Sweyne Park

 Sweyne Park

By Janet Baldey 

Early one morning, decades ago, I remember lying sleepless in my bed.  A momentous event lay ahead, one which I hadn’t planned for and my happiness lay in the balance.  Knowing this, I had tossed and turned all night and now lay exhausted, staring into space. As daylight crept into my room, I heard a single cheep and turned to the window, where my curtains were now rimmed with gold.  That first chirp was rapidly followed by others until it seemed that every bird in the universe was shouting out their joy at the start of a new day.  Back then – in what is now called the past - this full-throated explosion of birdsong was taken for granted and either delighted or exasperated and I’m sure there were those who, with muffled curses, pulled their pillows over their ears and tried to get back to sleep. As for me, as I lay surrounded by a symphony gifted by nature, my woes receded and lulled, I was able to sleep.    

          In the past there were many occasions, like this, when one could experience moments of wonder without having to spend a penny.  On many a rose-tinted evening my husband and I would walk down to Southend’s sea-front and stand spell-bound watching as thousands of starlings looped and plunged in smoky arcs across the sky.    While at harvest time, the formerly green hedgerows near our cottage were transmuted into shades of brown as a twitter of sparrows descended, each anticipating a meal of scattered grain as combine harvesters rolled their dusty way across the fields. 

              Then, there was the magical event that happened in Leigh-on-Sea every October when the Brent Geese arrived from Siberia to overwinter on the Eel grass.   On one particular morning, I’d spent the night on my father’s barge and as the mist dissipated and the air warmed, I decided to drink my morning cuppa on the deck.  As I sipped my tea and thought of nothing, I stared into the distance, past the mudflats and the yachts, their masts at odd angles as they lay at anchor, towards the horizon where a black line separated the sky from the sea.  As I watched, the line thickened and very soon a dark stain was spreading towards us.  I felt my heartbeat quicken.  Dad must see this.  I turned towards the hatchway.

          “Dad,” I called.  “The geese are coming.”

          I heard a scramble of movement from inside the barge and a few seconds later up he popped like a genie out of a bottle.  He raised his binoculars towards the moving cloud and I knew that he was smiling even though most of his face was obscured by binoculars and beard.

          “I thought it might be today,” he announced.  “You can almost set your watch by them.”

          But that was yesterday when the mud flats were covered by hungry geese and their music filled the air.  I haven’t been back to Leigh recently.  The last time I did, the geese had arrived but in patchy numbers and it broke my heart to see them so depleted.

These days, the place that’s special to me has no soaring ice-tipped mountains, no far-flung purple moors filled with the sound of silence, no coves with golden sand beaten flat by the ebb tide, it’s just the place that I walk the last dog I shall ever own, and as such, it’s very dear. 

Formerly 57 acres of wartime agricultural land, Sweyne Park has been transformed by Rochford Council into a leisure park for the local population.  It has two ponds, islands of twelve species of tree, Willow, Oak, and Alder to name but three, and is surrounded by four km of hedgerows.  Stitched cross-wise by paths, it’s a popular place for dog-walkers and I’ve seen it in all its moods.  In spring time, the branches of the hawthorn are cocooned by sweet-smelling blossom of the purest white, that could transport me back to the snows of winter, were it not for wind that has lost its power to scour the skin.  In summertime, the sun blazes down from cloudless skies for days on end, baking the earth and shrivelling the Timothy grass.  On days like these, I seek shelter in the cooler parts of the park by following the path over a small bridge, underneath which the remains of a stream, a sluggish relative of its former winter-lively self, feeds into the lower of the two ponds. Here Willow trees flourish, planted especially to help to drain the marshy soil and their shade is a welcome relief.  However, respite is short and soon sweat is stinging my eyes as I plod up a hill that seemingly has the same power to exhaust as Everest.  But however long the days, time passes at an ever-increasing speed, soon the nights are drawing in and it’s autumn again.  Autumn has two faces.  At first the leaves of the trees change from differing shades of green to shades of burnt orange, amber and scarlet, their colours burning against the sky like brands held by Olympic athletes.  Their beauty is breathtaking but it is a doomed beauty and soon the leaves relinquish their hold and spiral down to earth where they form a frayed jigsaw of colour.  As the days pass more follow disintegrating with their fellows into a uniformed mulch leaving the bare bones of their mother- trees shivering against the skyline with no defence against the raw winds of winter.  And so, the cycle starts afresh.

          This is as it should be, it is expected and comes as no real surprise.  But what does worry me is what I haven’t mentioned.  When the park was first created forty years ago, it was home to at least ten species of birds – blue tits, long-tailed tits, greenfinches, black-caps, starlings, blackbirds, collared doves, whitethroats, green woodpeckers, and sparrow hawks.  There was no mention of magpies, those strutting bandits with their harsh cackling cries, or of crows, their gangmasters.  Now these thugs seem to have taken over and I suspect have subjugated the smaller birds who may still be seen but in rare and fleeting moments.  But where are the sparrow hawks and the starlings who used to be so infinite?  Sadly, we humans have sucked the life out of our natural spaces and not enough people care.

 

          But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe in times to come folk will tear their eyes away from Facebook, or TikTok and maybe even the internet will bore them.  They’ll look around and realise there are empty skies to fill. Books will remind them of all the wonders that once called planet Earth their home and we will pine for all we have lost.  But our species is very good at making demands and maybe, for once, our demands will be for the good of the planet.  As in the film, extinct species will be brought back to life and once more wolves, tigers and bears will roam the forests.  Science will have found a cure for plastic and the seas will be cleansed so that sea creatures can flourish.  We will learn to cherish all natural life, not just for its sake but for ours.  And wouldn’t that be lovely?

 

Copyright Janet Baldey