These days I’m a full-time worker (ah, yep — nice-sounding studio albums don’t pay for themselves!), and I have learned to love the mornings*. The air is crisp. The light can be starkly vivid, and I love the smell of coffee and hot breakfasts, especially at airports for some reason.

But there’s a ‘night time me’ that makes life hell for ‘morning me’. And he’s been around for a lot longer.

My childhood was peppered by many a night being awake ‘after bedtime’. You see, when the cousins of an only child (me) go to bed, and the adults stay up to play cards, eat peanuts and drink KB and Tia Maria, it becomes a fascinating world...