Dirt Tracks, Moving Water and a Brass Band

An annual review (of sorts)

The cafe toilet walls are pasted in sheet music. It must be hundreds of sheets and thousands of notes. It’s a long time since I was fluent, but musical notation is a language I used to speak. Today is strikes me anew as language and the cubicle becomes noisy. I know this kind of noise - It only happens when there’s a certain kind of space. ‘The kind of silence in which another voice may speak’, Mary Oliver said.

HMRC has recognised me as a sole trader since 2013. Since then I’ve been artist, cook, bottle-washer and many more things: A whole business in myself. If I had a boss with a team with a budget there’d be away days, so I’ve always made it a priority to take myself on away days. What are away days for? Reflecting, planning, celebrating. So that’s what I do. I aim for delicious food, creative spaces and a good walk. Good decisions get made on good walks. The agenda is present enough to know new things on purpose, but loose enough to make the most of what emerges. This once biannual practice had lapsed somewhat, so when a nearby hostel was having a Spring sale I booked two nights instead of one and packed a bag.

“You mean like that one?” says

Letty McHugh

, pointing at my rucksack. Letty has just asked if I have memories of how or what got me so excited by art. Lots of roads lead to some kind of answer to this question, but I find myself talking about the adventures I’d take to the bottom of the garden; the ceremony of packing, the piece of string ‘just in case’, choosing a teddy to come along this time and assuring the others their time would come. The feeling of adventure being comfortably close, as long as the basics are on my back, has never left. Letty sees right through my ‘away day’ facade - I’m just taking another trip down the garden.

I had forgotten brass bands.

I had forgotten they rehearse.

The hostel is next to a community hall. The kind you can book by the hour; the kind that has a schedule printed out and pinned up in a frame with peeling varnish. It’s 7pm on a Thursday and still light. Thank you, Spring. I’ve taken a bowl of hot soup out front to feel the last of the sun on my skin, and there are various honks seeping through the red, brick walls. They join thick and layered birdsong to form quite the cacophony. It’s a practice, so I hear the same few bars a handful of times, before a couple of run-throughs. There’s a small cheer and some laughing when they finish. I wonder if the birds are practicing too, or whether this is the real thing. I carry that quiet sense of having stumbled upon something brilliant but not wanting to interrupt any of it.

I meet a Mayfly up close. They live one day and spend more than half of it in water, a nymph. Mayfly lands on my forearm as the last notes drift from the hall. They’re fairly large things with a lot of limbs, so my knee-jerk is to shake them off, but after recognising the forked tail and lack of biting equipment, I leave them be. We sit together for a minute or so, before I pick up my book and carry on reading. They stay put for several pages. Four or five minutes. 0.3% of a life spent on my arm.

An hour of following the canal towpath has brought me to the next town and I need a wee. I spot a supermarket and nip in to use the facilities, grabbing a couple of piece of fruit for the next couple of miles. The queues are long and there’s no self check out, but I’m not rushing. “Is that all you’ve got?” asks a man, who’s jumped across three lines to enquire. “Come in front of us. No problem.” His wife strongly agrees. We chat alongside the conveyor. This is their ‘big shop’. “Someone did the same for me last week when I popped in for a couple of bits - Nice to pass it on." he says. I pay 79p, everyone is smiling, and rejoin the pavement.

“Follow the steep windy road up past the Quaker burial ground.” I’ve asked a local friend the fastest way to get from concrete to hills. It’s a spontaneous text, and I’ve already racked up 7 miles before lunch, so I’m only going for it if he gives me something truly direct. Halfway up it’s already clear he nailed the brief, but before getting even that far I pause at the burial ground. There’s a plaque - 1668 - but otherwise it’s a dusty patch of earth, tree roots poking up in various places and a wobbly wall precariously constructed as the perimeter. The tree belonging to the roots looks old: Wise. It sprawls, reaching and hanging. There’s a tyre swing on one branch. I consider its relationship to paradise.

I ask if they have a gluten free beer. They don’t, but the space is perfect, so I grab a rosé cider and make a nest in one corner. The bubbles bring just the right amount of fizz and ceremony. “Welcome to the AGM” the stem of the glass between my forefinger and thumb. “The board are very happy with our doings this year,” [there is no board. I am the board] “so cheers to that.” All minutes are signed and agreed, priorities for the next year are discussed. ‘We’ leave with a strong plan which may make little or every sense.

Hugging a bowl of porridge on a squashy leather sofa after two sleeps in the hills and two hours ‘til my train I wonder if I’ve completed the agenda that was never written down. I sip coffee and recognise the chirrup of a nearby chiffchaff. Maybe. Probably not. Mostly. Yes.

---

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

— Mary Oliver