A Timid Tongue in Budapest

Came back from a trip with the University's History department to Budapest on May 27th and wrote this 3 days later in response. The lemonades were possibly the best I'd ever had, the currency is in those ridiculously huge notations, and I am still surprised so many places speak English.

Feels like an ordinary city,
a flight that goes for ninety minutes 
lands you on common ground.
In the darkness,
one street to the next is familiar,
a Tesco glaring its beacon of homely light
in what you must keep telling yourself
is a foreign night.
And soon, buildings rise up,
rustic and molded,
unchanging in the morning sun,
so you come to realise you are in fact
'somewhere else'.
Tables spill out onto pavements,
tongues spill out the language of goulash -
but also more fish and chips than you expected.
There is a clear market for your
hard-earned ridiculous currency
in eating with the locals,
from a menu labeling the Hungarian specialties 
which you never manage to try,
sold by a waiter whose tongue is braver than yours.
There is a clear market for your
hard-earned ridiculous currency
in trinkets, resplendent with gem stones,
unpriced to build up attachment to what translates
to a twenty-quid bracelet -
this wrinkled vendor knows 
your girlfriend's expensive taste better than you.
Pretty soon you must abstain or starve.
Away you go, to the open plazas punctuated by
historical full stops on horseback,
and more Gothic facades than a nineteenth century estate agent.
There is no escaping the past here
in a city occupying a perilous position of reluctant modernity,
such that few buildings dwarf you to any great height
and drivers won't stop for a red light.
You wander in amazement,
knowing these walls didn't survive the war,
the aged lost to a gruesome recollection of the Holocaust
in a monochrome TV set.
Their hand touches your shoulder
as you sip fruit-laced artisan lemonades,
wishing they were this good back home -
even wishing this was home.
But your tongue is not brave enough,
even to catch your bilingual waiter's attention
so he can part you with more cash
and set you free into this isolated colourful war-zone.

Always, Forever, Eternally

I haven't got any updated material from university to add here so I thought I'd just throw an old piece of poetry your way. I cannot remember when or why I wrote this one, but I still like it, even after 2 years. 

Ever and always we find ourselves wanting

What can’t and never will be;

Forever wishing with our religion

What can’t, will be, just for us.

In loneliness we pray death resurrect,

Can’t and refuse to be alone;

In fear we beseech war make peace,

That what destroys can rebuild again.

Ever and always we hide in dark places

Away from what is and now will be;

The scars forever burn in memory

Of what will now always be.

Creative Non-Fiction - A Rambler's Guide to 'Dam

NB: This is the updated version which I submitted as my final piece for my Second Year Creative Non-Fiction module (which got me 72/100 = a First :D)

 A Rambler’s Guide to ‘Dam

Let me paint you a picture: You’re in Amsterdam, student Mecca of Europe, and you’ve stumbled upon the Red-Light District – purely by accident – though not far enough to be drawn in like a moth to the pink and red neon lights. Lacking a sense of navigation, you approach the nearest doorway to ask for directions and are faced with a Dutch lady in four inch stilettos and gaffer tape taking a cigarette break. (Do I need to explain the gaffer tape? Just imagine those black censor bars they use on TV). Now, you have three options: proceed with asking directions, murmur embarrassed apologies and leave, or alter your question to fit the situation and ask ‘How much?’ What do you do?

Welcome to Amsterdam

As you are reading this, I can only assume someone you know has come back from Amsterdam and now you’re curious. Well, that’s good because nothing brings people together like travelling to a city famed for sex. In retrospect, this could have been the reason why my boyfriend, Jackson, chose it as our first holiday destination despite only knowing each other 4 months. Somehow, a year later, the charm remained –  both his and the city’s – compelling us to return. Unfortunately, not wiser than before, as I had purchased a pocket guide to Amsterdam in the hopes of getting more out of our visit this time around. Apart from just about managing to guide us to new places, both that little pocketbook and I would have gotten more from the exchange if I’d used it as a coaster. Even the websites I scanned proved to be lacking in the personal touch of someone who had been there.

