In defence of the lie-in

The problem with waking up is the awareness that you have indeed awoken, which creeps up inside of you whilst your eyes are still shut to the outside world. Your eyes being closed should trick the rest of you into realising it’s made a heinous mistake, and thusly cause it to recoil back into sleepdom. But there appears to be an inverse relationship between the tighter you screw your eyelids and the raising awareness of the fact that you have indeed awoken.

One eye decides to test the water, and cracks the door open just a little.

7:17?! Who wakes up at 7:17 on a Saturday!

The right eye reports back to the left the seriousness of the situation. There’s only one thing for it. The body turns over, sighs a little, and retreats further into the duvet.

The left eye winks open to see if the feint has been successful.

This just won’t do.

The mind gets bored with the whole upsetting façade, and decides to wander.

And this, my dear friends, is the beauty of the lie-in. Cast aside all notions of a day wasted, and any guilt of the productive and interesting things you could be doing. Revel in the feeling of being tucked in between your sheets, duvet folded around you, perhaps one leg out to keep from overheating, your eyelids gently closed, and your mind free to wander and wonder, without the guilt of listing all the other more important things awaiting you outside of the bed.

I could turn this into a lesson, and lecture on how boredom is supposed to be good for creativity or how night owls have been found to have higher IQs, therefore justifying the need to lie in after a week of very late nights and enforced early mornings.  Or provide insight on my own experience, which is that the long weekend mornings spent lolling around in bed are the mornings when my wandering mind starts to gain insight into areas left unsolved from during the week, or when I can spend time browsing through various Twitter feeds, or reading articles marked to read but not yet read. And how both these things are essential elements of where new ideas come from.

But those of us that either dabble or embrace this sordid past time don't lie there thinking, "Ah yes, excellent, I can already feel my creativity increasing by a rate of 0.75 per minute of boredom." Nor do we smile smugly to ourselves as we think of all those early birds rushing about with their low IQs, being all productive and cultural and what-not, whilst we lie in our musty sheets and covered in a slight sweaty sheen. Or, "Right! Time to get productive on the old idea-factory line. A few more hours in bed ought to do the trick."

No, rather we have decided to reject any feelings of guilt associated with staying in bed beyond the thirty seconds it takes to decide whether you're going to embrace the day or embrace your pillow. And we simply enjoy the feeling, and the time to ourselves (or with whoever it is that you've decided to share a bed with). We know we could be shopping, or cleaning, or exhibition-visiting. But we'd rather not. And so we don't.

And that's the crux of it. We know that we enjoy lying in until whatever time constitutes a lie-in. We know that we enjoy dozing, napping, pretending the busy outside world doesn't exist for a while. And so we embrace it. No apologies, no justification, no excuses. Just pure, unadulterated, unfettered,  laziness. And so you may judge, those of you who get up at 7:00 on a Saturday morning to make the most of the day and cram in as much as you can into the weekend, or those that force yourselves out of bed early during the week to exercise or watch the news or eat breakfast. But I think we all know who the real winners are in the scenario. Yep. The real winners.