Being quiet doesn’t come naturally to Jay Rayner. So we sent him on a silent retreat. But could the disputatious food critic make it through a day without speaking? Find out, and hear about 10 other retreats…
I am just 30 minutes into my silent retreat when it hits me: I hate the sound of my own voice. Sure, my lips aren’t moving, but I can hear me. My brain has gone into overdrive. There’s nothing I can do to make the damn thoughts in my head shut up. God, but I’m noisy. It wasn’t what I expected. When it was first suggested that I try shutting up for 24 hours, I thought of the process in terms of absence. Mostly I thought of it as an absence of me. My voice isn’t just a bit of equipment, like my hands or feet. It is me. As a broadcaster I speak for a living. I have recorded 10-hour-long audio versions of my own books. I talk therefore I am.
I genuinely do not fear silence. Fear suggests worry. I just hate it. I hate the thought of a table surrounded by people with nothing to say to each other. How can people be that wordless? Silence with others is a bedside vigil in the terminal hours. I became a journalist specifically because it allows me to ask strangers impertinent questions. I live for disclosure, for a guided tour of the messy stains that we all leave on the bed sheets of life, and for that you need a voice. You did what? With whom? And when? How marvellous! Now it turned out that, when forced into silence, the only person I would be asking questions of me was me, and I wasn’t especially interested in the answers.
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