As usual, I rarely take the time to appreciate what’s on my doorstep.
At university, I walked to and from my first year lectures down a quiet little country path flanking a sprawling rapeseed field of swaying yellows and greens, barely pausing to even look and think “oh, that’s nice.” In second year I lived right beside the links of the spectacularly bleak West Sands beyond the famous R&A golf course. I can count on one hand the amount of times I went there. In my last two years I lived in the perfectly decrepit Gatty next to East Sands. At the end of every year this became the most popular place in St Andrews for families with their screaming kids, barking dogs, and not very clever but painfully pretty young students who liked to take their tops off a lot. I visited this place more often, mostly in Summer. Late at night I would stand on the end of the old pier and stare into nothingness just listening to the sound of the sea. Sometimes at around 4am I would walk out amongst the rock pools, and sit with just the purple sea and pink sky for company, watching the sunrise. But on each of the few occasions I took the time to do it, I scolded myself for not doing it enough.
But today I am happy. After finally knuckling down to the much loathed synopsis of the deeply protracted (and quite loquacious) novel, I treated myself to a lunch time stroll in Highgate Wood, armed with only some tobacco, a Cherry Coke and a dark chocolate Bounty. It occurred to me that I’ve never really seen the colour green before. Not really. The leaves in the wood are so brilliant, so vibrant. When I realised from the local parents’ looks that I’d been staring at a tree long enough to apparently alarm them into thinking I was simply waiting for an opportunity to snatch their gremlin children from them, I quickly left the human path and found a clearing with long logs for benches. It was a nice little patch, not far from the bare bones of a makeshift teepee someone had apparently lost interesting in completing. The clearing looked like the sort of place King Arthur would sit to rub his bunions after a battle, or a where a modest Wiccan ritual had taken place days before. There I sat. I rolled a cigarette, drank my Cherry Coke and ate my dark chocolate Bounty bar, and watched the squirrels, the flies and a tiny green caterpillar that was crawling across my knee. I even took my hat off.
Afterwards I found an impromptu pet cemetery, or memorial park. There were two ‘graves’ there. One for Toby, whose name had been craved into an oak stump with photos of the red haired chap, noted only with a date in October last year, and ’7 weeks and five days before Toby died.” The other, a terrier, had only two photos – one of the dog, and one of him with his owner by the fountain in snow, and a quote above them both:
The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground,where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains…
I thought it was time to go home, so I did. Fortunately the families and their screaming children had had the same idea several minutes before. As I left I passed a lady with her labrador. We exchanged smiles. I even gave her dog a smile too.
I like Highgate Wood. I had a good day.
