The Threshold

4.20am. I went outside. The air was still and cold. It took a long time to seep in beneath the warmth of sleep that enveloped me still. Nothing moved. The only sound was a distant hum of cars along a motorway I can only hear when the rest of the world sleeps. A single lit window. No fireworks. No shouting in the streets. What now? I made some instant coffee and took it back to my desk and looked again at the map with its new swathes of blue. I listened for a while to hoarse voices and strained smiles, and then I wondered if Barak Obama was thinking of his grandmother.