‘Ensure you are prepared for all elements’ they tell you, ‘good walking shoes are most certainly important’, take advantage of the ‘local cuisine’, and essentially do all you can not to look like a tourist. Of course, this comes from a book designed to be a guide for tourists. So obligingly you’ll leaf through it like it’s your Holy Bible of Amsterdam, while throwing several jumpers, a bottle of sun cream, an umbrella, hiking boots, condoms, and some spare camera batteries into your suitcase. But the things I learnt on Dutch soil put the word of your prophet to shame.

…no visitor should leave without experiencing the city's world famous bike culture…

For starters, He won’t have scrimped on explaining that most people in Amsterdam ride bicycles and will, therefore, insist that cycling the city is an ‘absolute must’. What this means is safety of the cycling tourist will be given priority, while conveniently forgetting to mention the pedestrians. To illustrate this point, if I was a cat, I’d be down to my last few lives by now, the amount of times Jackson has had to pull me clear of an oncoming pedal-powered juggernaut. Their tinny little bells, echoing across the city, should’ve given me fair warning, but the tourist is a breed of person whose observation is extremely selective. Even strolling through leafy residential avenues, I somehow ended up missing the single cyclist coming towards me.  So, you, munching on your stroopwaffel as you take yet another #Amsterdam selfie, will be able to thank your prophet for the inevitable #holidayinjury.

Lesson 1: It is impossible NOT to experience the bike culture, even if you’re not riding one.

Recommendation: Travel with a sharp-eyed companion, such as – but not – my boyfriend. They also come in very handy if you, like me, have trouble navigating these quaint and quirky streets.

…ditch the map and lose yourself in the labyrinth of narrow lanes…

‘I’m sure we came this way’ I said to Jackson for the dozenth time that day, and ‘I recognise that shop’ because every street less than six feet wide looks identical: rainbow coloured waffles, macaroons, and doughnuts; military ranks of steaming pizza slices; dim smoky coffeeshops like modern opium dens; great wheels of cheese; tacky souvenirs; gimp masks (though the last two can easily be confused).

Being overwhelmed is all part of the Amsterdam experience, but it quickly becomes a maze; if you’re touting a map like a sore thumb, you’ll see what I mean. Every road runs parallel and perpendicular to the web of canals which make up Amsterdam Centrum. You’ll think ‘this should be easy’, and proceed to transcribe the prophet’s word into a checklist of ‘world-famous’ landmarks and restaurants from the city’s ‘culinary melting pot’, which will look something like this:

·         Ancient church

·         Famous-local-artist museum

·         Site of historic significance

·         Market browsing

·         Photo with I amsterdam sign

·         Obscure Dutch restaurant

By the following afternoon, however, you’ll be standing astride a bridge, viciously rotating your wallchart of a map, and trying to navigate in relation to one of the many churches sprinkled throughout like immense and ornately gothic middle fingers.

Lesson 2: Getting lost is inevitable, with or without a map

Recommendation: Take it easy. Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, Amsterdam’s streets cannot be conquered in the same time frame. Although their paving team would beg to differ.

…a quaint warren of cobbled streets…

Do you remember those ‘good walking shoes’ that were of biblical importance? You might want to downgrade them from Doc Martens. Of the many streets you will traverse during your stay, He alleges that several are cobbled. Equipped with a mental image of charming, rustic avenues of knobbly stones, I entered each new street in expectation of these promised treasures – which I was told paved a cluster of nine Straatjes in Amsterdam’s version of Oxford Street. In their place were smooth woven carpets of vibrant red brick. The richly clean aroma of marijuana permeating the air seemed to take on a lonely tinge without them, the crotchless panties cheapened as if they were being sold in an alley in Soho. Only on the third day, standing on a bridge in the aforementioned manner and whining to Jackson that ‘all the churches look the bloody same’, did the word of the prophet come true. My feet, thanks to my thinner-soled footwear, eventually felt every hard lump of the promised land – all 500 feet of camera-wielding-tourist-polished stones hugging the base of the thirteenth-century Olde Kerk.

