I have been thinking about what to write for some time now. Several months, if I am honest. This is not procrastination — I want to be clear about that. This is deliberation. There is a meaningful difference, and it is one I feel my fellow residents at Woodmeadow might benefit from considering. Mrs Bojangles rushes to an opinion within seconds. Toni announces hers before she has finished forming it. I prefer to let a thought mature. Good thoughts, like good things generally, are not improved by hurrying them.
My name is Thor. I am a giant tortoise, and I arrived at Woodmeadow in 2021. I am sixteen years old, which I understand sounds elderly to some of you but is, in tortoise terms, the equivalent of being a fairly young and enthusiastic adolescent. Our species can live well past a hundred. I mention this not to be boastful but because I think it explains something important about how I experience time, and how I experience Woodmeadow specifically: I am not in a rush. I have never been in a rush. The concept of a rush is, to me, a curious human affliction that I observe with sympathy but do not share.
I should also tell you something about my nature that may help set expectations before you visit. Giant tortoises are, by disposition, solitary creatures. We do not crave company the way a dog might, or seek an audience the way Toni certainly does. We are self-contained. Complete. I am not lonely in my enclosure — the very idea would strike any giant tortoise as faintly bewildering. I am simply, entirely, and very contentedly myself. This is worth understanding before you come looking for me, because quite often, people do come looking — and quite often, I am just, in my shed.
Now. The shed. I must talk about the shed.
My shed is heated. I want you to fully absorb what that means before we continue. On a grey November morning in Northamptonshire, while the rest of Woodmeadow is wrapped in that particular damp cold that the English Midlands does so well, my shed is warm. Properly, genuinely, radiantly warm. The kind of warmth that seeps into your shell and stays there.
Humans, I have noticed, spend enormous amounts of money and effort trying to create exactly this feeling — the right temperature, the right shelter, the right sense of being enclosed and protected from the indifferent weather outside. They buy heated throws and plug-in radiators and argue at length about the thermostat. I have it sorted. The shed is perfect, and I spend a considerable portion of the winter months simply existing inside it in a state of profound contentment that I suspect most beings never quite achieve.
I am told the garden buildings at Taylors, which operate from the same site, are rather good. I can only say that whoever is responsible for my shed specifically deserves considerable credit. It is a masterwork of comfortable temperature management and I am grateful for it every single morning from approximately October through to April.
I am aware that visitors sometimes come specifically to find me and discover, with mild disappointment, that I am inside the shed and not immediately visible. I want to address this gently but clearly: I am fine. I am more than fine. I am warm, I am comfortable, and I am in precisely the place I have decided to be. Giant tortoises do not require an audience. We do not perform. If you peer through and catch a glimpse of me in there, contentedly stationary, please know that this is not a tortoise in hiding — it is a tortoise at its absolute best.
Fresh kale. That is all I want to say on the subject except that I want to say it emphatically. Fresh kale in the morning, with perhaps some other leafy greens alongside, is not merely food — it is the correct beginning to a day. I eat slowly, deliberately, and with full appreciation. I do not bolt my food. I do not eat while distracted. I am present with my kale in a way that I think most humans could learn from, if they chose to pay attention to a tortoise at breakfast, which they would be wise to do.
The visitors to Woodmeadow are interesting to me, though I tend to take my time warming up to new faces — a trait that, I understand, I share with a number of the humans here too. Children find me particularly fascinating, which I appreciate. They crouch down to my level and stare with a seriousness that I respect enormously. They have questions. Where do I sleep? How old am I? Can they touch my shell? The answer to that last one depends very much on how the morning has gone and whether I feel like being sociable, which is not always. But I am working on it.
What I find most interesting about Woodmeadow is how it manages to be busy and calm at the same time. The tearoom hums. The craft cabin crafters who have produced things with patience and care. And through the middle of all of it, at whatever speed I have decided upon that particular morning — which is not fast — I move. I look at things. I consider them. I find my sunny patch when the weather cooperates, and my warm shed when it does not.
The humans who visit Woodmeadow are nearly always moving faster than they need to. I watch them arrive with their shoulders up somewhere near their ears and I watch those shoulders gradually descend as they walk around. By the time they leave, most of them are moving at something approaching a reasonable pace. I do not take credit for this. But I do not rule it out either.
Mrs Bojangles has territory and Toni has volume. I have time. All the time. More time than any of you, if the actuarial tables for Aldabra giant tortoises are to be believed, which they are. I find this not a burden but a gift — the gift of not needing to rush, of being able to watch seasons change, of knowing that there is always another warm morning coming, another serving of kale and other fresh veg waiting, another slow circuit of the enclosure with nowhere in particular to be.
I came to Woodmeadow in 2021 quietly, and I have been here quietly ever since. But quiet is not invisible, and slow is not unimportant. Slow, if you do it right, is everything.
Come and find me. I may acknowledge you immediately, or I may take a moment. Neither should be taken personally. I am simply doing what I have always done.
Taking my time.