When my father retired from the LCD in 2000 my mum said, ‘Oh, he’ll be a bloody nightmare.’
She forecast endless, contrived, unnecessary ‘projects’ he’d decide were imperative at just that very moment. And her life of curating a massive, empty-nest house in Talbot Woods with a garden to rival Compton Acres would be changed. First came golf, but that didn’t last, then the home projects which included, but weren’t limited to: The Leaning Tower of Barbecue, The Mad Hatter’s Signpost, an eternal tap, a squirrel-proof bird feeder, home made filter bed for the (MY!) pond I set in 1989. Since then the pond has gone (along with my 2’ green tench, golden tench, mirror and common carp, I might angrily add), and there now stands instead an <ahem> enchanted well, with endless drips.
He’s been happy doing all that and my mum (and us) have witnessed some very great successes as well as his failures. And even though the enchanted well’s endless drops look more like water jetting from a colander (honestly, it’s s**t), it’s kept him happy.
Our conversation on Mother’s Day: ‘You know that old Tomahawk bike of yours, son?’ [I was seven, then]
‘Yep’
‘I found it in the garage loft. I’ve been restoring it.’
Oh, dear Lord, will it not end?
This lockdown has me wondering about all those people who are like my father, who need stimulation constantly. What are they thinking? Other than the fear of their family’s safety and the worries of the future, what’s their approach to this? Are they happy to have more to do round the house, or is it torture?
I’m comfortable with my own company - actually try to keep isolated as a norm, anyway - because freelance teaching 200 kids a week is all the ‘realness’ fix I need. But even I’ve slipped into an ennui over all this. And I keep thinking I should re-read the classic short story The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), but that’s probably going to feed the fire of cabin fever so I’ve not done so.
But what’s become more noticeable over the white noise of the A503, the histrionic five or ten sirens per hour, the loud conversations of old East-Enders talking at the bus stop, is the sound of my childhood.
Or rather the quality of the sound has reminded me of my childhood. With the gradual progression of population growth, technological growth and urban sprawl, it's snuck up on us - or rather away from us - unnoticed.
In between the hush of tyres, the odd bark of a dog, and perhaps a particularly stiff gust of wind that might summon a shhhh from the trees, there’s that silence that I’ve not really experienced since I was young. Over the past few years I’ve learnt that I might not have had the most ’typical’ childhood, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
This is a more clean silence. I’m used to the subtle whir of my Mac, the not-so subtle fan of my PS4, the white-squeal of the TV on standby, but now there is an absence of sound that is the presence of something.
I wonder what that is. Is it part of us that has been dormant because so much is supplied by globalised living that it has atrophied and is only now waking? Is it always there, but not ‘visible’ or ‘audible’? Because, this is different. It’s not merely the absence of the noise of human traffic, its ‘bigger’.
When I stand on the bridge, I can look down into the Capital and see The Eye, The Gherkin, The Shard, etc etc, ten miles away. Normally they look like The Eye, The Gherkin, The Shard, pushing up from the fug of a megalopolis, as if they’re fighting not just for visibility but something else. Today - and it helps that there’s a bright sun in a cloudless sky - they seem more like giant sunflowers than struggling wallflowers. There is more to them.
For me this lockdown is deeply internal in terms of listening to what is going on in my mental landscape, and outside, in terms of contextualising how I approach my pedagogy after this is over. I want all the kids I teach to feel and enjoy that otherness, that silence, because although it might bring a deep peace for all, it speaks of something we’ve lost not just in big cities, but I suspect most places.
It speaks of a world where there are blank pages instead of just commas, where you can stop rather than pause, and where you might find communion with a part of yourself that the rat-race, age, or hardship has made you forget.
After you’ve swept the leaves, baked the bread, washed the windows or finished that boxset on Netflix, just stop and listen, really listen, and realise there’re parts of your life you might have been living on autopilot for a very long time. If you have some minimal, meditative music (I find Stephen Halpern’s Spectrum Suite to be phenomenal for meditation), try going inside.
