This is the fourth attempt, and the first with equipment.

Every few years I decide that the reason my life is not working is that I am getting up at the wrong time. This is never true, and I believe it completely. This autumn I bought a bamboo whisk.

Day one

Alarm at six. Dark. I made matcha with great ceremony, sat by the window, and watched the street lamp. I felt enormously superior to everyone asleep. By ten I needed a lie down.

Day five

The whisk has become the point. I now own a small bowl specifically for it, and I have read two articles about water temperature. I have written nothing, thought nothing and achieved nothing in the extra hours, but I have done it very calmly.

Day nine

By day nine I had a whisk, a routine and a mild resentment of birds. They start before six. They are extremely pleased with themselves. I lay there and understood that I have never once in my life had an idea before nine in the morning, and that no quantity of green powder was going to change this.

I do my best thinking at eleven at night, usually about things I should have said in 2009.

Conclusions

I have gone back to getting up at half past seven like a normal disappointment. I kept the whisk. It turns out matcha is perfectly nice at four in the afternoon, and at that hour even the birds have calmed down.