Early riser

So it's Tuesday and i'm on my early rise. I have previously explained the need to get the early train because of having to shower at work.

I don't mind the earlier rise. It gives me a sense of achievement - ever so slightly bizarre bearing in mind I managed to spend pretty much all day Sunday lounging round in bed. But managing to get the early train; exercising the body, and doing so much earlier than normal.

This sense of achievement is somewhat tarnished, though, because of an odd phenomenon. The odd phenomenon of everyone-else-also-running-early. It's a phenomenon closely associated with the phenomenon of everyone-also-running-late.

Weirdly you will notice that, on the day you are running early or late. The woman that you always pass at the crossroad at the top of the hill, her with the red bag and blue shoes that really don't match: you will pass her at the crossroads at the top of the road as per usual. Yet it should be - and actually is - twenty minutes earlier, of twelve minutes late. The short, muscular hispanic chap with the very hairy but neatly trimmed chest - the one who always wears slim-fit shirts despite them being too tight - will get the same train as you, despite it being entirely the wrong train. And when that train pulls in at the next stop, exactly the usual contingent of commuters in the same suits or tanktops or overalls will get on or off as usual.

It's very disorientating. If you're running early, you start to panic that maybe you aren't actually early, you are on time (but therefore, in the circumstances, late). But if you're late it throws you even more because you're not sure if you are actually late: it can give you an undeserved sense of rectification, that you have somehow corrected the error of delay. You risk slacking back to ordinary routine despite actually still being late, along with - apparently - the rest of the country.

But what it does do, when running early, is to smudge the smile. Yes, you are still early, you have still achieved exactly what you set out to achieve; you just don't seem to have beaten the competition. You've done well, but not better than anyone else. A pat on the back, but in a somewhat condescending manner.