Slough

I went for the fourth time in a week, on an errand to Slough. It’s a town occupying a special place in the British imagination: perhaps from The Pilgrim’s Progress, which describes the Slough of Despond. “Slough”: a strange English noun, meaning a muddy place: does it rhyme with “cough”, “through”, “though”, or “rough”? With none of these: it rhymes with “now”.

Others will remember that our late Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, dedicated a 1937 poem to Slough. It starts:

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

I have always liked the town. I was about to say “despite ...” but there is no need to balance it with negatives. It’s a brash defiant ants’ nest; a town on the plain which expanded quickly, not quite in the overall grid-iron pattern of an American city but more grid-like than most English towns. It has some wide tree-lined avenues with headquarter buildings of glass and steel with names like Federal-Mogul, set behind lawns. It has the Mars factory, manufacturing chocolate bars, owned by the famous American family: you can see it in my photo, along with enough grass to graze several cows. I took it from Kennedy Park. Don’t think of an ornamental area laid out to commemorate the late US President. It’s a few acres for walking dogs and flying kites: hollows and thickets provide opportunities for other activities requiring seclusion. It’s really waste land spared by the developers. The little hill I stood on was probably soil dumped when they excavated the land for a building programme.

Why am I walking around these mundane streets of Slough, so unlike its sister towns just the other side of the river Thames: Eton with its aristocratic College, Windsor with its Royal Castle which has given a surname to the Queen and her direct descendants? I’m walking here because it was here three years ago that I found I could walk again.

I sit here at the very spot, the Sheffield Road Rest Gardens, a little quadrant next to a busy crossroads and rows of shops. It has trees, flowerbeds and benches. I’d like to choose the shadiest bench but it’s occupied. A man sits alone there, quite still. I respect his space. That’s the bench where I sat with K that time, to eat the pizzas we’d bought, after our trip to a nearby village. There I’d consulted a doctor specialising in my condition: one which caused a kind of allergic reaction to the slightest exercise. The flare-up could last days or weeks, so I had to be careful at all times; but on that occasion I insisted we could leave the car and go over to the gardens to eat our pizza. “Are you sure?” asked K. I was. Something had happened in the doctor’s surgery. All he did was tell me the theory and ask some questions. Answering one of those questions, I knew that I became well at that instant. He had asked me about the onset of the illness. It was in 1973. I saw that I had repressed a desire to be free, for an altruistic motive. As talking therapies go, this was like laser surgery done with pinpoint accuracy. I saw the repression, acknowledged it freely, laid my burden on the ground and walked away from it. The doctor had no idea what had happened; didn’t quite believe me when I emailed him the next day to say I was well.

I think this is how the miracles of Jesus worked. A simple encounter and you throw away your crutch. I didn’t have a literal crutch but I donated my wheelchair to charity. I developed more stamina each day, gave thanks for the ability to go and post a letter without fear; to travel to a place without having to park the car close by. Since then the act of walking, healthy like a young man again when I’d been getting ready to die, is a sacred act of thanksgiving.

So here I am, sitting on a nearby bench in the Rest Gardens with my Explorer Map---2½ inches to the mile. I find the spot and mark it with a tiny dot, as if to say “Here was a miracle”. The man on the other bench comes over and asks “Are you trying to find your way?” I tell him briefly why I’m here. He listens intently, but he stands four feet away, as if respectfully. Perhaps he doesn’t want me to smell his worn and grimy clothes. His face is lined and weary but he’s bright enough. He’s a carpenter, but cannot work due to epilepsy. He could fall off a ladder, hurt himself with tools. For the same reason he cannot drive a car. We talk, discussing possibilities. In this of all places, I think, there must be hope. Our encounter must have a meaning. I tell him about my application to work as a handyman for an old people’s charity. Perhaps he could do that? He seems interested. It’s a voluntary scheme, but it could restore a man’s self-respect. I explain that I haven’t started: still waiting for my Criminal Records Board check to be completed. He tells me insistently that he has no criminal record. Poor man! Does he think I suspected otherwise?

I wonder if our encounter could change his luck, could in some way answer his unspoken prayer. But why should I need to know the detail? I know miracles can happen.