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Source ISBN: 9780008264345

Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008264352

Version: 2018-02-26

Dedication

For Henriette

For everything

Contents

Cover

Title page

Dedication

Foreword

How to make time

A lexicon of dawn

Other usage

A manifesto

Sunrise graph

My morning: Allan Jenkins

My morning: Jamie Oliver

Dawn diary

Dawn diary: March

My morning: Jane Domingos

Dawn diary: April

My morning: Guy Grieve

Dawn diary: May

My morning: Benjamin Raynard

Dawn diary: June

My morning: Philip Hoare

Dawn diary: July

My morning: Anna Koska

Dawn diary: August

My morning: Ian McMillan

Dawn diary: September

My morning: Marlena Spieler

Dawn diary: October

My morning: Lemn Sissay

Dawn diary: November

My morning: Liza Adamczewski

Dawn diary: December

My morning: Samuel West

Dawn diary: January

My morning: Linda Grant

Dawn diary: February

The neuroscience of sleep and light

The philosophy of daybreak

Ornithology and the dawn chorus

Divine Dawn

Conclusion

Early rising: The 20 rules

Acknowledgements

Illustration credits

By the same author

About the publisher

Foreword

As cool as the pale wet leaves

of lily-of-the-valley

She lay beside me in the dawn

Ezra Pound, ‘Alba’

For years now I have been getting up around 5 a.m. in winter (often earlier in summer). It suits me. I like the energy, the awareness before the day wakes. The quiet before dawn in winter, the shift from night to day in summer. I get things done. I write. I read. I think. I garden in soft light. It is my best time of day.

This short book will explore why.

I will make the case for being alert at first light. To wake in the quiet moments when the day inhales and the night fails. Just you and the stuff that surrounds you. To be extra alive in a way that near silence allows, sensitive to minute moments of change. To be able to gather yourself, your thoughts and feelings, whether it is to sit, to write, to walk, to read, to be inside or outside, to be sowing seed, to garden, to be saturated in experience. The gift of more time in the morning, so easily given and so easily missed. The simple opportunity to start the working day refreshed, renewed. To be whole in a way that near silence gives, to be one with the wild. To be natural in nature. To nurture yourself. The chance to be alive to your breath and distant from distraction. The space to be (by) yourself, before others wake.

It’s easy, take it, half an hour, an hour, maybe more when you want. To be comfortable with yourself in a way that being alone allows no matter how many people you share your life with. The opportunity is there every day. Just you and the morning light, like flower or fauna. To learn to allow yourself to build in awareness, even if it’s just of birdsong. To be awake in a moving meditation. Try it some time, take small steps, the morning world is waiting. You and the sky or a computer screen, the page of an unread book, the taste of tea. Bring the outside inside. The day can start when you want, uncoupled from demands and distraction. And if this doesn’t work for you alone maybe find someone who wants to share the silence.

I will talk to a neuroscientist, a fisherman, a philosopher, painters and poets. I will interview other early morning people. I will examine how changes in light throughout the day, through the year, affect different people, plants. I will report on how time influences behaviour. I will take the first bus. I will report from different latitudes, including the Arctic Circle in summer (from barely three hours of daylight to twenty-four hours of sun) and the effects it has on inhabitants and me.

I will investigate the language of light and morning, the many words from different cultures for dawn and first light and what they mean and how they change.

I will keep an early morning diary from my window. I will describe how the light lifts, the sun rises, the birds sing or not throughout the year. I will observe and report. I will listen and feel.

I will tell the morning’s story.

How to make time

Seize the day. Your morning doesn’t have to be decided by what time you leave the house. The constant conventional rush: for breakfast, a bath or shower, in time for the bus or Tube or drive or walk to work, to get the kids to school. You can free the day, start in a different way, remove the race.

Build up to dawn, wake a little earlier, try half an hour. Skip

Newsnight

or Netflix, the phone the night before, or whatever it is you watch. They will still be there. Savour the time. Avoid doing the same you always do or the day will fill like an incoming tide. What is it you wanted to do but told yourself you don’t have the time? Paint, possibly? Draw? Read more books? Bake bread? Do a little now. It’s a start. Take baby steps.

Build on it, slowly if you need. Make it an hour earlier, build up to two, it’s honestly even better, open space enough to think and feel. Don’t rush it, take your time, you have enough.

Perhaps try to skip social or other media before you sleep and once you wake. Make your early day a holiday. It is easy, honestly.

If winter is too dark and daunting (though I think it is my favourite season), start in the spring, when the light will be there waiting, as will writing, reading, yoga, walking, sitting. Whatever it is you

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