4am is a magical time. Where the late-nighters have mostly drifted off to bed, and the early-risers haven’t well…risen.

It’s simultaneously eerie and relaxing in a most odd sort of way. Hearing birdcalls echo across a graveyard silence in a usually hectic city center is an…experience. The occasional twitters should feel out of place in the concrete jungle, normally masked by human noise as they are.

They do not.

Sitting there, watching the sky gradually lighten and listening to the calls is magical because you feel isolated. Despite being surrounded by thousands of people, you feel isolated because you are the near enough the only one awake and around.

A city at 4am feels like a graveyard. Except that — unlike a graveyard — its inhabitants are only temporarily at rest.

Passing through the airport close to my home earlier that night…well, morning, had a totally different feel. Even at the oddest hours, the place is together alive and dead. Alive because it is filled with people. And yet dead because those people are mostly waiting.

An airport at 4am feels like an indrawn breath.

There’s a sense of anticipation as people wait to jet off across the globe, or wing there way home. That too is magical, in a totally different manner.

What was I doing around town at 4am having worked a double shift that day? I went to the gym after work, at gone midnight. I parked my motorcycle in a multistory carpark, assuming that because it was not locked by midnight it wasn’t going to be. Wrong! Leaving the gym (past 2am) I found steel shutters between me and my bike.

I took a bus to the airport intending to walk home from there…and on arrival realised I’d left my keys in the gym. By the time I’d bussed back, I decided to wait for the shutters to be opened. And so, I found myself in one of the oddest experiences of my life — a city normally so filled with life emptied.

They were long hours, but I almost don’t regret them just because of the 4am insight.

Thought for the day: The heavier the eyelids, the sincerer the words