The morning tap

This morning I woke up with a tap attached to my face. It was there in place of my nose, and it was dripping. Constantly. When it wasn’t dripping, it was tingling. Well, I suppose you get that when someone replaces your nose with a tap. It’s bound to feel a little funny. In this instance, the funny made me sneeze regularly. The tap has been there for a few mornings, recently. It seems to disappear before lunchtimes. It’s a morning tap, a spigot without an ‘off’ position. It’s visited me before.

During my school days – back before the dawn of time, or of the millennium at the very least – I struggled through mornings just as I do now, a wodge of tissues permanently at the ready and the constant threat that, if I ran out of them, I’d end up looking like a toddler with a cold. Mothers would come up to me, pinch my nose and demand that I ‘blow’. I lived in fear of morning assemblies, daunting ceremonies that always had an uplifting theme, designed to stir us on to ever greater heights, illustrated through stories of inspirational women and uplifting hymns. We were expected to sit silently through these events three times a week, not wriggling too much as we sat on the hard wooden floor, or being caught talking when we were deemed old enough to have a seat in the balcony of the school hall. Most of the girls had their blazer pockets stuffed, one with their hymn book, the other with various coping mechanisms – usually of the sweet, chocolate- or sugar-coated variety. I always carried things that might work well as nose plugs, should the need arise. I’d always assumed that it was something in the hall that triggered my - sorry, this is going be gross – river of snot, but it turns out it wasn’t. It’s the morning generally that does it.

I’m allergic to mornings. By lunchtime, it’s gone. It was always second period at school before I could breathe through my nose, before I could enunciate clearly and not sound like a rugby player who’d just been pinned on the bottom of the scrum by his head. Now, it clears by the time I’m at my desk and have cleared my email inbox – a time that, admittedly, gets later and later every day. And rather than a pocket full of tissues, I have a roll of toilet paper sitting on my desk. I’m all class.

The way I see it, some people are morning people, and some people aren’t. I clearly fall into the latter category. I would love to be able to bounce out of bed in the morning, doing my very best impersonation of Tigger, but I have long resigned myself to being a shambling incarnation of a crime scene photograph when I first arise. The tissue plugs up my nose probably don’t help the appearance.

I’m going to be forced to get my act together, though. Word came down from on high that I am to be at a new desk location by the end of the week. The moment will be put off as long as possible. As much as I want the company of other people, I enjoy the luxury of having nobody nearby to see just how late it is when I first plant my head on my desk and reach for the toilet paper. Sitting with other people, I’ll have to start functioning through the snot. At least there's no mothers handy to offer me a handkerchief.