The early morning workings of the lady brain

The missus started a new job this week. I was broadly in favour until she dropped the bombshell that, for no apparent reason, her working day now begins at 8.30am. This means she is furthering her career at the expense of my quality of life.

In her old job she started at 9am, which as a long-standing and indulged member of staff she treated as a nominal estimate of the time she might, under exceptional circumstances, aim to be not too much later than. But now she's new and keen and the new regime is costing me about thirty minutes of sleep every morning. That's about 10 hours a month - this is serious stuff.

So the alarm now goes off at 6.30am. Once she is coaxed or, more often, driven out of bed by a sturdy shove to the lower back, she puts the kettle on and gets in the shower. If I haven't had to pull her out of bed by her feet I may fall back into a light sleep. This lasts until the kettle starts whistling. I stomp downstairs and take the kettle off the heat, bang on the bathroom door and issue her with a 4,879th final warning about sorting her bloody tea out without waking me up.

She breezes past to make the tea, perhaps with a derisive "Alright, Dad", and plonks herself in front of the TV. There she will sit, with a hairbrush in her hair as she clasps her mug of tea, and she will absorb herself in absolutely anything that is on BBC Breakfast. She will give the same attention to an update on the Manchester United defensive injury crisis as she will a feature on the decline of the Norfolk duck population. If the TV shows her an image of a child or any form of cute animal she will grin. If the TV shows her an image of either of these in any kind of sad context she may have a little cry. If an irate boyfriend pokes his head around the door she will feign, feebly, a hair-brushing motion or a peer into a make-up mirror.

Somehow, many hours later, she will have done her hair, make-up and got dressed. Then she will begin drifting from room to room in a listless hunt for the items she has scattered around the flat the night before. She will emerge from the spare room holding a sock, and trudge upstairs to get her glasses from the bedroom. Then into the bathroom for hairclips, the kitchen for shoes and living room for her phone. Then spare room for different shoes, back up to the bedroom for a second sock, the top of the stairs for a coat and the living room for a handbag. After a few more laps she'll reach the door and start rummaging through her handbag. She's got her purse, keys, phone, she's walking out of the d...."Oh shit! Where's my Oyster card?" Then back in the flat for a hunt through every pocket of everything she wore the day before, as the Oyster card sits ignored on the kitchen table.

This all adds up to why an early start time is such a disaster. I accept that boys, who only have to decide which of five pre-ironed shirts to wear, have it a little easier. I also accept that things like long hair and face paint are a factor. But the fundamental disorder of the lady brain is laid bare at times like this. Perhaps there's a morning routine efficiency class I could send her to?