Until I met my wife, I thought the only way to get up was with an alarm, followed by a swift swing of legs into the cold air, launching myself with force into the morning – an abnegation of anything subtle or sweet, like jumping into icy water. Then Ele came into my life and changed my morning routine. Now I am drawn from deep slumber by a trill of notes, an arpeggio perhaps or some soft chords, as I roll between the last fragments of dream and the day ahead. My wife is adamant: no alarms, no bells, no sirens. Instead, the radio gently rises in volume until some note of whatever is playing rouses me from my dream state into reality.
After the trill, one of us creeps downstairs to put on tea and, while the old dog eats her breakfast, arranges the pleasing array of a small, not-too-sweet biscuit or two, a bowl of cut fruit and a huge pot of genmaicha green tea (the fun one with the popped rice in it). Then all three of us pile back into a bed that has had its pillows plumped and duvet smoothed out. And there we sit, sipping tea, eating biscuits, listening to BBC Radio 3.
This whole process can take up to an hour, if Ele gets her way. She will declare her love of bed, sinking slowly back into its comfort until I become impatient with the sheer indulgence of this routine and demand the morning gets going. It is not really so extravagant: Ele is a night owl and just can’t get up immediately. Her deep love of sleep means she needs to be coaxed into the morning. If you try to pull off the plaster? Well, woe betide you – not because there is wrath, but rather a doubling-down under the duvet.
So the routine is a necessary transition but, my, has it changed my outlook on life – particularly the classical music before dawn. I’m deeply ignorant about classical music and, as hard as I try, it doesn’t seem to stick. I hear something I like most mornings, but an hour or so later can’t tell you what it is. In many ways this is a boon: each morning I wake surprised and delighted by some concerto or such, until the man on the morning show decides the day is getting on and turns the pomp dial up and it all gets a bit too rousing for my liking. But he has a point: it is time to move on.
We have tried other stations. BBC Radio 4 is too likely to make me shouty; 6 Music is too energetic; the online station NTS is the opposite – it thinks everyone is just getting home from a night out and far too chill. My beloved World Service did win out for a while, but there is an urgency to all that news that makes me anxious. So Radio 3 it is. I find myself waking up open and relaxed to what the day will bring rather than rushed and high on cortisol.
No longer reliant on a phone to wake me up, I have put an end to my late-night scrolling and reclaimed one of my chief loves: bedtime reading. Thus, this morning routine has re-established a much better night-time one. It also places the anxiety of always being available firmly downstairs – it really can all wait till morning, and the quality of my sleep is remarkably improved. With no internet to distract me, I drift off to sleep swiftly and remain there till those first few notes of radio.
