I am not a morning person

“Get up, David, we’re leaving in five minutes.”

David groans as his mind races towards full consciousness. His brain is still reeling from the odd dream he had. He was back in school and the teacher gave out to him for using his mobile phone in class. In spite of this, he felt oddly relaxed and comforted being back in primary school. He is not sure what this means, although he remembers that he was considering a job as a teacher last month. There’s no time to ponder this unsettling idea as he crawls into his clothes and staggers towards the bathroom. He slaps too much gel into his hair and then prods it until it resembles something that might be mistaken for a hairstyle. He can hear his sister complaining about him from the kitchen.

“We were supposed to leave at eight! This is really unfair.”

David resents this remark. He’s getting up four hours early just to suit her plans. He considers shouting this down to her, but he’s not the shouting type. When he gets to the kitchen his mother has poured his cereal into a bowl so that he can eat it in the car.

He silently pines for an age where meals were eaten at a table.

“I just have one little job for you to do in town for me…”

Alarm bells go off in our hero's head. Sure enough, the task is one that Hercules would quail at. He smiles weakly. As he puts on his jacket he realises that his sister is not finished getting ready. He waits five minutes, for no apparent reason.

In the car, his sister conducts a one-way conversation, spewing facts and statistics and urban planning that she will need for her exam this morning. It transpires that his sister is not going in his direction so he leaves and gets the bus. The sunlight hurts his eyes, sensitive from too many nights slouched in front of a computer. He sweats underneath the heavy jacket he wore after the weather forecast promised “frequent wind and showers”.

He arrives in college, collapses in front of a computer and prepares to describe his morning in minute detail. He decides to utilise a third person style, in an attempt to distance himself from the grumpy, unpleasant individual revealed by his confession. He flexes his fingers.

And begins.