waking up

Unlike many people I know, I have no problem waking up. If I set an alarm, I often wake before it does. Between six and seven o’clock, my eyes open, I swing my legs out of the bed, my mind and body snap to, and I start doing stuff.

My good woman, on the other hand, and her two kids vaguely register alarms and slumber on. When they grudgingly crawl out from under the doona they stumble into walls and are incapable of coherent speech or action for at least half an hour.

This morning, New Year’s Day, is one of those rare days when I wake with my good woman in bed beside me. She shares her house, fourteen kilometres away, with a 19 year-old daughter, 17 year-old Serbian prince, and a small-brained Turkish cat. I share my house with a late middle-aged Jack Russell.

So my New Year’s Day begins just after six. The Bureau promises a scorcher so the first task is to roll down the Hollands on the eastern side of the house. I unsnake the hose, fill watering cans, and drizzle the vegetable seedlings and herb pots dotted around the house. I breakfast on freshly-squeezed orange juice and a bowl of cereal: I’d eat in my sleep if I could. My good woman dozes on.

The day doesn’t really begin at six; it kicks off at midnight. My good woman and I have shared the sunset with about fifty others on the Kyeema Track, just below Mt Cohranwarrabul. We were reprising our first date of a little over four years ago. On that evening we had the track and the orange sky to ourselves.

After the sun dies we dine at the only Olinda restaurant open on New Year’s Eve. Sated, we roll down the mountain to my ageing wooden cottage to massage each other’s tired bodies. External massage morphs into internal massage, as it often does.

Fireworks erupt and my watch on the chest of drawers near the bed chimes in the new day, the new month and the new year. My good woman informs me that in her native Balkans it is said that what one is doing when the new year begins will be the theme for the year.

Rock on.