Timing is crucial. 8.12am, we are told, is the time we know whether we are going to have a good day or a bad day.

At precisely 8.12am the other day, I was at the petrol station packing the car with gas cylinders to warm up the house. Was I going to have good day or a bad day, I wondered?

Apart from the heating issues, we had woken up to the teenager sleeping through the alarm on the day of an early exam; the daughter who could not find her school shoes; the school van hooting with a queue of cars behind it; and a passerby who decided to engage in a spontaneous tirade. Was this gloomy first impression enough to qualify it as a bad day?

It’s unclear how the precise time of 8.12am was concluded, but it seems related to a rough average of people’s alarm clock settings and a common belief that the first thing to happen to you in the morning is an accurate indicator of how the next 12 hours will turn out.

At this point I have to clarify that the respondents were not Maltese; it’s a UK survey which quizzed 2,000 British adults. Maybe this in itself is telling: 8.12am is probably the time British people switch on their news channel to a daily dose of how from once a glorious empire and top influential EU country, they are now having discussions about their lonely future headed by its former microscopic colony (us).

Also, it is not a MaltaToday survey, but conducted by, erm, a juice maker: the Berry Company for their Berry Good Day campaign or similar. Surprise, surprise, at the end of their report they suggested to their readers to wake up ahead of their alarm and start the day with a fresh bunch of – ta-da – berries.

All this is not applicable to us. Although granted, here we start the day with daily fresh news of high-risers and juicy news of selfie-taking hijackers.

Would 8.12am apply for Malta too, as the marker for a mood decider? “Generally I know by 7am,” said a girl friend. “If at that time I’m stuck in traffic in Qormi, I know it’s going to be a bad day, because I’ll be arriving late at work, and by noon the day is half way over.” Her suggestions is for all of us to start work at 10am. “The day would be better all round,” she says.

We are lucky that we sometimes wake up to bad days. It means that sometimes we have good days

Another friend said her cut-off is 9am. “If I get any phone calls before that, I know I’m doomed for the day. I can’t bear to open my mouth when I still have one eye closed.”

But according to another (cheery, hippie) girl friend it’s probably 8.12am everywhere. “It’s a code. Just like we decide what to buy when shopping in the first 12 seconds. Or how if we’re romantic it usually doesn’t last more than12 minutes. It’s all in that number,” she said.

Others are typically stoical: “It’s all yarn. You can only tell that your day is a good one when you put your head on your pillow at the end of it.”

Fine, so let’s talk about what puts a morning frown on our faces? According to the merry berry survey, 30 per cent of us are put in a bad mood by our partner; 27 per cent of us have our morning cheer quashed by our boss; 15 per cent feel that they have their day ruined by a complete stranger.  A straw poll among friends listed the following morning gripes: children bickering between themselves; people talking to you much or too loudly; people complaining or wanting to discuss issues; wanting to use the bathroom badly but there’s someone in it; a horrible alarm clock sound; no hot water; losing car keys; not having time to go jogging; a flat tyre; someone wakes you up when you want to lie in; no cereal for breakfast.

I suppose all this can be summed up in one word, the absolutely lovely Maltese: ‘strumblat’. Even pronouncing it is enough to give off the feeling of flustered-cum-shaken-cum-bad hairday.

How to counteract these groggy, early-morning states? Listen to classical music; eat a fresh croissant; buy flowers; sing to a radio song; welcome a random act of kindness from a stranger; getting goodbye kisses from the kids/ the boyfriend / the husband.

All these can pivot the 8.12am deadline to a positive one. Unless of course, it’s a Sunday like today … and I will have had no idea what today was going to be like at 8.12am, because hopefully I’ll be fast asleep.

■ But then when you think about it – we are lucky that we sometimes wake up to bad days. It means that sometimes we have good days.

Imagine waking up in a room which has more flies than people; shared by four on two-by-two bunkbeds; on a thin mattress; and the pillows have no vest; and tea in half plastic water bottles.

That is how nine Malian men in detention have been living for the last 70 days since they were rounded up while they await deportation. These nine law-abiding gentlemen worked legally and were totally traceable but were suddenly arrested and taken to the Safi detention centre because of hugely questionable “EU return directive”.

I haven’t stopped thinking about them for the last three months: here I am going through life complaining about mundane things – and they cannot even do that.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti

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