"Not a morning person" doesn't begin to cover it.
Or it didn't once.
That was my mantra.
All has changed. Technology has made me a morning person.
I wake up softly these days, gently roused by sweet sounds.
No longer am I shocked into consciousness by strident, jangling, aggressive, head-hammering clocks.
Nope, it's my handy mobile phone.
My darling iPhone. Before that it was my Nokia.
The pretty wake-up calls available on the mobile phone are one of the significant inventions of our time.
For all the great technological advances of our time, the way in which mobile phones have transformed wake-up calls would seem to have been the least appreciated.
I wonder has anyone really contemplated how many marital arguments did not happen because couples were not jangled into the new day? How many bosses did not bite the heads of employees because their wake-up was non-aggressive?
What larger differences may there be in our world when people's wakening is greeted by beauty instead of abrasive alarm?
I know that my cellphone alarm has absolutely improved the way I meet the day.
I wake up relaxed - not rattled into awareness. I hear the gentle sounds and my mind reaches out, at first wondering as one does out of sleep, and then identifying this as the tune of the dawn.
It is years since I had to wake up just to grasp out and stop the noise, to kill the ugly bell.
And I realise that a whole new lucky world will have known nothing other than cellphone wakeup calls - and perhaps may be a better community for it.
Whoever thought of programming harmonious wake-ups into cellphone technology might well deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.
