Tinderbox Times blog - Day 3

Today I went to the woods. I walked into the very heart of the place and found a fort made of branches stacked against a tree. A child’s den. A hideaway.

I went and sat in the middle of that fort and looked up. The sky was peaking back at me between the branches. I remembered that last scene from the film Melancholia where the characters take refuge in just such a fort right before the earth is struck by a much larger planet and destroyed.

There is no place I’d rather be on this misty, bright, crisp autumn afternoon. I stay a bit longer before picking myself back up again and heading towards the playing fields. Old men jog by on the muddy paths, breathing heavily. I hold my breath as they push on by, exhaling long after they’ve passed.

The playing fields are a carnival of dogs chasing balls. All sorts of big, fluffy boisterous dogs. A small not-so-fluffy one is yapping away on the side-line, getting his butt scratched by his owner, who’s squatting happily behind him while chatting away to a friend sat on a bench near-by.

I carry on, back into the woods and find a quiet bench to sit on and take in the life all around me. Dappled light dances across the forest floor, golden yellow leaves carpeting dark, cool, wet mud, pungent in my nose.

Pigeons ruffle around in the canopy and squirrels dart this way and that. They keep catching my eye just long enough for me to make out their puffy, grey tales.

A young woman pushing a pram saunters past. She’s got ear buds in and keeps saying, “Yup, yup. Uh-huh.” I imagine she might be talking to her mother or a colleague.

Then a couple of middle-aged women walking fast as they gossip about their book group on “the Zoom.”

After a little while I decide to head back home, my stomach leading the way. It’s almost lunchtime. I pass another woman also on her own. She’s about my age and in a brief moment of solidarity I look up at her and smile. She smiles back in a half-hearted I-wish-you hadn’t-done-that sort of way. I imagine her remembering it later and feeling badly for not smiling harder when she had the chance.

Before leaving the wood I decide I’ll just pop into the shop for a few things. But my bladder can’t wait so I make my way into the undergrowth to relieve myself.

Its sheer bliss, peeing outside. The combination of the fear of being caught while also doing something so incredibly natural, that humans have been doing for thousands of years, is exhilarating.

I head to the fruit and veg shop and then the hardware store. There are fewer people out and about than usual, many of the shops and restaurants shuddered shut. Others have hung big, bright signs in the window saying their still doing take-away.

The men in the hardware store know me well. In the three weeks since we moved in I’ve been there at least a dozen times. Today it’s for extension cords, floor protectors, and blue tac.

I head home, make some lunch, and get back to work on the lounge. I’ve put Japanese style fairy lights up, but they don’t quite reach the plug socket hence the extension cord. I could keep working on setting up house for the rest of my life, or at least until Biden wins Nevada.