The wisdom of the owl
Good morning.
Yup. Half four and I’m not long out of bed.
Back in the sixties, when I was a student, I first started experimenting with my biological clock. I came to the incontrovertible conclusion that I am a night-time person. My natural time for getting up was around three in the afternoon. Night-time was for the serious matters in life like carousing and drinking. Sleep was for wimps.
Now that I am released from the dictatorship of the alarm clock, I have let my biological clock have its way with me. Life has somewhat turned upside down and has reverted to the natural way of things.
My cycle is now dictated by my needs, and not by the needs of others. When I am tired, I go to bed. When I am rested, I get up. At first, I just found my self going to bed later and later. I wondered if it just carry on regressing but it didn’t. My natural bedtime seems to be around four in the morning. It hasn’t budged from that for quite a while now. It means I don’t wake up until midday at the earliest, and more often than not, a good deal later. If anyone wants me in the morning, they can go fuck themselves. It may be their morning, but it’s my night.
It does have one or two snags though.
If the postman is delivering something that won’t fit through the letterbox, he rings the bell. It’s all very well for him, but the inconsiderate fucker is waking me up at midnight.
The main problem though is dinner time.
Those bastards in the takeaway insist on closing their doors when it is only mid morning for me.
Rats.
As a night shift worker you problems mirror my own!
Hey Belfast Taxi Driver is Harland and Wolff’s social club still there up in Strandtown. They made me a life member there back in ’78.Â
BTD – Not a problem for me. A problem maybe for those who phone me in the ‘morning and get their ball chawed off.
TT – What the hell did you do to deserve that?’
Getting Whiskey sodden RUC home to their abodes at dawn after drinking all night in there and Shorts. Them still in their uniforms with Walther P4s on their hips and boots scraping along the Newtonards Road . A foolhardy thing to do in those days. Ahh, but I was young and invincible.
I have resisting commenting, but here goes.
I, as opposed to G’Dad, go to bed around 10PM and get up around 5AM. So who is more screwed up?
Survey says…………………………………………………
(Fast food joints refuse to open at 5:30AM unless  one lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, which means that one would die a certain death.)
An article I read this week said that people with high IQ’s are more active at night whereas those with lower IQâs usually retire to bed sooner. So even if you do have some problems you’re probably smart enough to solve them. I pity the poor fool who gets up with the birds. He’s screwed.
I have only one thing to say.   “Duh?”
It’s not you – or me – it’s them. Life would be simpler if they would stop disrupting our rhythms. However, it’s lovely doing things out of sync with everyone else- but you need to see them rushing around to enjoy sitting watching them.
TT- its still there just up from the cop shop on Dundela ave.
I pick upthere fairly regularly, its a very big place now dont know what it was like in 78 as i was only 2!
NEWS FLASH! The winner of the 3 minute short story NPR competition gets up every morning at 4AM to write.     Chew on that!
BTDÂ I used to watch the kids taking the numbers of the unmarked cars there on Dundela.
TT- Take it you not in Belfast any more?
Nah Atlanta 26 years. I was just a “tourist” there.