Mornings

Posted on 2004/01/07 14:05:08 (January 2004) by john.

Surely the most irritating part of the day?

I have never considered myself a "morning person", but recently I have found getting up in the morning even more irritating than usual. This cannot be healthy. In the same way your parents always told you you should eat a good healthy breakfast in the morning to set you up physically, being annoyed right from the word go can't be good for you psychologically. Let me illustrate by describing my typical morning experience.

When the heating first comes on in the morning the radiator makes a series of rapid noisy conk-conk-conk sounds. After it has been on for a while these slow down a little, but are still frequent enough to be very irritating. Typically, these are the first sounds I hear in the morning. Right from my first waking moments, I'm annoyed. My first feeling of the day is irritation.

Whilst I'm in an unforfilling half asleep state, having been partially awoken by the radiator, the alarm then kicks in. Alarm clocks seem to be always very, very, very annoying. I can appreciate the annoying sounds from the radiator are somewhat unique to where I live, but the alarm clock is something common to all of humanity. Why do the people who make these machines have to inflict the good people of this earth with such enfuriating noises? Are alarm clock designers all sadists?

The alarm clock goes off again, then again, then again. Chie seems to like the "snooze" facility. For me it is just repeating the unpleasantness over and over. Why would you want to repeatedly put yourself through that torture?

It's cold. I wouldn't mind the heating being quite so irritating if it wasn't then also cold. Of course, if I turned the heating off altogether it would be practically arctic.

My throat hurts. Probably because of the cold. I seem to have a sore throat just about every single morning.

My stomach hurts. I think my internal organs undergo some kind of housekeeping process overnight, and as typically I'm unnaturally awoken, they're not actually quite finished when I wake up. If I have to wake up very early for some reason, I actually feel sick.

As it's winter now, it's bloody dark. I'm lying in bed, struggling to muster the enthusiasm to get out of bed and face another day on this (at times) deeply irritating planet, and it isn't even daylight. This simply is not natural. Human beings are designed to run around in the day time, hunting and gathering, and then go to sleep at night. They are not made to wake up when alarm clocks go off, but are supposed to awake when the sun comes up, and they can get back to another day's hard work at the hunting and gathering office. I don't have the level of mind over matter required to control this in any other way. If I wake up, and it's still dark, then I still feel sleepy. If I feel sleepy, I go to sleep.

When I finally do drag myself out of bed, breakfast then presents me with another source of irritation. I frequently don't have anything decent in to eat. In fact, in the world in general there are very few interesting things to eat for breakfast. Anything I might actually have a chance of enjoying is going to be hideously fatty and make me worried about being unhealthy, and anything actually healthy is going to be so unpleasant to eat I'd rather be having sawdust. Muesli? Bran Flakes? No thanks. I often end up eating nothing, and then have the whole morning being irritated by how hungry I am.

My hair irritates me. Overnight, my hair undergoes a complex optimisation process so that by the time I wake up in the morning it is as messy as is folicularly possible. There has been a fashion for a while for sort of sticky-up messy hair, even styling products called "Bed Hair" but this would never work with mine. It doesn't look like a carefully constructed style that is wild and funky and appears similar to how your hair might look when you first get out of bed in the morning. My hair just looks like very messy crap hair. No end of combing will fix this, so I have to wash my hair every single bloody morning, adding to my list of irritating tasks that must be completed before I'm ready to face the world.

Then there's getting dressed. Which means, on a weekday, sorting out a shirt. Having sacked it off the night before, I am now faced with the task of ironing a shirt. This is very frustrating. Few other chores serve such an utterly superficial end. You wash clothes largely for hygiene. You dry them because it's unpleasant to wear damp clothes, you might catch a cold, they might go mouldy, etc. But ironing serves no other purpose than the obvious aesthetic one. Be that as it may, if I do make a real effort to iron a shirt, nobody ever says "Hey John what a lovely ironed shirt you've got on there". However, you can guarantee wearing a non-ironed shirt will prompt an endless stream of "Is your iron broken?" or "Maybe if we all clubbed together we could get you an iron for your birthday?". I own a least one "non-iron" shirt, which, lo and behold, has ironing instructions on it, and does actually require ironing. Now that's irony for you.

When the heating goes "Conk-conk-conk" you should be glad that you have a centrally-heated home. Mine actually goes conk-conk too, but it find it in no way displeasing. If you hate it that much, you can either have it mended, or switch it off. As for the radio, why don't you tune it to a station which you enjoy? Personally, I go for Radio 2 and, again, this upsets me not at all. I cannot help you with your stomach, your hair, or your throat; I believe these are personal problems, and not really a function of mornings in general. As for it being dark ... exactly what time do you get up? My alarm is at 6:45, and it's certainly dark then. However, by the time we get to about 7:30, the sky is starting to lighten somewhat. Now, I could be wrong, but the last time I looked, you live opposite your work-place, so there's hardly a need to get up early, is there? Why do you get up in the dark? Have you moved? Changed jobs? Hey- I'm nearly as unsympathetic today as I was yesterday! But somehow I steel feel fairly happy ...

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/01/08 08:41:36.

I'm in the office, it's past 9, and it's still not completely light.

I'm not discouraged by your abject lack of sympathy though Jimmy, I know I'm not the only morning hater in the world. Plus I think my seemingly peculiar ailments suffered early on in the day are not that uncommon either. Apparently it has something to do with low blood pressure. I'm sure eventually I'll get some support from somebody or other for my damning condemnation of mornings.

Posted by John at 2004/01/08 09:07:56.

Oh- don't get me wrong, John, I'm not fond of mornings either. I merely wanted to express my lack of sympathy. I'm working hard on developing a mean streak. I've mastered silliness, drunkenness, untidiness and even grumpiness, but meanness-of-spirit is where I'm going next. So, er ... bah!

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/01/08 13:52:30.

Think yourself bloody lucky mate. On a *really* good day (ie, one where we haven't been up four or five times in the night) my day starts at about 5am to the cheerful chatter of my daughter. This gets louder and louder until she's finally convinced us that we need to go and attend her. Sometimes she'll quieten down if we bring her into bed, sometimes the day just has to start there and then. She gets her breakfast before I get mine, then she has to be changed and clothed before I've really rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I then drink the cup of coffee I made when i got up, which by now is stone cold. Having been alone all night she then requires a few rounds of head, shoulders, knees and toes or row, row, row the boat before I can sit her under her mobile. This buys me about six minutes to shower, brush my teeth, put my lenses in and get dressed. Usually I manage about one of these before I have to rescue her from the mind numbing boredom of doing anything for longer than 40 seconds. Even getting up at 6am, I'm usually only ready to be out and about by about 9. God knows how we're going to manage when I go back to work.

Of course, I wouldn't change things for the world (although I'd sell my brother for a good 8 hours sleep) But if you're finding mornings tough, borrow a baby for a few days and realise how good you have it!!!

Posted by Alex at 2004/01/08 21:46:44.

I'm terribly sorry to appear ignorant but... morning? What's that then?

Posted by Rusty at 2004/01/09 01:54:25.

I can't wait Alex, I can't wait.. :-

Posted by tom at 2004/01/16 18:39:18.

Don't worry Tom, they're sooooo worth it and you're going to love it :-)))))

Posted by Alex at 2004/01/23 14:33:10.

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