Skip to main content

Early in the morning

It's unlikely that you've noticed, but this blog is into its tenth year now, I imagine I'll post more about that nearer the time, but I was reflecting this morning that the guy who started writing it back in the heady pre-crash days of 2003 would be slightly bemused by the one who writes it now. The "morning" part of that sentence is key.

25 year old me did not get up early. 25 year old me went to bed very late indeed. 35 year old me, however was out running at ten to six this morning. What started out of necessity (I was too tired of an evening and too busy a crucial half hour later in the morning) has become one of my favourite parts of the day. There is a stillness to the world at the crack of dawn, those few cars that are about seem to move silently, you are aware of how quiet the world is once human noise is removed. There no dog walkers in the park yet, the playground's deserted, as I run up the path beside the church there's an explosion of song, thrush and blackbird, it's purer and clearer for being set against nothing.

So yes, I'm a convert to the very early morning. I've outflanked my children by getting up even before they do, I've had the whole still world pretty much to myself for forty minutes of just me and my brain, ticking over and sorting out the day ahead while my legs get on with the business of running. When I get home I'm centred and equable, able to devote my attention to my sons without the nagging feeling that I should be doing something else. I've done something else already.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To all intents and purposes, a bloody great weed.

I absolutely love trees, and I get quite irate when they get cut down. One of the aspects of life with which I most often find myself most at odds with my fellow man is that I'm not really a fan of the tidy garden. I like to see a bit of biodiversity knocking about the gaff, and to that end I welcome the somewhat overgrown hedge, am pro the bit of lawn left to run riot, and, most of all, very anti cutting down trees. I love the things, habitat, provider of shade, easy on the eye, home to the songbirds that delight the ear at dawn, the best alarm clock of all. To me, cutting a naturally growing tree down is an act of errant vandalism, as well as monumental entitlement, it's been around longer than you. So, this being the case, let me say this. The public outcry over the felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap is sentimental, overblown nonsense, and the fact that the two men found guilty of it have been given a custodial sentence is completely insane. Prison? For cutting down a Sycam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oh! Are you on the jabs?

I have never been a slender man. No one has ever looked at me and thought "oh, he needs feeding up". It's a good job for me that I was already in a relationship by the early noughties as I was never going to carry off the wasted rock star in skinny jeans look. No one has ever mistaken me for Noel Fielding. This is not to say that I'm entirely a corpulent mess. I have, at various times in my life, been in pretty good shape, but it takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of vigilance, particularly in my line of work, where temptation is never far away. Also, I reason, I have only one life to live, so have the cheese, ffs. I have often wondered what it would be like to be effortlessly in good nick, to not have to stop and think how much I really want that pie (quite a lot, obviously, pie is great), but I've long since come to terms with the fact that my default form is "lived-in". I do try to keep things under control, but I also put weight on at the mere menti...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...
Post a Comment
Read more