Driver Jatt

Sophia Park, Cardiff

So, there I was, professionally loitering in Cardiff. This is a core courier skill they don’t mention in the training. The ‘drop and wait’. I’d hauled a box of what was probably a very important widget from a workshop in Birmingham all the way to an engineer in the city centre. My part was done, but his part, the fiddly installing part, was just beginning. My new job was to stand down. To wait. It’s a strange bit of limbo, where you’re essential but temporarily useless.

Faced with an hour of watching paint dry on a council wall, I went for a wander. Cardiff’s good for that. You turn a corner and history hits you in the face. In this case, it was a big, beige-grey, castle-shaped bit of history. I was skirting the walls of Cardiff Castle, trying to look like a man with purpose, when the city just… gave up and turned into a park.

Sophia Park, the sign said. It’s nestled right there, like the castle’s kicked off its shoes and put its feet up. I’m fairly sure it’s part of the old grounds. It has that feel. Like it was always there for when the lords and ladies got sick of looking at battlements and fancied a daisy. If I’m wrong, don’t tell me. I prefer it my way.

First thing you notice is the quiet. Not a dead quiet, but a thick, green quiet that swallows the traffic noise. Then you notice they’ve actually tried with the flowers. I mean, really tried. This isn’t the usual sad, municipal effort. This is colour-coordinated, ‘we-got-a-proper-gardener-in’ level of planting. It’s the kind of thing that makes you feel a bit guilty for not knowing the names of any of them.

My courier brain, always scanning for essentials, locked onto the operational highlight: a small, green wooden kiosk. Coffee. Ice cream. Sanctuary. I got a coffee that was suspiciously good for park coffee, the sort that makes you stop and actually drink it, rather than just pour it in.

Fuel acquired, I could take in the rest of the operation. The park slopes down to the River Taff. There’s a little jetty where you can get a boat. The boat, I am told, goes along the river and right past the back of the Cardiff City stadium. I like that. The idea of a gentle boat ride suddenly interrupted by the roar of a football crowd. I gave it a miss this time. My relationship with seating was already strained for the day.

The real beauty of the place is its sheer lack of urgency. Students were using the grass as a library. A man was having an extremely detailed conversation with a pigeon. It was a masterclass in doing very little, very well. I found a bench that wasn’t sticky, sat down, and joined in. Just me, my decent coffee (bought from the onsite tuck shop), and a view of a castle. The delivery, the return leg to Birmingham, the engineer with his spanners, all of it just faded into background noise for a bit.

Eventually, my phone buzzed. The pause menu was over. The engineer had finished, the old part was boxed up for its return journey and I was back in the game.

Walking back to the van, I had that slight recalibration feeling you get. One minute you’re in a timeless green bubble, the next you’re double checking the postcode for Bordesley Green. That’s the job, though. They pay me for the driving and the lifting, sure. But the quiet moments in places like Sophia Park, the weird little pockets of calm you stumble into because someone, somewhere, needed a part delivered and installed on the same day… that bit’s free.

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