Ian MacMillan: Wake-up call to shatter the sounds of silence

He’d say, to my mother in particular and to the word in general, “I’m just getting up”, and he’d creak across the landing to the bathroom and slam the bathroom door with a flourish that could be heard up to a mile away.

I try to be the opposite; I love getting up really early but I don’t want to disturb my wife so I try to slip from the bed like a shadow and make my way downstairs without disturbing the air at all. And, of course, I fail spectacularly. I may as well slam the bathroom door while playing a banjo.

I wake up. I glance at the clock: 0500 hours. I lie there for a while then get up to do my exercises and go for my walk – and my first exercise, and perhaps the most difficult, is to get up silently. I slip from between the sheets, and even the sheets are noisy. I tiptoe across the room trying to avoid the creaky floorboard, which, of course, I never do because somehow the creaky floorboard double-bluffs me and creaks like a duck. A giant duck.

I go downstairs as quietly as I can but because I’ve put some socks on, I lose my footing on the stairs and slip. I try to delay the inevitable by balancing like a ballerina or a stork but slowly, ever so slowly, I bump down a couple of steps. I’m angry with myself and I say “Shhh…” like a stage drunk, which makes even more noise.

Downstairs, I decide that I need a drink of orange juice before I do my exercises and I open the fridge and it seems that even the fridge is noisier than usual, humming and buzzing like a machine in an old science-fiction film.

I get the juice out and the carton bumps on the worktop like thunder. I feel like I’m suffering from some sort of rare disease of the inner ear that magnifies every noise a hundred times.

I reach up to the cupboard for a glass. I try hard, really hard, not to knock the glass against any of the other glasses but, of course, I fail because my hand is trembling; because I’m nervous; because I don’t want to make any noise; because I don’t want to be my dad in the mornings.

The glass knocks against a glass then knocks against a glass then knocks against a glass...

Why have we got so many glasses? I say to myself. Or maybe I say it aloud; I can’t tell any more.

I pour the juice. It sounds like Niagara Falls at the IMAX Cinema. I become mesmerized by the pouring, and the glass fills and then overflows and the juice cascades over the worktop and splatters to the floor, deafeningly. I lunge to grab a cloth and then everything goes into really slow motion.

Some fool (okay, me) has put a pan on top of the cloth. I pull the cloth and pan begins to fall, twisting and turning in the air. I reach out to grab it, shouting “Noooo!” and the pan hits the floor and bounces. Twice.

My wife comes downstairs.

“Hope I didn’t wake you up,” I say, innocently…