Something terrible happened this morning: my newspaper arrived an hour late. I know it sounds daft, but it’s completely buggered up my day.

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point over the last few years I realised my mornings took a specific pattern – and if that pattern was disrupted, it cast a shadow over the whole day. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or just a weird brain thing, but each day I follow the same pattern: go downstairs, put on the coffee machine, grab the newspaper and then read it in a very specific order. So weekdays are the Guardian, and the order is:

* If it’s Monday, read MediaGuardian first; if it’s Thursday, Technology Guardian.
* Pick up the G2 supplement and read the back page first, then start from the beginning
* Pick up the main newspaper

On Saturdays, it’s:

* The Guide supplement
* The magazine
* The financial and business bits, and then
* The newspaper proper

And on Sundays, it’s:

* Sunday Times first: Style, then Culture, then money and business bits, then the Ecosse supplement, then the Driving supplement, then the paper proper, then News Review, and finally the paper proper
* Now, the Observer: magazine first, then business & media section, then the financial bits, then the weekend review, and finally the paper proper

I’m a bit like Rain Main in this respect: if we have guests and they grab a bit of the paper just as I’m due to read that particular section, it feels really weird if I skip a bit and read a different supplement. If the paper’s late (or on Sunday, if one of the papers doesn’t arrive, or a supplement is missing) then I end up mooching aimlessly around the house, and if I have to go out and get the paper mid-morning then it’s pretty much a waste of money, because I won’t be able to concentrate on it because the Paper Moment has passed.

I do the same with the Web, too: there’s a particular order in which I do things online, so I always start off by checking email and then looking at my various RSS feeds in a particular order – so reading Engadget before checking out my friends’ blogs, or reading MetaFilter before checking out The Register is a major no-no.

Do any of you have similar routines, or am I just weird?