There is a bird who lives in the hawthorn tree outside the bedroom window, who wakes me up as it gets light, with its piercing and intermittent song, which sounds exactly like someone blowing up their air mattress ( a sound I used to associate with the first day of our summer camping in Devon, before we all graduated to swanky but essential self inflating ones). This is before all hell breaks lose when the bin men arrive with their banging and crashing and slamming of garden gates.
One of my favourite early morning sounds used to be those that my chickens made when I let them out first thing, before Mr Fox made off with them ( or ripped them to pieces before leaving them lying around the garden to be more precise). There was something soothing and rhythmic about their gentle pootling and chirruping as they rooted about for worms and picked through leftover pasta and greens. Early mornings in the garden with the first cup of tea of the day do not feel quite the same these days without them.
I remember waking up on my first day in Arizona, and standing on the balcony in that hazy heat soaked early morning, looking out over the wide avenue below my bedroom with palm trees and blurred silhouettes of the hills in the distance, and listing to the dawn chorus. It simply couldn’t have been more different than the familiar sounds of early morning Camberwell with all the exotic cawing and screeching that was going on below, and some weird deep honking and booming sound as if someone was pressing an old and rather tired car horn. Later that week I went to stay in the mountains, and as I feel asleep I could hear coyotes howling in the night sky, the blackest night sky I have ever seen, with sparkling silver swathes of stars strewn across the blackness as if someone had thrown a silver necklace up into the air.
When I was little, the sound I associated most with early mornings was the swish and hiss of the sprinklers which were timed to go on and off, waging war against the searing summer Tokyo heat in an attempt to bring the scrubby sharp grass to heel, taming it to resemble that of an English country garden, a reminder of home, when home was very far away.
And to counteract the theme of early summer mornings, and for a reality check there is always the gentle pitter patter ( or not so gentle) sound of rain on the roof of the van or my bell tent in August before I get up, accompanied by the raucous sound of the sheep in the next field, impatient for their breakfast.
This weekend has been very hot, hot enough to imagine that in fact I am in Spain or India, rather than South London. On Saturday I was up and in the lido by 8am, early enough to escape the hoards, already hot enough to dry my wet footprints in minutes, and the water cold enough to chill my bones at the same time as fuelling my soul. In my world nothing beats an outdoor swim, particularly at the quay, but the lido comes a pretty close second. And coffee, a croissant and Saturdays Guardian were the perfect companions.
The park at the end of the garden where I am writing this, is a hive of activity, a cacophony of noise, the noise of of kids shouting as they run up and down the slides and on the swings, footballs being flung against the railings, dogs barking and the rhythmic clip clop of balls on tennis rackets, as everyone comes out in the cool of the evening to play.
Like every other street in London tonight, the smell of barbecues is wafting through the golden evening, mingling with the thick heady scent of the May tree and the sweet sickly orange blossom that clings to the branches like candy floss by the garden wall.
And as I have just remembered that there is some salted caramel ice cream in the freezer, and an episode of The Bridge to watch I wish you all sunshine and love and hope that this time next week we aren’t all sitting at home with the heating on.
Theresa's writing 
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