The rarest sound is urban silence

Silence. It's rare in London, and strangely disturbing. I dropped off to sleep in the garden in the sunshine on Sunday afternoon, came to 10 minutes later with an aching coccyx and a twisted neck, and knew instantly that something was wrong. It took 15 seconds to work out what: I was listening to silence.

No aeroplanes, no car alarms, no burglar alarms, no police sirens, no patio pressure cleaners, no authoritative fathers, no angry music, no ring-necked parakeets ... Just silence.

I fell asleep because despite a late night out I'd still made it to the allotment for eight, to sow Jubilee Hysor broad beans, Sugar Ann peas, ruby chard and Rudi and French Breakfast radishes and plant Centurion F1 onions. For me, this is the best time in the allotment year. All the hard physical work of improving the soil has been done and the weeds have yet to hit their stride. Slugs and snails and discrete plant diseases are only a faint memory; every little seed that you push into the ground has the potential to become a healthy, handsome, sweet-tasting vegetable. It can grow up to be anything it wants.

I was back home by 9.30, moved a ceratostigma from the back to the front garden (it's a good time of year to transplant but you must remember to water regularly), sowed annual poached egg plant and Californian poppy seeds direct into the ground - good pollen and nectar plants for wildlife - and sowed some heritage sweet peas (yes, I know I'm behind, thank you) and tomatoes into seed trays to clutter up the kitchen. I then sat down on the bench in the sunshine for five minutes, admired the first brimstone butterfly of the season, watched the wood pigeon courtship ritual (he bobs, she hops, they entwine their bills, he gets to work, it's all over in five seconds) and fell asleep. And woke to the sound of silence.

We're short on silence in the city but there's an abundance of light. I was wide awake at 4am the other morning so I took the cat for a walk. As I stepped outside the front door I had no sense of night and there were certainly no stars. The street lights cast a sulphurous glaze over everything and the stairwell of a block of flats on the far side of the A316 was lit up like the mother ship. Even more surreal, when the cat sat down suddenly (which signifies imminent danger) and I looked around to see why, there was a chap trotting along the middle of my road, presumably on his way to or from work, legal or otherwise. We wished each other good morning. At 4am. Weird city.