Yesterday, on the last morning of June, I woke to a sun-filled room. I brewed some coffee, slipped on sandals, then left the house and headed for my local park.
The walk is short – about ten minutes down from our hill and halfway up the next, towards Holgate Windmill. It’s later than usual – coming up to half past eight – and school-children are starting to stream down the pavements. The sun is already high and hot. The air is already summer-scented and nostalgic. It’s set to be the warmest day of the year so far.
I veer through the gates of West Bank Park with purpose, winding along a shaded pathway towards my favourite bench – in the heart of this well-used oasis, cared for by regular volunteers. Down a pergola-tunnelled walkway, a duck-under the seed-pod tassels of this year’s wisteria, and out into the sunshine. Here is my June bench: the place where I have been coming, whenever possible, to begin my day.
I sit down in a clean gap between bird-droppings, pull out my book, and take the first sip of my coffee. Pink geraniums grow up through the slats in the seat bench, tickling the backs of my legs, and small honeybees and hoverflies are busy leap-frogging the flowers. The beech hedge behind me rustles with quiet activity, and the sounds of the park drift on the sunlit air: dog walkers calling gently for slow dogs, toddlers trundling on their scooters. The morning orbits around me at an easy distance. Not for the first time on this bench, I spread a smile for no-one but myself, and think how lucky I am to be sitting here.
There’s something special about a park bench. It’s a space which brings a kind of contentment I’ve thought about a lot, but not yet tried to articulate.
There are many mornings when I get myself out of bed a little later than I’d planned, and am tempted to speed up my morning routine by just stepping outside in my own garden and sipping my coffee there. Same effect, surely? And perhaps even better – it’s private.
Except it really isn’t the same effect. I love my garden and I love being in it, but there is something both calming and rejuvenating about leaving the house and going to a lovely public space – just to be. I used to scratch this itch by walking along the banks of the Ouse each morning, but since moving away from the river, I have had to find new ways to move my body and breathe the air before it’s time to sit at a screen for the day.
I found West Bank Park early on, but I didn’t fully discover it, in all its unexpected beauty, until late spring. Since then, I have tried out a few different benches, moved about with the shifting morning sun as the weeks have passed, and become familiar with the routes and routines of Holgate’s dogs and dog-walkers.
My June bench is my favourite yet. With it being the height of solstice, I can arrive here as early as 7.40am and already the sun has lifted any condensation from its seat.
When I’m here, with a soft-focus on the book in my lap but one ear on the sounds, animals and thoughts that might be passing by, I seem to be prone to ideas. I’m an open notebook. I have regular pre-breakfast epiphanies from park benches: not just writerly ones, but personal ones, too.
I also feel, loosely and anonymously, part of something. There’s a whole community here, wrapped around this lovely park. Lives meet, or at least pass one another, and I start to recognise faces and voices that, like me, live in this specific place, in this specific time. They know what I know. It’s a particularly comforting sensation when you are far away from the place you come from, and are used to feeling like a visitor or temporary resident. It’s the first small step to feeling as though I could one day ‘come from’ here, too.
I haven’t always made use of park benches, or known their particular joys. As a young woman, always busy and always conscious of what other people might think, it has taken time to gain the confidence (yes, confidence) to stop and sit in public, without seeming to have a purpose, or somewhere to be. Even going out walking without any obvious ‘reason’ has been a habit I’ve spent a few years trying to get comfortable with. Walking along the river, I would seldom stop to take in the water’s edge – and when I did, it was in the quietest spot I could, preferably unseen from the busy footpath’s flow.
Even now, having a coffee in my hand – certainly a book – grounds me a little. I am here for a reason, and I have something to do. Really though, it’s just a useful excuse, because much of my time on park benches is spent thinking (or, more accurately, letting thoughts arrive).
The excuse is useful because it makes me more comfortable. I’m still aware that you don’t often see young people sat alone on park benches – not unless they seem to be waiting for someone, perhaps absorbed in a continuous scroll, or tucking into a pasta salad on their lunch break. Anyone living in a city will be used to seeing public benches well utilised by office workers. That’s lovely – we should all get fresh air when we can – but it isn’t what I’m talking about.
The familiar sight, of course, is an elderly person, perhaps taking a necessary or leisurely rest along their regular walk. I used to think that’s what park benches were invented for. Now, they are one of my favourite things about this society we’ve designed. Truly: these benches aren’t cheap, and yet pinched councils continue to plant them all over the place, to care for them. We dedicate them to our loved ones. We’ve even started allocating them for conversation - tiny but much-needed third-spaces, for anyone in need of some friendly interaction. I fear any future where the park bench might become endangered.
