Not a morning person

I am feeling rather grumpy this morning.

The alarm went off with a bit of a jolt at 6am (The Hubby has to get up that early, not me) with a bouncy Radio 4 announcer talking fairly assertively about politics. I’d like to say here that Radio 4 is not my choice and hasn’t ever been; I am a Radio 2 woman, although less so now that Terry Wogan has retired.

After the usual frantic scrabbling to try and switch it off, making the mistake of instead switching it from radio to buzzer and back again, then The Hubby putting on the light to see what he’s doing and eventually switching the damn thing off, I feeling exhausted.  I was wide awake, so I suppose it’s done it’s job, just unfortunately an hour earlier than necessary. Attempts to get back to sleep failed dismally, and so I decided to get up and come into work early, and leave early this afternoon to compensate as incredibly I have no meetings today except one very short one at 10.30am.

I am not a morning person. It takes me a good hour or so to really come round with the aid of strong tea and splashes of cold water (the splashing is done by me and not anyone else, you understand. That would be unkind first thing in the morning and possibly lead to a murder charge!). I can’t eat breakfast until I have been up at least an hour or more, and so tend to buy myself something when I get up to central London. Usually it’s a bacon roll and a coffee, but this morning it was a Maccie D breakfast of sausage and egg McMuffin, hash brown and coffee. A rare treat, but oh so delicious. Sadly, not very diet! But I don’t like cereal very much, fruit means I am hungry again in an hour and so eat something really sinful, and I prefer something savoury for breakfast, so the options are limited.

I can do the getting up early thing with sufficient incentive, such as catching an early flight on holiday, but I hate it. The Hubby, on the other hand, can leap straight out of bed when the alarm goes off at whatever time and be bouncy and wide awake immediately. It is one of his less understandable and less endearing traits, but one I have got used to. And it does have its uses – he makes the tea at the weekend! Less usefully, he expects me to be fully with it early on too, and starts talking about DIY projects or family finances, which I really can’t deal with. I may have been rather scratchy about it in the past, not sure!

Fortunately this morning I was able to get up in peace, drink my tea and stagger round getting ready for work with no one else there trying to engage with me except the cats, who looked slightly surprised to see me out of my pit so early. No one talks to each other on the train that early, and if people do get on chatting to others or on their phones they soon shush after getting black looks from everyone else who is buried in their newspaper or sleeping. So the train was quite peaceful too. I have now had my coffee and Maccie D breakfast and feel slightly more human, probably a good thing since I have to do a quick staff briefing for 30 people at 10.30.

Having got up so early, I will be grumpy and tired by 9pm tonight. So not really an evening person either.

Actually, I’m not sure what my optimum time of day is. I don’t think I have one!