Being a creature of habit has its many perks

I get up at the same time every morning then shower washing the same body parts in the same order for the same length of time. Once dressed and downstairs I will have either toast if it’s a Tuesday, Thursday or Friday or cereal if it’s Monday, Wednesday, Sunday. On Saturdays I have eggs, either scrambled or fried.

Without dissecting my entire week I trust you get the picture. In a perverse sort of way I’m enjoying the lack of unpredictability that routine brings to my day-to-day sundries.

But don’t be too quick to judge. Routine is not to be confused with a life of boredom and servitude.

You see, it all depends how you define and establish a routine.

For example, a few months ago I had a bath on a Sunday night and I took the notion to have a glass of red wine and read a book whilst relaxing in the suds.

Now, each time I take the notion for a bath I associate it with a glass of red wine and a book. In order to ensure I don’t become a dripping wet alcoholic, but also maintain a healthy digestion of literature I’ve limited my bathtime fun to the first Sunday of every month.

Similar routines I’ve established include visiting Tesco at least five times a week and on each occasion buying something I’ll fail to eat within the use-by date.

Television also plays a significant role in my weekly plan. For a long while, probably since I started working for the Lurgan Mail, Tuesday could only be thought of as deadline day, a day when all good stories must be brought to a suitable conclusion or heads would roll.

But then Sky Atlantic struck serial killer gold and every Tuesday for 15 weeks I gasped, screamed and often laughed aloud as slack-skinned robocop Kevin Bacon pursued Twitter-inspired mass murderer James Purefoy in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Tuesdays became all about The Following.

When The Following ended I thought nothing could fill the void, but then DCI John Luther returned to the BBC and Tuesday had a focus once more.

It had been hoped that Ray Donovan, billed as Hollywood’s number one problem solver, could fill Luther’s boots, but sadly Sky Atlantic’s much-lauded series has turned out to be nothing more than a gun-totting version of Jim’ll Fix It.

Like any man of a certain age, the most important part of my weekly routine is making sure the right bins go out on the right day.

On the subject of bins, just as I was about to leave for work on Thursday morning, I saw a man at the bus stop, which is right outside our house, throw an item of rubbish into our blue recycling bin. If I’ve learnt anything from living near a bus stop it’s that people have no respect for the colour-coding of rubbish. Most of them think my front garden is a willing receptacle for all types of garbage.

I charged from the house and, like some kind of Bacon/Luther/Donovan hybrid, I roared, “You’d better get that out of my bin right now or I’ll rip your arms off and beat you with the soggy ends!”

Upon closer inspection I saw he’d put a perfectly legal plastic bottle in the recycle bin. Realising my mistake, I apologised profusely, but I’m not sure whether he heard me considering I’d ‘bravely’ waited until he got on the bus before reading the riot act.