Sunday morning, 6.20am. The streets are empty except for hopeful mincabs, newspaper and bread delivery vans, perhaps an occasional traveller coming in from an airport. The priory opposite will open soon, but the communion I am looking for is on the allotment, serene in early morning sunshine.
It's too soon for paper shops or patisseries, I have a half-read Hemingway short story. The plan is not to dig or hoe, plant or plan, but to simply wander, sit, observe, listen...
I used to be better with birds, as a boy I could distinguish dozens of calls but now pretty much the only songs I am certain of are wood pigeons, magpies, jays, and my favourite blackbird. It's the harsher notes of the first three that dominate as the sun lights up the apple blossom.
To mooch about pulling up a few dew-drenched sycamore seedlings (maybe getting the mastering of them now), admiring rocket flowers (we're letting some seed) and half-closed calendula blooms (they'll open later when the sun is higher in the sky) is perhaps as near to heaven as I get in an urban environment. All that is missing is the young fox that passed through the morning before.
Soon enough its is seven thirty, I finish my short story, pick up pastries and the papers and I'm home before my wife wakes.
