I love spring – but sleep even more!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

That clock change couldn’t have come at a better time. Every year around now I start waking up ridiculously early. We’re not talking mere incremental minutes per week, but hours.

I’ll happily admit that the odd dawn is a wonder to perceive. Sometimes you have to get out there and wander the dew-drenched grasses, watch mist lifting slowly from distant reed-strewn dips, drying out and disappearing under the strong sun.

There’s an exquisite calm about that time of day.

In the magnificent trees around my new home dawn is increasingly orchestrated by birdsong. The chorus will reach epic levels in weeks to come, but that’s not the reason I’m waking up.

I’ll sleep through anything natural. Hailstones slamming my window? Zzz. Falling asleep to storm force winds? Yes please.

The sound of smashing rain is my codeine, but a distant motorbike has me sitting up in bed.

Far more blathering fool than evolutionary biologist, I reckon that the reason I wake up at 5:05 am at this time of year is primal. I’ve noticed it’s very much a male thing. As soon as I give out about waking up silly early, there rumbles a collective blokey muttering of “Yeh, I know, me too, tell me about it.”

You can have all the lifestyle sleep well live full breathe deep pooh well apps you want, but none of them are more powerful than the one inside you.

If you’re a male mammal and it’s light, there might be other predators about, so you’ve got to be awake; alert; protect the brood.

Ironically far from 21st century woke, but that’s the way it was, that’s why I do it, and it’s exceedingly irritating, because I neither need nor want to be wide awake that early.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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