Daylight Savings Time; the fairy God mother of time, gleefully granting your every wish… well, as long as your dreams are full of 5pm darkness and an extra hour in bed. If you are like me, and I hope for your sake that you’re not, it would take nothing short of a miracle to get me to spend an extra hour in bed – and yes, I am including half a bottle of gin as a miracle. This is by no means a reflection of how I feel about sleep because I can guarantee to you that I am more passionate about sleep than anyone out there, 15-year old boys included; I am simply cursed to wake-up at 6.45am, on the dot, every day, regardless of whether 6.45am is actually now 5.45am and the rest of the world is still sound asleep.
So as I lay there awake, “accidentally” watching various
Kardashian’s Snapchat stories with the volume on full, a feeble and fruitless
attempt to wake up my boyfriend, I decided that this year would be different;
this year I would take the bull by the horns and do something productive with
my extra hour. After all, the early bird catches the worm.
I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I’d had a heavy heart ever since the clock struck nine on
that fateful Wednesday. The whole of the UK had a lump in their throat. No more
Soggy Bottoms, no more Hollywood Handshakes. The end of Great British Bake Off
as we know it. Wednesday evenings would never be the same. I’ve been in
mourning ever since.
Every year, as the seasons changed, a whirlwind romance
would ensue; the anticipation and excitement would overwhelm me, like an Army
wife waiting for her husband to come home. I would instantly pick my favourite,
and they would sweep me off my feet week after week – I’m looking at you Selasi.
I was dedicated and loyal. I would cheer them on, like a mother on the side-lines
of a Year 1 sack race, and share their pain when they forgot to add the almonds
to their almond cake.
But now it was all over, I was newly single and I needed a
rebound. I needed a TV show so trashy that you almost feel ashamed whilst you
watch it, the TV equivalent of macaroni cheese and garlic bread. I was going to
spend my hour searching for my new vice.
Inevitably, I got distracted scrolling through Twitter.
Recently Twitter has become a sea of Donald Trump articles.
Merely flicking through your feed is like fighting against a fierce undercurrent,
trying to keep your head above water until you see a lifeboat, a rare menial tweet
about someone’s diet progress, or their raging hangover, that helps to distract
your mind and relieve your anxiety about the fact that this time next week Donald
Trump could be elected president. It’s the unfathomable, the unthinkable, and
surely the impossible. Someone had to stop him. This is how I would spend my
hour.
Quickly, my hopes to fix my Great British Broken Heart
evaporated into thin air.
My mind began to wander. I thought back to games of Mouse
Trap as a child, absolutely convinced that this time I would make it to the
end. I would kneel at the table, ready to go from 0 to Victory Dance in 1.2
seconds, but, every single time the little red plastic net would come down and
foil my plan. Inspiration can be drawn from this, I thought. I need a Donald-Trump-sized
red plastic net.
Or what about Gone Girl? Maybe he deserves something darker
and more twisted. If Melania’s Gucci Pussy Bow statement is anything to go by
she wouldn’t be too hard to rope in either.
I click back on Twitter to read the latest, I need to know
every detail if I’m going to forge a successful plan to stop him, but, once
again, I get distracted.
If my bank balance could talk, it would curse targeted
advertising. After three years of studying marketing, I am well aware that when
an advert for a that pair of Topshop
boots, the ones you’ve been lusting over everyday this week, appears in your
Twitter feed it is no coincidence. The problem is, I am also aware that I can talk
myself into buying anything; I am the world’s number one sales woman, I
blissfully block out the kicking and screaming of my inner monologue and click ‘Proceed
to Checkout’ before the noise becomes silent.
And there they were, sandwiched between the Donald Trump
tweets that had been antagonising me mere moments before, Copper GHD Platinum.
Santa, if by any chance you are reading this, I have been a very good girl this
year and please let these be my
reward.
In this instant, snow began to fall in my mind, blanketing
my plans to save the free world.
My head quickly filled with glutinous thoughts of roast
turkey, chocolate and baileys. I could almost feel the warmth of the fire on my
skin. And that’s when it happened, the brash ringing of my boyfriend’s alarm,
rudely interrupting my daydreams; my hour was up and, once again, I’d done
nothing at all.
