Paul Thomas: Induced consciousness in the half-light of morning

This is my second attempt at filling this space. The first, alas, will never see the light of day. Opportunities for columns about testicles are few and far between and in my eagerness to get to grips with the issue of the moment I paid no attention to the timid little voice from the recesses of my memory that was trying to tell me you can't write about the election on Election Day.

Decades have flown since I was a journalist during an election and perhaps I subconsciously assumed that, since virtually every other prohibition from that era has either been lifted or can be flouted with impunity, it was no longer a no-no.

But some things don't change, which is why I'm in front of the computer at an hour when I'd normally be wrapping a pillow around my head to muffle the noise of three people getting ready for another day.

There are a number of time-honoured tests to determine what sort of person you are. One is: are you a morning person or a night person? I'm a night person; always have been, always will be. I've slept through more glorious sunrises than the average taxi driver.

I still suffer boarding school flashbacks. When it was pitch-black outside, a prefect would barge into the dormitory, rudely order us out of bed and herd us under cold showers, like borstal inmates who can't be trusted with their personal hygiene. It was all part of the process of making men of us.

In my day the student life was tailor-made for night people. We often took mornings out of the equation altogether, not getting out of bed until the afternoon.

The working life, however, was like boarding school without the cold showers. The Auckland Star's first deadline was around morning tea time so news gathering began early. I used to steal a few extra precious minutes in bed by only ironing the fronts of my shirts, shaving at work and accumulating parking tickets on a heroic scale.

Fellow night people often ask me what it's like to work at home. Their faces pucker with envy when I rattle off the various benefits, most of which are variations on the theme of waking up knowing you don't have to be at a given place at a given time so why not roll over and go back to sleep?

Another time-honoured test is: are you a tea person or a coffee person?

I'm a coffee person and, like all serious coffee people, my state of mind at any given moment is heavily influenced by the quality - or lack of it - of the last coffee I had and the likely quality of the next one. The best solution to this never-ending drama is to live in Italy. Not France, Italy. When it comes to matters of ingestion the French are good at many things but coffee isn't one of them. If Italy is out of the question, inner-city Sydney isn't a bad fallback.

In our little slice of Wellington suburbia, cafes are thin on the ground but we found salvation in the form of the E61 Rocket. The Rocket is often described as the Rolls Royce of domestic espresso machines; an alternative description would be that it's a ludicrous extravagance for people with seriously skewed priorities.

Our original Rocket made a good espresso but was a bit temperamental, which you expect from anything that's Italian, stylish and very expensive. It became progressively more temperamental to the point where the term was no longer applicable; by definition something that's temperamental in the sense of being erratic, inconsistent and unreliable must occasionally do what it's meant to do. Now and again it actually has to work.

In our hour of crisis, the outfit we'd bought it from agreed that there wasn't much point in another trip to the workshop. They replaced the prima donna with an updated model which works like a dream.

So here I am at the computer listening to the birds wake up, wondering what I'm going to write about. At least I have a good espresso under my belt and the comfort of knowing that I can make myself another whenever I want. After I've driven across town to buy some more beans, that is.

Our dog Smudge is here in the shed with me. Dogs are neither morning creatures nor night creatures; their metabolisms don't work that way. Right now Smudge is stretched out on the floor fast asleep even though she only got up half an hour ago. Likewise when it's our bedtime, she wants to play, even though a couple of minutes earlier she was dead to the world.

Smudge is a Labrador, a breed more associated with good looks and personality than high intelligence. She's extremely beautiful, a canine equivalent of the gorgeous dizzy blonde, only black. She can't write this column for me and nor can the E61 Rocket.