I was up at 4:45 this morning… daughter was going to the airport and had to be there at 5:30… we don’t live far away which is great – and we especially thought so a few years ago when we overslept and had to get there to catch a flight to Iceland!
As I was driving back, dawn just arriving, I thought about how I always used to be up early. It started when I was a teenager and had early morning swimming training and also a paper-round, then working at Manchester Airport ad having early shifts and then when I was a teacher I always arrived at work really early to get myself sorted for the day, socialise with friends in the staff room, have a coffee and then drift back to my classroom early with everything prepared for the lessons ahead.
Having had a life of early rising I imagined that once I gave up work I would continue to be an early bird… well it hasn’t quite worked out like that, in fact I sometimes sleep through the alarm! It’s not just because I stay up late at night – I’ve always done that, and it’s not that I can’t get up easily when properly roused – like this morning… in fact I don’t know what it is!
My dad was an early getter-upper, in fact he needed little sleep and woke early without an alarm. In the summer he would go out and do some gardening, and if the milkman had time he would make a cup of tea for them both. In the winter he would be up, listening to the radio, reading bits from the day before’s newspaper he had missed, knitting, doing chores…
I think this is such a lovely image from this favourite old song:
Early one morning, just as the sun was rising
I heard a maid sing in the valley below
I know it’s a sad song, but doesn’t that sound wonderful, to be somewhere on a hillside and, gazing out of the window, or standing on the doorstep, or leaning over the fence you hear this mournful and beautiful voice.
Lois Elsden 