November 6

Lately I’ve been trying a bit of reverse psychology with Monday mornings. Monday morning usually picks up the fact that I dislike it – what with me hiding my head under a pillow and chanting ‘go away, I’m not getting up, you don’t exist…’ But no, for the past few weeks I have been throwing off the doona (ok, crawling out from under it - B. would complain if I let in a draught) at 6am (context: its dark! its cold!) and heading down to the gym. After about the first fifteen minutes (spent cursing my lunacy) the endorphins start kicking in and I’m glad I made the effort.

One of the best things is that I’m getting up for something other than work, meaning work is put in the context of the morning, rather than being the whole morning. I am fortunate that my employer encourages this work-life balance. We work a 35-hour week and I would say that 95% of people (yes, I am one of them) stick literally to these hours. On the few occasions I’ve made it in for 9 (because I’ve wanted to leave at 4:30) there was only one other person there. As long as we work between 10:30 and 3:30 we can figure the rest out for ourselves. This took a while to get my ex-public sector head round, where my regimented hours were something like 8:45am to 5:21pm - although we did have a 9-day fortnight - ahhh, the memories. If only I could speak French – they have a four-day working week. Then I’d just need to get used to Tuesday mornings.