Three Alarms Before a Seven O’Clock Flight

A seven o'clock departure means a wake-up somewhere around four thirty, a room checkout before five, and a security line that may already be busy. The evening before is short, and it is tempting to fill it. A session in an airport hotel room the night before an early flight is one of the more common layover-shaped bookings, and it works, but only for travellers who treat the morning as the fixed point and build the evening backwards from it.

The first alarm is for the session to end

Not literally: she keeps the time. But the first number to write down is the hour at which you want to be asleep. For a four thirty wake-up, that is ten thirty or eleven at the latest. Work back from it. An hour to wind down after the session, including a shower and a few minutes of doing nothing. The session itself. Half an hour before it for arrival and settling. A session of one hour therefore wants to start around eight, and ninety minutes around seven thirty. The page on sessions before a morning departure works through this in more detail.

The second alarm is for the morning

Set it before the session starts, not after. Once the session is over, the mind is in a different state, and the task of setting an alarm is exactly the kind of small thing that gets forgotten. Put it on the phone, and put the phone on charge across the room so that you have to stand up to turn it off.

The third alarm is the hotel's

Ask reception for a wake-up call. It feels old-fashioned and it is. It is also the one alarm that does not depend on your phone being charged, your volume being up or your hand not having silenced it in your sleep. On a morning when a missed flight would cost you a day, three alarms from two different sources is not excessive.

Packing before, not after

Everything that can be packed should be packed before she arrives. Tomorrow's clothes on the chair, the bag zipped except for a toothbrush, the passport and boarding pass on the desk. After the session the body wants to sleep, and it should be allowed to. A traveller who has to pack at eleven at night after a session sleeps less well, and a traveller who has to pack at four thirty in the morning risks leaving something behind.

What kind of session suits the night before

Something that ends in stillness rather than activity. The sensual massage format suits the evening before an early flight, because it is slow, it needs nothing but a bed, and it tends to leave the body ready for sleep. Longer formats that need more setting up, or a second therapist, sit less comfortably in a short evening. Your therapist decides what the session includes; the thread only needs to know that you have an early departure, and she will pace it accordingly.

Alcohol, and why to skip it

A drink in the hotel bar before the session is a common impulse and a poor one. Alcohol thins sleep, it dehydrates, and on a morning that begins at four thirty both effects are felt at the security line. Water before, water after, and a proper meal early in the evening, well before the session, is the pattern that leaves you in good shape for the morning.

If the flight moves

An early flight that is retimed the evening before, or cancelled outright, changes the whole night. If the notice reaches you before she has set out, write straight away. The session can often be moved to later in the evening, or lengthened if the morning has become a lie-in. If it reaches you after she has left, the session goes ahead as booked; a flight moved by an airline sits on the traveller side under the house's terms. The cancellation policy sets out the scale.

A word on the morning itself

At four thirty, nothing should require a decision. The clothes are on the chair, the bag is zipped, the boarding pass is on the desk, the shuttle time is known. Wash, dress, check the room once, and go. The calm of the evening before is still there if the morning is simple, and it disappears quickly if it is not.

When an overnight makes more sense

Some travellers with a dawn flight choose an overnight instead of an evening session: eight hours with one therapist, with half paid ahead. The logic is that the night is short anyway, and they would rather not spend it alone. It is a larger booking and needs arranging well in advance. For most, an hour or ninety minutes in the early evening and a proper night's sleep is the better trade. The three alarms work either way.