Safe spaces

Everyone has a safe space, whether it's your whole home, a public place or even your favourite armchair, we all have places and things that comfort us.

My safe space is my bench. For a long time it sat outside of my dad's workshop, it was initially bought as a project (the bench it's self is sturdy but is missing an arm rest) to this day it hasn't been mended. I'm not sure why but I adopted the bench. Its lived in Doniford, Watchet and Alcombe and I refuse to live anywhere my bench can't sit patiently outside.

I sit on it first thing in the morning and last thing at night, I think, pray and make all of my phone calls on it! I've been known to sit outside on it for hours on end and in all weathers (even the tail end of a hurricane!)

Originally my bench was part of a ship. There is a small plaque on it detailing its life as the 'admiralty yaught, The Enchantresses and is enraved with the words 'like the flowers ever try, to catch the sun, ere it go by'. I've often wondered where these words came from. I've googled it but can't seem to find an origin! It likens the person resting on the bench to a flower trying to catch the sun's warms and light before the day ends and I often feel like that, like I'm trying to catch a bit of goodness and peace by sitting and musing on the bench.

I am a thinker. Despite it's constant noise, my brain often finds time to ponder life's big and small questions. My head is a mess at the moment. Life is a little complex. I'm sat, on my bench, now letting the peace of comfortable aloneness drop the pieces of my brain into place like Tetris. I often feel like a swan, graceful above water but legs going like billyo underneath, on my bench I feel at peace.

So, at least for the time being, I'll sit on my bench and let time slip away. I'll listen to the world outside our garden walls, the cars sliding past, the birds in the trees that over hang my bench and the work men clanking and shifting in the distance. When I sit on my bench the world doesn't feel quite as intense and it allows me time to reorganize my mind, put things away and relax, time that I need and crave.

I think we should all have a bench (not necessarily a literal one!) Somewhere we can clear our heads and step out of our stress for a bit to just breath. Where ever yours is, I hope it's as useful to you as mine is to me.