An exception to the rule

I am not a morning person.

In those perennial "How to Find Time to Write" workshops* the suggestion to gain an hour by getting up a 5am acts on me like kryptonite on Superman, or water on the Wicked Witch of the West.

Melting! I'm meeeeltiiiiiiing!

This morning was different.

This morning I really, really needed to be in work before half eight instead of after half nine, to get some work done before a ten o clock meeting.

There had been a heavy frost overnight, and the sun was just coming up as a I left. I'm very, very lucky where I live, in that I have to drive through the Lake District mountains to get to work.

Picture the pink light of dawn just beginning to hit the moutains, pale yellow sunshine pouring into the shadowed valleys, dispersing the mists that hung alondside woods and rivers. The platinum grey rocks at the mountain's heads were just dusted with brilliant snow, like diamond dust. Last year's bracken gleamed gold behind the silver birch in the gullies and ghylls. The whole world was jewelled. And half it's people were still in bed, and would never see it.

But I was lucky. I saw it.

So, today, I was a morning person. Just once.


*Which are, I hasten to add, generally fantastic!