The bench in our park.

Some time ago, my physio set me up with a walking programme. She said it would trim my (ever expanding) waistline and hopefully get my little legs toddling a bit better.

“Off you go” she said, “today the first lamppost and tomorrow the world!” Of course she didn’t actually say this, what she really said was –“this week try and walk to the first lamppost and next week try and get to the second one.” Well, I’m not one to do things by halves and decided that since we live opposite a park I could do ‘today 1st tree’ and then by the next day I’d be walking to the other side of the park. This of course is a blatant lie – the first time I tried I only got as far as crossing the road and I am still nowhere near getting to the other side of the park. I get as far as the building that the council are renovating (coming on very nicely now) and to two trees just a little bit further on. I have ‘stuck’ at this for a few weeks and for the moment seemed to have reached my limit.

Well, where was I – oh yes, the title of the post was about the bench. One day I was getting to my ‘just a bit further’ two trees and I looked up (I normally watch my feet when I walk, it seems to make them work better) and I saw a bench. I’m sure I saw it, in fact, I know I did. It was on the big bend, just out of my reach and I thought tomorrow, I will try and get to it (and then I thought, I can sit down, groaning with pleasure at taking the weight off). So, the next day, I rushed ( don’t laugh, it’s not nice to mock the afflicted), to the two trees and looked up. The bench was gone – I couldn’t see it anywhere and so I blamed the whole thing on a surfeit of drugs (or indeed the opposite) and tried to forget the whole thing.

That evening, hubby, who walks to the station through the park said, “I see they’re preparing the ground for a bench on the big bend”. “That’s right” I said, “I saw the bench yesterday”. Hubby said nothing, just looked at me very oddly (as he often does in fact) and I put the whole thing down to a deja vue moment (or indeed some kind of interesting hallucination) and that (as they say ) was that.

The next day I walked to the two trees again – looked up and saw the bench – but this time, it was not on the side of the path, but nestled up in the trees. It looked very menacing. I don’t know how it got there, or how it moved by itself^*1 but I found myself mentally calling it Christine and despite my tired little legs, I didn’t want to sit on it at all….

I shall see where it is when I go to the park tomorrow, but if you don’t hear from me, call Stephen King, he has a lot of experience of this kind of thing…

^*1 Logic tells me that due to a shift in light or some-such, the bench has always been in the trees but not always visible due to minute changes in angle and seeing it through the bushes etc. It never was on the bend, it was just an optical illusion etc etc – even so, I am glad they shut the park gates at night. It may be able to move around but I doubt it can climb over the railings….