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.