It is 5.15am and I am walking down my street, feeling smug. The buildings are bathed in peachy dawn light. “Win the morning and you win the day,” suggests productivity guru Tim Ferriss. The prize is within my sights: an oat-milk latte, my reward for getting up ridiculously early.
The trains have not started running yet and the silence seems to magnify hitherto inaudible sounds. There is a mysterious squawk of gulls. I live in Camden, north-west London, many miles from the seaside. I have certainly never heard them here before.
