The Breakfast Club

Last Saturday at 8.45am I heard the Postman drive up to my house to deliver my usual collection of begging letters and demands for payment. And I was embarrassed. Why was I embarrassed? Because I was warm and toasty, gloriously snuggled beneath my duvet. I was revelling in the Saturday morning lie in as I did not have to do the school run or go to work. But I couldn’t help thinking “What does he think when he finds the house in silence with its eyes tight shut?” Of course what the employee of the Royal Mail was actually thinking was “How quickly can I ram this heap of junk mail into this fecking letterbox and get finished?”

There is a complicated kind of shame associated with a lie in when you are a country dweller. I know someone who rises every day before the first Sparrow has broken wind and sits on their patio with a warm coffee and an even warmer coat, to watch the sun cheekily peep over the horizon. It’s a lovely idea, but to do this every day you have to go to bed before Emmerdale has finished.

Aside from the idleness of the weekend, I do adore an early rise. Nothing sets you up for the day in a better fashion than a cheeky excursion around the neighbourhood on horseback when the shadows are long and the dewdrops are still garnishing the grass. You might not see a soul, or you might see the world before its wife has got to it. A year ago when out on a pre-7am ride, I almost scared to death a lovely lady who was staying in a holiday cottage nearby. She was brandishing her camera and said she had been told that there were many hares in the area and she was trying to photograph them. I told her that at that time of year I saw hares most mornings along the piece of road leading to her cottage. As I rode away from her a hare ran over the road in front of me, as I turned to see if she had seen it, I saw she was facing the opposite way. When I was returning home, two more lolloped across my path as she meandered on ahead; with her back to them. For those of us who remember the Kit Kat advert with the Pandas, it was a moment like that.

There is tranquil softness in the air before 8am and I like it.

It’s like being a Member of the Secret Club that resides behind an unmarked door in Mayfair, although there are no champagne cocktails offered on a silver platter at 6.20am. More’s the pity.