Lesson 3: Cross out the word ‘cobbled’ in your Bible

Recommendation: When you find a patch of cobbles, cover every inch before moving on just to get the full experience. But in hindsight, it’s for the best that they are confined to a picturesque courtyard given the instability of British tourists on a night out and the lack of railings around the canals.

…floating along the canals by guided boat tour is a great way to get under the fabric of the city…

Sparkling like a silken thread through the eye of the bridge, framed by hanging baskets of candy-pink petunias, the city’s 165 watery thoroughfares are highly photogenic, making them the crown jewel on every avid traveller’s Instagram page. It’s little wonder then that your prophet will stress the importance of a ‘magical’ canal cruise, and as a couple you will find yourself compelled to obey – but I would urge you to resist. Jackson and I made our first visit in the middle of August, during the Gratchenfestival, a week-long music festival for which people hire boats to see musical performances on and around the canals. Some of these boats are beautiful mobile picnics carrying sun-worshipping Dutch folk, or immense party barges, heard long before they are seen, and for the measly sum of €8, you can join them – careening the wrong way up the canals in a dinky pedalo. Jackson had been ambitiously eager to join them. ‘They’re surprisingly cheap’ he’d remarked as we stood on a bridge watching rowdy shirtless Brits causing waterway traffic jams; we were still there an hour later.

Lesson 4: A Brit will find their own way under the fabric of ANY city

Recommendation: Enjoy your sunbathing and picnicking on terrafirma. Try to find the perfect suntrap, if you can, even if it means wandering into an unfamiliar area. You can always ask for directions. Sound familiar? Before you make your decision, however, you might want to find out what else this area has to offer. 

…the Red-Light District is a world of its own that does not easily divulge its secrets…

I know what you’re thinking: peep shows, sex toys, dare I say it – prostitutes? The prophet need not profane His lips at your expense; you practically guide yourself. But that’s not what occupied our time, and, unless you’ve got nothing better to do, neither should it yours. Initially, nothing seemed out of the ordinary until the woman in gaffer tape caught our eye – or was it the other one lounging moodily in the window beside her, breasts looking like two onions in their orange mesh bikini? We took in similar windows and establishments with a concealed smirk, eventually sitting with legs dangling over the canal. Follow my lead and it will make your experience of De Wallen (to give it its proper name) a much more fulfilling one:

·         - Window shop for bizarre bondage gear.

·         - Make up names for the ladies in the windows.

·         - Watch people’s reactions to said ladies.

·         - Laugh at the truck drivers trying to navigate the tiny streets.

That’s not to say you should adopt a look-but-don’t-touch attitude for your whole trip. Go ahead – hug the 7-foot golden penis in the Erotic Museum (it makes for a great holiday snap), buy some novelty condoms or an apron with a furry footlong.

Lesson 5: Some secrets are often hidden in plain in sight

Recommendation: Let out your respectfully raised inner child. Look but don’t stare. Have maximum fun with minimum mess, and when you’re done, venture back to some semblance of normality. Just make sure you have money left because all this walking will have made you hungry. But where will you go?

…Amsterdam offers the hungry traveller plenty of unique culinary experiences…

Considering the time of day, moon phase, and current temperature, your prophet will suggest the perfect restaurant for you and your ever-shrinking wallet, while helping you blend in by taking you to ‘where the locals eat’. But realistically, your I Love Amsterdam t-shirt will make you stand out more than going to McDonalds because the locals eat everywhere. The trick is to let your senses guide you:

The open-front pizza vendors set us salivating from 3 streets away; the hand-made baguette sandwiches resembled works of art; we could taste the cavities in the air outside the ubiquitous confectionary patisseries.

