The sounds of silence

No day would go by when I don't use my ipod. My music is my escape, my muse, and my solace, all rolled into one lightweight and charcoal coloured piece of nifty technology.

It is a noisy world we live in. I spend the daytime with sounds of phones, keyboards and the background hum of conversation, intruding on my thoughts.

When I escape that world, and transition into my own (via the tube home) I immerse myself in the sounds of my own world, my music. But very occasionally I will forget to plug myself in and find that I'm, instead, bathing in the world around me.

Some people say that we spend our lives travelling to other worlds, but never travel in our own. On a clear, warm evening this week, Clapham Common was at its finest, rich for 'travelling'.

A couple of groups of people sat on the grass, resisting the incoming darkness, occasional echoes of laughter lifting from their circles. Persistent joggers, lined with reflectiveness, circumnavigated her edges.

The trees were jagged black shapes puncturing the pink blue sky. And silence gently fought with only the odd squeak of bus brakes to reign over this not quite square piece of inner-city countryside.

I saturated myself in this near-silence, washing away the noise of the day. And I remembered just how lucky I was; that every day, twice a day, I get to pass through this nicely manicured, green space; with its age-old trees, well-worn paths, and small armadas of spring flowers.