Rose

I hadn't thought about the heaviness of soil before. It seemed that a big flower pot full of it was more awkward than I had made allowance for when planning to transport a rose to my mother's house. You could tuck it under one arm best, with both hands clasped underneath. I had it in a thick paper bag with cord handles, from a clothes shop, and just a few of the newly-sprouted leaves poked out of the top so that the passers-by on my walk to the train station took a furtive sideways look with an almost imperceptible raising of the head to get a better angle on whatever could be in there.

In a way, I wanted them to realise it was a plant inside. I do sometimes revel in being a little bit unconventional, and carrying a plant pot through the streets was therefore quite appealing. But then, I do also get a bit held back by self-consciousness; I could never be post-conventional. So I suppose I also wanted the plant to be seen because if there wasn't an unusual object inside the bag, then I was carrying it in what was almost certainly a socially abnormal way for no apparent reason. I was making absolutely no use of the handles. In fact, I also carry in this fashion when a bag is heavy on account of being full of books from the University Library, but then the bag is usually made of clear plastic to make sure that we don't try and steal any, which circumvents the visibility problem.

I had set off a little early in order to be able to sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee on the station's platform before getting on the train. I'm not sure why the platform was part of the coffee equation rather than my seat on the train, but the contrast between crisp-air-on-cheeks and hot-coffee-on-lips when I did drink seemed to congratulate me on the choice. The other people on my bench were early too, and so we all sat together in silence for about ten minutes, during which time the rush of people crossing in front of us to and from trains seemed like a pressure wave pushing us back into a little corner of intimacy. It seemed a bit like we were having a very personal conversation as we looked out at the people intently from our bench with our hot drinks. They all had the opposite idea about their drinks. They all held them in front of them as they marched ahead, leaning slightly forwards from the waist. I began to suspect the drinks were actually pulling them forwards, what with the way they clutched onto them so tightly, and how they seemed so very serious about their train-catching task. What a disaster it would be if they were to drop it. Undoubtedly they would stand entirely still and look at all the trains in total bemusement. Perhaps then they would notice the bench and decide it would be nice to have a little sit down.

As I put down the rose bag on the third train of my cross-country route, the bag broke. I folded it and placed it on the table top as a mat for the pot so as not to spread the soil everywhere. Now everyone was able to admire the rose, and when finally I arrived, I carried it out in front of me to my mother who was waiting on the platform.

shingle street

The tiny hamlet of Shingle Street was evacuated early in WWII. The sea is five fathoms deep very close to the edge of east Suffolk's shingle desert here. It would have been a great landing place. In fact, rumour had it did make a good landing place in the summer of 1940; a brief and defeated landing where the sea was set ablaze and thousands of burnt German bodies were secretly carted off. Evacuation plans had been made before here too, a hundred and fifty years earlier, when a line of thick-walled gun towers had appeared up and down our east and south coasts. New buildings for new guns joined these Martello towers in WWII, and this time with some further innovations. At the conveniently empty Shingle Street, Barnes Wallis tested his bouncing bomb so successfully that there is now a gap in the line of houses where the Lifeboat Inn used to be. I decided to take a visit.

I'm in no rush to get there. Taking in new Suffolk scenery from the car seems already enough of a treat after weeks in Cambridge, but mostly I want to pretend I'm becoming a Suffolk local by getting there without a map, which I suspect will result in my getting lost. So a rush would be pointless. I follow the signs to Hollesley, the village just before Shingle Street, and Bawdsey, the village after, since Shingle Street is too small to be on any signpost. On the way, a Nissen hut assures me I'm entering the land of WWII defence detritus, but then things start to become confusing.



As I near Hollesley, the signs seem to give options only to different parts of Hollesley Bay prison. I try to follow my nose towards the sea, but keep ending up confronted with 'no entry' commands. Still there is not a peep of Shingle Street. Kafka's Castle floats past my imagination and I wonder if I will make it. But this whole area was strung with road-blocks marking out the off-limits Defence Area in the war. The boundedness of the prison fits right in! I greet the signs with relish, and pull up next to the prison in awe at its size and barbed wire.



Hollesley suddenly releases me and the winding, enclosed, tree-lined roads give way to an expanse of flat land stretching to a strip of yellow ochre and a sail gliding past in the distance. A pillbox peeps out from its camouflage at the side of the road.



At Shingle Street now, I find the single row of houses, fronts to the sea, backs to a narrow road and fields. There is a gap! In fact there are two gaps. Neither of them seem to say very much about their origins. But this shingle seems to stretch for miles, empty except for sea cabbage, and at the end of the row I think I can pick out the hulk of a Martello tower. I want to walk, to the tower and into the emptiness, and the bouncing bomb and Lifeboat Inn slip away.



The Martello is in the grounds of someone's house. A black labrador sitting beneath it silently watches me skirt the fence that keeps me out, and round the other side, a red, curvy children's slide at its base tells me that if I want to play games with imagining myself into an invasion scare, this is not the place. Past it though, I can see three more, each half a mile apart along the gently curving shore. Four towers, all within sight! I hadn't realised they would be quite so close. At the second tower, there seems to be a pillbox perched on top. Spikes jut out from its roof.



Fifty feet away, another pillbox is sunk into the side of a bank, at the start of a procession of anti-tank cubes towards the sea.



The next Martello has a swooping glass addition to its roof, some scaffolding up one side and a jeep outside. What an incredible place to have made a home.
Finally I'm bearing down upon the last tower, and things start to come to a climax. Already my muttered incantation numerating my finds has been fueling my excitement. Two Martellos, two pillboxes... two Martellos, three pillboxes, one line of anti-tank cubes...
The patch of coast where sits the last tower is called East Lane, Bawdsey, and here I find the sea lapping through the openings of a pillbox, a huge concrete gun battery, a tall observation tower and another pillbox, all within a stone's throw of one another. I have been walking in these deserted expansive surroundings under a hot sun and a strong wind for some time now, and all my attention is on my military mission. Behavioural inhibitions have disappeared, and scampering up to, creeping round, peering into, tramping past and making gleeful exclamations at these buildings has become my new normal.



Five pillboxes, four Martellos, one line of anti-tank cubes, one observation post, and one gun battery. This has been a good day.

down and up

In a narrow street in Cambridge there is a hole in the tarmac in the shape of an elongated heart. Around the corner, when the light fades from the sky the sundial high up on the church wall tells the time of the orange lampposts' night. Sometimes I look down and sometimes up.

Recently I have been using my old inline rollerblades to get from A to a range of other letters, and so now the pavement has a new meaning. Now I feel the down. The pavement has more texture than it did when I was just shoe soles and bicycle wheels.

It is incredibly smooth and I weave between the walking people without ever needing air to come between my wheels and the ground, only elements of the figure eight. And then it is slightly less glass-like, it is the sandstone paving stones, and the sound comes out in a strange wavering tone that sounds like ghosts are underneath. But then there are older paving stones with the deep cracks between, and if the weight is too far forwards you will trip, so you must sink back a little. You will never flow here, and the precision of where the next pushing step must fall absorbs everything. At the special paving stones made of little bobbles that tell the pedestrians where they should line up to cross the road, if you hold your wheels in a very straight line for a while you can slip exactly between the bumps that otherwise would judder and jar through your legs and right up your back. Cobbled streets are obviously out of bounds. Then there is the road. Sometimes the road is so rough that the wheels cannot move with any pace and need constant, vigorous encouragement, even though your tremor-ridden legs ache for the glassy surface to come back.

Sometimes I look at my feet and sometimes at the sky. Now I feel with my feet. I want to feel the sky.