They often say that some people are owls and others are larks. Larks rise with the morning light and are out and about doing things while owls languish in their beds. And while owls inhabit the night hours, buzzing with ideas and mental energy, larks slumber in their nests.
I am very much a night owl. Always have been. In this sense I am rather like my mother who always seemed to be up late making things - lampshades, leather gloves, baskets or simply knitting. All my childhood, it was my father who was up bright and early to make his sons' breakfasts. Mum was always in bed. Unsurprising really as she had probably climbed the staircase to bed in the early hours of that morning.
I like the peacefulness of the nighttime. For me it's a good time for reading, writing, surfing the internet, watching a late film or looking up at the night sky. Sometimes I will even lock our front door and toddle off on a short night walk through the silent suburbs - with very few lights to be seen in windows. It can feel as if I own the night and everyone else has gone. A fox will dart between cars. A faraway train will rumble towards Doncaster or Derby. Perhaps an owl will swoop by - a night owl like me.
Larks might claim that the best part of the day is the early morning and may cajole night owls for missing it. But I feel no guilt for I cannot help my attraction to late nights. I haven't been to bed before midnight in a long, long time. This was even true during my working years when I needed to be up and about soon after 7am. I would have been much happier if my working day had begun at 10am and finished at 6pm but frustratingly I didn't make up the rules.
It seems to me that larks and owls are at the extreme ends of a spectrum. I guess that most people are somewhere in the middle - neither a lark that rises in the early morning nor a night owl in the moonlight. If I am right then I think those in-between people require a different bird symbol. Let's call them crows. They sit on fences between fields.
Which are you? A lark? An owl? Or a crow?
Does that mean there is something of the night about you? I am most definitely a lark and would be happy to be tucked up in bed by nightfall.
ReplyDeleteSomething of the night about me - like The Phantom of the Opera.
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I am probably an old crow then.
ReplyDeleteCrows are very intelligent creatures. In fact, I think the crow is more intelligent than the peregrine.
DeleteI think you are correct there YP
DeleteI'm an Owl. I find it difficult to get out of bed in the morning but Tom is up and dressed before breakfast.
ReplyDeleteI sleep upstairs in my own bedroom with another desk and another desktop pc, all of my craft stuff and can often be found at 1 o'clock in the morning doing crochet.
We generally go to bed about 11.30 - 12 and if I'm not doing crafty things I will read. I'm just not tired and if I try to sleep before that I have difficulty in getting to sleep.
I often hear people complaining that they cannot sleep and then find out that they go to be at 10 o'clock regular, I don't understand why they do that.
Briony
x
You play crochet in the early hours? Don't the neighbours complain? All that clacking of crochet balls!
DeleteI am most definitely a lark although I would like to be a bit of an owl too. I naturally wake around 5am. I am filled with los of energy and accomplish a lot.
ReplyDeleteHusband is an owl. He comes to bed around midnight and says he feels more alive in the evening.
Every year I grow night scented phlox from seed. I have never smelt them
My husband says they are glorious!
Your husband and I should have got married and you could have married my wife. Then we'd all have lived with greater regularity. Twit-twoo!
DeleteMy parents are owls. Which, when you are child hoping to get some breakfast, is unfortunate. As far as I can make out they are still owls. Call them before a certain time at your peril. I haven't had the cold heart to tell them they'll most likely die at 4 am (0400 hrs) when most people die. Owl or not.
ReplyDeleteMyself? I am a Lark. Up before the cockerel crowing. The Angel mentioned the other day (and please don't hold me to detail) that some people's patterns are primal, going back to the olden days. They sleep (say, for four hours), wake, go (some time later) back to sleep. That's me. Neither do I need an alarm clock.
What I like about the early early very early morning you may still call night that it's sort of "time out". No one makes any claims on you, expects anything from you. It's your time only. Time to squander without being held to account. Not even by myself. Delicious. Luxury. Bonus.
U
Sounds like you feel the same way about the very early morning as I do about the very late night.
DeleteA book at breakfast for Ursula Lark:
Delete*Morning - How To Make Time* (Fourth Estate 2019) by Allan Jenkins.
Jenkins, a food and drinks editor, talks about sleep and morning to a fisherman, neuroscientist, poet, artist, birder, actor, chef, beekeeper. To the French it is l'heure bleu, to the Irish the bright ring of the day.
A book of little moments, night skies, food, plants, creatures, and morning rituals.
I'm more of a cat. I think I could sleep all day and night if given the chance.
ReplyDeleteTo continue the bird analogy, I think this means you are akin to a dodo.