When I go to West Bank, the earlier the better. But I’m almost always the only person in the park making use of a bench.
It’s a simple thing, this ritual that I seem to have built into my day, but it’s one that has opened up a new space that’s just for me. A protected pocket of time in which I don’t have to feel guilty, or be pulled in different directions. It’s replaced the mindful time I used to spend commuting on the train. It feels necessary, and it makes it easier to get up in the mornings: the first thing I’m entering into is something of pleasure, not pressure.
The rest can wait. I have time. The dog walkers, the birds, the world can carry on moving around me while I pause here, not needing to be anywhere else – even if just for ten minutes. Even if just for five.
Long, light, and windy days.
I have decided that June is the best month of the year. So while I’m not exactly reluctant to be going into July – the month which has always been the gateway into summer holidays season – I am a little sad to say goodbye, and to know that from here on, the days will be getting slowly, but quite surely, shorter again.
Though it ended on a mediterranean high, June was a very windy month for us here. Our house sits at the highest point on a hill of semis, exposed to the elements (and to wide views of sky and sunsets). Wind sweeps across our back garden – even more so at the moment while our fence is down and waiting to be replaced. It pushes open windows left ajar, swirls through rooms and slams doors.
I find particularly windy weather unsettling and distracting. The sound of it whistling around the house, the way it picks up plastic plant-pots in the garden, and billows loose the bike cover. How it kicks up dust, and frets the pages of my book if I try to read outside.
I’m not the only one. My young runner bean plants, which I’ve been trying to coax upwards out of uncharacteristically dry soil, have been repeatedly blown off their canes as they try each sunny day to wrap their tendrils around the wigwam I have built for them. The pea shoots have been much the same, and I’ve had to plant stakes for other croplings which, usually, would manage fine on their own at this time of year.
The grass is littered with crumpled leaves, as if autumn were already on its way. The poppies bursting into colour all over York – so brief and cheerful – have their petals blown clean from their stem after just a day or so in bloom. I keep an eye out for dried seed pods, sprinkling their contents into our new garden, with more hope for next year.
These past few weeks
I spent quite a lot of June on this garden of ours, partly with the help of my green-fingered mum who came up to visit for that purpose. We planted up my first proper vegetable patch, and everything she had already taught me – during those long summer days spent with her at the allotment as a child – came back to the surface. ‘Gardening is such a positive act,’ she said to me. This is something my mum has always loved and found a happy space within. And she’s right – you’re watching new life grow. You’re helping make that happen.
While many of my days have started on a park bench, even more have ended in the garden, hose in hand, watering the thirsty beds at dusk. These rituals of June have been exactly what I needed. Grounded, soft, and an antidote to the busy times behind and ahead of us.
I wasn’t very well for the first part of June, but from home I’ve still been plenty busy; with repainting my office a glorious yellow, and with work. Issue 002 of Folding Rock went to print this month, and we’ve been getting ready to launch it at our summer party, in Barry, next Thursday.
I appeared (slightly snottily) on the Books Unpacked podcast, interviewed by the very lovely James who asked me all about this life of many hats within the publishing world. You can listen that episode here.
I also took a quick trip up to Stirling, to speak on a keynote panel at a contemporary literature conference at the university, about indie magazines and regional publishing. The campus was incredibly beautiful – possibly the nicest one we’ve got in the UK (!) – and it was a total pleasure to spend time with other lit mag editors and, however briefly, enjoy the even later Scottish summer light.
Last week, I shared the penultimate episode of This Place Podcast. This one was with author and creative coach Julia Forster, at her beautiful Writers’ Cabin in the heart of Powys. Our conversation was part of an escape into that magical space where writing is the most important thing. If my local park bench is one end of the idea of a ‘retreat’, then this cabin is the other. You can listen to that here:
Funnily enough, I’m also speaking on a panel with Julia this evening, taking place online and discussing the trials and opportunities for writers trying to make a living in Wales. There’s still a bit of space, and you can sign up here.
Around the corner
July is looking fun: I’ll be back in Barry next week to unleash Issue 002 into the world, with a help of a whole bunch of our brilliant writers (if you live nearby, please come along!) And then I’ll be handing in a lovely, watery essay commission I’ve been hard at work on… Before it’s time to down tools for a week or so and spend time with family in Canada. I’m already dreaming about those lake swims and lazy mornings.
So, until next time: have a glorious July – and maybe seek out your own park bench to enjoy. Make space – give it a try. And take a coffee. I thoroughly recommend it.
With love,
KT x