I’ve been taking an early walk down to the harbour and along the sea front. I go at about 6.30, which at this time of year means in the dark.

I go to just to take it all in. A wake me up. The people who are regularly starting work at this time, whether they be shop owners, fishermen, carers, builders or A.N.Others, are just doing what they do. It’s nice to experience all of that on a very cold and crisp December morning.

Life carrying on, like it does, all the time, everywhere.

The gulls at the harbour are Wide Awake. Some take to the wing when I walk by. Others are a little more “two fingers to the wind”. But they’ve all left their white and pungent “marks” in profusion along the jetty. It’s a kind of freedom.

On those days when it’s howling a gale there is a glorious, breath stealing experience to be had. But it’s been so still the last few mornings. On these kind of days every sound carries through the early morning air. The chug of the fishing boat as I watch it leave the harbour entrance. The little snort of the seals when they are around. Voices from a hundred metres away, greeting each other.

And then there is the smell. I’m very happy, because I seem to be starting to smell the sea again. That sense had left me after a number of years of living near to it. Maybe taken for granted. I don’t know. But it was always so bloody exciting as a child when we got a whiff, because we lived so far away from it back then. And now it’s back again, like a childhood returned!

Then finally, in the distance and after I’ve walked along the shoreline a little beyond the artificial town lights, over there beyond Davaar Island as she guards Campbeltown Loch, the sun is threatening to start chasing the darkness away, like it does every day.

The daylight will soon be here.