‘But how do I get a real taste of Holland?’ you ask. His answer will be exhaustive and largely obscure – raw herring, for example – but wading through you will come across ‘frites’, reliable old chips in a paper cone. The oddly named Manneken Pis, voted ‘No.1 Holland Fries’, served them to us slathered in mayo and satay sauce, and topped with onion. Of course, if you’re craving sugar, the Dutch have you covered too. Up a flight of stairs only a few degrees shy of a ladder, we found the Pannenkoekenhuis Upstairs, serving dinner plate-sized pancakes to a tiny teapot-filled room of just 10 people at a time.  

Lesson 6: Fussy eaters need not fear when chips are still an ‘experience’

Recommendation: Only leave your culinary comfort zone when you are ready. No one is going to judge you for eating chicken chow mein in Chinatown every day. However, there is one temptation I will leave you to be the judge of.

…smoking cannabis or hashish is permitted in the city's coffeeshops…

Of everything you are expected to have done while visiting Amsterdam, the drugs will always be number one. It’s as if lax laws somehow equate to it being compulsory. Not being smokers, I never thought we’d find ourselves in such a bohemian place, jars of the dried herb ranged alongside loose leaf teas and coffee beans, but, by chance, Jackson’s colleague was on holiday too and invited us to join him.

The mere act of entering this establishment feels like a rite of passage as you acclimatise to the heavily scented air and the shrouded half-light thrown out by a combination of fairy lights, spotlights, and Art Deco fixtures. Figures wreathed with mist sit in the shadows, while others, seated at the ornate wooden bar, alternate between milkshake and Mary Jane. For the inexperienced, as I was, it can be intimidating, but I guess that’s what the resident feline was for; a dopey black and white cat, who must have been high as a kite, 24/7, sunning himself in the window.

Lesson 7: You are still permitted the atmosphere; no one says you HAVE to join in

Recommendation: If smoking is your thing, looks like you’re all set; if not, go anyway. Your prophet won’t openly promote coffeeshops, only throw advice at you in the hope it will stick, but that doesn’t mean you can’t see that other world.

You’re still standing beside the doorway, the woman’s cigarette burning low, scattering ash onto her painted toenails. She looks at you expectantly, standing to one side as if to invite you in. Amsterdam is waiting. What do you do?

Creative Non-Fiction - Specialist Subject Final

So here is the [almost] most up-to-date version of the Specialist Subject piece - which I will be using for my first assessment. I have yet to apply any changes to it following last week's workshop but from what I remember, I got a rather mixed response to it, some good and some bad (or rather, constructively critical). Needless to say, it's still going to be undergoing further changes so watch this space.

This whole world is steeped in science. You cannot take a step or a breath without interfering with some unseen life force, like vibrating a thread on the universal spider’s web. Stepping out one day on a brisk Winter morning with the expectation of being drenched by the rain, I was pleasantly surprised to be met with the contrary – zenith blue skies bathed in sun, and the pavements exuding their acidic scent post pluviam. But I was in no way spared my saturation, for I was still weighed down, like a sponge heavy with water, with that unseen life force: science.

I just so happened to be heading towards the campus medical centre, which got me thinking about science. Not the physics which carries an apple from its tree to a patch of unforgiving concrete below. Not the chemistry which causes it to bruise in contact with said concrete. What I considered was the biology which guides the fly to the rotten core to lay its eggs. The living rice grains which boil forth are not something which many people would wish to go near with a ten-foot barge pole – I, myself, have often gagged when finding them carousing in the ripe juices at the bottom of a dustbin – but I have continuously found myself in awe of biology’s visceral intricacies and miracles in all their stages, from conception to dissolution. In this instance, I was only thinking about what could be wrong with me. Acidic taste in the mouth. Was it acid reflux? Food poisoning? Dehydration? I never usually got sick thanks to the strength of my immune system so it was kind of a big deal. It made me wonder just how resilient my insides actually were.

