The Vicar's Wife

I have many faults, but I think my worst one is probably my slothful attitude to mornings. I loathe getting up. It’s partly about sleeping, and partly about hating to leave my warm comfortable bed for a chilly Vicarage.

Ideally, I think I would really like to run my life like Mrs Stitch in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, who was in bed at 11am when Scoop’s (anti)hero Boot visited her. Although she did staying in bed in a very energetic way, simultaneously signing cheques, dictating details of costumes for charity balls, supervising the painting of a mural, checking her daughter’s Virgil translation and completing a cryptic crossword. On reflection, perhaps being like Mrs Stitch is too ambitious.

Now that I no longer have babies who cry for attention at an early hour I need as much help as I can find. I have a few strategies in place (Teasmade by the bed, married a morning person etc) but I know I could probably do a few things to improve my morning sprigginess. So I was interested to see a Wikihow article tweeted by a similarly unlarklike friend this week with a number of useful tips.

The first section of the Wikihow article is called Preparing the Night Before and I was reminded of a couple of golden proverbs I’ve heard from ancient saints. You must say this in a very plummy accent to get them to sound right:

The Battle of the Blankets is won the night before

and

Christians on their way to heaven get to bed before eleven

So I have been trying to win the Battle of the Blankets by getting to bed at least at a time which still features the word eleven. And I’ve been ensuring that getting up is slightly more enticing as an activity. The best thing for me this week in terms of improving my ability to rise from my stupor has been tidying up the post Christmas debris alongside the bed. The attractiveness of getting up surprisingly increases in inverse proportion to the likelihood of skewering my foot on something spikey on the way out.

And I’ve printed out Do the Next Thing to read in my devotional time, to remind me that the Next Thing is to get up. The first line is helpful here:

Do it immediately…

So now I’m off to win that Battle of the Blankets. Once I’ve posted this and talked to the Vicar, and maybe noodled about on the internet for a bit. Still aiming for bed before eleven. Ish.