It’s three weeks till the Melksham Food and Drink Festival. It is a great event. People like it. It’s nice. For the last two years it has been the most stressful element of my job and has been the cause of the highest concentration of swearing, seething and tears. To prevent a third year in a row of cripplingly unhappy anxiety and stress, I have decided to take a vacation. Every single day in the next 21, for at least half an hour.
To make sure that I keep to this, and because it might even be interesting, it will be documented here. Thus:
Day 0. Thursday 22 May. Polling Day.
Having arrived home at 9.15, I grabbed my polling card and a piece of toast, and marched across the park to my polling station. With that important democratic duty fulfilled, heading back through the park, I heard a mournful melencholy sound.
Meooooow. Meooooow. Meooooow.
It was constant, eerie, and a bit too rhythmical to be a cat. Looking around I saw a solitary figure on one of the swings in the gathering gloom. He or she was swinging high and fast and the swing was crying out across the park from its rusty hinges.
I stood at stared for a while. Do they need help? Are they ok? Are they crying? Are they high?
The person seemed fine, a little thoughtful maybe, and strangely beautiful as he or she swung, silhouetted, in front of the glowing red neon sign of the Odeon just behind.
And why not. This is our park, our council tax, as I am only to keenly aware, pays for those swings, these trees, this security light in my eyes, and, yes, this bench, thank you very much, which I sat down on.
It was partly out of solidarity for the lonely swinger, partly because it was a really peaceful cool evening, and partly because, after another long hectic day, I wanted to just sit still for a while.
And for the few minutes I sat there, I felt a deeply relaxing sense of calm settle in my bones. So peaceful. So beautiful. I thought of the significance of the people before me, the woman who had faught for my right to vote, of my fellow Trowbridge residents, going about their evenings in and around the park, the person who installed the bench and the fence and the swing and the lights, and this complete stranger swinging sonorously over there whose evening I was serendipitously sharing.
So I decided to do this every day, at least until the Food Festival, as I need to have regular reliable access to a place of calm, and what good timing, we have the neat three weeks to go. I could call it meditation, although it isn’t really, it’s just sitting still and disposing of each thought politely without dwelling or worrying about it, until no more thoughts come.
Day 1. Friday 23 May. Trowbridge.
Got up earlier, very keen, headed out all smug and pleased with myself to my bench before getting my bus, but it was raining so not such a success. Sat there with my umbrella and felt mostly cold and a little worried I would miss my bus. Wasn’t too bothered cos technically it was 22 days to go so I could start the next day.
Day 1 again. Saturday 24 May. Heathrow.
I had decided, just after midnight the day before, that I was going to surprise my brother from New Zealand when he landed at Heathrow. Dave thought this was a ridiculous badly planned expensive waste of time, but still mumbled ‘Have fun,’ from under the duvet as I kissed him goodbye at seven in the morning and ran across town to get my national express coach to Heathrow.
Having written out some lists, sent a few emails and designed a leaflet, my productive bus journey was nearing Newbury and it was time to get my first proper half hour of calm in. I found the Amelie soundtrack and settled in to its beautiful chords. Bus journeys are even better than trains for this. So much longer, less stops, and the aloneness is much more complete.
The piano tunes accompanied the countryside as it sailed by, I was thinking of my brother who I hadn’t seen for a year and how strange it is that we had been 3 and 4 together, running round the woods, laughing, crying, playing, we inseperable smaller siblings, while the other two did grown up kids stuff. There was a plane in the sky flying parallel to the coach and I thought it might have my brother in it. This thought sent tears streaming down my face. Why so many tears, Miriam? I love my brother. So much. That’s all. It was new to cry about it though.
Day 2. Sunday 25 May. London.
This day had a train journey in it, but standing up cramped next to strangers. Not the best. It also had a huge amount of drinking, laughing, a bit of dancing (in Hyde Park) and some chips and ice cream. All three brothers together, very rare, I wasn’t going to miss that. I took a lot of pictures. By midnight we had laughed and cried and you-tubed ourselves to sleep in Vic’s flat, and I had not carved out my half hour. I thought maybe the half hour rule only needs to apply to busy days, and actually if you have laughed for most of a day that might serve as some sort of equivalent. I’ll make it up tomorrow, I thought.
Day 3. Bank Holiday Monday 26 May. Trowbridge Park.
The train journey home was full of work. And other people. At about nine, as it was getting dark, I went for a walk in the rain. The park was deserted. There’s the silver lining to rain. I wandered round a bit, then sat in the shelter of the bandstand. Really peaceful. Not a fabulous venue but dry and empty. I did my meditation technique where every person I care about gets a Buddhist blessing.
‘May love be with Dave. May peace be with Dave. May he always be happy, peaceful and prosperous. May no difficulties come to him and only good things come to him. May he always be happy, peaceful and prosperous.’
It takes half an hour to get through everyone. It is really lovely. At each person I see them smiling, happy, and also walking past me, so they are then gone from my mind. Once everyone, including people (and some buildings) that bother me, have walked on past, I am calm. So calm. And last of all, I do my own blessing. ‘May I always be happy, peaceful and prosperous.’
I believe there is some good energy this can generate. But more than that, it just fills my head and my heart with so much love for everyone. It cleans out my heart with love. I like it.
And full of all this peaceful love, I did a quick tidy up around the bandstand, which had clearly been the location for much snack and beer related socialising over the weekend.
Back home I discovered my camera is broken. My £300 camea which I hardly leave home without, which I use for community events, friends, family, work and art. It makes so many people happy as so many moments are captured. I just bought a new 32 Gig SD card for it.
And I am so sad. I am sorry to my camera that I haven’t taken care of it. I think I dropped it yesterday at the pub. I probably did.
And I think of the major community events coming up, the people I have reassured that I will be there to take pictures for them, the projects I have said I will help with, the value that I have assured for myself as the person who will capture it all for them….
I will have to let go. I will have to say no. Mayor’s portrait. Melksham In Bloom. Hospital. Queensway Event. Food Festival. Five things that I will suddenly be unable to photograph.
And as I search sadly for a silver lining to my broken camera, maybe that is it. I will have to say no and let someone else do it.
I have no choice but to let go. And of all the million things too much that I do, this one can go.
And I will be more calm.
Myriad 