named bench · x · between two paths
A short pine plank on two trestles, set in the strip between the gravel walk and the hedge, in a stretch that nobody planned. It is not on any approach. It faces nothing in particular. The carpenter built it for a different stretch, found it surplus, and left it here meaning to move it later. Later was a long time ago. The plank is sound, the trestles are sound, the spider that lives in the joint is third generation by now.
The view is the back of the laundry, twenty paces of nettles, and the corner of a wall that has nothing on the other side worth looking over. At certain hours the far lamp on the long path shows through the hedge as a single dim warm point and the bench, for ten minutes, acquires a destination. The rest of the day it does not. The solitude here is not chosen; it is supplied.
It is sat on by almost no one. A child crossing on a dare. A delivery man waiting out a heavy rain. Once a year, by long accident, the stranger — the one nobody recognises — sits here for an hour, then goes. What they think the bench keeps to itself. The bench, when alone, considers whether to be moved at last to a better place, and decides each time that the better place would not, in the end, suit it.
field-note a small dark object is often found under the bench. it is never the same object twice. it is never quite worth picking up. it is never gone the next morning.