The City at Nine in the Morning

Amsterdam at nine on Sunday morning belongs briefly to cleaners, runners, dogs and people like me who have somehow ended up awake. #

I was outside at nine this morning, which on a Sunday feels like gaining illegal access to another version of the city. Streets I know crowded become wide. Places normally full of voices have only footsteps. Delivery vans. People cleaning. A man walking a tiny dog with enormous confidence. Runners looking offensively healthy. The water almost still. I bought coffee and walked instead of cycling because there was no reason to hurry. Living in the centre means I know Amsterdam mostly in motion, people arriving, leaving, crossing, ringing bicycle bells, dragging luggage, talking, laughing, queuing. At nine this morning the city had not put all of that on yet. I could hear individual sounds. A shutter opening. Bottles moving somewhere. A bicycle chain. My own boots. By ten it was already changing. People appeared. Cafés filled. The spell did not break dramatically, it simply became Sunday. I came home with cold hands and coffee finished, climbed the stairs and found Yuri still in bed. «You’ve been outside?» he said, as if I had returned from Antarctica. «I have seen the morning.» «Congratulations.» I got back under the duvet for ten minutes anyway.

Remember me, Eclipse.