England is mine.

Would it be hers?

“Are you prepared for your procedure?” Leaning over a laptop on wheels, I echoed the questionnaire on the screen.

“Yes,” she laughed, “last anaesthetic I had tea with Michelle Obama.” I looked up; this wasn’t the usual reply.

It was an early morning and admission time. Jeans off and gowns on. The people were being transformed into patients.

She seemed eager, ready to take on whatever comes her way. A happy, mixed cookie with golden skin who radiated an attractive blend of curious confidence and playfulness. Joy spread from her bay in the ward. Just like it does, I would think, from wherever she walks or talks. If I was a country, she would be the kind of citizen I’d like to harbour.

She needed knee surgery. “So, what happened?” I asked, nodding at her leg and expecting the ordinary story of squash, running or football.

“Well, I demonstrated…” she started. This is why working with people is fun; you never really know what’s to come.

“You demonstrated…?” I checked her out some more. She didn’t come across as your normal activist type, one that I know well and that disappointingly often is mind-numbingly boring.

“Yeah, against Trump… And I jumped up in the air, clicked my heels together, as you do, and just as I did that, my knee also clicked and that was it. Something had snapped and my knee was out of order.”

Bloody Trump, forever misbehaving regarding the ladies! But then again, I assume you must not jump as a jester while dutifully demonstrating?! Surely, there would have been some sort of protocol against that? Where was the risk assessment?

We got talking and ticked off politics, Michael Jackson and Brexit and then she said:
“You know, outside the London bubble; England is scary!”

“You know, outside the London bubble; England is scary!”

Her knee got mended, we went home and Easter arrived.

All the Christian nurses were fasting and humbly eating simple fish in between going to church, back and forth. Me, I stepped into my car, reclined the seat a bit further, adjusted the volume on the radio and drove fast out on the M25, up the A12, through Essex and into Suffolk. That’s where I go when ‘I need to see cows and I need to see light.’

Two hours later, I parked up under a tree in Snape. The nurses’ prayers had sent sun and heat and it came with birdsong and a gentle breeze. I got out of the car and gazed out over the wetland landscape overlooking river Alde. The first destination on my route, an ancient church, appeared in the distance; it was Easter after all. Thick reeds stood quietly together as if guarding the magic of the marsh and slowly, careful not to disturb the fugitive beauty, I trod ahead.

After a mile, the path turned into sand and I found myself looking down at my feet. Hesitantly, I started taking my shoes off; first one, then the other and soon two moderately ugly and wintery pale feet stood bare in the beige sand. Their first for the year. Two big brown sheep looked suspiciously on.

To walk barefoot is much like swimming naked; an intense physical sensation brought by exposing your bare self to the elements or, if you prefer, to the truth. There’s no hiding, as it were, which maybe is why it’s so cathartic. Maybe it should be practiced more in this nation, rumoured to contain several people that insist keeping their socks on when they…

With the boldness of someone who is, momentarily, set free, I declared; ‘England is mine!’

For hours, I let my soles trod on the worn-down tarmac of country side lanes, taking me through sleepy hamlets, along fields and paddocks struggling to contain alert horses with their senses heightened and muscles shivering in seasonal excitement. With the boldness of someone who is, momentarily, set free, I declared; ‘England is mine!’

But what about my favourite patient of just the other day? Would she feel free when walking barefoot through the sleepy hamlets, half-secretly looked at by the villagers who pretend to go on with their business behind the fences? When she approaches them to ask for directions; would they smile to her? When she walks into their country side pub, and they all turn their heads; what would their faces say?

Would England be hers?