Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a strange and disturbing trend among my friends.
We all used to be the same page about social activities. But increasingly everyone’s gone mad for the mornings, and decided that they’re the best time to do things.
Don’t they know I’m a vampire? I sometimes wonder. Seemingly not, as the invites keep coming for brunch, which I’ve always viewed with a degree of suspicion – even though I love eggs. Because not even the finest egg in Britain can make me scramble out of bed.
When it’s not bottomless brunches, it’s equally alarming events, such as morning raves, that have drawn in the masses. Nowadays people are even doing exercise on the weekend, because they’re raving mad.
I thought things couldn’t get any worse until I went to a ‘breakfast gig’, where I danced with a salmon bagel in my hand. “What am I doing here?” I wondered, my eyes too sleepy to appreciate the lead singer of a famous rock band, right in front of my face. I know he was thinking it too.
We were both victims of a new fashion that demands young people centre their social events around the morning, for reasons unknown to me.
All my life, I’ve despised mornings. Sometimes I feel I receive unfair judgement for this disposition. Rising early in your spare time may even be a type of virtue signalling, that gives the impression of an organised, saintly character. We night owls look slovenly by comparison.
But I’m not lazy; I’m just not wired up in such a way as to enjoy fierce light and Phillip Schofield. My productivity soars as the moon sets. During my childhood getting up in the morning would make me feel physically sick. Such an inclination was made worse by adults around me, forcing breakfast down my face. “It’s the best meal of the day”, they lied. Cornflakes? Please!
The night was different. It was my time, and I thrived on episodes of Casualty. Thanks to my liberal parents, this bliss went on for years until a traumatic adventure to boarding school for a week, where I was ordered to bed at 9pm. I felt as if I was in a straightjacket.
While I snuggled in my oppressive duvet, I dreamed of a future where there would be a divided universe, in which night riders and morning movers could live side by side, accepted in their own right. So that never again would I get a look of disgust for the confession I woke up at 12pm on a Saturday (this face doesn’t make itself!).
As I moved into adulthood I found that my sleeping habits became socially acceptable; especially at university, where I could disguise them under tenuous ‘carpe diem’ philosophy. But then I came out into the real world, and people started to become really, really sensible. And it became all about 10am, rather than pm.
Is everyone drunk though, seriously? For as far as I can tell there is nothing alluring about socialising in the forenoon. Particularly with brunch, as – call me Captain Conventional – I can’t help thinking that dinner is way better. Even if there are no eggs.
It does seem to me that ‘daylife’ is increasingly being made into a thing. I’m no creature of convention, but I am conventional in my opinion that nighttime is the right time to do (social) business. I need the darkness; it soothes my pupils and hides the bags under my eyes. You snooze, you don’t lose.
Besides it’s not easy for us night owls, with work already demanding so much of our physical capabilities. Waking up at 7am five days a week is hard enough; the thought of more makes me insides crumble. Who do people think I am? Bear Grylls?!
I’m just a girl who needs a morning snooze; let socials not be a nightmare.
Charlotte Gill 