A walk in Singleton Park, Swansea
Singleton Park breathes, sighs, and stirs with the seasons. On a quiet afternoon, its lungs fill with cool, salt-tinged air drifting in from Swansea Bay. The breeze seeps into every hollow and glade, moving to the slow, measured rhythm of a sleeping animal.
The great oaks are the legs of elephants, vast and wrinkled, shouldering the canopy with unhurried strength. Beneath them, clumps of daffodils become nervous flocks of geese, their yellow heads dipping and bobbing in the breeze. The weeping willows are octopuses, trailing their listless, silken arms until they dissolve into stillness.
On the island in the lake, the rhododendron bushes are sleeping bears, dense and impenetrable. Once spring arrives, vivid blooms blaze out from their dark mass of fur. But not today; they are still sleeping.
Tall stands of bulrushes are herons, standing at the water’s margin, stiff-necked and patient. Even the ivy is a slow, determined serpent. It winds itself around trunk and wall with quiet, unstoppable intention.
The boating lake glows, an open, motionless oval of water. It is the park’s great eye, always wide and watchful, blinking only when a swan glides across the surface or a gust of wind ruffles its glassy lid. It reflects the clouds and mirrors the trees. It watches the jogger with a calm, indifferent gaze, a creature that has seen centuries pass without urgency.
At the park’s edges, where it meets roads and railings, the boundary becomes a kind of skin, permeable and porous. It lets the city’s noise seep in but never dominate. Singleton Park absorbs, adapts, and endures: a slow, generous, ancient creature resting at the edge of the sea.
Wandering the paths around the lake, I met Steve, a veteran bird-feeder, who explained why he comes every day.
“I realised grass feeders can’t puncture the earth until about May,” he began. “It’s too hard. So, I decided, as I have time on my hands, I would help out.”
He’s clutching a bag of corn and mixed seed, into which he dips his hand and spreads bird lunch.
The male swan, whom I named Colin, wasn’t taking any nonsense from the ducks, though. He threw one persistent little Anatidae back in the water. This was after the duck attempted to invade his space once too often. After a single warning, a tug at the duck’s neck, Colin acted. Donald hadn’t got the message. He picked it up by the neck with his beak and, bam, Colin launched Donald right over the Strait of Hormuz.
“Hey, hey,” said Steve, chiding the swan like a recalcitrant child. But like grandparents everywhere, he rewards him with a handful of seeds. The majestic animal bows its white, spear-like head to peck away, undisturbed by the busy little ducks.
All the other birds wait their turn. The ducks are behind the domestic geese. They’re ahead of the Canadian Grey geese, though, who are in the Swan’s bad-books according to Steve. The smaller female Swan stands off, pecking around the broad grey plates of the male. She knows he has a temper.
I commented to Steve that they were the only pair of Swans in the park.
“Yeah,” he says. “He won’t have another pair. They’d fight. He even chases the Canadians.”
I assumed he meant the geese, not the tourists. Even though they gave us Tim Hortons, they can’t all take the blame (or the credit) for that.
I’m sure the swans of Swansea agree.
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