Bristol Harbour Festival

6.30am

Last year at this time we had a stage a few yards from the boat with youngsters playing mostly hip-hop. It was noisy during the day but one or two were quite good and it finished early. This year we have a huge funfair all round us and the noise is relentless.

The silence now is as intense as the noise was a few hours ago. Only the gulls are loud; feasting on all the rubbish left from the hundreds of food stalls which seem to be in every little corner. Around Queen Square they are very up-market with lots of French and Italian traders selling an astonishing variety of mouth watering delicacies – all expensive. Here though it’s seagull food – soft white bread, burgers, chips, sweets.

There are one or two people around – the security men on the last shift of the night, and the odd overnighter, bottle in hand.

Mostly though it’s blissfully quiet, dead calm, warm with the sun breaking through thin cloud.

Gaynor is staying with us on the boat. Like me she is a misfit – passionate about her language but scathing about any kind of narrow nationalism. The Small Nations idea suits her well – we are internationalists who care about the local. She comes from a farming family near Llandeilo but none of them follow the conventions that implies. Perhaps it’s down to high intelligence all round.

I was fairly sure she would enjoy Bristol, or at least this heightened version of it, and so far she seems to be having a good time. I took her all round the harbour yesterday, and she kept stopping to talk to people or seek out interesting digressions, making the tourist experience a deeper one.

It’s great having her here but I’m really struggling with conversation in such a noisy environment.  Even in the tasteful surroundings of the Loch Fyne fish restaurant, where we went to avoid the crowds and sit down to eat, the noise was so high that I managed slightly better without my hearing aid. I really am getting to the limits of what can be done with hearing technology, and will have to put some serious effort into alternatives.

The drama which is being played in the car park here is called The Iron Man, and features a huge robot-like metal figure and a cast of 5, several of whom are handicapped in some way, and who use a wider range of gestures, often synchronized in dance-like routines, and many of them from the repertoire of  British Sign Language. The gestures were highly expressive and great to watch but no help to me. Should I try to learn signing? It’s no help in rural Wales, but presumably would be in cities. I’ve made very little progress with lip reading.

Bristol harbour

It's a beautiful, warm, clear calm morning - 6am and already a few of us are around amongst the gulls and the pigeons. The water is absolutely still, and the spire of St. Mary Redcliffe is mirored in the water which is just edged with gold as the sun breaks through the thin cloud.

The man with the coffee stall by the Arnolfini has arrived. He can park on the double yellow lines at this time. A woman walks over the bridge with her eyes facing forward but her mind on the sounds in her headphones. Inevitably there are joggers. All the cities I've visited haved early morning joggers.

The tall ships are assembling for the harbour festival. There are 4 of them now plus the squat reconstruction of Cabot's ship the Matthew. It looks strange to me to see this apparently 16th century sailing ship chugging along on its motors; more than strange, it takes away its dignity.

There is an air of expectancy. In 2 days time this whole area will be crowded with thousands of people, music everywhere, hundreds of stalls and just here, in the Mud Dock, a huge representation of Ted Hughes' Iron Man - not quite sure what to expect. Watch this space.

The lord of the body clock

5.15 am st. David's Pembrokeshire. This is the kingdom of the early morning, ruled over by the lord of the body clock, and it belongs to a very select few. 

We're in a small hotel and I decide to have a bath since the bathroom is not quite ensuite, but next door so it won’t wake Thema.  The water runs, but it's too early for the bath to be hot - yet again early risers are assumed not to exist. I pack some fruit, a book, coat etc , creep out and take the car down to the coast at Carfai bay – only a couple of miles but too far to walk in the time available. 

5.45: As I drive along my mood improves; it’s dry, cloudy but warm; pigeons on the road think it belongs to them at this time and are almost run over – they can’t believe it’s a car coming. The turning area is deserted so I park facing the sea, get out of the car and transfer to a bench overlooking the bay. There’s a camp site just behind but not a soul stirring. 

I’ve been tramping along the coast path for 20 minutes before I spot a solitary fisherman. Three peregrines fly past ignoring me. The fulmars and gulls ignore me. We citizens of the dawn, we crepuscular humans, we are oddities; not part of the known universe.

The early morning in summer is a land apart. It’s my time, a time for thinking and planning, for writing and reading, and especially for walking.  I have a severe hearing loss, but in my kingdom I can hear all I need to hear – the crunch of my feet on the path, the cries of the gulls and the peregrines, the swish of the waves, the rolling of the pebbles. I’m not deaf here because I don’t need to understand what anyone is saying.

In the city it’s more democratic; it belongs to the joggers, the bike riders, the late clubbers and me, but we are few enough to greet each other. We are still the elect, the chosen.

Yes, we are the chosen. We did not do the chosing; it was done for us by some genetic quirk which set our body clocks. Something told our bodies that 6 am is the correct time to be active.  My body clock also dictates that if I try to cheat it by going to bed later it will still wake me but if I give in and go to bed earlier it will wake me even earlier. Six hours shalt thou sleep and no more. Less is permitted – the clock lord has no problem with 4 hours, even 3 at a pinch, but then his grace will insist on taking extra bits of my day to compensate – as well as the 15 minutes after lunch which we have long agreed upon, he will trick me into falling asleep in the middle of a TV programme I was looking forward to, or in a meeting or some other embarrassing place.