My dad always says I could talk a glass eye to sleep. I know what he means. I often find I have a lot to say, and love conversation and communication.
I hate silence. I wake to the radio, and whenever I am home in the evenings the TV is on in the background. I get scared by quietness, and often use noise to banish unwelcome thoughts that pop into my head.
All the same, several friends have recommend silent retreats to me over the years. I am known as an anxious person, and have a reputation for rarely switching off. My friend Bernie O’Roarke has been on a 10-day silent retreat in India, a month-long one in Kathmandu, and several weekend ventures. She swears it does her the world of good, and has all but begged me to consider trying it myself.
The rather marvellous Reverend Richard Coles, the voice of Radio 4’s Saturday Live, has also urged me to give silence a chance. Coles gives up the chat on a regular basis and tells me: “It is the most wonderful thing – but like anything worth doing it takes a bit of practice,” before adding, almost as an afterthought: “It’s not very pleasant.”
And so, at 5pm on New Year’s Day, I decide to shut my gob for 24 hours.
I am in Italy on a working holiday with friends and family, on the top of a Tuscan hill with no immediate neighbours. Handily, the Wi-Fi is down, so it is impossible to do the Skype interviews I have prearranged. The telephone reception is always precarious in these parts, but this week it is only possible to get a decent signal by standing on top of some logs that are piled up next to a crumbling stone wall, while holding on to the skinny bay tree branches. Even I don’t like to go to such lengths to natter on the dog and bone, especially in the freezing wind.
I text my mum so she will not worry about me, and warn everyone they will have to do without my words of wisdom for a while. I am unable to use Netflix or YouTube, thanks to the Wi-Fi, so will have little choice but to read, reflect and ponder. I can, of course, still write. My aim is to meet all my outstanding deadlines and get a head start on a long article that is not due for a week.
Settling down at my laptop, smug and content, I start my article, but soon give up in frustration. I need to talk to my primary source to check some facts, but of course this is not allowed. I attempt to knock out an opinion piece, but find I want to bounce ideas off others. I attempt to argue with myself in my own head but fail.
An hour into my silence, dinner preparations are under way. It is not my turn to cook. I see things being dragged out of the fridge that I hate – fennel, spinach and pesto. “NO!!!” I want to shout. I try to physically intervene and am told to “butt out”. I eat in silence. All around me others are in animated conversation about everything from the horror of Ukip, to which tennis players are out as lesbians.
Sleep is merciful. I have my most commonly recurring dream, in which I am desperately trying to get through to someone urgently on the phone, but keep pressing the wrong keys and failing. I wake and am unable to ask for coffee, so use the time-honoured sign language of raising my hand to my mouth and pretending to drink. My partner assumes I am describing a bad hangover, and passes me the paracetamol.
Later that morning, after eating some toast that sounds ever so noisy, I take a long walk and try to communicate silently with nature. I am not sure it realises. I pass an elderly couple out walking. “Buongiorno!” they cheerily declare. I merely nod like a plonker at them.
Returning to the house, I realise I still have about six hours of unrelenting boredom ahead.
One of the best times to keep schtum is during an argument. I have been known to use semi-silence as a tactic, so I seem reasonable next to whoever is shouting at me. But how could I start a row during my vow of silence? Point to a picture of Nigel Farage and lick my lips? Start mixing all the red wine with Coca-Cola?
I sit with my book and try to be in the moment. Is there anything at all I like about being silent, I ask myself? If anything, I feel anxious and insecure. The comedian Kate Smurthwaite, also with a reputation for liking the sound of her own voice, once stayed in a monastery in Japan “out of curiosity” but didn’t enjoy it at all. “I am strange like that,” she told me. “I enjoy being stupidly busy and I hate relaxing. I once had a panic attack in a flotation tank.”
Suddenly it is 5pm. My personal retreat is over. I open my mouth to speak and find nothing comes out. Can it be so easy, after 50 years of shooting my mouth off, to forget how to do it? My voice comes out in a croak. “I’m back!” I almost whisper. The rest of the household has gone into town, so there’s no one to talk to. Now that I can, however, I am perfectly happy to sit in peace for a few more minutes.
