I could be a morning person, if morning happened around noon.

I love sleep.  My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

– Ernest Hemingway

I’m not sure that early birds should ever marry night owls. 

I should know, because I am a Lazy Daisy whereas His Nibs is one of those people who, at the first beep of the alarm, jumps out of bed, into the shower, into his clothes and out of the room in an unnervingly short time.  We’ve been living together for almost twenty years, and this difference in our personal habits is no easier to deal with now than it was the day we moved in together. 

On a Saturday or Sunday morning his early bird tendencies suit me down to the ground.  He gets up at all hours, usually around 6a.m. (allegedly.  I wouldn't know), escorts the dogs out to the garden to complete their ablutions, feeds them, and then gets on with productive things like gardening. 

I snore on into the late morning in peace.

Then, when I finally wake up, I roar out the good news that I am now conscious, and would like a nice coffee, please.  As soon as possible.  Immediately, in fact.

Because he is a good man who loves me, and he enjoys a quiet life, he brings me a coffee.  Rory, delighted to see me finally awake and available to give him endless attention, jumps onto the bed and I lounge there, like a queen, drinking coffee and petting the dog or reading a book, until I take the notion to get out of my pit and get on with the day.  But that’s only on the weekends.             

Every second week, His Nibs and I travel to work together.  His Nibs, because he is bonkers, insists that we’re both in the car ridiculously early.  He considers himself late if he’s not in the vicinity of his workplace an hour before his shift starts.  He spends the time drinking coffee, and standing outside the building smoking and greeting early arrivals in an insanely cheerful manner. 

I, on the other hand, consider things a roaring success if I arrive anywhere, including work, within twenty minutes of the latest agreed time.  I spend the spare time before work on these early mornings sighing and cursing my ill fortune in being landed with such a punctual spouse, and generally being difficult.

On the mornings when we commute together, His Nibs wakes me by giving a good few shouts at me to get up.  I refuse.  He insists.  I refuse again.  He takes the duvet and runs to the spare room with it.  I explain why it is unfair that I have to work for a living and try to make it clear that I cannot be expected to go to the office yet again, he tells me to stop blathering on and get up, and I go back to sleep.  Then he shouts furiously that I’m to get up and get ready, and that I can sleep in the car.

This is to remind me of the fantastic system he set up to make the commute easier.  He drives.  Every day.  And while I could just sit in the passenger seat with my head bobbing about like a deflated football on a stick, we go one step further.  He makes me a car bed.  His Nibs prepares, in the morning, by leaning the passenger seat back quite far, and putting my car pillow and car blanket on the seat, in a bed like fashion.  And in the winter a pair of slippers for my added comfort.  In summer there is a sleep mask for my use in the glove compartment.

I eventually stagger out the front door, stumble around the garden, and finally fall into the car, where I instantly, and I mean instantly, go back to sleep, only to be shaken awake when we get to the Big Smoke. 

The arrangement is, that since His Nibs does all this driving, I park the car in the mornings, because by the time he through the traffic he is desperate to get out of the car, and into the coffee.  And in the evenings, I finish before him, so I go and get the car and have it at the door when he finishes.  Then I jump back into the car bed and go to sleep again.

There’s been a couple of hairy moments.  I wasn’t happy the morning I was greeted  by a laughing colleague, who had been in a service station buying milk on the way home the day before, and had met His Nibs.  Who invited him, invited him if you don’t mind, to have a look in our car window on the way out, to see what a fine life I have with him.  I was so deeply asleep at the time that I didn’t even know we’d stopped for petrol.  Not only had we stopped, but His Nibs and this man who I know personally, had spent a few happy moments laughing in the window at me snoring.

Another day the sun was too bright, despite my wearing my sunglasses, so I pulled my summer car blanket up over my eyes (yes, I have seasonal car blankets), lest my sleep be disturbed.  When His Nibs was stopped at a Garda checkpoint he was asked to wake me up, to prove to the Garda that he hadn’t killed me, I am just a very deep sleeper.  That was when we equipped the car with the sleep mask.

As I write this, I realise that His Nibs sounds like a saint. It’s worth noting that if I didn’t have my car bed, I’d moan and whinge and thrash myself about in the car all the way to work.  So not all his actions are for my sake.  Better a sleeping peaceful wife than a tempery fishwife, I suppose.

But neither weekends nor commuting together are the real problem.

No, the real trouble is the mornings when I’m supposed to go to work early, and he isn’t.  So I have to get up and drive my own sorry carcass all the way to Dublin.

And on those mornings chaos reigns in this house.  As usual, His Nibs gets up ridiculously early, and deals with our pets.  Because he is on late nights for the week, he wants to go back to bed.  But I’m doing my usual refusing to get up and begging for “five more minutes”.

He knows perfectly well that if he goes back to sleep I will also go back to sleep.  I will snore and snooze the minutes away until well past the latest time I can leave at to reach the office on time.   His Nibs doesn’t like trouble, and he is very well aware that we need both salaries to keep a roof over our heads. 

So he starts shouting and roaring and giving out and insisting I get straight out of bed and go about my workday.  And I lie there moaning and groaning and once again lamenting my ill luck, and saying how unfair it is that he can stay in bed and I can’t.  And then he points out that I’ll be home at least three hours before him in the evening.  And I say that that’s no good to me now, when I want to sleep.  Then the argument gets sillier and sillier until we find ourselves both wide awake, roaring at each other.

 

It's a miserable time.  Even though His Nibs likes the late shift, as he gets to avoid the traffic on both journeys, I hate that week.  Because it costs a fortune in double petrol and parking.  And because I get exhausted from all the driving and the loss of my car sleeps before Monday is even over.

This week is one of those weeks when His Nibs is on late shift.  I had no problem getting up this morning.  This is because as soon as I opened one eye and saw him, I nearly fell out of the bed with fright. 

As I said, I’m a night owl.  I love night-time.  Even when I’m getting up early and His Nibs isn’t, I usually go to bed well after him, and well after I should already be asleep.

Last night I decided to be grown up and mature and well behaved, and I went to bed at a reasonable time.  I’d say it was the first time this year I had the sense to go to bed early.

And how did my husband spend this time he had alone?

Did he do the ironing?  No. 

Did he write me a love poem? No. 

He fecking well shaved his beard off.

He has had his beard for twenty years.  He was in his twenties when he first grew it.  And being but a slip of a lad he had no focus and was forever messing it up when he shaved.  So he’d shave the whole thing off and start again.  It was an unpredictable time.

But ever since he learned how to trim it, he never shaved it off again.  Neither of us can remember his being clean shaven in at least fifteen years.

I think he should have woken me up with a shout of “I shaved off my beard, look, look!”

But he didn’t.  Instead he stood by the bed, leaned over so he was too near me, and started shouting at me to get up.  He put the fecking heart across me.  I thought we had a handsome burglar,  that some ridey stranger was so overcome by my feminine wiles that he’d broken into our house in the early hours to declare undying love. 

To be clear, this is highly unlikely to happen, and I wouldn’t want it to.  I’m happy with the ridey non-stranger I live with, thank you.

He frightened the life out of me. 

 I wasn’t pleased this morning, I like his beard.  But I’m already getting used to it.  He looks grand.  Of course, being the contrary pair of goms that we are, he’s now decided he misses his beard and is growing it again.