Creating a haven

Finding quiet in a strange space

This week I found myself unexpectedly in hospital for a brief stay. (I’m home and ok now).

I have nothing but good things to say about the paramedics, doctors, nurses, technical specialists, porters and support staff who tended to me during my stay. The NHS is clearly creaking a bit (I spent 4 hours sitting in an ambulance because there wasn’t a space in A&E ) but I’m deeply grateful for the fact of its existence and that it was there to catch me when I needed it. We need to ensure it stays, and is strengthened, both as an institution and a body of people.

Being on a ward is largely about waiting for things to happen. And being in the presence of other people. And noise. Conversations, visitors, the bright, breezy monologues of nurses attempting to keep the atmosphere light. Machines beeping. Beds being trundled past. Trolleys. Being seen and being invisible. All this is overwhelming, and self-shrinking. I wanted silence, trees, space to just be me. So I wrote. And what follows is unedited, just a pouring of longing onto a page, the weaving of a safe silence in an unfamiliar place.

So shall I try and create a haven here? Instead of being sad and helpless that there isn’t one?

I know the feeling of a cool breeze and a warm sun.

I know the feeling of damp grass on my bare feet, the feeling of joyful rebellion in being barefoot in a public space, and not knowing whether the next step will be soft grass or the prickle of a hidden thistle, or the sudden shock of a sharp pebble, the squish of rabbit poo.

I know that I am rooted in the earth, that I am touched by the sky.

I know the squeal-inducing cold of the sea on bare skin, and the camaraderie of squealing and swearing and tiptoeing our laughing way in, followed by the peace of immersion and the physical exhilaration of that change.

I know the feel of salt on my face after a blustery walk on the beach.

I know the shape of the trees and bushes and hedges around the park.

I know the sounds of the morning - the owls retiring as the first cockerel crows; the sleepy chirps that resolve into a blackbird’s song, then a robin, a song thrush, a wren. The backdrop of woodpigeon call. The staccato of a woodpecker.

I know the scent of honeysuckle woven through the gorse and blackthorn, and the acrid tang of horse piss. I know the sweet-and-dank of blackthorn blossom, the sweet sleepiness of cow parsley.

I know the chik-chak of jackdaws talking together in the morning, deciding the business of the day; and the raucous chatter of them gathering in the evening to roost and tell stories.

I know the double-thump warning that the rabbits make. I know the shape of their bodies, the way the evening sun shines through the thin, taut skin of their ears. I know how a group of them grazing, apparently entirely relaxed, will ensure that they are facing different directions so that they can see all around them. I know the lope of the older ones and the bounce of the kits.

I know the silhouettes of swifts, swallows and martins in the summer sky. I know the swifts’ scream, their otherness, the ecstasy of slicing air.

I know the effortless-seeming glide of buzzards and red kites; the broad-winged buzzards and the long-wing fork-tailed kites. Their plaintive cry.

I know the rattle of magpies, the kiteshape their tails make in flight. The blue-green rainbow sheen of their feathers. I know the sound the magpie families make when the juveniles are venturing into the world.

I know the greengold of ripening wheat, and the endless pink and bronze shades of flowering grasses. I know the faraway-windchime rattle of tall reeds.

I know that my silence is not silent. My silence is full of sound; songs of sky and earth and water.