Getting out the door: A morning run

A short film made after I’d been woken by my neighbourhood version of the dawn chorus. The local blackbirds and sparrows started up around 0500, some three hours before my alarm was due to wake me.

I yielded to the inevitable, got out of bed, found my running kit, drank coffee, ate cake and went out for a run in the half light. I also picked up my iPhone and did a little filming.

It was a really rather lovely run, a peaceful morning, surrounded by a birch woodland emerging into spring and filled with the sound of birdsong. And this magical place of twisting paths, of squirrels and foxes and birds and bats and the occasional badger is just one minute’s run from my suburban housing estate back door, in the middle of what was the South Yorkshire coalfield, a mucky place of pits, glassworks and shunting yards when I was a boy.