Another sunny day as I head East from home after lunch past Woodbridge and through Tunstall Forest to the coast. I’m listening to an Audible version of The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman but I can’t seem to get into it. After 5 minutes I can feel my mind wander.
The roads turn to lanes and the edges have pale, sandy beaches where the wheels of the car slide and send up an occasional plume behind the car.
I park near Dock Farm and make my way back down to sea level, to the marshes. What’s changed this time? Dad is in bed but only because he has a sore bottom from sitting so much in the same position. I start to wonder if he had made a special effort for Christmas and now, with no goal to aim towards, he might just wither away.
I know he hates being in bed all day but I bought him a TV and I’m now starting to wonder how much his brain is affected. This morning mum brought in the milk jug before she brought his tea and he started trying to drink from the jug.
It’s just the way it looks that hurts. Is this how it’ll end?
Christmas was odd. Having always been someone who had liked the feelings of goodwill associated with this time of year, the forced fun and happiness portrayed in countless posters and TV adverts smacked of falsehood. How can we be having fun when we know one of us is about to die?
We managed to congregate in the sitting room with Dad in the centre of us all but he didn’t seem to comprehend it. He sat quietly in his riser/recliner, looking like he always did but without any of the verve, vigour, laughter, life that had always been there.
He would always open a bottle of Champagne – quick to celebrate any occasion – but this time I did it. He knows to raise his glass with the rest of us and when we say ‘Happy Christmas’ we try to smile our way through the irony, our eyes glistening behind the smiles
The carers have been excellent. Every morning and night Alec from Zimbabwe comes to change his incontinence pads, wash and dress him. He always has a cheery ‘Hello, my friend’ for Dad.
Grace from Namibia has lived with Mum since we had the panic when Mum knew she couldn’t cope anymore. Grace administers all his drugs and feeds Dad and is there to help with any other chores that Mum might need help with.
She is calm and deliberate and good to have around for peace of mind.
There are more people on the marshes today. It’s Sunday. Some of them birdwatchers. As I walk between the ponds a flock of some type of duck take off and circle overhead three times, making high-pitched clucking sounds before settling on the water.
I run up the grass bank that allows me back onto the path. Although it’s called the Suffolk Coast Path it has started to move away from the coast following the Butley River then making a detour around Snape before eventually being reunited with the sea near Aldeburgh.
The river, stretching inland, is bathed in a soft yellow light picking out a solitary fishing vessel resting up in the middle of the stream. Jolene. I wonder at what sort of voyages Jolene has taken over the years and how many fish she has dragged up from the depths.
‘And I can easily understand
How you could easily take my man
But you don’t know what he means to me
Jolene’!
I have a fretful thought about memories and how poor mine are. I often think of times I can’t recall properly or I get muddled. Did I used to play with a toy boat in the bath when I was a child? At my grandparents’ house yes but never at my parents’. I don’t think.
Similarly, I’m sure there was a time when I used the Butley ferry but when and who with? Am I just imagining it?
It’s only discernible as a place by its low jetty and a small hut on the marsh side of the sea wall although there has been a ferry here for hundreds of years. At the end of the 16th century the local landowner employed a ferryman who lived next to the river. Passage was free. At least 2 women were in charge of the ferry at various points. In 1897 George Smith was run over by a wagon so his widow, who had 10 children to look after, took over the ferry.
A friend of mum and dad’s did it for a while. In fact I saw him at a friend’s friendly football match on the 27th but forgot to say hello. Even now I think it’s not much more than a rowing boat.
The path now turns inland and for the first time since I started walking this path I am walking up an incline. This is Burrow Hill a name I’m more used to seeing in Somerset. Like the hills in the west I expect this site is home to a barrow or burial ground.
There was actually a Saxon Settlement here in the 8th century. Excavations have discovered wooden graves and the skeletons of over 200 people giving rise to theories about a battle. Apparently these settlers also had the ability to make fine materials. They must have chosen the site for its defensive ability. Although only 15 metres above sea level this would have been the highest point for miles and would have been an island in those days.
I turn South and West, refreshed by the change of view offered by the rise in the land. The sky is incredible. Clouds are stretched across it in all sorts of intricate patterns while the light in the West already promises a sunset. How I love those curved shapes in the land – the contours, paths or lines of the land always moves something inside me.
No sooner have I turned back to the path and there’s a very sudden change. No water. For the first time I’m not accompanied by that ever changing presence of the sea. It might seem more prosaic, certainly less dramatic but I enjoy the change. A desire for newness.
The path now heads North West towards Butley, a green band lining the fields and woods ahead. Turning my head back from the sun to the path ahead I see a figure several hundred metres ahead and I can see him clocking me. Strange how aware people become of each other when in the middle of nowhere.
This man is walking very purposefully. I can tell by his gait what sort of person he might be. Less than 100 metres apart and we look at each other again. As we get to within talking distance we look up to greet each other.
‘Afternoon and seasonal greetings!’
It’s such an old-fashioned and rhythmic phrase.
‘Oh, yes, and to you’, I manage to conjure up in the few seconds that I have to respond. And the moment is past.
I seem to arrive at Butley in a matter of minutes although of course it’s not: it’s just that I’ve drifted into one of those deep daydreams that absorb me when I walk. The type that consume your consciousness so entirely that you’re not really aware of anything that’s around you. It’s a little bit of magic.
When I was at school I was always made to feel daydreaming was a weakness. Something that needed to be corrected. I was always getting in trouble and not understanding why because I was absent from what was happening in the classroom or rugby pitch or even when we went on an outward bound trip. I remember various men red in the face with fury yelling at me and me looking perplexed wondering what all the fuss was about. Now I consider it a great blessing.
Butley is the sweetest little village. I pass old low cottages near Carmen’s Wood looking cosy in the dying light. It is also home to the wonderful Butley Priory. I didn’t visit this time but it will get a mention in the next post. Where will we be then?
The road twists and turns as I loop back towards the South and head towards Capel St Andrew and to the car. Lines of clouds are banked in the West and I witness one of the most intense sunsets I have ever seen. The lines of cloud in various hues of pink and peach look like hills of foreign lands. As a child I imagined it was heaven. My heart becomes heavy. Everything that a sunset symbolises – the ending of something, the death of a day, the inexorable passing of time. I feel the same as I always have but suddenly I’m older and when dad passes I really will feel older. A part orphan, no longer protected, looked after. Vulnerable.
It stops me in my tracks.
The fiery beauty is suddenly terrifying and I get another glimpse like at Avon Gorge of the brutal, ancient mystery of everything. Where are we? Who are we? What are we doing? Nobody knows and we can’t understand. Just putting one step in front of the other.
Dad will never see another sunset.
It’s time to join him and seize the moments that are left.
The Slow Walker 