CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

by Hattie Ellis (Salisbury)

The Drainage Collection walks you down medieval streets where pilgrims lost medals and their hand-made keys, shaped like Inca words, slipped from chains into the channels; lost, until the Victorians drained the typhoid waters and a museum was born.

You step from the museum into the living Close, where constables still lock the gates at 11.30pm and the day passes slowly under the Cathedral. Even the early morning’s work-hurry is settled. Afternoons, people lie on the grass, like a beach by the See.

One evening, I sat on a bench near a circle of teenagers. They chattered like starlings, taking off and landing on a joke together. One came towards me, his mouth tight with shy humour. “I love you!” he said and ran. It was an innocent dare; funny.

A woman went towards the Cathedral, a long grey scarf knotted around her head. I thought she was ill and going to pray. A teen from the group ran up. “I want to have sex with you,” he cried; ran without seeing her face. He sat down and they laughed.

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What Hattie Ellis says about CLOSE ENCOUNTERS:

This story starts in the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum with its Drainage Collection, the foundation of the museum, made from the many objects found in the old channels that were made for this medieval planned city. Then I sat in the Close again and this incident occurred.