Amara Boateng

The quiet did nothing for me. Twenty minutes of it, twice a week, for three years, and I want to be honest: it was twenty minutes of my list. Shopping, my mother, an email I had not sent. People describe it as settling. Nothing settled. I sat there being efficient in the dark.

I said this to the reader at Briar and she said, that is also what it is, which is either very wise or a way of never being wrong. I have not decided. I think probably both.

So when the Fellowship came up I said no. Two evenings a month for two years, on top of a job with shifts, for a thing whose central practice I do not seem to be able to do. And nobody minded. That is the part I did not expect. Nobody minded, nobody asked why, nobody mentioned it again, and I was slightly insulted, which tells you something about me and not about them.

What I did like was the repair table. I like fixing chairs. I am good at it. I have thought about whether it is ridiculous to belong to a philosophical institution for the woodwork and I have decided it is not, because the woodwork is the bit where I actually pay attention to something, which is supposed to be the point.