It’s the silence that gets me. Our little house is close to the M32, M4, M5 and the main railway lines to all points north, west, south and east and depending on which way the wind is blowing, there’s usually a hum or a swish of traffic. And in our little village, there are usually cars starting up in the early hours and people walking off to work. Now, the world is grinding to a halt and it’s oh so quiet.
It is the silence I remember from long ago when growing up in Brislington, or Briz as us Briz folk still call it. There was traffic on the nearby A4, which in pre M4 days also happened to be the main road to London, but not remotely like the same level we don’t enjoy today. And as the evening came along, it was almost empty and silent. There were very few aircraft going in and out of Bristol Airport. A generation or so ago and we lived in a very different, far quieter world.
It reminds me of trips to Devon and Cornwall some thirty years ago when my partner and I would drive to quiet B&Bs in the middle of nowhere and beaches when the only noise was from waves washing over the sand and seagulls. Silence is sometimes golden.
It’s so quiet the loudest thing I can hear is my tinnitus caused by the popular beat combo outfit Airbourne at the Colston Hall a decade ago. Normally, the unwanted white noise can disappear into the general noise of life as we knew it. Now, it’s there all the time.
If the silence is eerie – and it is – then how about the blue skies? There have been times since last autumn when I wondered if the sun would ever shine on us again. Yet since the semi-lockdown has been imposed, the clouds have lifted. When the whole world seems darker, the skies above are brighter. As people become infected and, tragically, die the dark clouds have gone away.
Our senses are working overtime, with what we can see and what we can hear, although when it comes to touch, they’re not needed at all.
However, the peace we see, hear and feel is an illusion. A silent killer lurks unseen and many of us would settle for another year of rain if it meant it would go away. But it’s not going to go away yet.
It’s the silence that gets me. It takes me to a different place. I just wish it would take me to a different time when this is horrible nightmare was all over.
