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bottle—whatever the world has brought to
your feet. Touch it, look at it, think about how
it grew or was created, where it began, and
what carried it to you. If you have a magnifying
glass, use it. If the object is man-made, consider
who made it, where, and why. What was the
weather like there, how did the air smell, what
did people eat for lunch?
The point is the specificity of your encounter
with this object, the coincidence of your stories.
It’s more obvious to change the scale the other
way, to look at the moon or the sunset, but
in the middle distance I started to notice the
shapes of particular trees on my bike rides and
runs, to enjoy murmurations of starlings and
the overhead passages of migrating geese.
After all, spring comes everywhere.
The next stage was the city itself. Coventry
was once a medieval city famous for its many
spires, its monastic buildings and ancient
streets. On the night of November 14, 1940,
German aerial bombardment left nothing but
rubble and flames. Firefighters on the roof were
unable to save the 14th-century cathedral, and
most of those who had stayed in the city that
night died. In the 1950s, Coventry was planned
and rebuilt for a new generation, careful
attention given to the needs and comfort
of its battered population.
There’s little provision for cars in the
center, but ready access for pedestrians and
cyclists. Covered arcades were intended to
allow shoppers to stroll in comfort whatever
the weather, wide walkways accommodated
strollers, and the streets were oriented around
the library, a new public sports center, a new
indoor market, and the new cathedral. The
ideas and design were generous, but the taskto school along the South West Coast Path,
a long-distance hiking trail following every
indent of the jagged peninsula, and in winter
we used to see the sun rise over the water.
I used to take photos when I went to the bank,
or to buy milk, because the beauty of the
Fal Estuary—the bobbing sailboats and the
green headland with its ancient castle—
never stopped surprising me.
Now I live in a 1920s semidetached house
in suburban Coventry, a small city in the
West Midlands that was once a center of
manufacturing and is as far from the sea as
you can be in England. My area is nice enough.
Coventry tries hard, but England’s beautiful
landscapes are far away. It was badly bombed
in World War II, the postwar rebuilding was
hastily done, and the industries that had
sustained the city for decades withered and
died in the 1980s. I feel vaguely protective of
the place. It’s a young, diverse city with a proud
tradition of welcoming refugees who bring
energy, expertise, and interesting food. People
are friendly and the drivers unusually polite.
The cycling infrastructure is excellent because
there used to be bike factories. But let’s just
say tourists don’t often come here.
We left Cornwall for sensible reasons,
mostly related to work and schools. Cornwall
is spectacular, but, as the locals say, you can’t
eat the view. Most jobs are low-paid, seasonal,
and casual. At the local high school there were
stories of hair set on fire and knife fights on the
playground. Still, I mourned when we arrived
in the West Midlands. The bluebells at the
roadsides here reminded me of the bluebell
woods stretching down to the sea there. I would
cycle out onto the country lanes and make the
best of bramble hedges and birdsong, but there
were always industrial parks behind the woods
and the noise of traffic in the air. Still, I don’t
want to live in discontent. I am too young—
everyone is too young—for constant nostalgia.
I didn’t need to love the West Midlands, but
we’d be here for 10 years and I needed to learn
to enjoy the place for itself rather than picking
out what reminded me most of where I wasn’t.
I started by changing the scale, which is
one of the exercises I often use in writing
workshops. Go outside, I tell my students,
and find something you don’t mind picking
up. Anything at all: a leaf if you’re somewhere
with leaves, a stone (gravel will do), a blade
of grass. The more advanced version could
include a discarded bus ticket or an emptyI started to notice
the shapes of
particular trees, to
enjoy the overhead
passages of migrating
geese. After all, spring
comes everywhere.TAL0620_E_Coventry.indd 53 FINAL 4/21/20 7:26 PM