“To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget about ourselves” – Mahatma Gandhi
It must have been six weeks or so after moving in, after the hustle and bustle, the adrenalin fuelled excitement, the parties, the “new house” sex, the platitudes of friends, the tentative connections to new neighbours, the slowing down, the gradual uncovering and “post purchase” realisation of what was hidden “pre-purchase”, the exhaustion….and….the inexorable emergence into a new norm; a new norm which was very similar to the old norm….but in a different house! There were some important differences. Indeed, it was the promise of those differences that prompted the move….and one of the promises of new horizons was the garden. So it was, after that rollercoaster six-week ride, and aside from a few wanders around the estate, I had a spring weekend set aside to spend time in the garden, to get to work as it were.
In line with my first encounter some weeks ago, the garden was generating in me, a set of novel emotions. It was speaking in hushed whispers, quietly, sometimes inaudible, but I knew there were words being spoken, spells being recited, invitations being made. As I strolled down the garden surveying the new “estate” I experienced a cross fertilisation of inhibition and intoxication. I recalled my years as a sport psychologist, at times, working with athletes on enabling them to reinterpret their feelings of fear and anxiety as excitement, changing their experience from one of threat to one of opportunity. Physiologically, the body’s response to fear and excitement are more-or-less the same … so here I was, faced with an incredibly steep physical and mental learning curve … excited.
It was spring, a time of growth and renewal, where better to start than the neglected vegetable patch. In allotment parlance, the patch was about “half a perch” (do some research here) which wasn’t overwhelming. I wasn’t averse to physical work, indeed, given the sedentary nature of my occupation, physical exertion was therapeutic… so to digging! I was fully prepared, indeed, eager to immerse myself in the brittle, early morning spiked Spring air, resonant with silence and a horticultural plot of possibilities. I didn’t know what I was going to grow but was sure that “digging over the patch” was the right thing to do. That first hit of fork/spade into ground is always telling. It hints at times past; who had toiled the soil in bygone years, what (if any) attention had been given to the tilth and seasonal ministrations that create a workable, fertile and friable soil? The indications were good!
I was two or three spades in when I first heard it. Cutting through the air with ease, piercing the clean, porcelain atmosphere like a spade through compost? Someone was whistling. In and of itself this wasn’t an issue; this was my new neighbourhood, my new turf, I had to accommodate, to acclimatise, to fit in. Pausing, I tilted my head to give my ears the opportunity to narrow down the location. This took a few seconds and, looking down the garden, I narrowed it down to four or five gardens to the left. There was no chance of seeing the whistler given that the gardens had varying degrees of hedge heights which meant any neighbourly communication was limited to the gardens immediately to the left and right (Richard on the right and Cyril on the left – I hadn’t met their partners as yet).
The whistling was voluminous, confidently delivered, the breath control was admirable and the sound flowed through the air like a terranean equivalent of whale song ….. but, unlike the ethereal, timeless, melancholic and heart-rending humpback incantations … this was out of fucking tune! Now, … … a missed note in a reasonably good quality delivery is what it is, a dropped stitch, a slight blemish, something fleeting that is more or less immediately forgiven and, if a melodious return ensues, immediately forgotten. This was different. This was a series of bars delivered with confidence, with aplomb, with a “joie de vivre” that, in other circumstances, might have been a delightful accompaniment to a morning’s graft in the garden. But, delivered with an equivalent level of confidence, were the bum notes. Spaced intermittently, with no possibility of anticipation, the offending notes were delivered powerfully like jabs to the solar plexus. The feeling was akin to taking a rusty garden fork and dragging it down a huge blackboard … jarring, piercing, and penetrating.
So what happens when you are confronted with something negative over which you have no control? Well, there is no universal “right” answer, it depends on the individual at the receiving end. In my case, as a psychologist with, at that time, 10 years’ experience working with people in a therapeutic context, it was the ideal opportunity to put into place all the calm, reasonable, and measured options that had worked so well with many of my clients. The basis of this was breathing, ideally, the diaphragmatic breath, in through the nose and out through the mouth … slowly … in through the nose and out through the mouth. Add to this, messages of calm, anything that will take you out of the immediate moment and provide a bed of context and perspective on which you can lay your irritation … anger … …rage! Simple, eh?
How did I respond? I was livid. This screechy caterwaul had ruined my peace, tripped me up, and punctured my Zen. The grip on my beautiful new spade tightened, my heart rate increased, and breathing became shallow. Derogatory words and phrases bubbled up from my gut resulting in a relatively simple shake of the head and a whispered “Fuck me! You’ve got to be joking!” You must bear in mind that I had no control over what crossed the airwaves. Yes, I could have skewered the air with aggrieved insults, issued commands to cease, but what would that serve? The gentleman, (for I was convinced this was a man), was clearly enjoying his morning, he was in his element, he was in command of his space. When he rose from his bed that morning and asked himself “What am I going to do today?” I don’t for one instant think that he’d thought.
“Ah yes, I’ll plant some carrots and annoy the shit out of anyone who can hear me in the garden!”
Ideally, I would have preferred to work in silence, or to be more exact, to work with the natural accompaniment of bird song, spade in dirt, the occasional chirp of allotmenteer’s in the distance, exchanging their trials and tribulations with other “sufferers”, and the gentle rub of breeze through tree … but the whistler lured me in with the promise of some early morning free accompaniment to my travails … I’d been ambushed and I had to accommodate.
… and accommodate I did.
When confronted with challenges there is a relatively simple choice, to focus on the challenging thing (problem focus), or, if you have no control over the “thing”, then focus on the emotions that it generates within you (emotion focus). My sense was that, in the circumstances, I couldn’t do anything about the whistling. Confrontation would be impolite, hurtful and inconsiderate. So what to do? I reframed. This wasn’t an immediate response; it was a process that took some reflection and planning.
I had to think about the situation differently. Somewhere, not 30 metres away, yet completely out of sight, was a fellow weeder, vegetable grower, seedsman, hoer, and digger. We were both in the garden, we were both enjoying ourselves (the jaunty delivery of his tunes were an indication of that), we were tilling the soil, getting our hands dirty, his intentions were not malicious … we had a lot in common and who knows, we might meet at some point, chat about the history of the local area, neighbours in times past, more about the history of our new house, I might be even be able to tap into his gardening experience and continue my journey? The whistle became a marker of future possibilities and opportunities.
Over the coming weeks and months the whistled tunes became an innocuous background to my gardening endeavours, a marker of stability in the world. My brain gradually learned to tune out the unintended gaffs and I heard, in those songs unknown, the breathing of my fellow gardener. In the pauses twixt offerings I pictured a man in contemplation, maybe dwelling on what might be for lunch, on how well the carrots were doing, or maybe on his heavy drinking the night before (could be a little “projection” here). There were more similarities than differences between us.
… and then it stopped! No, that sounds too abrupt. Let’s try again, … and then … it wasn’t there. I can’t remember how long it was before I realised that I hadn’t heard it for some time. It wasn’t as if the whistling was there every time I was in the garden, … but I missed it! I started to wonder what had happened; where was my fellow gardener … on holiday, visiting relatives, or was he ill? Having become aware of it, I was drawn to the silence in a different way than I had experienced it some months before. It wasn’t tragic, I wasn’t overly upset, but something had gone … I missed his whistling.
It was a couple of weeks later, in a chat with one of our new neighbours on the way back from the shops, I was told that the old gentleman who lived 5 doors down (the whistler), had died.
. …………………………………………………………………………………..
On a slightly lighter note, let me take you back to the 70’s and the über talented Les Dawson and his phenomenal piano playing. Trust me, it’s relevant!