable illnesses, and no need for miracle cures, CD sleep-programmes, meditation techniques or anything else thank you very much.

In fact, the only incurable thing I’m suffering from is chronic parenthood. That’s a life-long condition that no amount of guru wisdom will cure and no magic pill will take away… nor of course would I want it to. Intriguing though it is to read about other peoples sleep problems on the internet, it was doing nothing to resolve my “problem”. So I tried to pinpoint for myself where my early-bird habit had crashed and burned. That’s when it hit me.

When getting up early meant enjoying an hour or two of “me” time in the morning, getting out of bed had been easy. But that changed a few months ago when, for some reason, the little-one’s “Daddy Radar” became hyper-sensitive. No matter how early I got up, or how quiet I was, she’d detect my slightest movement, and five minutes after I put on the coffee into the kitchen she’d run beaming from ear-to-ear.

It’s always lovely to see her happy in the morning, but peace, tranquillity and a four-year-old blond lunatic are simply mutually exclusive conditions. She doesn’t do calm. Once she’s up, the twins aren’t far behind – and any prospect of “me” time is a distant memory. As for reading the paper or getting ahead with a bit of work… forget it.

And that’s what happened. With the benefits of getting up early exorcised by the children, my subconscious has decided that the duvet is probably the better option. Now that I think about it… it’s probably right.