The Listener

November's Nature Challenge

It’s night and I’m sitting in a dive bar in Southend, Essex. There is R&B playing through speakers at a slightly subdued volume whilst, directly behind me, the TV is playing a German football game full blast. To my left, there’s a man talking loudly in another language on his phone and, across the room from me, a group of middle-aged men talk loudly over each other with a collection of empty beer bottles. It’s dark beyond the glass front of the building and the four lanes of traffic outside whizz past without too much delay for the first time all day. The waitress, early forties, high long blonde ponytail and lipgloss, looked at me oddly when I came in, curious with a touch of suspicion. She asked if I wanted my hot chocolate to take away and I said no. She brought it over to my sticky black veneer table and lingered for a moment but didn’t say a word.

I’m not the only one working in here. The grey-haired man at the table beside me is sitting in his oversized leather jacket, with a coffee, his laptop, and a Quantum Optics textbook beside him.

I came to pick my other half up from Roots Hall stadium, the fascinatingly named ground of Southend United. I timed it perfectly, finding a free parking space in a leafy housing estate a fifteen-minute walk from the ground, ten minutes after the game was supposed to end. Only Southend scored at the last minute, bringing the score to 2:2, and the game was extended for another half an hour.

I googled the nearest café and found this one open until 9pm. I grabbed my rucksack and walked through the eerily quiet estate, autumn leaves clustered around parked cars like snow drifts, crossed the dual carriageway at the lights and found myself here.

It is the 2^nd of November and my plan was to write the November nature challenge. I sat in the café, to a chorus of loud male voices, television and music and despaired. You see, this environment is pretty much exactly the opposite of what the November challenge represents. This environment bombards you with sound and stimulus until you want the cracked black vinyl of the seat to swallow you.

But, in a way, it’s also appropriate, because the November nature challenge is all about sound.