Beginning of Essay
Like any other morning I was up at four, the day Oliver met with his violent death. At four in the morning the grass is wet. Now, it's still wet at 6 a.m. and even at seven, and these tend to be the hours of choice for most people wishing to apprec ....

Middle of Essay
.... a splash of colour would emerge. The all-night cricket band would reluctantly wane under the first gentle reveille from those "early-birds" of epigram fame. And then would come the most striking sensation of all: the smell of fresh dew on the grass - I think the terms "exhilarating" and "intoxicating" were coined by someone who'd just taken their first breath of northern morning air (though they likely did so between 6 and 7 a.m. when one is better primed to wax poetic and the passage of sensory information from one's nostrils to the brain is not so hopelessly clogged - as is the case at 4 a.m.). All these sensations I can fully appreciate o ....