Oh God O'clock

Imagine- the sky is a nondescript grey, mysterious, as if a veil of fog has been pasted to the atmosphere to further delude the prophets crying out global warming. Even the birds haven't yet woken up to sing, the trees are silent, as if, deep in their core, they too slumber. The sun is hiding somewhere down Australia way, and the frost still permeates the air like a choking icy ghost.

"Time to get up!!"

A grunt, which with my limited dictionary I can translate as,

"What time is it?"

There's a pause. A tug of an ear lobe. Rub of the neck. And then, an uneasy, half closed mouth mumble...

"six...AM."

Silence. You know, like when there's silence right before a typhoon. Or a bushfire. Or a tidal wave. Or the ever more hyped up apocalypse. Apparently, when she's 6000 miles from home, severely jet lagged, almost as cold as Captain Oats when he popped out for a walk and utterly exhausted, it's not acceptable to wake your mother up at Oh God O'Clock. On her birthday.

Note to self. Remember that.

Still, at least this time I wasn't the root of the problem. Actually, it was my brother's zealous obsession with rugby, and the fact that actually, his teams quite good. Add a dash of parental pride, a lack of semi normal regular familial activities and hope for a birthday try, and we find ourselves in the above situation. They won, but the try eluded him, though there was a close shave in which my mother became near hysteric. Honestly, even the slightly disproportionate team chihuahua's eyes weren't quite so wide, or voice quite so high, as she suddenly realised something really good might actually happen on her birthday.

That's sad isn't it? I mean, it's supposed to be a wonderful day- the celebration of one of life's mysteries in which we actively participate, the marking of a loved one's coming into the world- a philosophical sign post indicating logically this is when we may conclude this person came to exist. (though since it's philosophy, please free to include obligatory 'maybe/perhaps/probably/none of the above'.)

And yet, here she was, freezing her toes off on a muddy field in the North, wrapped up in at least three coats to protect her from our glorious weather having woken up at six o'clock, travelled four hours and not even had breakfast in bed- fanatically egging him on in the hope of something more to celebrate.

It's sadder still that my family actually have various codes for these particularly torturous obstacles in our lives in which we are required to wake up at such damned witching hours and travel, groggily, for hours with nothing but directions from a printout and a flask of coffee to fuel us. These include the afore-mentioned 'Oh God O'Clock', and just 'get some sleep', said in certain tones to indicate the meaning, much like numerous eastern dialects. Forget Captain Cook- we are the intrepid explorers of HavenBaulk lane, the code breakers of the school provided directions, the heroes who soldier on with barely a welcome break pork pie to go on- those messy haired, halfway dressed nomads who stumble onto the pitch and wait for the wind to give them an adrenaline rush where caffeine couldn't.

You know the best thing? It's late afternoon, and neither I, nor they, care any longer. The past is the past, to state the long gone obvious. It no longer exists and there's no point lamenting it. A goal was set, it was achieved, we came back together- for an hour or two we seemed like a normal family (ignoring the fact we were discussing the varying difficulty of bartering with chinese stall owners depending on geographic location, and where to best find full cream goat's milk for your father/in-law.) And that's all that counts. We pick which memories we remember, often without even consciously considering the action. We block out the pain of waking up at such forsaken hours much like we decide- in general outside of our sentient knowledge- to breathe or use a hyphen (woops).

So if I look back on my school trip to Rome, I'll remember acrobatic dogs, disturbing cryptic postcards (and by that I mean gems dealing with photos of crypts because the british postal service doesn't have enough to deal with.) I'll remember west country lads picking up irish accents and how to say 'nun' in cantonese. I'll generally be ignorant on reflection of the blister to defeat all blisters, and my english teacher's cheerful chirp of a 'short walk', where his piece of string stretches several miles and ours some desperate metres.

And Mum, I hope, when she looks back on today, will remember being at home, and knowing that we love her. And yes, that's unbelievably soppy, and no, I'm not sure any of us has the guts to put it into words and show that, shock horror, we have emotions, but the sentiments exists. And if it's possible for someone to perceive a negative sentiment where there is none, then there must also on occasion be a positive sentiment which lies unseen, but exists nonetheless. Maybe some deity or greater force exists, maybe it/he/she doesn't- but there is something in which we can have faith, especially as we get closer to christmas.

If nothing else, if only for a moment, trust in the goodwill of humanity. Because from someone, somewhere, even at Oh God O'clock, it's there.