It’s the deep night. Off in the distance a vehicle’s horn sounds intermittently; repeatedly intermittently. It can’t be the fishmonger, so it’s either somebody locked out, or the mortmen are collecting the plague bodies. The expectorating oldie in the seniors’ housing that’s part of the hotel complex across the courtyard must stand by an open window to clear his nicotine-encrusted lungs; so quiet is the night that he might be in the room next door. The ecclesiastical campanile on the horizon that chimes a solitary strike for a canonical hour. Matins or Lauds, I don’t check the clock. The silence has heft, it carries texture, yet we’re rooming in the middle of the old town. I find myself listening for the swash of wet tyres on limestone cobbles to get some indication as to whether it’s started to rain and is it a morning to be wearing waterproofs. A tent doesn’t have this restriction, neither did the garret with its skylight in Caen. I miss those meteorological predictions. Only the night still stays solid, silent.

Maybe I dozed, for time seems to have moved on.

The various elements of a crepuscular dawn climb slow out of the night, like a tuning orchestra, a series of discordant notes slowly coagulating around the instructing band leader’s chord of ‘C’, slowly solidifying into one harmonious note. Stars perish with the growing luminescence. Light seeps into the recesses of a chimney stack, a monochromatic window morphs from a blank wall, a grey scale of detail emerges.

Only for the crashing crescendo of sunrise to rip across the city.