Early to bed...

Recently, I've been enjoying the deliciously wicked feeling that comes from going to bed early, sitting there, reading and sipping something, with the curtains wide open and seeing the sun still shining in the evening.

What's so 'wicked' about that is what you are probably now wondering. Well, for me, the daylight hours mean that I have to be 'productive', that I mustn't waste time. Rather like a peasant, I am sensitive to light, which means that the earlier it gets light as of spring time, the earlier I wake up. At the height of the summer, this means 5 a.m.

I grew up hearing my mum say as soon as she sat down on the sofa in the evening: "No, I can't sit down and do nothing." Upon which, some knitting would come out. If you hear that often enough over the decades, it worms its way into your own consciousness and the idea of always being productive, of always doing something is firmly fixed in your own mind. You can, therefore, imagine how long the days are in the summer when you feel you have to cram every daylight hour with doing something useful.

Even when I was still at school, this was already influencing me, so much so that I felt a bit naughty for going to bed early on a Thursday evening - but the music programmes on BBC Radio 2 were too good not to devote myself to listening to them for three hours. Two of those hours were Wally Whyton's Country Club. Sheer heaven. All the old stars. What I call proper country music. Followed by big band and Latin American music - both with half-hour programmes.

These days, now that all my evening classes have been cancelled, I've taken up the habit again and sometimes I'm in bed at 7 p.m. - always with a good book - and relishing the luxury of doing nothing but reading and not being 'productive' in any way. Bliss.