Who's The Daddy: Enjoying the glorious spring morning sunrise

Daughter #1 was out celebrating an award she won last week at her high-flying corporate job (lovely trophy and even lovelier folding cash) until waaaaay past dawn, whereas me and The Boss were up at 4.30am because she wanted us to see the sun rise.

If you don’t have little kids in the house, haven’t seen the inside of a nightclub for 30 years or have a red-eye flight to somewhere exotic on holiday, then 4.30am feels a little askew.

But seeing as how we’ve been off the sauce for a month now and you’ve still got to get your middle-aged kicks somehow, The Boss decided that we’d both like to see the sun rise over Williamson Park on a glorious spring morning.

We’ve been keeping the hours of medieval farmers and highly-strung sighthounds for a while now, especially since our gym switched a Les Mills Sprint class to 7am on Mondays and we signed up to a stretchy class at 7.50am on Tuesdays.

Still, when the alarm went off at 4.30am last Sunday, it felt like some sort of community service order. Or a heart attack. Or possibly both.

We were literally the only ones in Williamson Park as we stood on the Ashton Memorial steps to witness the early morning gloom gradually illuminated by bright sunshine, turning the outrageously pink, cloudless sky into a gorgeous shade of blue.

In some ways, it was like the best bits of the first Covid lockdown. Or camping with your little kids. Very loud, shrieking birds and absolutely no people around. Actually, after about half an hour we saw two. One on their way home after a night out and another off to work on an early shift.

Maybe this is what middle-aged couples with grown-and-flown kids do when they’re not drinking for the foreseeable and have so much time on their hands that weekends feel like three days instead of two.

But it was worth being hauled out of bed like a vampire who’s been disturbed from their slumber a century early to see the huge grin on The Boss’ face as the sun came up. Even though by 1pm that afternoon yours truly was so tired everything started to spin like some sort of brain stem infection (March 2010, would not recommend).

When you’re in your mid-20s, like Daughter #1 is now, you can stay out all night, nip home for a shower, a change of clothes and a Pop Tart, and go and do a day’s work like it was nothing.

When you’re in your mid-50s, just you try pulling a stunt like that. The modern vernacular is “**** about and find out”. Even if you only short-change yourself on sleep by a couple of hours on one night, you will pay a heavy price, my friend.

The hallucinations only abated after a three-hour afternoon nap so deep and powerful that when I awoke with a jolt around 4ish I thought I was late for school in 1985.

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