The display lights the darkness; three thirty-eight… wonderful. You really have to do something about that Twitter notification that sounds like a text and drags you awake, like it or not… just in case. The next hour passes in dogged refusal to get up. You try meditation…at least you are relaxing… till the pre-dawn cold creeps into bed with you.

You give up and throw back the duvet, shivering in the frozen night. There is perhaps something to be said for heating the bedroom a little, but the dressing gown is warm as you huddle into its folds.

Downstairs profanities appear to wander through the eyes of the dog who dutifully drags herself to the door to greet you nevertheless, yawning and stretching like a cat. ‘What time do you call this?’ she appears to say… and you wonder how long it will be before she demands her morning walk. Not yet, apparently. It is cold outside in the blackness; your hands clutch the meagre warmth of the coffee cup and the silent shape of an owl glides across the streetlamp as you wait for her to come in from the garden, dashing inside as if the frost has bitten her feet.

Still, it gives you an early start. The list of things that await your attention is long enough that even this time of morning is useful. Was it Franklin who said, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise?” Well, you got half the first bit right… though the benefits of the corollary seem doubtful on all counts. Maybe it doesn’t apply to women… Maybe you need more coffee…

Walk the dog to the village shop to get milk… inadvertently chase cat, given you are attached to the leash… then home for that coffee…

At least you get the new poetry book out there before sun-up. Complete the cover for the other poetry book you are working on… the one with the daft stuff….clear the inbox of everything but the emails that are going to need work, ready for the morning influx.

And suddenly it is three hours later, the sun is rising and you have no more time. Oddly enough, it is at this moment you feel that going back to bed would be useful… You are overtaken by lethargy that not even coffee can reach. But the day beckons insistently and the slow death of rush hour traffic demands your presence.

Somehow I get the feeling we are doing this all wrong…