Woken by the phone making a noise yet again this morning. It must have been 5.15. The phone by my bedside gives out an electronic mutter from time to time for no apparent reason. I think it wants to be used. I take it off the little dock it lives in and let is discharge for the rest of the day and it does not happen again for weeks. Yesterday and the day before my mobile did similar things. A noise emitted, just enough to break slumber. The phone rang at 2.30 three nights ago. There was the pause which indicated some call centre in the Pacific Rim zone was ringing to ask if we needed double glazing. I hung up as I always do before a voice cuts in, enraged sufficiently to have difficulty in getting back to sleep.  This morning for some reason my mind was awash with thoughts and worries from the moment my phone made its little protest. Fed up of the worrying about ridiculous things I got up and resolved not to return to bed, for the morning was splendid.

This dawn began pellucid, light long ahead of a future rising sun, a kind of slightly yellowed dawn with, by the time I was in the garden, a dew damp chill to the air.  I made a drink of hot water and milk, selected a canvass garden chair and sat outside protected by a thick pullover. It was wonderful. The sky was completely blue save for almost mist-like distant patches of cloud. The big jets were homing in with a flight path this morning which was swinging them quite low overhead to then turn north east and then bank towards the west somewhere beyond Crystal Palace and then to continue their approach with 300 half asleep and half excited passengers. At my level the garden was heavy with wrens darting to nests which must surely have quite advanced fledglings.

Being early and Sunday there was no traffic outside, no trains at that time in the morning, no workmen, no drunks, no chattering kids, no sound other than birds on the wing, a flock of pigeons doing acrobats, a distant couple of grumpy crows, and an inquisitive blackbird looking for something to murder on the water edges of the lower pond. All of them were oblivious to the human civilisation which formed a backdrop to their tooth, claw, beak and wing world. The damp lawn had a scattering of hurrying snails which seem to belong to two clans: the ones on the left of the lawn, and those on the right. Last night they came out onto the watered lawn and approached each other together with a range of elegant slugs. Perhaps by the time the sun hits the lawn, trapping a few so that they almost burrow into the grass roots and slime back into their shells, the bulk of them will head back to the plant margins on either side of the lawn - the left clan becoming the right clan and the right clan becoming the left clan.  Meanwhile some of the slugs, who do not appear to be as bright as the snails, will be given to crossing the paved area and will be caught in the sun and die like inexperienced travellers traversing the hot desert without appropriate planning.

Gradually, despite the pullover and the hot drink, the early chill began to establish itself: first in my naked feet, then my head, then piercing to the small of my back. I went back into the house to have breakfast to be met by a slightly irritated Jazz -  her tail was beating out of politeness rather than enthusiasm – who looked at me to the effect: “What the hell are you up this early for?  It’s too early even for a dog to piss.”  She paused, unusually, at the door; seemed to sniff the cool air; then with a sort of shrug went out to do a damaging piss on my lawn anyway.