Sunrise

I miss the Sunrise.

I miss waking up and instantly knowing how long it is until I have to drag my sorry carcass out of bed to face first the computer world (for my early morning brain workout) and then the outside world as I travel to my place of work (which - if I am feeling energetic - involves my early morning body workout).

The problem with waking up and it still being pitch black out there is that you have no idea how much time you have left before the alarm clock (in my case it's an app, but the principle is the same  - and no matter how pleasant an alarm tone you have chosen you will come to hate it) assaults your ears forcing you to get out of bed. You could have hours in which to fall back asleep and have more dreams or it could be less than five minutes until the alarm is due to go off.

Let's face it, by the time you actually get motivated to check the time it's usually the latter. You lie there in full wakefulness dreading the noise that is due to come your way any second and yet without the gumption to simply get up, switch the alarm off and start the day a tiny bit early.

And what do you do when the alarm finally goes off? Snooze.

The snooze button is one of the most pointless inventions ever devised by man.  Using it is an exercise in self loathing, an admission of weakness. If you wanted to get up at 6.30am then bloody well get up at 6.30am. An extra five minutes will do you no good whatsoever; all it means is that you have to go through the alarm hell all over again. Pressing the snooze button twice is even worse and any more than that - well you might as well set your alarm half an hour later and resign yourself to getting into work later.

The thing is that by early January you really feel that surely it should have started at least pretending to get lighter in the mornings again. Wasn't the Winter Solstice, the shortest day, back in December before Christmas?

Ah but it's not as simple as that. It never is.

The Earth is a contrary bugger and it may surprise you to learn that whilst the last Solstice may have been 22 December 2011, the nights stopped drawing in and Sunsets started getting earlier on 16 December 2011.

Conversely Sunrise continued getting later and later until this morning and it is only on 5 January 2012 that it will start getting earlier again.  The problem is that it changes so damned slowly at this time of year which only serves to exacerbate the feelings of inertia and darkness. It's improving though - whilst by the middle of January sunrise will only be six minutes earlier than it is now, by the beginning of February it will be twenty five minutes earlier. By the time we reach the Spring Equinox, Sunrise will be getting earlier by three minutes every single day. Unfortunately this is as good as it gets, it slows down again by the time the Summer Solstice rolls around.

In an ideal world I would prefer to live in a world of perpetual sunlight.  If I want darkness I can always buy thick curtains.

Sadly this is impossible unless I spend six months north of the Arctic circle and then immediately fly to south of the Antarctic circle for the next six. Quite apart from the expense of having to maintain two houses in polar conditions it would cost a fortune in airfare.

The person that invents a bulb that really does look and feel like sunlight is going to make a fortune. Only then will we be effectively freed from the tyranny of the turning planet.

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