DeleteI can be a lark or an owl. But most of the time I am a crow.
ReplyDeleteSure you are not an oven ready turkey?
DeleteI am an owl trying to become a lark .loved your post .
ReplyDeleteI suspect that there are more owls trying to be larks than larks trying to be owls.
DeleteI am definitely a Lark ... up at 5:05 a.m. this morning! Sometimes I have a morning nap ... more often a nap after lunch ... sometimes a catnap after my supper! The older I get, the more I tend to sleep and sometimes it worries me that I am sleeping too damned much! LOL
ReplyDeleteYou are not sleeping as much as a hoary marmot Marcia.
DeleteLark. I used to leave for work by 4:30 am--then drive 50 miles to work. You need to be wide awake for traffic around WDC. Used to call it the death commute as someone was always trying to kill you through their stupidly insane driving. Retired now (thank goodness), but still wake in the early hours...assuming I sleep through the night in the first place. Never take naps, even if I end up staying awake reading until midnight. Evidently not one who needs a great deal of sleep.
ReplyDeleteWild elephants only sleep for 2 to 3 hours a night. Do you happen to have big floppy ears and a trunk Mary? By the way I never nap either. I only sleep in bed.
DeleteNope. Small ears. Small nose. :)
DeleteA little bit of both, here, although if I was forced to choose I think I'd fall on the side of a lark.
ReplyDeleteI thought you would be a green parrot Jennifer!
DeleteOwl. Someone once said we should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I lean toward the dove end of the spectrum, as I would never call anyone a dodo or a turkey.
ReplyDeleteNot even in jest.
Delete"I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." I believe it comes from that well-known black book that Mr Trump held upside down in front of St John’s Episcopal Church in Washington D.C.. Of course I would never compare you to a bird Bob - not even the brown thrasher which, as I am sure you know, is the state bird of Georgia.
DeleteNever heard of the Brown Thrasher, did it flee from the Wren Boys in Ireland? Why didn't Hoagy Carmichael get it into his song, Georgia On My Mind?
DeleteWhat about those who go to bed early, get up in the night for a couple of hours, then go back to bed again until morning?
ReplyDeleteThat's the peewee bird.
DeleteIn his poem to S.R. Crockett (online) Robert Louis Stevenson has both a peewee and a curlew, which he calls by the Scottish name, whaup. *Blows the wind today, and the sun and the rain are flying.* Reciting a poem, before going to sleep in the pre-dawn, brings on a good dream. Walter de la Mare, Yeats, Christine Rossetti, Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, Masefield, Kipling work for me. The Stevenson poem has a lovely line, *the howes of the silent vanished races* which makes me think of my Dad who was fascinated by the Picts. *Who were the Picts?* he would say when he was out on the hills.
DeleteYou have actually stirred a lot of memories for me, YP. When I lived at home my Mum always went to bed at 0220. She got up at 0700. My Dad went to bed probably nearer 2300 and rose around 0615 I should think from memory because I think he got the 0710 bus to town. Even when he retired in the early '70s he wasn't a late riser. I inherited my Mum's traits and went to bed around 0100 most of my life. I'm still rarely in bed much before midnight and I'm still up before 0700 as a rule although in the winter my body might be persuaded to linger longer.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't have any desire to go wandering off at night any more. The last time I can recall going for a walk around midnight in the middle of the summer it was a lovely warm evening without midges and we walked to the beach I can see from my kitchen window (about a mile as the road goes). When we got there is was still fairly light. It's the only time since my youth I can remember skinny dipping. Fortunately the way back home over the crofts is a bit faster! These things are great when you do them but walking back in damp clothes rather takes the edge of it afterwards.
I am so pleased that this post stirred memories of your mother and father's habits Graham. As for the skinny dipping, I have avoided the temptation to visualise this event and will continue to attempt to block it from my mind. I hope there weren't any crabs around with their cheeky little pincers.
DeleteI've been an owl for as long as I can remember. My mother (a lark) still tells me how hard it was to drag me out of bed for school, and I couldn't stomach breakfast because I just wasn't functioning at that hour.
ReplyDeleteIt makes life rather difficult when the world works on a lark's schedule.
In this we are united Jenny. Up the owls!
DeleteI know you live in Sheffield but that's going a bit far for a Hull City supporter.
DeleteMost observant sir.
Delete*A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.* Hemingway
ReplyDeleteI see you as a crow on a fencepost reciting Homer and Rabbie Burns, YP.
I wonder which bird you are John. Perhaps the flamboyant capercaillie of the Scottish highlands.
