An Hour in a Day in the Life
It goes like this: my alarm erupts at 8:05am, although I’m usually already awake and have been for a while. I use my mobile phone as an alarm and, for the first few months, set it to play ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ by Procul Harum. However, I began to worry that being woken up every morning by my favourite song might create negative associations in my mind. As such, I changed my alarm to play the theme song from ‘Postman Pat’ instead, which helpfully contains the lyrics ‘early in the morning, just as day is dawning’.
Anyway, all I want to say is that the alarm’s going off and it’s usually something of a relief. I’m no good at being woken up by outside influences, it just doesn’t sit well, so I normally spend the half hour before I get up gazing at the clock and drifting in and out of consciousness. It’s not really a problem, you just learn to live with it and I’d rather wake up gradually than being shocked awake.
It is incredibly cold this morning, for the first time this winter, which isn’t too bad considering it’s already February. I stand in the shower for a long time. This is the time when I usually get songs in my head and on this occasion it is ‘Been Smoking Too Long’ by Nick Drake… ‘take me a shower, but the water don’t feel no good’. Grammatically bereft, but accurate: the shower in our en-suite is underpowered, overheated and, because our bedroom is in a basement conversion, occasionally smells suspiciously of backed-up sewer.
I stare at the walls of the shower cubicle for twenty minutes and let the water run over me. I think about things that need to be done at work today: McClemmin’s new business prop, Peck’s change of address, the renewals that were due February 1st. I worry, mildly, that I gave some bad advice on the phone regarding an ongoing claim for which, in a worst case scenario, I could be liable. I’m sure it will be fine.
I get dressed and pat down my pockets for wallet, keys, phone. I have the walk to work down to a tee and can make it in twenty minutes easily. For a while I would be constantly finding new ways to shave off a few seconds here and there, but I don’t think it’s possible to make it any faster now. I might surprise myself: finding that shortcut through the Whitgift Centre was a master-stroke.
As I walk by Fairfield Halls I see Norrie, a guy I used to work with at Barclays. I often see him and nod ‘hello’, but I’m happy enough that he doesn’t notice me today. We were never great friends and he once got into a fist-fight with Khuram, over a girl, of course. I guess my first loyalty should still be to Khuram, although I’ve barely seen him since his marriage.
The traffic lights are playing up a bit, and there is a dead pigeon by Natwest. I vaguely wonder how it died as there are no obvious marks on it’s body. Other birds are meandering around the corpse, pecking hopefully at the concrete, but they seem fairly non-plussed by the death of a friend (colleague? Family member?). Maybe it’s just sleeping.
It always amazes me how quickly I walk compared to everybody else. I couldn’t live my life in slow-motion like that, doddering along whilst the lanky guy effortlessly floats past. They must spend their entire life travelling. I ghost past the crowds of commuters on Wellesley Road, flitting into the spaces that open ahead of me. Sometimes I worry what it will be like in 50 years time, juddering to a halt as athritic bone grinds against athritic bone. It would kill me to be so sluggish. I guess there’s no point in worrying about this now: it’s an inevitability, assuming I live that long, and a bridge that I’ll just have to cross when I get to.
Further on, down the service alley behind the Whitgift that used to smell strongly of urine in the past, and probably will again in the not-too-distant future. Shops beginnning to open on either side of me and, glancing at the clock on my mobile, I realise that I could be late: the delay at the traffic lights has cost me precious seconds. I quicken my pace, out into the pedestrianised shopping streets, past McDonalds, HMV and Forbidden Planet until I careen into my office, slightly out of breath. My arrival passes, barely acknowledged.
Time, of course, to make a cup of tea before I settle down to work. Inevitably, by the time I boot up the company database, it is 9:05am.
February 8th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Normally I too find myslef frustrated by the slow walking pace of others, especially on the narrow streets of Richmond. However I recently twisted my ankle and have spent the last couple of days with a limp and a greatly slowed walking speed. I also found myself frustrated at the impatient lanky guys who just strode past with an irritated tut, after all do they not appreciate this is as fast as I can go?