Instead of looking, or visualising, listen.
pH
She forecast endless, contrived, unnecessary ‘projects’ he’d decide were imperative at just that very moment. And her life of curating a massive, empty-nest house in Talbot Woods with a garden to rival Compton Acres would be changed. First came golf, but that didn’t last, then the home projects which included, but weren’t limited to: The Leaning Tower of Barbecue, The Mad Hatter’s Signpost, an eternal tap, a squirrel-proof bird feeder, home made filter bed for the (MY!) pond I set in 1989. Since then the pond has gone (along with my 2’ green tench, golden tench, mirror and common carp, I might angrily add), and there now stands instead an <ahem> enchanted well, with endless drips.
He’s been happy doing all that and my mum (and us) have witnessed some very great successes as well as his failures. And even though the enchanted well’s endless drops look more like water jetting from a colander (honestly, it’s s**t), it’s kept him happy.
Our conversation on Mother’s Day: ‘You know that old Tomahawk bike of yours, son?’ [I was seven, then]
‘Yep’
‘I found it in the garage loft. I’ve been restoring it.’
Oh, dear Lord, will it not end?
This lockdown has me wondering about all those people who are like my father, who need stimulation constantly. What are they thinking? Other than the fear of their family’s safety and the worries of the future, what’s their approach to this? Are they happy to have more to do round the house, or is it torture?
I’m comfortable with my own company - actually try to keep isolated as a norm, anyway - because freelance teaching 200 kids a week is all the ‘realness’ fix I need. But even I’ve slipped into an ennui over all this. And I keep thinking I should re-read the classic short story The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), but that’s probably going to feed the fire of cabin fever so I’ve not done so.
But what’s become more noticeable over the white noise of the A503, the histrionic five or ten sirens per hour, the loud conversations of old East-Enders talking at the bus stop, is the sound of my childhood.
Or rather the quality of the sound has reminded me of my childhood. With the gradual progression of population growth, technological growth and urban sprawl, it's snuck up on us - or rather away from us - unnoticed.
In between the hush of tyres, the odd bark of a dog, and perhaps a particularly stiff gust of wind that might summon a shhhh from the trees, there’s that silence that I’ve not really experienced since I was young. Over the past few years I’ve learnt that I might not have had the most ’typical’ childhood, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
This is a more clean silence. I’m used to the subtle whir of my Mac, the not-so subtle fan of my PS4, the white-squeal of the TV on standby, but now there is an absence of sound that is the presence of something.
I wonder what that is. Is it part of us that has been dormant because so much is supplied by globalised living that it has atrophied and is only now waking? Is it always there, but not ‘visible’ or ‘audible’? Because, this is different. It’s not merely the absence of the noise of human traffic, its ‘bigger’.
When I stand on the bridge, I can look down into the Capital and see The Eye, The Gherkin, The Shard, etc etc, ten miles away. Normally they look like The Eye, The Gherkin, The Shard, pushing up from the fug of a megalopolis, as if they’re fighting not just for visibility but something else. Today - and it helps that there’s a bright sun in a cloudless sky - they seem more like giant sunflowers than struggling wallflowers. There is more to them.
For me this lockdown is deeply internal in terms of listening to what is going on in my mental landscape, and outside, in terms of contextualising how I approach my pedagogy after this is over. I want all the kids I teach to feel and enjoy that otherness, that silence, because although it might bring a deep peace for all, it speaks of something we’ve lost not just in big cities, but I suspect most places.
It speaks of a world where there are blank pages instead of just commas, where you can stop rather than pause, and where you might find communion with a part of yourself that the rat-race, age, or hardship has made you forget.
After you’ve swept the leaves, baked the bread, washed the windows or finished that boxset on Netflix, just stop and listen, really listen, and realise there’re parts of your life you might have been living on autopilot for a very long time. If you have some minimal, meditative music (I find Stephen Halpern’s Spectrum Suite to be phenomenal for meditation), try going inside.
Instead of looking, or visualising, listen.
pH
