At 5:30, I’m squawked awake by an astonishingly loud seagull.
After half an hour of lying in the semi-darkness and thinking about seagulls, their being harbingers of climate crisis, their association with rubbish dumps and consequently our grubby city, and wondering why the council don’t get up off their arses and shoot them all with GUNS, I decide to just get up.
Rarely am I awake so early without also needing to catch a plane, so it’s all I can do not to start hunting around for my passport.
Not yet desirous of my cereal, I decide to get the jump on a few chores. I do the washing up, shave, place a grocery order, fold laundry, write my diary. At 8:00, I can’t believe how successful I’ve been today, and with so much time ahead of me for the squandering.
I can’t help wonder if maybe this is how things should be, and that the hup-hup-hup-with-the-lark, thousand-words-before-breafast writers were right all along. Has a noisy seagull changed my life? Christ, I hope not.
Compulsory crack o’dawn starts are rather a drag, but when you are duped or squawked into it,or that’s just the ball the day throws you, it is reliably ace. You will feel that sense of achievement, yuu will indeed seem to have a much longer day and you will feel righteously tired come evening.
Maybe I’ll start setting that alarm clock more often. Today I rose naturally at 9:20 though, which felt pretty good.