Silence - I'll Settle for Quiet

“Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”  (From Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, 1927)

How refreshing it feels just to be quiet with no distraction. I like to have the radio or a CD on, but sometimes it’s good not to bother and go about my housework duties in silent prayer or lost in my thoughts. My thoughts are bordering on torturous at the moment. A mini crisis which I needn’t bore you with and I’m sure it will blow over with some self-counselling and a quiet word above.

The place that offers the most silence is our favourite lodge in Dumfries & Galloway. Off the beaten track, hidden by trees and foliage, any sounds come from nature – and the fridge thermostat kicking in – owls, foxes, deer and the ripple of the nearby stream. Dare I believe that we’ll be there in just a few short weeks? Recently arranged and neatly in line with my retirement, we will sample summer time at the lodge. Very rare, we’re usually out of season visitors, but very welcome after lockdown.

The back garden offers tranquillity, depending on the day or time. The sheltered side, nice for a quiet read, never on a Sunday, though. Someone in the neighbourhood will fire up their lawn mower, strimmer or electric hedge cutter and kill the moment. No one around here has a massive garden, so what takes hours with some extra loud machine, I do not know. Someone else nearby likes to entertain outside and after winter and lockdown, it is clearly back on the agenda. Raucous laughter, which we hadn’t missed, and, I am told, the smell of a barbecue was apparent at the weekend. The best time to sit out is on a week day during school hours, until the boy across the back comes home and starts kicking his football against their wooden fence. They have to start somewhere, bless him.

At work, we hear the sound of silence at the end of the day when the fluorescent lights are switched off and the high-speed drills stop buzzing in our ears.  It isn’t my domain but there is something I find peaceful about a spotless, empty surgery, prepared for the next day. I accept that I’m a strange one. Somewhere a phone will ring and an answer-phone will take a message. I won’t miss much of this.

I am happy to fill my house with the noise of four lively grandchildren coming to tea, make sure they have fun and enough to eat and enjoy the peace and quiet when they’ve gone home.

My Haikus:

My washing machine
Is torture to all ear-drums
When it’s in a spin.

Stressed and troubled, then,
When dental drills stop whining
Serenity calms.

When the noise has gone
And there’s a moment to think
About what makes peace.

Hushed in the darkness
The unsettled baby girl
Loved and nursed by me.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading, keep well. Pam x

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What Really Scares Me - It's The Dark!

What really scares me? Well, apart from mundane worries about growing old, having enough money to live on and what the future holds for the next generations, I have to say it is ‘the dark’ and horrors from my own imagination.

I remember feeling very scared of the darkness at the top of the stairs in my great-grandmother’s house, and waking up into pitch black when we stayed overnight there. My mother soothed me, put a light on and settled down beside me.  My great-grandmother passed away sixty years ago but the memory remains and so does my fear of the dark.

There was the time when I got locked in at work. It was a cold, wet, winter tea time, a long time ago, decades before mobile phones. I was upstairs in the office of a small department store, just gathering my things and getting ready to go when the low buzzing of fluorescent strips ceased and I was plunged into silent darkness. The last person to leave would turn off the lights with the main power switch, situated next to the door. No chance to shout, not that I would have been heard on the ground floor anyway, but I was literally frozen to the spot with fear. I had keys, but I couldn’t bring myself to try to negotiate my way out of the office and through racks and rails of clothing and merchandise that filled the top floor. As my eyes adjusted to a small glow of street-light coming through the tiny window, I could see the telephone. Luckily, I knew the home number of the person who had locked me in. With a trembling finger I managed to feel my way round the dial and sob my dilemma to his wife, who knew me well and kept me company on the phone until her husband got home then set off straight back to release me. No harm done, but it was very scary at the time.

Then there was the last ghost hunt my friend and I went on, and oh my, I was so scared that we haven’t been on any others, up to now. This was at the Spanish Hall in the Winter Gardens, something we had looked forward to for ages, after the fun we’d had at the Grand Theatre. It was semi-dark, but we had torches and we were in a group, though everyone had spread out into different rooms and areas. I was coping with the dark and with the odd things we kept hearing. We had a medium with us a lot of the time, though I confess, I don’t believe everything I’m told, I like to work things out for myself.  My friend and I went into a dressing room somewhere back-stage in the Spanish Hall theatre.  We sat down, my friend on my right. I felt something at my left, but no one was there. The presence became strong, so strong that I was too scared to look, but many times since, I wish I had.

I’m used to staying at the lodge we go to in Dumfries & Galloway, but the first time we went, the darkness, or rather, my imagination outside late at night, scared the life out of me. I was taking our dog out on my own for his last little walk before bed. I had my torch, a dim outside light on the lodge veranda and a sky full of stars. I was shining the torch on my dog and the path immediately in front of me when my mind started giving me horrors. I was sure I’d see the feet of someone facing me. I didn’t dare to shine it on the trees, terrified by what might be hanging there. I worked myself into a blind panic rushed back to the safety of the lodge, only a few steps away, before anyone could grab me. These days, confident that our dog won’t venture any further than the first tree, we watch from the veranda and let him go by himself. Maybe seeing ‘The Abominable Snowman’ when I was eleven has affected me for life.

 

 

This is my own poem,

 

 

A Ghost Tour in the Spanish Hall

 

An evening in the Spanish Hall

Fun-time promised for one and all.

Exciting times for you and me,

Paranormal activity!

Hopes and desires, all are risen,

Someone’s speaking, we must listen.

“Enter the rooms with open mind,

And be prepared for what you find.”

The semi-darkness of torch-light,

Anticipation of the night;

Wondering what there might be here

To chill us with delight or fear.

We heard a strange and weird sound,

Quiet growling from underground.

Distant laughter, joyful patter,

Ghostly party fun and chatter.

Chink of glasses, bell-like tinkle,

Passing orb gives us a twinkle.

We crept across the ballroom floor

To where we hadn’t been before.

A woman beckoned from her chair.

As we approached, she wasn’t there,

Just vanished, like she’d never been

But we both knew what we had seen.

And later, on the wide stair case

I froze as something touched my face.

I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t shout;

Someone was with me, there’s no doubt.

When we sat in the back-stage room

We both smelt dated perfume

Like musky lavender and rose

Stagnant, lingering in repose.

And that mirror! I dared not see

The presence sitting next to me.

I felt their breath upon my cheek

And could not move, too scared to speak!

I must now be most explicit,

Show respect to restless spirits.

Never ridicule, tease or taunt.

It might be you they’ll come to haunt.

 

                                                                                            PMW 2012

Happy Hallowe'en, everyone. Thanks for reading, Pam x

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