Steve appeared just before 10am in a small van, fretting that his colleagues who were bringing the bench on a flatbed truck hadn't already arrived. They turned up after a few minutes, still ahead of the appointed time, driving across the grass, a minor transgression I felt, but acceptable in the circumstances. The bench was pale, like a newborn, quite different from the established old lags elsewhere on the Heath which were weathered to silvery grey. People would notice it, I thought, and perhaps the more curious would change their course, walk over and inspect the inscription: In memory of Walter and Jacqueline Welford 2015. A few might even recognise the names. It's worth putting some stain on it every six months, I do that with my shed to keep it looking good, Steve advised. The comparison seemed vaguely profane but wood is wood, I suppose.
The chaps from the flatbed wrestled the bench into position, checking that its orientation was to my liking, then excavated holes to conceal the metal brackets attached to its legs. Long poles were driven through the brackets into the turf. When they were rammed home, anchors were opened remotely at the foot of each pole. It seemed pretty secure.
After the workmen left, I took a couple of photos: a close up with the inscription clearly legible, then a broader view showing our house in the background. The bench faced east and glowed in the bright morning sunshine; I think my mother would have approved, even though her preferred location was Greenwich Park for which I had been unable to gain permission. My father would have made a wry comment or a clever pun but have been secretly pleased: he loved Blackheath and was sad to leave Orchard Drive.
Finally I sat down. The view has changed very little since I last looked out of the windows of the house forty years ago. Small trees have been planted, marking the edge of Eliot Place and there are half a dozen other benches scattered around what I always think of as 'our' piece of the Heath: the triangle bounded by Hare and Billet Road, Eliot Place and Orchard Drive. The street lighting has been modernised. In the fifties there were ordinary incandescent bulbs. These were upgraded to orange sodium lamps in the sixties and have recently been replaced by energy saving LEDs. There are new lamp standards designed to resemble old-fashioned gas fittings which complement the surrounding architecture well. Discordantly, to the left, No 1 Canada Square, commonly referred to as Canary Wharf, peeps over the horizon, looking oddly out of proportion as most of the tower is hidden by Blackheath's high plateau.
Now that I live in east London, I often traverse the foot tunnel under the Thames and amble up through Greenwich Park to Blackheath. Sometimes I avoid Orchard Drive, at other times I deliberately aim for it, pacing up and down and recalling the names of the families who inhabited each house in the 1960s. I think about walking across the Heath to the station to catch the train for school. When it was foggy, it was possible to get completely disoriented and end up near the Princess of Wales pub instead of in the village. In the snow, my mother would taking us tobogganing in the old gravel pits, my father a reluctant participant. But oddly none of the memories triggered by these visits stir any emotions, they are more like historical facts. Yes, I was there, I did those things - end of, as the kids say nowadays.
My mother's bench has its own life and destiny now. So it's a curious sort of memorial: a private desire which, once enacted, immediately relinquishes its sentiment and becomes a public realm asset. People will sit on it because they're tired, or like the view or want to snog. I leave the bench to its uncertain fate, like casting a bottle into the ocean.
© David Thompson 2015
Well done for getting it in the ground! And don't worry about the workmen driving over the grass. Happens all the time!
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