Diary entry #4 - mornings

Into my eighth week now and it still feels wierd not having to get up and iron a shirt and go through all the usual formalities before enduring one of the following: boarding a train that is late and twisting with people; or disloding the encrusts of sleep from my eyes as I wait an eternity at the platform for the 8.16, and then the 8.16 doesn't come at all and that faceless announcer comes through the speakers at 8.20 to say the 8.16 will not run today and the next train will be the 8.21 and when the 8.21 arrives at 8.26 (which isn't 'late', according to Connex - six minutes and under is 'on time') arrives it's twisting and turning with people. Faces squashed against the glass and all that vibe. Got room for one more, someone asks a few stops down the line. No, can't you see my head is up against this dero's armpit (and he's a fare - and soap - dodger; I'm the one paying for the privilege) and then this person pushes through anyway. Further into the forest of foulness I go.
Now, I just wake up (easier said than done now that I keep my own time), write whatever is in my head down on a notepad for twenty minutes or so, then head to work. That is, I get up, adjust myself and walk, in my jocks (green Bonds this morning), via the toilet, to my desk.
Being generous, I'll say it's one and a half minutes from bed to the desk now, instead of one and a half hours... and no armpits.
I won't know what's hit me when I do go back to the nine-to-five thing.
Not to say there aren't interruptions. The blokes next door, who are at my eye level each day (on the rare occasion that I open the curtains) as they drill bolts into their roof as part of a complete house makeover, are eager and loud and remind me of the real world, and there's an apprentice who looks no older than eighteen who reminds me of myself when I was his age - an uncertain gopher - only difference is, he actually has some semblance of what to do with his hands. Oh, the unlucky few who took me on for a day's experience here and there... I knew what they were thinking: he's a country boy, he should know how to use an angle grinder, a drill, a saw, a hammer, a nail gun, a shovel, a hedge-cutter, a corkscrew (actually, I picked up that one in the end).
So I'm logged in. Downstairs for breakfast. With my morning coffee always comes great delight as Mr Cow goes to work. Mr Cow was a Christmas present: a perculator in the design of a cow. My girlfriend hates that I call it Mr Cow. Actually, it's the sort of thing I would hate someone else saying, come to think of it. Anyway, the name has stuck now. It's a great little contraption. And, if you're comparing it with the 'toss it in and gulp it down' method of instant coffee, yes, there is a bit of dicking around. But it's worth it. Inside, without getting technical, goes - from bottom to top - water, espresso-strength coffee, and milk. The milk froths up like a cappuccino. Only when the froth creeps out of the lid, and starts dripping the cow's side, do I turn it off and carry it, along with a cup, back upstairs to the desk.
The old pupils expand as I sip away and listen to John Faine talk down to the people in power to the point where I begin to feel sorry for these powerful people, and then the whine of talkback callers has me switching the radio off.
I check my emails, feel the same anticipatory excitement as I've always done when I see I have new messages, which is soon offset by anger when I get into my inbox and notice it's just spam mail.
I get some work done, and then it starts getting warm. I open the doors to the bedroom and the mid-morning sunshine beams in so I shut the doors again. I can't be reminded that it's a nice day, I'm at work.