I have been waking up at 3:30am most mornings now for the last four years or so. I hear a bell, clear as you like, and its the reverberation, a low hum, that gets me out of bed. I used to reach for my phone and scroll through the recent updates pouring in from Oz or the West Coast of the US. Long ago, almost forgotten acquaintances in their lively early afternoon vibrancy,  the artfully curated feeds of people I no longer know well enough to call, but could tell you where they are on their weaning journey, broccoli splattered over their children’s gummy smiles, in 35mm hash-tagged glory. It kept me awake at night, digging through twitter trying to dissect the latest outrage, or meme. I have managed to put that to one side in those deep dark hours, but the ticker tape persists.

Do we have enough milk in the freezer? How can I have a more balanced life? How are we going to get our son to eat vegetables, or a vegetable? What if I don’t find my purpose? Is that a fox or a woman being murdered? Please be a fox. Yes it’s a fox. Have I booked swimming lessons for next months? Does Tier 2 mean I can leave London? Define London?

And somehow, around 4am or thereabouts, the white noise subsides enough to let sleep take me again, usually to dream about not being able to remember my husband’s mobile number in an emergency. The numbers just escaping my memory as I try to find the right buttons on the phone. I wake up most mornings feeling furious with myself.

‘It’s the patriarchy’ a very stylish and wise friend says to me over the phone. I can hear her smoking while we are talking and for the first time in years I crave a Marlborough Light above all things. The silver paper, the flick and catch of the lighter, the first sharp intake of pure unadulterated relief. The patriarchy has a bell?  I wonder this while spraying anti-bacterial cleaning product on every surface in the flat we live in. I’m not sure it’s the right brand but it smells astringent and lemony and makes me feel better. I am not convinced. ‘I think its hormones’ I say definitively. She laughs, she is just that much older than me that her laugh can make me feel about 12, with ease. ‘Don’t be daft, you’re not even forty. You’ll know all about it when you hit that change, and that fucking bell won’t wake you up any more because you’ll stop giving a fuck’.

I am trying to give less of a fuck.

I stopped shaving my legs sometime around lockdown in March. I am setting firm boundaries (I think? Right?). I am being frivolous and fanciful and buying things that give me joy (but not the Malboroughs) and writing endless endless endless journals that chart my inner world and my to do list with excellent precision. I am carving out time, increments, a minute here, an hour there. To be myself, with no fucks given. And in that time I am spraying anti-bac on the bin. Throwing out old underwear and sourcing the right kind of cheese for my son. The hour, the minute is interrupted – the dentist appointment needs to be moved and I still can’t find any plimsolls for my son’s PE lesson. Nowhere. Not even at the big Tesco.

‘Can’t blame the plimsolls on the patriarchy’ I say to my true and manicured friend. ‘No my love, that capitalism – it probably has a big bastard bell too.’ I want to throw the phone out the window.

I try to give less of a fuck and send my son to his PE lesson in his normal day to day trainers. The world does not end. I rejoice. I do not spray anti-bac on the bin that day. I read a book I have been meaning to, I buy some more film for my camera. I begin to dream of a quiet night, velvet and midnight and heavy. That is until we forget to pick up the trainers up from school and have a weekend of NO DINOSAUR SHOES. Which is the same as being in hell for my son.

No good not-giving-a fuck goes unpunished.

I am standing by the garden door at 3:25am watching the blue night. There is expectant silence that settles around this time, into which a glass might break or an alarm may sound, the door slightly ajar. But tonight, with Tier 2 locked in and sanctioned there is little to hear other than the clock ticking in the kitchen.  A dog bark a few streets away. There are no fucks to be given at this time of night. Perhaps that’s why I am up. Wrapped in a hangover of white noise and notifications. To be silent at 3.25am, and awake.

I try to explain this to my well read, sharp witted friend. The quiet, the sinking moon, a hushed expectation. Jesus, she says, just stay the fuck in bed.