from appearing two-dimensional to three-dimensional. Seen in sunlight the world pings into focus with depth and distance and a richness of colour. However tired, I am always reluctant to sleep if the sun is shining.
What do you like least about being awake early?
There isn’t anything I don’t like about being awake early. I know I am free to crawl back into bed at any point I choose.
What do you like best about being awake early?
Having a good night’s sleep is a recharge of your batteries. Having a good night’s sleep and being awake at dawn is the icing on the cake – a lithium battery as opposed to alkaline.
How would you sum up your thoughts on your mornings in 100 words or less?
On a good day, and preferably a sunny one, mornings are a fresh start, a new opportunity. Energised, I feel ready and able to tackle anything and I look forward to creating something new. Joe Wright’s 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is a family favourite. The final scene, as the lovers are drawn into the new day before the world is awake, nails dawn beautifully. Rising sun, pale lemony light, dawn chorus, a meadow, dissipating mist, clarity of thought and vision, hope on the horizon, the promise of something new, and love, of course, always love.
April 1
3.06 a.m.
The owl wakes me. An ancient-seeming sound in a busy urban street, disconnected almost from it. Lordly. Its call calls, if you will, summons me from sleep. I am here, it says, worth being awake for. I wonder who it talks to. Is there a sparse network of other owls? As a child I used to watch them fly by my window, spirits I saw. They talk in secrets, a lonely call as code. I am glad to wake and hear it before I go back to sleep for an hour, get up at 4.20 a.m., dress in the semi-dark. The blackbird kicks back in just gone five, a showier showing-off song. It fills the gardens. More comfortable, almost more middle class, sort of suburban.
By 5.50 a.m. I am at the allotment, the fruit trees are in blossom, the apple blossom ghost-lit in the gloom. The baby broad beans are darker-green shadows against the earth. The cardoons are rushing, the forget-me-nots are covering in carpets. It is not yet light. The sunrise catches chicory, like paper-wrapped red bunches of flowers. I sow a couple of rows of radish. I mostly sit and listen. Suddenly it is 7 a.m., time to buy fish and oranges, fresh bread for breakfast.
April 3
5.55 a.m.
Gathering thoughts and drinking tea, start of the week. Reading world news before 6 a.m. and back to yoga. It has been a while and feels like it. My hamstrings tell me. It is good to be back on the mat, my wife on my left. Her shoulder is bettering. We both groan a bit and grin. We salute the nearly there sun and stretch. We bend, we shape like cobras, we do spinal twists. We breathe consciously.
April 5
4.10 a.m.
The city almost sleeps, almost silence, just the background thrum of 10 million people breathing. By 5.05 a.m. sirens are screaming, birdsong is agitated, London is woke. Well, some of it; mostly me and the emergency crews, cops, paramedics mopping up last night’s emergencies, making today’s arrests.
April 6
5.25 a.m.
The owl appears to have moved into the churchyard. Its call as yet only tentative (I think it may be adolescent), it hands over at the end of its shift to the blackbirds. The bird of night and the bird of morning, outside my London window, calling the passing day, matins and vespers, the hours as holy service.
April 9
3.20 a.m.
Woken by a bright moon. The French windows wide open, it is quiet outside, just the spring morning cool creeping through. Swedes call this time Vargtimmen, the hour of the wolf: the time between night and dawn when the wild is said to be outside your door, usually thought to be between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. It is used to describe ‘an organism that is only active in the pre-dawn hours or early morning’, less likely wolves than bees now looking to escape competition for pollen. Some flowers, such as morning glory, have adapted to this practice. Increasingly it almost describes me.
April 13
3.40 a.m., Denmark
Even here on the Danish coast where the sun sets late and rises close to 4 a.m., it’s the blackbird that overrides sleep. Here is magic, he sings, forget your day job, your duties, here you too are like me, alive, awake, alert. I can almost hear the first sun hit the top leaf, see the gentle bathing, feel the day’s soft touch. The house is scented with summer lilac, picked from the path. Hedges of variations, a softened violet, churned with cream. The fragrance of Nordic summer, everywhere, dotted through every road. A punctuation of place. This is Denmark, it says, in a way the blackbird can’t with its universal sing-song.
The sun breaks through the branches at 4.10 a.m., a laser pulse of yellow light. Soon it catches doors, trees, casts watery shadows, branches are rewritten. The tall trees bathe in it like last night’s dew. This is the day’s first food. The oak warms, changes colour, shrugs off the gloom. Here is rejuvenation, renewal, refreshment. Fast now. Urgent. It runs through the leaves. The northern sun in its pomp, life-giving, nutritional, heat for the later harvest, sunlight for growth, for baby birds, for the blossom, bees. A pollination of the day, touching everything everywhere, moving on. Here I am part of the process, waiting to be lit. I gather thoughts, harvest them, scythe them down, rake them up, for compost, for pillows for picnics: green and sappy, to be dried and used later for fuel.
April 15
4.55 a.m.
A black and white light. Charred sheen on the terrace. Trees silhouetted, the wood a solid charcoal sketch. Blocks of near black for nearby houses. Almost total silence broken at 5.20 a.m. by birds. Suddenly they are all in song. I wonder how long they have been wondering whether to sing. A wall of sound, maybe a hedge, but no species dominant, all in full flow, bass treble, soprano sections. No long solos, every bird has its part. The rain like a percussion track taps on the metal chimney of the stove, lays down a back rhythm on the terrace. The fire joins in with a liquid roar, like wind, like waves.
Within half an hour the birds quiet, still singing but more sidetracked, as though they have things to do, babies to feed. The tunes change, become more reedy. The yellow flowering bush is lit, the monochrome filled in. Soft edges. Shadows. The grass a fat green brushstroke, more for the idea than the thing, no detail as yet, the mood of grass, a signal. White wood anemones almost shine in the meadow, perhaps a pearl necklace.
April 20
5.15 a.m., London
Slept in, late night. The back gardens are full of cats. The black-and-white Felix is the most fearless, the one who gets trapped in trees and on roofs. He is stalking another smaller, younger cat like him. The dog behind the fence makes a lunge as he passes. Both cats quickly disappear. A new tabby sits on a far elevated corner, looking down, studying its new world. The dominant black stalks the flat roof with a swagger.
This is the big cat-meeting place, four or more with
