Saturday at eight

It's Saturday and it's eight o'clock and you're awake. You woke at twenty to, without the alarm, which you set anyway. The curtains are open. There's a coffee. You're in a chair by the window and nobody wants anything and you're reading something with no purpose, and it's the hour that used to be at ten with the curtains shut, and it's better, because you're in it.

At half past eight you go out. Round the block, to the bakery, nowhere. It's grey. It doesn't matter. Twenty minutes of grey daylight and you come back and the day is yours, all of it, from nine, and it's long.

Saturday night you're tired at eleven, which surprises you, and you go up. Sunday you wake at ten past seven. Same chair, same window, same walk. Sunday afternoon feels ordinary, not high, and you notice that and don't mind. Sunday night you go to bed at half past ten and you're asleep by eleven, and there's no arithmetic, and there's no phone, and there's no Monday in your head because you're not awake to have one.

Monday the alarm goes at half past six and it's just an alarm. You're not thick. You're not slightly sick. You have one coffee, not three. The emails are the same emails. It's Monday and it feels like a day, and by Wednesday nobody at work has made the joke, because you haven't looked like the joke.

That's what the lie-in was costing. Not the sleep, which you're getting more of. Not the rest, which you're having. The Monday, and the Sunday night, and a day and a half a week for years, in exchange for two hours of morning you mostly weren't awake for.

One thing, this weekend. Set the alarm for an hour after your weekday time, both mornings, and when it goes, open the curtains before you decide anything.