Morning Unbroken

It's in the wee hours of the morning that I find myself most productive, coaxed through the hardest parts of work by cold air and odd scents. I smell the effluvia of a thousand night-venting factories, redolent of spices and yeast, tobacco and faux-chocolate. I feel the silence, like a comfortable cloak. The bond between keyboard, monitor and me is never as close as it is in the early hours.

The dogs scuffle around outside, momentarily dreaming or disturbed by doggy instincts. A distant clatter causes the cat to prick one ear and then subside into the usual lazy slump. Dim throbs of the early roadworks crews resonate faintly almost beyond consciousness, as they unpick the seams of our daily workways.

I feel the tension in my neck subside. There is less stress, less urgency to produce clever work and perfect sentences. I stretch my stiffened neck muscles and make my uneasy head lighter as I breathe a different air. It's easier to hunt and disable the mosquitoes that seek my blood. It is easier to see the things normally unseen – the things that in another age and place would have been called house-gnomes or other odd excrescences of the universal id.

I finish my chapter summaries for the latest book on globalisation and education. I finish another game of Scramble on Facebook. I finish this and that. I finish, I feel like the finisher I was meant to be. If I were any more Finnish, I'd be Nokia. Or Santa Claus.

And I head to bed before the dawn, feeling very satisfied indeed.