Unlikely Sanctuary

In the last few months I've found a likely sanctuary, a place which makes a lot of sense to be the place of peace, freedom and escape. A place of sanctuary is something that I have always needed, until the floods got in the way the lions mouth was always that place, a spring in the village closest to my town, it still acts as that sometimes, but I stopped wanting to walk around this town, it stopped being place and so to get to the village became something harder. Without realising it 9 years ago I began to find a place of sanctuary, though a very unlikely place. For most of the last 9 years it has been my sanctuary, though stopped being that after the death of a friend who I used to spend time there with, finally this week I faced that, I faced the memories all at once and the ghosts stopped hurting, the memories are there but not the sharp stab of grief which stopped me wanting to be there.

The year I started secondary school was the year I turned 13, at the end of August I got my school bus card, any trip anywhere on MK Metro for a total of 35 pence! At the tender age of 12 I took my first trip to Milton Keynes shopping centre by myself. The place confused me at first, especially when I realised I was getting lost walking in a straight line! The weekend before I'd been wandering around the streets of Oxford on my own completely oblivious to the need to think about where I was, confidence and knowledge was something that I had in Oxford, I knew where I was, a map of the city imprinted on my mind from about the age of 7, I could never get lost or forget where I was. Now I was surrounded by this place, glass and marble and palms, shops everywhere, I didn't know where to go or what to do, but I had my independence in this strange place and if all else failed I would go to the only shop I knew until I worked out what I wanted to do - John Lewis.

I had taken to going into Smiths and buy a magazine once a month already - I would walk down to Midsummer and sit and drink coffee. Now I had time and freedom I thought I better try to find somewhere else. That summer day I wandered into Silbury, it wasn't busy, and I took the money out of my purse thinking hard, the guy behind the counter looked at me, I was looking up trying to work out what I wanted to drink - I wanted to drink Mocha, the delicious concoction of chocolate, milk and espresso with vanilla flavoured cream (the vanilla made all the difference), but I was 5 pence short. At the enquiry I told him, he smiled at me, don't worry about it, he said to me and made me a mocha.

From that point on whenever I wanted to stop for coffee it was always Silbury, then I started to write there. I was only writing short stories and I realised how nice it was to sit there with the people walking past, the smell of coffee, inspiration surrounded this young writer. I began to know the staff, they would remember me, and I would always remember the smiles that were returned, the laughter and the coffee they gave me. I would try something different everytime I went in, and it was a lovely place to be.

Slowly every month became every fortnight, every fortnight became every week, and very slowly every week became every day, and sometimes more often than that - though it went back to every week a lot of the time. Secondary school had not been what I had hoped for, I had hoped - naïvely so - that secondary school would be a place where I could learn, where I could use my mind to understand the world, literature, philosophy, to excel at mathematics and chemistry, to learn what I was good at and challenge myself where I wasn't good. Instead it was a fight, a daily battle to learn anything, to do more than sit in the back of class having finished all the set work within the first ten minutes whilst people threw rubbish and insults at me. It was the sort of place that I needed to escape from, and my house felt like a building site (to this day we have an archeological dig in the front room). So slowly I realised that I was happy to be sat in a coffee shop most of the day, the people around me were lovely and I could spend the time out that I needed.

Then I began to write a book, a hefty task for a 14 year old to take on, but I took it in my stride, soon the hours wasted at school became places where I would escape to the place I was writing about, working out the characters one at a time, I would think through a scenario in every way possible, saving it up until I got to Silbury and I would sit and write. Though when you're spending that much time somewhere it no longer becomes just about the writing or the coffee, it became about the people, the people who surrounded me, who made me laugh and smile when I was trying not to cry, the community that existed for me in this place. It became the only place I really wanted to be, and it became my escape, my place of sanctuary, that place I needed more than anything else at that moment in my life.

I could spend many more thousand words talking about how those people stood by me in my times of trouble, how that place was the only place that I was safe, and if anyone tried to attack me there I had defences around me, people who would jump in and save me and when it was my own mind that pressed against me, my own fears and doubts I had my writing, I had words that moulded themselves into people on a page. Of all the things I never expected in my life, I never expected a community of friends who stood by me to come through a Starbucks store in Milton Keynes shopping centre, that place was my sanctuary, where I was found for many years, where people who knew me would look for me, it was a safe place for me to be when I need it.