An Account Of Confrontation And Early Morning Confusion
It was the start of another weird day.
I had slept badly and woken up early. My head was spinning and, rather than toss and turn for hours trying to get back to sleep, I decided on an early morning walk.
It was, however, no more than a handful of steps along the street before the strangeness began.
I was challenged by a fox. Now when I day challenged I mean it stopped right in front of me and stared. Just stared.
Was the fox going to move before I did? I was hardly expecting a stand off at 20 paces in the early morning gloom, but that’s what I found in what was, arguably, his time and territory.
It will surprise no-one that I moved first.
And the foxes, because a second one had arrived to back up the first whilst we tried to out stare each other, moved off down the street without a backward glance.
Being unused to confrontation at 5.30 in the morning, I didn’t handle it well as I should. In fact, continuing the weird theme, I felt peculiarly anxious for a reason that I couldn't really place. I even started looking over my shoulder as I carried on walking.
I went down to the river to forget about foxes.
Across the stepping stones, through the dry and sun-scorched meadows, where the grass had already started to go yellow despite it still not yet being summer. It must have just been cut, probably the previous day, because even that early in the morning I got a blast of the heady, freshly cut smell that I always associate with long, hot days of August.
And, along with the smell, I found myself hit by a wave of nostalgia to join the existing anxiety. Nostalgia for those days in my youth spent messing about in the countryside with friends and family and for a time when the world just seemed a little more normal.
And also, let’s be honest, for days when summer was actually in the summer.
Because in these strangest of strange times, when anxiety seems to be caused by things we would barely have considered just a short while ago, It’s probably good to embrace a little nostalgia when the opportunity appears..
