Reflective Learning Journal #6

Hyde Park, an ‘idealised landscape’ that ‘feels like home’. For a group report, I am considering how the management and design of the park creates this idea after taking an eight-hour bus journey to London, which had been delayed by four hours because of flooding. Personally, I did not think of Hyde Park as an ‘ideal landscape’ because it is an ‘artificial’ nature, created and managed by Human rather than being managed naturally by animals and weather. I suppose it could be argued that neither the city nor the countryside is entirely natural but in rural areas, nature is given places, many of which are National Parks, to grow without interference from Human exploitation or occupation. Urban areas tend to reintroduce parks and ‘natural’ areas where there may have been infrastructure, managing them in a way which creates a park which feels uniform and artificial, similar to a garden. My opinion may be biased because I live in a quiet rural area and so my attitude towards urban nature is more negative than my opinion of rural nature. Despite this, the vastness of Hyde Park made this densely populated, bustling city feel almost tranquil and empty which made me feel more comfortable than I did in any other part of London.

It struck me how the relationship between people and nature was different to the rural areas I have visited. Most people in the park walked along the paved area rather than the grass and I’ve recently noticed a similar relationship in Exeter. It almost seems like the urban society and the natural world are too completely different worlds that cannot touch, or that nature is the ‘wild’ opposite to the ‘structured’ urban area. This is very different to my rural hometown, where nature and society seem to intertwine and it feels normal to walk across the grass. In Exeter and London, however, I actually feel out of place if I don’t walk along the path laid out for me. I feel like I am being judged for doing something that is normal back home and it strikes me how feelings towards different things, such as nature, can change geographically and spatially. I read an article recently by J. Burgess (1988) which discussed how open spaces are a fundamental part of human life and that humans have a need for it. Through this, I thought of how there is a kind of ancestral link between our heritage and us. The way our ancestors lived and survived from nature has been deeply rooted in all of us, even though we do not use the information to the same extent. In my opinion, this is a fundamental reason why all of us feel some connection to and a need for nature in our own way, be it a plant in our house or a park in our city. Within nature, we can lose ourselves to our thoughts, disappear inside our psyche and escape from the outside world. Everyone needs an escape from reality every once in a while and parks and green spaces like Hyde Park provide us with the opportunity for this. Perhaps the key reason why Hyde Park is ‘idealised’ is because it allows us to escape.

References

Burgess, J., Harrison, C.M and Lamb, M. (1988) People, parks and the urban green: a study of popular meanings and values for open spaces in the city, Urban Studies, 25(6): 455-473.

~ Jones' Journal

Reflective Learning Journal #5

As Human Geographers, it is one of our academic duties to go on fieldtrips. A three day all expenses paid fieldtrip to London is pretty good. It really made up for the fact that a four-hour bus journey turned into eight. For the majority of the journey we were stuck in a stream of traffic as the storm poured rain down the windows of the bus. As we travelled – slowly – across this urbanised road, one image really struck me. Standing on a central raised point in the middle of a field were several grazing cows surrounded by a ring of glistening water. The soils were too saturated, from excessive surface runoff from the roads as well as from the storm conjuring up thoughts of the impact of the urbanisation of areas and the tarmacing of roads, for further infiltration, potentially causing severe crop damage to the adjacent cornfields. By the end of the road works, we realised the cause of our delay: two large trucks had collided, scattering debris all across the road...all that wasted milk.

Therefore, the first day largely consisted of travelling, although (after sleeping for at least half of it) it was interesting to just admire the surroundings and think about them in different ways. On our way through the outskirts of London I noticed that we drove past a Mercedes shop. Clearly, you can devise economic implications about the areas from this one shop, but as I looked around there was much more to it than just that. There seemed to be a clear-cut line between what could be defined as the ‘richer’ and the ‘poorer’ shops. The landscape along the main road to Hampstead was covered with a combination of high-rise buildings, both residential and corporation-based of modern style – square and uniform with glass walls and exterior elevator shafts, as well as smaller suburban housing and car parks.

Despite the congestion and the modern uniformity there were a few gems among the stones. In the distance, large church spires of old architectural design, towering above the smaller rows of houses, cast long shadows over the landscape. Small green parks occurred every now and then like a small oasis in a desert of common grains of sand but the plants were like manmade objects, unnaturally dispersed and maintained to suit a specific vision. Although the attempts may have been to make this place seem like a natural landscape, trying to reflect the perception of the ‘natural’ countryside, the parks seemed too artificial to me. Perhaps my opinion is biased. Being from the countryside, my vision of what is ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ may be clouded by my own perceptions of the differences between the countryside and the urbanised environment. When I think ‘about what ‘nature’ is I immediately think of where I come from, surrounded by mountains covered with forests and unkempt flora, vast oceans of fields and little else besides. Although I wonder now, is all of that really nature?

~ Jones' Journal

The Ghosts Of Our Past

Here it is as promised: my first short story which I've written for this blog. Enjoy!

“Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Meyers? I do. I believe that we’re all haunted by the ghosts of those we have wronged. Do you know why I believe? It’s because I’m haunted, Mr. Meyers. I’ve been followed by the ghosts of my past all my life. They whisper to me, they torment me. After a while you just want to end it all, and all it takes is just...one...bullet.” Jason almost whispered while pointing a gun directly at his own temple, his face so close that Mr. Meyers could feel the warmth of the madman’s breath on his face as he breathed his slow and sinister words, sending shivers up his spine. Mr. Meyers was secured tightly to an old wooden chair in the middle of a vast open space, only a circle of which was lit by the bright shine of the moon while the rest of the surrounding area was swathed in a thick blanket of darkness. A piece of old cloth filled his mouth, rendering him speechless, helpless. Jason smiled, the contrasting beams of illuminating white light from the moon to the darkness of the decrepit and derelict old barn casting eerie shadows across his face. Rising to his feet he began to pace around the room, waving his gun in contemplation. Looking towards the crystalline starlit sky he continued; “I should know. It’s what I wanted. But I fought it! I carried on doing what I did and after a while I stopped listening, stopped caring...and now? I’m free!” Jason looked at his captive and raised his hands, grinning at the notion, happy that for once in his life he was no longer disturbed by the waking nightmares of his guilt. Mr. Meyers flinched with fear every time Jason quickly moved his hands, gesturing as he spoke, because the thought that Jason could end him at any second had built up a tension inside him which he could not release. “I know you want me to tell you that I’m sorry for what I’ve done, that I repent for all the things I’ve done, that I’ll never do it again but the truth is I’m not sorry. You wouldn’t understand the reasons if I told you, not even if I showed you.” Jason smiled slightly, chuckling quietly at the thought, but his good mood did not endure for long before his eyes became dark and glinted like coal and an angry expression contorted the features of his face.

                “Do you know what it feels like to be pushed to the edge of society, being told you’re a worthless piece of shit and no-one gives a damn?” Jason shouted, storming over to the chair to which Mr. Meyers was bound. “I’ve felt that all my life. Ha! They thought I wasn’t good at anything. They thought I was stupid...I showed them. So if you’re asking me why I do what I do, it’s simple; for the rush. At first it was more about justice, a little bit of vengeance for being treated like dirt. I mean, who else was going to do it if not me? The law never did anything so I had to take matters into my own hands, didn’t I? But then it became more of a hobby. I mean I had finally found something I was good at, and I loved it.” Jason smiled widely, exposing a row of white teeth. In his expression was something which almost seemed like a demented wild hunger beginning to burn inside the monster of his mind, a thought which knotted the stomach of Mr. Meyers and sent chills trailing across his skin as though he was being crawled on by the smallest insects. “It started out small; ‘taking care’ of those who had wronged me, before I got picked up by some of the more powerful people who gave me money for doing certain contracts. But the thing about those kinds of people is that they always see you as a loose end to tie up, so I just had to get rid of them before they had a chance to get rid of me. You could say I’m like a mercenary I suppose. After that though, it just became normal; a daily routine. I can’t even go a day without doing what I do best.”

A loud screeched echoed in the ominous old barn as Jason dragged a silver metal chair and dropped it directly in front of Mr. Meyers. Casually he raised the gun and pointed it between Mr. Meyers’ eyes, hovering it in front of his face. “When you’re staring down the barrel of your own gun, aiming at your next victim, they plead with you to let them go. “Oh no, please spare me.” “I have a family.” “I’m too young.” “I’ve never done anything to you.” “I don’t deserve this.” I’ve heard every plea!” His fist smacked down on a nearby table with a loud crack “And I don’t even care anymore. You know why? Because at that moment, that exact moment, you literally hold their life in your hands and you can take it away with one squeeze of the trigger. One squeeze.” He paused, light flickering in his dark eyes like an excited fire dancing to a tune. “That’s when the adrenaline kicks in, coursing through your veins, pumping your heart faster and faster until you can barely resist the urge. No one ever knew it was me. No one even ever heard the shot. I was too professional to falter at that hurdle. Oh I’ve learnt every trick of the murdering trade.” Jason leant back in the hard steel chair with a small smile etched across his smooth, young, slender face. His tousled russet brown hair was longer on the top than the sides, and his dark brown eyes glinted with satisfaction. He wore a black Armani suit with the white shirt open at the collar, a pair of black leather gloves, platinum and diamond cufflinks and a pair of black shoes which shimmered in the beam of moonlight that streamed from the hole in the ceiling. Mr. Meyers sat opposite, his smoky grey eyes filled with fear as he studied his captor. He was older than Jason by about twelve years and the hardship of being a special-agent had been wrought on his face. His cropped black hair and stubble darkened the handsome features of his light beige face, only lightened slightly by the grey-silver waistcoat, white shirt and black shoes and trousers he wore. The collar of his white shirt was stained with blood which trickled down his face from a combination of injuries: a gash in his forehead, a broken nose, and a cut eyelid from the full force of a pair of brass knuckles.

Jason rose to his feet and moved the chair out of the way. As he altered the fit of his gloves he spoke calmly, almost too calmly, saying “I’m sorry you had to get involved in this Mr. Meyers, truly I am, but you should’ve backed out when you had the chance." Jason’s face was almost expressionless as he pressed the cold steel of the gun against his victim’s skull. "Goodbye Mr. Meyers.”

~ Jones' Journal 

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