The benefits of waking up early

It was five.thirty. Five.thirty. Not to be confused with that in the afternoon, but the morning. On Saturday. And I was awake. A mosquito bite and thus itching on the left side of my right foot, my friend too. He was warm and was waving the sheet, I was too. Window open, back in bed, it wasn't so comfortable anymore. And there we were, like two old ladies at a quarter to six outside with coffee. It was still Saturday, at a time when I would have just come home five years ago. But waking up early has its advantages, I discovered.

1. No matter how much you loaf around, you don't waste time. You have at least three hours of gain on your free Saturday. And if you lounge for a few hours with a cup of coffee, a series, and breakfast, then you start doing something at a time when you normally rub the sleep out of your eyes. Gain, I'm telling you.

2. It's quiet on the street. No men who think they are Petacchi or Froome (I live on a popular cycling route), no children riding around a thousand times on the tricycle, no neighbors starting the vacuum cleaner. It's quiet.

3. Nature does things to you. Suddenly you hear symphonies of birds, the soft croaking of a frog, the rustling of... Okay okay, I'm getting a bit carried away. But when the sun just rises and everything awakens; it has charm.

4. Fellow early birds greet you, it feels like a complete subculture. They are also people I didn't know were my neighbors, even though I normally don't sleep until eleven. But they say good morning, you nod back, still with that cup of coffee and it does create a bond, that early rising.

5. You can legally watch a movie or binge a bit. That's how I finished season six of Suits again, even though it's been on the twenty-five plus all week. And your day isn't even half over when you reach episode three.

6. Cool it is. As in: about sixteen degrees cool. I came out of bed a bit overheated and went outside to cool down. I was hot. I stayed sitting until I had goosebumps.

7. And maybe it was wiser to start with this achievement, but you can have the wine earlier. After all, your day started two to three whole hours earlier. So I plopped down around half past two behind a salad with burrata and drank a nice, full, fat wine. Because hello, the rest has only had such a short day, you early bird can't help that.