Faced with a dark clammy lump of meat on a tile and a scalpel as a teenage biologist, I had felt little in the way of excitement to carve it open and see what lay within. The resemblance was closer to the repast of a cannibalistic surgeon than a clinical classroom experiment. In my gloved palm, its cold solidity and disembodiment unnerved me, while the rancid odour of meat emanating from it seemed to bloom in my nostrils. I took a step back. It wasn’t that I was squeamish or averse to the sight of blood. I’d watched the daily decomposition of a mouse’s corpse from inanimate ball of fur to scattered bones with an almost poetic reverence; there was no poetry in this – until cloven open by a less reluctant hand. Here was an object I could put a title to. This pulsating fist-sized engine was possessed of chambers webbed with fibrous white tendons, muscular vermillion walls, aorta and vena cava protruding like fleshy straws from a thin cloak of fat. The lid had been lifted. Seeing this heart laid bare had instantly rendered the human body more beautiful than the textbook diagrams had led me to imagine.

Where before, the pruned labyrinthine mass of the cranial lobes resembled a rainbow crash helmet, now it was more a large and vulnerable pickled walnut. The chest cavity undulated with the swell of delicate coral branches and flesh curtains pressing against their white prison bars, instead of simply two misshapen pink balloons swollen with bunches of grapes. Then came the discovery that we somehow managed to compress thirty feet of digestive tract – from top to literal bottom – into our ninety inch torsos and wrapped it all up in twenty-one square feet of skin (enough to stretch across your doorway). Meanwhile, each and every cell of that body was engaged in inexorable and ever-diminishing renewal. I felt exhausted just reading it!

Unfortunately, as a result of that large pickled walnut, humanity has adopted an inflated ego which compels us to assert ourselves as the most superior life form, intellectually more advanced and so forth; an asset which we proceed to laud over the rest of the world like a shameless post-Eden Adam. However, upon closer inspection, Adam can be viewed as no more than an upright hairless ape with a censor button, which led me to wonder: how big does our ego really need to be? An animal such as the duck-billed platypus is, in form, virtually unchanged from creatures which existed 110 million years ago, yet thrives to this day. Even several fish, such as sharks, and other water-dwelling creatures like the horseshoe crab and leech-like lamprey, have undergone very little change from their prehistoric ancestors. If we are truly the superior species, then why has it taken us so long to get here? It was at this point that I started to doubt the value of intelligence.

In order to see where else the human design is failing, I turned to the microscopic. Allow me to introduce the Tardigrade or Water Bear. An immensely resilient invertebrate, no bigger than a full stop, this minute creature is capable of surviving at temperatures approaching absolute zero or exceeding boiling point (and you thought you had it rough when the air-con stopped working on the ‘hottest day on record’). Even when bathing in solar radiation or crushed in a celestial vacuum, these tiny teddy bears are seemingly indestructible, leaving us, as a species, kissing their infinitesimal toes in respect. Inevitably, like the children that we are, we begin to mimic such adept creatures through biomimetics. The humble though irritating burr, for example, inspired George de Mestal’s Velcro, while the properties of sharkskin are being tested as a defence against bacteria.

I pondered if such a thing could work on my throat as I returned home. I didn’t get an appointment that day (surprise, surprise), but I’d been told to call back tomorrow. I listened to the dull rhythm of my footsteps, like a metronome, like a pulse. Some may choose to segregate themselves from their primal past by ignoring the world’s biological drumbeat, force it to fade in the face of chemical advancements and greater steps in space than anyone has taken before. But when we owe our current victory to the successes of that past, then that drumbeat should be impossible to ignore as it’s beating inside our own heads.

Creative Non-Fiction - Three-Hour Incarceration

So this week is a study of form and language when talking about an activity or job which has a routine and which (probably) is tedious/boring/soul-crushing (this applied to me after a few months at it....) I worked for an antique company which is, in itself, pretty interesting but when your role is primarily data entry it does start to dull over time.

9.30am (or thereabouts – you never leave the house exactly on time) you stand and knock…several times, on the flaky lion door-knocker, to be admitted into the cosy establishment which houses your cell.

