On A Nature Reserve, No-one Can Hear You Scream

In order to support the application of dried frog pills to my poor, overworked mind, I have been away for a few days to do the very Jane Austen thing of taking the sea air. It’s not something I was much of a believer in until I started craving a walk on a windswept, winter beach during lockdown and became mildly obsessed by the idea. Once we were able to travel again, I scratched that itch and found that a generous dose of ozone really does help me calm the fuck down for five minutes.

What I really need is an ocean in my pocket. Or in the Neil Gaiman way, a bucket. Until this can be provided, thanks no doubt to the powers of AI or nano-technology I shall continue to need to go on me olidees from time to time.

This was the time of times.

Jason had to work, so we booked a few days away in a nice house, because that was all that he was going to see and I ventured out alone into darkest Suffolk. Unlike darkest Peru, it was well equipped with delis and a good fish and chip shop so I was properly provisioned for my adventures. As we know, a Katy marches on her stomach.

Yesterday was our last day and I spent most of it walking. In the morning I walked from Aldeburgh to Thorpeness along the beach. I am quite good at walking. I am not very good at returning because I am easily bored, so I did a circular route and came back via the road for a change of view.

On the other side of the road from the beach is the North Warren Nature Reserve which is managed by the RSPB. It wanders its way across the marshes, hedged high with overgrown brambles and gorse, which makes it a five star hotel for all kinds of birds - none of which I could identify even with a spotter’s guide and a pair of binoculars. Nevertheless, it looked interesting and as I was in the area, I decided to explore it.

Because it is managed for the birds and not the humans, there is only a single, narrow track through the reserve. I walked for quite some time through the cool of the brambles and it was only when I broke out into marsh and pasture land that I could see a person a fair way ahead of me on the path.

That’s when I froze.

It’s all very well, ambling about in a Fotherington Thomas ‘hello birds, hello sky,’ sort of way, but it stops being fun when you meet a psychopath in the middle of a deserted marsh and he kills you and chucks your body in the drink.

My brain went into overdrive. I was trying to see if it was a man or a woman and if it was a man, what kind of a man it might be. If he was a big, burly twitcher I wasn’t going to risk it and I’d just turn around and try to commune with nature another day. If it was a thin, weedy twitcher I might take my chances. All this was whirring away, along with a low level rage that I was even having to think like this at all and a side order of wry amusement at the fact that I was trying to figure out whether a bird watcher might love looking at widgeons but might also love bludgeoning middle aged women to death.

Don’t be telling me how rare this kind of thing is. It’s not rare enough to risk and the first time I ever got groped was in broad daylight in a busy, open plan office, so as far as sex pests are concerned, they are never not ready.

By this time, the person had walked a little way further down the path towards me. It was an elderly man with a pair of binoculars round his neck. He was quite spindly, and I reckoned that unless he had a weapon I could probably take him in a fight. If he did have a weapon I stood a fair chance of being able to either bludgeon him with his binoculars or strangle him with them, depending on which way the wind was blowing.

I carried on walking towards him.

When we were a couple of yards away from each other, we faced the dawning problem of path etiquette. It was only wide enough for one person, so one of us would have to walk around the other. What to do? I’m a woman, so does that mean he gives way to me? But he’s an old man, so do I give way to him? We darted a glance at each other that was full of mutual despair and did the best we could with it all. We both stepped slightly to the side. Thankfully we chose different sides or that could have been monumentally awkward.

As we started to pass each other, we both looked resolutely down at the floor and just as we were about to pass each other, we both said a gruff ‘hello’ to a patch of turf and went on our way, never to acknowledge each other’s existence again.

When he was gone, I leaned against a gate and considered the peculiarly British sensation of having gone from thinking of how I would protect myself from a murderer to the acute social embarrassment of having to pass a man on a footpath and thinking maybe he should just have murdered me after all. It would probably have been less embarrassing in the long run.