The Soken

There are so many things we know instinctively. No life lesson is necessary. No one had ever needed to tell me that humans are cruel to their own kind. No one had needed to teach me how to accept a punch in the playground, when I was outnumbered. I was five years old when my teacher told me I was dying, in front of everyone. Children do not know instinctively they might die, because they have not yet begun to live. I was eleven years old when the doctor at the hospital told me I was not dying anymore. There were a lot of people in that room, most of them student doctors. The style of delivery was self-congratulatory, and somehow crass. I did not know how I was supposed to react. I just blinked. My parents seemed equally perplexed. There was no explanation as to what my mysterious medical condition had been. No one claimed to have cured anything. Possibly because no one had claimed to have found anything wrong with me. I was going to live, and that was that.

Perhaps that was why I had never chased anything. Life just happened, whether it be good, bad or indifferent. I grew into a rebellious teenager and a largely alcohol-soaked, chain smoking adult. Years under medical scrutiny prior to puberty rarely end well. I was a misdirected missile, plunging from disaster to disaster with no plan, no direction, and no clue. I was also intentionally invisible. I had learned at a young age, at the hands of medical professionals, that attention only leads to suffering.

I was born in the oldest recorded town in England, Colchester in the East of England, which was once known as Camulodunum. Camulodunum was once the capital of the Roman province of Britannia. I grew up in a small village ... a soken. Thorpe-le-Soken in Essex. 'Soken' is derived from the Saxon 'soc' or 'soca' and means that it possessed an ancient right to hold a local court of justice. I never went far when I was 15, moving to nearby Walton-on-the-Naze until I was 19 and went away to University in Norwich, Norfolk. The Naze takes its name from Viking settlers, and means headland. My family had very little money and lived in a council house, which we later came to own, only to lose in the first recession.

My family has lived in East Anglia for many generations. I have traced them back to the 1700s. While I have worked in London and other places over the years, I have never left the East for long. I include parts of Essex, all of Norfolk and Suffolk in my definition of East Anglia but the kingdom of East Anglia did not include Essex at all, only Norfolk and Suffolk. Upon the marriage of the East Anglian princess, Etheldreda, the Isle of Ely became part of East Anglia. East Anglia experienced its own Salem with around 100 executions of so-called witches across East Anglia, predominantly at the hands of the Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins.

Perhaps because of my upbringing, I have always felt that there is something therapeutic about watching a rough sea. The wind whipping my hair against my face, making it impossible for me to do anything but take cover until it passes. The sound of the waves crashing over the top of the sea wall, drenching the occasional unsuspecting squealing tourist, filling the air with a fresh, salty smell. It is strangely reassuring, life affirming even, to watch people struggling to regain control over nature and lose the fight. The entitled tourists staying in caravan parks, dumping their dirty nappies into residents’ front gardens, reaping the slightly fishy aroma of karma. The fishermen, weather-beaten and battered by the gales on the edge of the pier. The boat bobbing wildly on the horizon, far out to sea.

There is something to be said for never straying further than 45 minutes’ drive from your ancestral home. In my experience, you spend the first thirty years of your life trying to escape your past, then the last thirty years trying to find your way back home. As Covid-19 hopefully enters its last chapter, I will be beginning a new one with the person I first met 13 years ago crossing the ocean to be with me here. A relationship that may never have progressed, had we both not been living under lockdown and accessing the internet out of boredom.