I then check my phone for the time, news headlines and any notifications. I try hard at this point to resist the urge to click on anything. I go to the bathroom but have rarely committed to actually ‘getting up’ early. I think I used to feel slightly worried about being up and about before anyone else in the house or maybe worried that I wasn’t getting enough sleep. On occasions when I have woken early enough and the glow in the eastern sky looks promising of a good sunrise or there is frost or snow on the ground then I’ll dress properly and head out for a walk through streets or over fields. Occasionally I drive to a spot where I particularly want to see the dawn working its magic.
We recently moved to a house with a smaller garden and a fox lair. I look for them out the window on rising and if they are there or if I am hopeful they will be there at some point, then I silently make my way down an extension to the rear and side of the house that takes me to within a few feet of where they are playing or sniffing for food. They seem oblivious to me standing at the window and I watch enthralled, their coats and eyes particularly stunning in the dawn light.
How does being awake early affect your life?
Being awake early forces me to acknowledge my individuality. I always feel energised and, unless particularly in the depths of a depression, hopeful the new day will bring good things. It is a time of much internal dialogue. For me, watching the sun rise or set causes an emotion I don’t feel at any other time. Finally, at some point I experience a kind of disappointment when I realise the sun is up above the clouds and we are fully lit – the illumination has been rapid but subtle.
What time do you sleep?
Lights out for many years has been 1.30 a.m. I worry it is too late. At night I value time alone after everyone else has gone to sleep and find it amazingly productive. I write thoughts down and make lists for the day ahead. I check my diary.
Does your sleep vary through the year?
Whether it’s winter or summer I always feel a need to be out of doors if the sun is out. I really don’t like grey summer days and feel angry at something but don’t know what. In the winter I accept the gloom and feel quite happy to busy myself with work or curl up with a book. Nightfall in the winter excites me as much as daybreak in the summer.
Has your sleep pattern changed?
When the children were young I would start work after they went to bed and could easily work through to 2 a.m. and still be up early for the school run. Now that I am older and since being ill I fall asleep in the evening.
Is the light important?
It is vital. Apart from needing sunlight for health and wellbeing, as an artist it helps me to understand the world. Strong directional light is what transforms an object 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,