9.35, you sit in the dank little office, lit by one, sometimes two, of the three lightbulbs in the fixture overhead, the familiar smell of musty books mingling with cat litter and whatever is cooking in the kitchen down the hall. The first item is in your hand from the pile of magazines, books, postcards, beer mats, theatre programmes, comics, clippings, or newspapers sitting beside you. You and your voluminous warden. The jolly bespectacled grandfather anyone would feel comfortable around, but with a face that after several months you’d be happy to never see again.

With time, and diminishing errors, his visits become less frequent, leaving you alone to your own hopefully productive devices.

9.50, the piles just don’t seem to get any smaller, especially when you’re dealing with wafer-thin beer mats and scores of 3-page pamphlets, the life history of which must undergo your scrutiny and documentation on the screen of a decrepit blinking box to convert it into cash.

9.55, this one probably never saw the light of a pub interior so it’ll sell for two quid…

9.57 …this one is identical but with a sloppy ring mark right in the middle, knocking fifty pence off…

10.10 …this play features a prominent celebrity at the start of their acting career so, of course, it’ll sell for more than a printed copy of some local school rendition of Bugsy Malone – until you spot a stain five pages deep where someone had been careless with their popcorn. There goes another fifty pence.

10.20. There’s a fly. In here. Somewhere. It buzzes so close to your ear as if on purpose. As if it knows you’re already watching the neon digits in despair (it hasn’t even been an hour yet?) and that the last thing you want is to spend another two hours feeling your already chilly skin crawl (why can’t he just turn the heating up a fraction?) You flinch with every fly-by until it goes silent. A momentary relief.

10.30 brings another relief in a standard issue mug with the same cheerful cat pattern on it, but without biscuits because you’re ‘on a diet’.

11.00, you somehow make it to the halfway point – without needing to use the toilet either (although saying that now might be a good time). You feel your efforts deserve a reward, so you dedicate a little more than the required time to the next colour-filled superhero comic until…

11.30 …one becomes several and you suddenly realise that that pile isn’t getting any smaller, but time is getting on and you only have one hour left.

11.50, okay, you just about save yourself (not that he’d notice when those comics seem to go on for weeks!) You finish the icy dregs of your tea, tensing when a faint buzz sounds from behind the curtain in front of the desk.

Beyond the window, you see people going by: driving, walking (with or without a dog), jogging. Today is December so it’s pretty cold outside, which makes you wonder at the dedication of some people…and the stubbornness of others (is it too much to ask to bring the temperature a little closer to twenty?)

12.10, you secretly thank your stars this job isn’t all typing or your fingers would have atrophied from being glued to the keys and mouse for so long. The same can’t be said for your eyes which have been losing focus every fifteen seconds, staring back and forth between page and screen trying to correctly spell the twenty-letter title of a German book.

12.20, it’s watching the clock time. You can almost hear the chains sliding loose and hurry to get extra done to lighten the load tomorrow (knowing full well there’d always be more even if you did finish early).

12.23. The fly’s back. Come to wish you goodbye - until tomorrow.

12.25, you debate taking a toilet break so you can stop now (it’ll be a half hour wait otherwise)

12.28. You wait too long. Perfectionism can be a bitch when there are so many things to consider with a magazine of sewing patterns.

12.32, you put on your scarf, coat, hat, gloves, bag, and wait for your release to be effected. With a full bladder, empty stomach, and a dying mp3 battery, you hurry on your way homeward.

Creative Non-Fiction - A Giraffe Among Strangers

A little late but I got it here in the end.
(NB: This is the updated version)

A vicious sheet of swirling white continued to gust through the doorway, the kind of white it hurts to look at, even through tinted goggles, and stings to breath in for its caustic purity. People came in from outside dusted in it, grinning out of warmly exerted faces which buzzed with confidence. They were the most frightening and inspirational strangers I’d ever seen.

I began to tug anxiously at my puffy mittens, trying to tuck them better into my cuffs; they refused to cooperate. It was the cold gusting around me, as much as the brilliant obscurity, which scared me more than expected. A cold which seemed capable of penetrating heavy-duty ski boots as well as two layers of thick socks.

