Recently on Mammamia.com Emily Vernem and Holly Wainwright complained about the rise of what they call ‘dawn culture’. They complain that people their own age have stopped going out at night (rejecting invitations for drinks or for dinner) because their alarms now go off at the crack of dawn and they are out jogging or swimming by dawn’s early light. Emily writes, ‘Suddenly, all the people in my life who are roughly my age have decided that being a night owl is tragic, gross and deeply uncool.’ She goes on to complain, ‘It’s completely derailed the rhythm of friendship. Gone are the spontaneous late-night walks, the deep 9 p.m. debriefs, the joy of being messy after dark. Everything is now structured around a timetable that is clearly designed for people who run on sunlight and kale.’ And Holly Wainwright asks, ‘What time does your alarm go off in the morning?’ For many people, that number is getting earlier, and earlier, thanks to this new expression ‘dawn culture’ – so new that it is not yet found in any of the major dictionaries. It’s not even in the online, hyper-hip Urban Dictionary. So this, folks, is at the cutting edge of language. If Emily and Holly’s phrase catches on it may become the freshest new thing, and by the end of the year might be up for a trendy Word of the Year award. As for the complaint it names – well, I have some bad news for these youngsters: your friends are behaving like old people. As we age our body clock seems to change and we wake earlier. We are up early having our first coffee of the day. We breakfast earlier. We do our chores earlier. And it seems to suit us just fine. At the end of the day we are happy to tumble into bed at 9.30 and be sound asleep by 10 p.m. – ready to wake after seven hours sleep, to be up and at ’em at five the next morning. We invented the ‘dawn culture’! So, Emily and Holly – welcome to Old World!