Well, it’s not quite every day but I have made it here again. This time out of bed at one minute past six, present in front of the laptop at ten past, and now, trying desperately to get a little piece written before seven at which point the proper writing can commence. Oh yes, that’s right, this is not the writing I seek to write, no, this is the writing that I seek to do to get my mind right to start to write. Got it? Right.
Last night, on the train home from London, I bumped into a friend. She is a maker (of television and motion-picture props, if you please), and to do her making in North-West London, she is out of bed at half-past four in the morning. HALF-BLOODY-FOUR! I have other friends, seriously I do, that even now, in their late forties, are just thinking about going to bed at half-past four. Madness.
I have on occasion seen this half-past four of which you (I) speak. At one point fifteen years hence, when I was doing the dailies with Bob, I would have already been at work for ninety minutes at half-four. We would sit in the grading suite with cups of tea and chocolate biscuits, engrossed in the eerie and silent world of film rushes. As the scenes played out, most of which would not make it past the editor's cruel knife, we would put the world to rights. We had a rule back then that anything said in the suite before six o’clock in the morning, stayed in the suite. Such was the effect of being out of bed before light, of working when so many others slept. So many little secrets and truths would pop out of our befuddled brains before the sun had come up and the normal filter, the one that functions during the daylight hours, had yet to be activated.
But that was another life, another time, and besides, getting up for work, actual paid work is one thing, getting up for something else is quite another. Which is, if one bothers to consider it, completely insane. I will happily get up at two, three, four, or five o’clock in the morning to do something about which I do not care, just because I am getting paid, so why not get up for the things that really matter? Well, today I made it for six o’clock, I arrived at my station even if had to pull a fast one on myself to get here.
On the train home last night I had pondered various tactics with which to beat the snooze button, the craziest of which involved a petrol-soaked rag, a toaster and a timer plug. Luckily though, such measures were not necessary on this occasion. Instead of nearly burning the bloody house down I did something simpler and less extreme. I just popped my phone on the other side of the room so that I was forced to actually get out of bed when the alarm went off and here I am. Sadly there is no Bob to hear my sleep-crazed ramblings so I'll just stick it here instead.