‘Are we going out in that?’ I asked, looking back to where my boyfriend, Jackson, and his parents stood, much calmer than I.

I’d forgotten that my boyfriend was one of those ‘strangers’.

They were all veterans of the slopes, his family having been coming to these same Italian mountains for the last twenty years. There was always a cheerful hello for the ski instructors and the restaurant manager, the same apartments booked year after year in a nearby complex, and an enviable ease when moving anywhere with five foot lengths of sharp carbon fibre strapped to their feet.

‘We’ll give it a little while’ was the reply.

I’d felt more like a new-born giraffe trying to acclimate to its immense limbs with those same lengths of carbon fibre on my own feet.  

Jackson came over to give me a hug, and flashed a reassuring smile as he sat down to adjust the straps on his boots. His were for snowboarding, and so much more forgiving, much less rigid than mine: it was as if my feet had been encased in lightweight stone.

I gave the blizzard one last look before sitting down myself to wait. That blinding white mountainside had already been acquainted with the novice bite of my skis sliding down the tiniest incline, and yet at that moment, I almost felt as if that once had been enough. Skiing was a sport which required more effort than you might think, leaving your legs sore from unaccustomed exertions and stripping you of the confidence that you’d ever improve.

‘I think we’ll give it a go’ Jackson said to me, pulling his ski mask over his mouth and dragging his broad snowboard out into the quiet oblivion.

Still not sure if I was even ready, I tugged at my gloves again, lifted my skis to my shoulder, and followed him out into my own personal snow-globe. 

Creative Non-Fiction - A Peace of Mourning

Hey, it's been....well, a while since I last posted in here - since the Poetry Challenge back in October (jeez) but as I am back into a prose creative writing module, I think I could start uploading each week's assigned piece. The focus of last week's piece was Nature Writing, and finding a small piece of nature to concentrate on. I chose a part of a nearby graveyard. I hope you like it as much as those in my class did.
(NB: This is now the updated version)

I should’ve felt some kind of emotion coming to this place, but all I felt was peace. Peace at the solitude wrapped in a white noise of bird song and the dull colourless rush of traffic. Peace beneath the blinding cold midwinter sun. Peace at the satisfying sound of my steps scraping and clicking against the stone underfoot.

Dewy grass muted those steps as I turned aside towards a small tree which appeared to be bursting from the very lungs of the grave’s occupant. In tarnished metal letters I’d find their name, how old they’d been, and who might miss them, but that didn’t matter to me as I’d cast my eyes over more personal stones enough to know what I’d see. Instead I gazed upwards towards a trunk and boughs twice as dense as expected due to a choking burden of glossy prickling holly and matt club-leaved ivy, their ropy tendons clinging with lethal tenacity to the bark. With another nip of earth-scented breeze, those boughs also became twice as vocal, their collective leaves susurrating smoothly against one another. I’d often heard such a sound in every other graveyard I had visited. Breath of the dead, perhaps?

A shiver of colour induced me to look down again to a carpet of damp fleshy leaves which had all but reburied the dead, gravestones and all, leaving just the coarse and weathered tips to protrude. I wondered whose relative had had the bright idea to sow such rampant plants. Their only charm was their tiny stems from which burst a small star of fine purplish-white petals, but even then the winter air had already robbed some of their colour, leaving them to shake their faded and downturned heads. Their act seemed as much in self-pity as in reverence of the stately crows perched atop the stones, a feeling mirrored in myself.

I felt that birds, with their free-roaming wings, were the embodiment of each individual soul interred beneath the ground, at liberty to go where they wanted but always return to this exact same place. The silhouettes of gulls ghosting and laughing overhead was rippled and reflected in the water pooled in a fallen gravestone. The distant twitter of small birds had formed a fabric of natural sound which vied for supremacy over the modern roar. By this point, the clouds were drawing nearer, trailing rain like soft grey feathers, compelling me to leave. As I did, the sound of children shouting and a dog barking somewhere echoed around me so they were shouting and barking everywhere. They were unafraid of the rain.