TEN MINUTES ON...
Irn Bru
This started post-transplant, post-Covid. In my new life. In the park.
Months of Isolation wards, Haematology check-ups, fast cars to Oncology, transfusions, chemo beanies, wheelchairs, months of obsessing over blood counts instead of the league tables or music charts of earlier years. Now spat out and dumped back in the world. Of interest to no-one after years under the microscope. Somehow alive when there was supposed to be no cure. Where to start?
I re-mastered standing. Later, pacing up and down the hall. Think Rocky. Borrowing a walker with no brakes to speak of, I aimed for outdoors.
Smells, breezes, colours all at once. The sound of birds and children. A bit too much. Have a little rest. Sit and watch the world. Breathe.
On the bench a drinks can and the remains of a sandwich - the owner departed under mysterious circumstances. Half-irked by the trash and half-amused I pondered what drama must have occurred to make them leave the scene like the Marie Celeste, wondered if they were lying in a ditch somewhere or had a goldfish memory and were now starving and wondering where they’d left their lunch. So many possible options. I went back to watching the trees and enjoying the dappled shade and the fact that no-one was sticking a needle into me.
I love the parks. How they change with the seasons, the way you can lose yourself walking through them, people watching, finding a new flower or bird, how the light or weather utterly re-makes them with a tree suddenly standing out under a different colour sky. I love that we share the space without treading on each other’s toes, that we don’t have to pay an entrance fee, that there’s no bloody advertising or fitting in, that you can lie on the grass all day if you want to. No branding, no spiel, no bastard trying to sell you something. That you can imagine what it feels like to be free.
In a city they are sacred spaces. For those of us with no gardens during lockdown or cars afterwards, once we were back in the world they offered so much that we didn’t know we needed.
Imagine a place we share and make our own, walk off our anger, read a book, chat with a mate, kiss a lover. Imagine that place can accommodate lovers, dreamers, workers, kids. pensioners, kids playing ball, people walking dogs. Imagine there are benches devoted to people who have died and who are remembered or who share with you the love of a spot. Imagine trees you might have walked past for decades who saw you when you’d just broken up with someone, just got that job, found out you were pregnant, walked with a date.
Imagine an Irn Bru can.
When you are ill or frail you have plenty of time to think while you are getting your puff back. Being in the park is somehow like being in an art gallery or the cinema. We go there to get out of the spaces in our heads, for a change of scene, for stimulation or to relax. I’d been reading Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, a reflection on his garden and his life. The view from the park bench is maybe what we go for, but I suppose the last occupier was focussed on their goals. They didn’t see the bench as my view. I pondered whether our modern nature is changing. Whether we really are more interested in our own stories than the community around us. Whether it was foolhardy to imagine we could keep the creep of commercial interests and branding out of a fabricated ‘natural’ environment. Whether it’s my role to go around picking up after other people. Whether these same issues don’t just roll down the generations regardless of what the packaging looks like.
Here began the journey.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and have about 3,000 photos from my local parks. Friends send me offerings from other cities and we compare drinks and their ‘offers’, locations, creative disposal locations and styles. It’s a rich subject area and I’m hoping to share my walks in the parks and ponderings, together with a photographic offering from the day. I’m hoping to explore some ideas and hear what you think about what you see when you are out.
Cheers
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