The trouble with British Summer Time, apart from it being a misnomer that is, is it takes Joel Bloom nearly a week to catch up with the lost hour. Mornings are difficult: a constant struggle with his body clock, which point-blank refused to accept the evidence of his eyes when looking at his bedside clock.
“Can’t be eight already,” he would murmur in his fractured oddity of a voice. Since Becca said she was leaving, he formed the habit of talking to himself. Good company and intelligent conversation, he joked, but the reality is, he is lonely and affronted by her betrayal. The bloody postman, he thought, how much of a cliché is THAT?
“Maybe it’s time to look again,” said his head.
He stretched as he sat on the bed. An article in the New Yorker said a good stretch when you get up is healthy, and Joel’s opinions were those of magazine writers, especially the New Yorker staffers, who seemed to write just for him. Try to punch the ceiling, the article commanded. He did so: his reward is a twinge in the lower right side of his back, just above the piriformis muscle, which had been troubling him these last few years.
Pinching his belly fat, he resolved to forego chocolate today, a daily admonition that usually weakened into vapour when he sat alone in front of the television, then rolled out his yoga mat and lay on it in his PJs, panting at the effort. Five sit-ups, five press-ups, five crunches and five burpees he commanded himself. His head disobeyed.
“Oh c’mon,” he sighed, “it’s only five.”
“Not happening,” his head responded, “maybe tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll do you a deal: five sit-ups and we can get back into bed and read the Guardian until eight-thirty.”
“Deal,” said his head. He was struggling after four, but plastering on a grimace, he pulled his torso upright one more time and then collapsed into a panting heap.
“Jesus H Christ on a bike,” he wheezed, picking up his iPad with a trembling hand, “it was five sit-ups, not a marathon.”
“Told you,” his head said, “but you didn’t listen.”
“You didn’t complain when we dug the garden,” he responded. He laid his iPad down and waited for his room to stop gyrating, closing his eyes, and breathing slowly.
“That was needs must,” his head said, “this is just vain foolishness.”
“Okay, okay,” he conceded, “but shallow graves would have done. We’re in the middle of nowhere, for God’s sakes. No-one is going to come digging up our patio.”
“They have sniffer dogs,” his head replied, “that’s why we needed a deep pit filled with calcium oxide.”
He climbed out of bed again, pulled the curtains and looked down at the patio under which lay the remains of Becca and Postman Bloody Pat, grinned manically, and disappeared back into his headroom.
“Hello, Joel,” it said, “who are you going to be today?”
