“Oh, hi, I’m looking for the talking bench,” I say to the park ranger who handily scoots by on her 4x4 golf cart near the entrance to Graves Park. She’s slightly taken aback by my question but tells me where it is and says it’s well used. “I often see people chatting on it,” she says. When I say I’m a journalist looking to do a story about the bench she still seems to assume I’m lonely and I need someone to speak to. Maybe she’s right. “The hardest thing is to take the first step,” she tells me.
It turns out I’ve parked at the wrong side of the park so have to walk all the way across to the three small lakes near the animal centre. Still, it’s not too much trouble. Sheffield is blessed with great parks and Graves is one of its best. At 248 acres including the animal park it's certainly the biggest. The land was gifted to the people of Sheffield in 1925 by city councillor and entrepreneur J.G. Graves and has been held in trust ever since.
Opened last September, the Graves Park “talking bench” is the second of its kind in Sheffield (the first one, in Meersbrook Park, has sadly been vandalised). Age Friendly Sheffield paid for it as part of a six-year-long National Lottery funded project to reduce loneliness and social isolation amongst people aged over 50 in Sheffield.
It’s in a lovely place, in a pool of dappled sunlight just next to the middle of three ponds on the park’s eastern edge, half underneath one of the giant oaks which frame the lake. Ducks and geese flap and honk across the lake’s surface. “This ‘happy to talk’ bench has been gifted to support an age-friendly Sheffield,” reads the bench’s inscription. “You’re welcome to sit yourself down here, have a chat and make a friend.”
And so I wait. And wait. And wait a little bit more. I smile at everyone who comes past hoping they will realise why I’m sat here. Sometimes I smile, look at the inscription on the bench and then look back at them imploringly. I think this probably has the opposite effect than the one I am looking for. Maybe people think I want to be alone. Perhaps I could do with a sign?
My strategy is obviously not working so I resolve to make the first move. An oldish woman walking briskly by in a shell suit and bum bag slows her pace slightly and gives me hope. It turns out she does know what the bench is for but doesn't want to talk. “I noticed you there before,” she says. “But I’m suffering with a bit of depression at the moment so I just want to be alone.”
Weirdly, sitting on the bench has actually got me thinking I might be lonely. I’m 44 years old and I live on my own at Park Hill flats. Lot of my family live a long way from Sheffield and the few friends I made at The Star are no longer as close as when I left. As well as living alone, I also work alone. Back when I worked in a busy newsroom I would see colleagues every day. Now, I have the odd video call but most of the time it’s just me and four walls. This isn’t just me. Post-pandemic, more of us are working from home than ever before. While many are attracted by the flexibility of these “hybrid” working arrangements, it’s difficult to lose the feeling that we’ve lost something as well.
That said, most people in the park don’t seem lonely at all. There are lots of families, big and small, all enjoying their last week of freedom before schools go back. Adoring grandparents looking after grandchildren while their parents are at work. Elderly couples walking arm in arm. Some people in the park are alone, but most look like they want to be: panting runners with headphones in their own world; solitary walkers searching for a few moments’ peace from the hurly-burly of life.
“Do you mind if I sit down here,” an elderly gentleman says, which snaps me out of my daydreaming. The man is there with his dog Ben, who is “nearly a whippet”, he tells me. Ben is a rescue and looks like he was the last in the pound to get picked. He’s tiny in size, has no teeth at all on the right hand side of his mouth and walks with a pronounced limp, the product of being kept in a cage for prolonged periods when he was a puppy. “He had a bad start in life,” says his owner.
I assume it’s Ben who’s here for a walk but actually it’s the other way round. A bad dose of cellulitis led to a prolonged stay in hospital and a lengthy rehabilitation. He’s now coming to the park twice every day to get his strength back up but needs to sit down every so often to rest. As he sits next to me he carefully lays out a black bin liner on the bench to shield his backside from the rainwater.
We chat about his condition, his struggles in getting a diagnosis and the problems of the health service. Worryingly, it turns out the cellulitis was caused by a silent heart attack two years ago. “It’s left me pretty washed out,” he tells me. As well as health, the other topic of conversation is Ben. “I’ve been bringing dogs in this park since 1967,” he says. “More than 50 years.” Seeing the bond between Ben and his owner, it feels like the answer to the need for companionship might be deceptively simple: get a dog.
Obviously, this isn’t to minimise the very real effect loneliness has on people. Dr Dorina Cadar, senior lecturer in cognitive epidemiology and dementia at the University of Sussex has stated that loneliness can damage a person’s health as much as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. An American study from 2020 (“Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System”) showed that social isolation was associated with approximately 50% increased risk of dementia, a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
According to research conducted by the Campaign to End Loneliness, in 2011 there were estimated to be almost 10,000 people in Sheffield aged 65 and above who were lonely all or most of the time. Over the last 10 years this is thought to have risen significantly, with the number of lonely over-50s in the UK set to hit two million by 2025/6 (compared to 1.4 million in 2016/7 — a 49% increase in a decade).
In the face of figures like that, how much can a talking bench really do? Maybe quite a bit. My day hasn’t really gone to plan but getting out of my flat for a few hours into the beautiful natural surroundings of Graves Park feels like it’s done me the world of good. And maybe it’s not just the fresh air. A growing body of evidence suggests that saying a simple “hello” to other human beings has a beneficial effect on our mood. One study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies in 2020, “Minimal Social Interactions with Strangers Predict Greater Subjective Well-Being”, found that “taking a moment to greet, express good wishes, or say thank you to strangers is linked with greater happiness in everyday life”.
I’ve certainly done a lot of that today. I do feel better for it. Dragging myself away from the bench is difficult but I have to get home. As I walk away two twin girls in bright pink jumpsuits giggle as they hide behind a tree from their grandparents. A film of waterlilies shines brightly in the sunlight.
