IT WAS one of those defining moments that you read about. Archimedes in the bath shouting "Eureka", John Lennon seeing Elvis for the first time and thinking "That's the job for me," and then little old me.

Little old me clambering from his bed in the middle of the afternoon and realising "There's more to life than this."

For as long as I care to remember, my weekends have been nothing but debauched affairs. Friday nights are there as a release. The end of the working week, with no early starts for two whole days. A licence to get drunk and stay up as your work-weary body will physically allow. A profound sense of freedom.

Which do not bode well for Saturday. Saturday mornings simply do not exist for me. I rarely wake before the day is in the pm, and if I do, I simply lie there in the glow of the television, catching the dying moments of the latest children's TV show, thinking how awful it is and how kids nowadays are so patronised. What ever happened to Swap Shop?

Then it is Football Focus and another hour without moving and perhaps the odd snatches of sleep scattered throughout.

By the time I can genuinely lay claim to being up, it is mid-afternoon and the day is all but over. A quick trip to town, if I'm lucky, or more likely a visit to the supermarket for the weekend's provisions and then start again.

Even if I don't go out on Saturday nights, a bottle of red wine is invariably on the menu. The Long Suffering Marjorie and I may treat ourselves to a take-away and a video, before further exercising our rights to stay up as late as we can.

Most of the LSM's adult life has been as a student, so she is more practised as anyone at the art of staying up and the consequent lie-ins. It is a simplistic and almost childlike attitude - because you don't HAVE to go to bed (with no early start in the morning) then why on earth SHOULD you go to bed? And likewise, if you don't HAVE to get up in the morning, then why SHOULD you.

These days things are changing.

It could be my age, but I can't do it like I used to. Even though I don't HAVE to go to bed at a reasonable time on the weekend, I actually WANT to.

I can - and do - stay up until one or two (even three) in the morning, but it's a real effort. I am fighting with my body's natural urges to close down. And the day after, I feel groggy, like I have not had a proper rest.

All well and good in your early 20s, but I am less than a year off 30. I don't want to feel tired on my weekends. I don't want to waste those precious two days that sandwich themselves between the working patterns I have followed for more than 13 years (save for a year at university) and will have to follow for the next 30.

I want to do things and see things, get out and about and explore my surroundings.

Lancashire has so much to offer and yet I mostly ignore it. Areas of natural beauty are on my doorstep, yet I just watch the TV. Not any more.

As I clambered from my bed last weekend, I realised I must change and so this weekend is the first weekend of the rest of my life.

Places will be explored, and adventures will be experienced. And to celebrate such a life-changing decision, I'm going to have a drink, stay up late and have a real good lie-in. Cheers.