What’s the best time of day?

SIMON ARMITAGE 5am
I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I’m a regular visitor to this particular time-slot. There’s a dawn chorus of several unsynchronised alarm calls in our house at about half six, then 30 frantic minutes to get our daughter to the school bus. Being up and about at five implies a change in the routine, and the rarity of the occasion adds to the experience, because to step outside at such a time, once the grogginess has worn off, is to feel the misanthropic thrill of a planet not yet choked by cars or muddled with people. Here is the day in its tentative, inchoate state, often silent, beyond what could accurately be called the night but before morning proper, a kingdom that belongs to those few who inhabit it.

Memories play a part, I think. A paper round when I was 13 meant wandering alone around the streets of a moorland village before it had woken up, before its secret was out. And camping on the hills in summer, I’d lie there as the fabric of the tent began to glow with the barely perceptible illumination of dawn. Like light through skin or the shell of an egg. And maybe the memory goes further back, into the subconscious. Book-ended as we are between eternities of darkness, the great privilege of being alive is to encounter the inexplicable properties of light, and in that scenario to witness the coming of the morning is a form of rebirth, but with an adult brain capable of appreciating it.