Thursday, September 18, 2008

Before Dawn

Ramadhan 18 1429

Part of the bone-weariness experienced in fasting month derives from getting up for sahur, the pre-dawn meal. I'm not and never have been terribly keen on eating at 04.55 or thereabouts, but it's not possible to skip and just wait for the usual prayer time (thus gaining an extra valuable 40 minutes or so of sleep) as, at the very least, you've got to take to take some liquid on board or you'll not even make it to noon. Also there's the tradition to follow, so I usually manage a small handful of rice. Some folks go for quite a big plateful of tucker and it's a mystery to me how they get going. But then I've never been that bothered about feeding myself before the evening.

There's a plus side to all this though (apart from being good for the soul) - I arrive in work a good bit earlier than is my usual routine and it's amazing how much you can done when there's no one around. The problem is that around about 11.30 a wave of weariness hits and it's impossible to mark with any vigour. (We've got exams for the Year 6 students at the moment so marking constitutes a fair amount of the working day.)

I'm looking forward to the weekend when at least I can go back to bed for a couple of hours after the prayer. Small mercies count for a lot.

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