My Boyfriend is Better Than Coffee

One of the questions I ask a prospective PA when I interview them is, ‘Are you a morning person?’ Because, well, because I am not.

Like most people who are honest with themselves, I cannot speak without bumping into a cup of coffee in the morning. On days that aren’t weekends, there isn’t time to make zombie coffee using our Italian coffee machine, so I kid myself with the most drinkable instant I can find, or buy a coffee on the way to my day-job.

But like I said, pre-coffee Lorna (me) is vastly different from post-coffee Lorna (also me, because I’m good like that.) This is usually true 365 days of the year, but yesterday was slightly different.

I had slept through the first alarm, and Sarge forgot to set the second one, therefore my wake-up call was my PA downstairs buzzing to get in. Usually I have time to put my monosyllables in some semblance of understandable order. Yesterday, I did not. I even scared myself, I grunted my way through a shower, making it last as long as possible. I could not even make the small-talk necessary when someone other boyfriend has to see me naked.

There was still nothing as I shrugged into clothes, and spritzed myself with expensive-but-somehow-on-sale perfume.

And then Sarge walked in from the shower, somehow looking more put-together than myself. I managed to to mumble ‘excuse me’ to my PA, and turned to him saying, ‘Hug me, please. I’m all discombobulated.’ That was a lot of syllables. My brain almost fizzed. We hugged, and as if by magic, (pun may be intended), my monosyllabic grumbles turned into pleasant-sounding sentences. My boyfriend is better than coffee. Yes, I said it! If that’s too much information, then I’m sorry. But than, love means never having to say you’re sorry. So maybe I’m not.

Yesterday, at about three o’clock, staring at my emails and my Outlook diary, I could have used a Sarge-hug, but I had coffee instead. Somehow it wasn’t the same.

Yes, even this coffee. Maybe. This isn't the one I had yesterday.