UK Trip Blog III: Thunderous silence
Written near the end of the tour: 10th July 2015
It should not be the case, but
I am surprised by how quickly I have settled in
to Sheffield student life. Despite the stairs
becoming harder to tackle each day, life on the top floor
of student accommodation is strangely peaceful, if warmer than expected.
I think it should be noisier here, but
this city seems to have been silenced. There is a voice that is not gone
but is quiet and whispers, not howls. The voice of an emphasemic grandfather telling tales to his bubba grandsons, of a misspent youth punching and pulling. I
swear I can hear the racket of old machinery but is it the distant rumble of a
truck on the motorway, or another of those freakish thunder storms? That first
thunderstorm that woke us all at 3 in the morning last week was like no sound I
had ever heard.
When I looked out upon the moors surrounding the Bronte Parsonage a few days later, I had an inkling of what Jane Eyre could have felt when she sheltered there under the heather, on her own, lost and bereft. I had thought I understood the gothic storms of Bronte novels. I was wrong. I have no idea. I now have a better sense of why Rochester thought Jane an imp and how anyone encountering another soul out on those moors during a storm would suspect the supernatural. And this, from an avowed atheist!
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| View from from the top floor stairs |
I
can seek out company as I wish or withdraw when I simply want to do
some thinking. And I have been doing plenty of that. Thinking about Sheffield. About
poverty and why poverty tourism gets me so worked up.
Work and why I really don't miss it at all. How I react to
people around me. What it is about Sheffield that I'm responding to at such a
basic level. I do not have all the answers. It is nice to
spend some time inside my own head without it being filled with anxieties
and fear and tension.
And really I should be worrying. About my
Mother's health - will the surgery be ok? (Of course it will.) My
brother's situation - will he have it all worked out by the time
I get home? (Probably not.) My sister-in-law's obvious distress. My Dad's
health. I miss my bubba nephews. Is Tony Abbott still being a xxxxx? (Goes
without saying) I miss my cats sleeping on top of me at
night. And there is quite literally sweet bugger all I can do
about any of these problems. So for the first time in quite a while I have
space in my thoughts for ideas instead of fears. And I feel like drawing and
writing and singing and I think this is my reaction to Sheffield - to
create.
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| The Bronte Parsonage in Howarth, UK. |
When I looked out upon the moors surrounding the Bronte Parsonage a few days later, I had an inkling of what Jane Eyre could have felt when she sheltered there under the heather, on her own, lost and bereft. I had thought I understood the gothic storms of Bronte novels. I was wrong. I have no idea. I now have a better sense of why Rochester thought Jane an imp and how anyone encountering another soul out on those moors during a storm would suspect the supernatural. And this, from an avowed atheist!
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