Most days, for most people, start in darkness. Quite often – more often than not – it’s hard to tell where the nightmare ends and reality begins. Most days start with a sense of unease. Discomfort. Pain. Most days start with…….morning.
Morning. One of the most chilling prospects in the English language. Right up there with power cuts during a World Cup final or a betrayed ex with a pair of scissors (God rest your soul, Mr Bobbitt).
Mornings are God’s eternal plague on mankind. They are damp, dark, torrid affairs where comprehension, reason and common sense have no place. Of course, this is primarily because comprehension, reason and common sense are late risers and are really not morning people.
Let’s face it – mornings are not joyous occasions for anyone. No one wakes up, bounces out of bed and exclaims – “Oh good golly gosh – the morning – the morning is here and I feel happy as a cloud over a meadow of golden daffodils”. Well, no one that you should be associating yourself with in good company anyway.
No, mornings are a time of grunts, groans and yawns. A time where conversation is reduced to anything that can be communicated without the actual need for words to be exchanged. A time where people will only ask questions that can be conveyed by pointing at inanimate objects no further than a few inches from the end of their barely outstretched arms, and only then on the tacit understanding that the response must: a) be communicated by a small head movement either on the horizontal or vertical plane; and, b) must not involve the proposee making much effort in order to satisfy the terms of the proposal.
Mornings are not just a chore. They are not just annoying. They are totally without purpose, as if God really didn’t quite think the idea through.
It is no surprise that there is a correlation between the depressing nature of the occasion and the fact that most days are work days.
Let’s be honest – the same sense of unease, pain and suffering doesn’t happen at weekends. Of course not. For a start, weekends do not have mornings. Weekends begin at eleven a.m. and end at three p.m. on a Sunday when you realise that the party is over because it’s work tomorrow.
Whilst everyone accepts that mornings are dire, most people eventually get through the extreme inconvenience of them. This may be through the rejuvenating effects of their power shower/sandblaster; the fifteen cups of coffee they drink the moment they arrive at their desk; or simply because their chosen career is so tedious that they can switch off until two in the afternoon anyway without anyone noticing or their productivity diminishing, for example train drivers, civil servants or politicians.
^ it's a veryvery thing, so it is. over time, many copies of it have passed through my hands and quite recently i bought yet another one (that same edition as yours above) just because i saw it there and it was saying "buy me". then, on my morning rounds a couple of weeks ago i saw 
