The Blurt of Richard Davies

Chapter Six

June 12th.

Writing all of that down has revived some unpleasant memories. It's no surprise so many of us suffer from a collective social amnesia, trying to put our traumatic past out of mind and concentrating instead on the day-to-day business of just surviving. Too much of that sort of retrospection is bad for my mental health; I need to get out for some fresh air, so I straddle my reliable old treader and set off for the nearby South Downs National Park.

Despite the development of Portsmouth and surrounding towns encroaching relentlessly at its borders it is still there; though in a much reduced area. We're assured that although some parts of it must be regrettably sacrificed for essential lebensraum its ambience will be preserved; mostly by the use of landscaping and clever tree plantings to screen the modern world away from the contrived illusion of the countryside that used to be. Sadly it doesn't work so well in practice. Once you complete the low-gear grind up the road that leads to the summit of Butser Hill and see things from that perspective, you find the effect is lost.

The view to the north is the suburban sprawl spreading alongside the A3; while in the distance Petersfield is a much larger town than it used to be even a couple of years ago. Looking further beyond across the sour green turf covering the crumpled panorama of the South Downs you notice more 'sympathetic' developments spreading like spots of mould; yet despite all the indignities that this urbane pocket wilderness has suffered, a sense of its former rural self still remains.

Turning to the east, on the far side of the artificial valley gouged through the chalk of the hill around a century ago for the trunk road, the forest of the Queen Elizabeth Country Park is beginning to stain varied shimmering hues of gold and burnt copper. Is this happening so early a portent of another severe winter to come?

I stop here to eat a cereal bar, and just let the ambience of the place soak into me. As a kid we used to come up here a lot for family breaks away from the city below. I spent seemingly endless days up here with Mum and Dad picnicking. Often we tried - and more often than not failed - to fly a kite. Or else I enjoyed running down the rabbit hole pocked slopes; something I gave up on when one of my feet got caught in a burrow and I sprained my ankle.

Later in life Karen and I used to spend romantic times here, until our differing expectations of what life should be pulled us in different directions. I thought it best to stay here and make a steady but unexceptional career in the media. She, having her head turned by the bright lights of London, moving there to become a corporate genealogist. (Don't ask me! But there must be enough companies in the LEZ who want their histories researched for her to make a living.) No, we don't stay in touch.

Isn't it paradoxical when you seek out the country places which are so special to you in order to forget for a while the things that bother you, the result is only to dredge up yet more memories? Yet the exercise in getting here and the power latent in the fabric of your peculiar spiritual place works unnoticed healing on you. Your issues may still be there but you feel better in some indefinable way. You may not 'get over it', whatever that It is; be it a bereavement, or a long-term relationship breaking up; or just getting by in the Fed; but you learn to accept what is, and can't be changed. Being up here alone with your thoughts and reconnecting with yourself puts things in perspective.

In any case you can't be depressed for too long hearing the skylarks singing and overcoming the grey aural mist of the road below. Or seeing that startlingly blue cloudless sky above. You could imagine it to still be as pure as it was in the past; unpolluted by the diluted fallout and the orbiting debris of our stupidity. There is something of the infinite in that piercing intensity of colour; the sky endures, as does the landscape. Eventually it must yield to the inevitability of geologic forces or a reglaciation, but from our mayfly brief perspective it was here long before us, and will be so long after we are gone. I find the thought strangely reassuring; but then that may be just me.