The Lie-In

I got my first paper round in my teens in the mid-60s, which at times involved warming my hands up by running COLD water over them, hot water being too painful. I don't remember any lovely spring or summer mornings, just grey winter light, dustings of snow, and the stares of owls settling down for the day. I was Le Grand Meaulnes. Ever since then, and possibly before, I have been an early riser, even at weekends, on holidays, or after wild nights out. The morning switch over from BBC World Service to Radio Four was the piper at the gates of dawn, while the late Shipping Forecast marked the knitting up of the ravell’d sleeve of care.

But no longer. I am freed from the chains of labour, and the Gods o'erwhelm my eye-lids with a flood of sleep...all the long night, the morning and the noon. No longer waking to a pressing catalogue of activities which gather like harsh voiced birds of ill-omen, I can now watch my thoughts roaming the sunlit plains and gathering at the quiet waterholes

There a few disadvantages, and many benefits to this development. More sleep means less time awake and therefore fewer opportunities to make a fool of oneself or ruin the day of others. It is always daylight when you rise, even in the depths of winter. Insomnia has no fears, just get up, make a cup of tea, and take it back to bed, and wait for the Gods to do their work again. This feeds into the concept of segmented sleep, which holds that mankind naturally wakes after a first sleep of four hours or so, has a time of activity, then sleeps again. And it turns out that most of the aforementioned pressing activities aren't really that pressing at all.

The only downside I can think of is that there is no longer time to fit in elevenses.

A typical Sunday morning.