DeleteLike yersell, maun, ma habits are like the Owl, tho' tawdlin oot for a night walk, and a wee gander at the staurs in Heaven, is nae advisable in Glesca, too many bad bogies waantin tae stab ye. As for the Capercaille, Sir, Ah've no eaten yin meself, but the well-seasoned Haggis is a joy on Burns' Night, especially if there's a lassie in a kilt who can recite a bit o' Homer tae.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Glesca was a traditional Scottish village, watched over by a famous Ben. The kind of village one sees on tartan biscuit tins.
DeleteThe nearest thing tae Ben Glesca is the Necropolis, the steep hill o' the deid upbae Glasgow Cathedral. Ye can ramble up there for an 'oor. That's 'oor meanin seexty minutes, mind, no hoor or whore, tho' ye'll find plenty o' them upbae Blythswood Square like. We bleat wi pride whan we conseedir the care wi wheech we bury oor deid. Jock Knox has a column tae himself upbae thi Necropolis, like Nelson in Trafalgar Square. Knoxy drove the hoors ootae Glesca, but back they came when Knoxy snuffed his candle like. They wear tartan bisques ye girls, yons knickers tae a Yorkshire maun. As fur biscuits? When the fcuk did beescuits get intae thees conversation?
ReplyDeleteI have a little trouble translating that Scotch into proper English but fortunately I resided in Stirling for four years so I am more used to Scotch than the average Sassenach. Were ye' steamin' when ye churned oot this comment Jockey Wilson?
DeleteYP I hope you won't mind if I point out that one of the languages North of the border is Scots. Scotch is a drink also produced and drunk in this fair country.
DeleteThe comment was churned oot over a cup of Mao Feng Green Tea from Teapigs and a portion of passionfruit cheesecake frae Tesco's, YP. The golden nectar of which Graham speaks I rarely sip, only when The Nights Are Drawing In, ken. A single malt in The Babbity Bowster (Glasgow) or The Canny Man (Morningside, Edinburgh) lays to rest all fears aboot Auld Mortality. If you benned in Stirling you will know The Settle Inn, with its Braveheart views of the Wallace Monument and the Ochil Hills. Or The Garfield Hotel in Snowdon Place. My gourmet brother who lived for over 30 years in Los Angeles said he had the best steak pie ever from The Garfield. He could do a braw Yorky Pud, perfectly roasted Aberdeen Angus; and his seafood chowder, with a glass of Chablis, made you feel immortal. I bet you are the canny maun in the keetchin.
DeleteWell, crows are some of the smartest birds?
ReplyDeleteWhat about Sheryl Crow?
DeleteI used to be an owl when I was younger but I'm more of a lark now. If I could be a bird I wouldn't mind being a heron, they always look graceful.
ReplyDeleteThey are also good at spearing fish!
DeleteI have always been an owl. Like you, I cannot remember the last time I went to bed before midnight and it's usually much later. The problem I have is when I have to get up early and have not had much sleep. The older I get the more sleep I need and I rarely get enough. But yes, I love the world at 2:00am!
ReplyDeleteWe speak the same language Bonnie!"Twit-twoo! Twit-twoo!"
DeleteI'm a lark, up with the dawn, I love the soft colours of dawn. But if I could choose it would be a barn owl that fly both in the dark and light.
ReplyDeleteYou want the best of both worlds Thelma!
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I'm sitting on the fence, I guess. It depends quite a bit on the time of year, though. In the recent summer heatwave I've been forced to be a lark because the sun shines into my bedroom really early, + the only time to get anything done without getting a heatstroke is before noon. In winter I tend to be more of an owl.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteGuess which side I am on:
ReplyDeleteTime Conflict
Stand up for your rights
O ye people of the night
against the 5:30 am march
of the mobsters of morning!
Their door bangings, flushings,
running of water, brushings,
high whining hair dryings,
flights of stair stomping,
constant phlegmy coughings,
and loud chatty joggings
in the pale morning light.
They who shush murmured conversation
at 10 pm in righteous indignorance
of whole wondrous cultures just leaving
the house for dinner around then
and going on from there to drinks
and dancing, conversation and romancing
on through the night.
(Rising again for café manchado, tostado y trabajo
by 9 am the next morning
lest you think their weight is light.)
Those denouncers of after dark delights
are a pervasive pestilence that must be
put on notice of their own perversity,
apprised that their penchant for early-to-bedness
to be ready for plucking worms at sunrise
can’t hold a candle to sweet stories shared
in the dark of el Parque Retiro
when the moon is shining bright.