The Daily Annoyance

A person can have too much excitement in life. As if the dancing Knickerbocker Glory and Liquorice Allsorts from Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker weren’t enough, I then went to see Russell Brand performing his stand-up routine at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. I woke up the next morning in a state of bewilderment – what had I experienced exactly? It was like some sort of fever dream and I was starting to think that both Russell and his audience would need hours of therapy to recover. I don’t have time for that, however, and decided to devise my own recovery plan.

Fate intervened at this point by failing to deliver a newspaper this morning. I have been wondering for some time if we should give up on newspapers altogether. What is the point? Do I need to start every day with even more stories of shameless entitlement, arrogance and exploitation? I see that already, watching the bird battles raging outside my window. Robins are surprisingly ruthless. The news certainly isn’t entertaining (unlike the birds) and, far from easing you gently into the day, it’s more like a rude awakening. A nasty shock to the system. So this morning was an experiment in a better way to start the day.

I started by doing the daily Wordle (I don’t know what I’ll do once it’s plastered with adverts now that the New York Times has bought it) and then listened to today’s piece of classical music from Clemency Burton-Hill’s Year of Wonder. It was lovely this morning, an unusual blend of classical and spiritual music written by the American composer Florence Beatrice Price in 1929. I had no idea there were so many female composers until Clemency opened my eyes. Then I did some tai chi, followed by a bit of online yoga with Adriene. All wonderful and calming and very therapeutic I’m sure, but there was just something missing. That little bit of grit in the oyster wasn’t there.

It’s very annoying to admit it, but perhaps I need to be annoyed every morning? It might well be more effective than caffeine in waking you up. It’s no use – I’m going to have to go and buy a paper. Once I’ve ploughed through the usual political carryings-on, I’ll turn to the puzzle page and the arts section and remind myself that newspapers have their attractions after all.