Taking My Ears for a Walk

If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, it’s easy to go a bit on automatic, even if it’s something glorious. So sometimes when I go on my lunchtime walk round the Botanic Gardens I try experiencing it in a different way. Like taking my ears for a walk.

Trees have very distinctive sounds. The poplar trees at the entrance gate of the Botanic Gardens make this incredible sparkling rushing sound, like the sea. It can be heard hundreds of yards away and close to it is almost deafening. Why does no one else notice them shouting? There are other trees in the garden that are almost completely silent: the majestic sequoias seem severely mute even in the highest wind. Horse chestnuts are another mute surprise, but they are all sick with the leaf miner. Beeches and hornbeams both make pleasant murmuring sounds, and tucked away in another corner of the garden I find a catalpa tree sweetly rustling. Bamboos of course make a soundscape all of their own, whispering, squeaking and mysteriously knocking.

It is a tactile time of year too, full of fruits and seed heads that are knobbly, spiked, furry. I touch them surreptitiously (is one allowed to touch the plants?). I find one flower whose seed heads are like tiny velvet purses.

Scent, not so much, except some of the more exotic limes whose sweet scented flowers still linger, and the hot spicy scents of the herb border. The tropical glasshouses are another matter: still a riot of sweet and earthy smells as everything competes for space and attention.

The Law of Conservation of Energy

The situation is this: I am not terribly ill, but I am in some pain and discomfort, and feeling very sorry for myself. I wait impatiently for the date of my operation to be set, with a growing list of things that have to be put off or put on hold until I know. Can I finish planning the summer holiday? Can I promise to take Julie to a university open day? Can I commit to visiting my father?

In the meantime, my energy is in increasingly short supply, and must be meted out carefully. Did I really bake bread once? I cannot imagine kneading bread dough at the moment! The house has to run itself as much as it can. I have two firm sources of support: principally Joe, who runs all sorts of errands for me, often when he is exhausted himself, and who is the proverbial pillar of strength. My other ally is the Internet: now I not only order food, but whole dinners. If you live in England, I can thorough recommend family meals from Cook, which are delivered frozen and can be heated up in the time it takes a teenager to ask (sulkily) “what’s for dinner?”

Two things that I find the energy for because they are life-affirming. My office now looks over the botanic gardens, and I walk there every lunchtime, come rain or shine, absorbing the colours, the blossom, the textures, the smells. The other is music. I have signed up for a short online course to learn about Beethoven (from Coursera) and wherever I have ten minutes alone I listen to a movement from one of the piano sonatas: really listen, not have it on as background music. Both of these are luxuries I could not even dream of last year when Julie was so unwell and so dependent that I had no lunchtimes, nor ever ten minutes alone. How I relish this now!