From before the first animal decided to walk for fun, if walking be for fun, I am*. It’s one of two important things I cannot remember the beginning of. The other is playing the piano.
There are stories and corroborative photographs which tell of exploits which I have no memory of and therefore had no control over. Parents are beneficial, and I’m sure that is the reason for why I cannot do anything but walk and play the piano – there was never a beginning to these things. Like eating and sleeping, they’ve existed since before there could have been a ‘since’.
It would be impossible to leave these things alone out of boredom, but we do all we can to make the best out them. We munch sugar as it’s good to sustain the addiction of fun things, and drink drugs. I just drink the drugs: I can’t stand sweet things. A good ale, a good walk, an open fire; these are my geographic requirements.
Anyway, this is London. Ale is provided in quantities and prices yet unnamed, open fires are outlawed (though walking through Camberwell on a still, star-attempted night, the woodsmoke wisps linger), and real walking for fun is a challenge unrecognised by Londonist footwear, earwear, extra-bodily apostrophes, and time. Or so they think.
I walk everywhere. Why not? In time it is equalled only by cycling and car-driving. “I walk everywhere”, I told the officer behind the desk in the Jury Service waiting area as I informed her of my inextant travel expenses. “Oh, yeah! I power-walk too.” I thought we might have exchanged the trees and details on buildings we pass that nobody else notices – those possessions owned by walkers, and exchanged with more mutual glee than almost anything I’ve experienced. I was in a queue of people who had the misfortune to be standing up. I had to wait until I got home to find out about power-walking.
In London I walk for the absolute rebellious nature of being reliant on nobody but clothing manufacturers and bridge engineers. It’s free, it’s impossible to be late by accident, and apparently there are things called health benefits (though these are the last reasons for walking for fun). I never have an umbrella, sunglasses, nor ear wires telling me things I’m not looking at.
And why start a blog? Because we don’t have room in our flat for anything else. Where would I possibly fit the letter W?
Today I walked to work, and I’ll walk home again. (I’m at work.) That’s a total of at least 5.02 miles by my reckoning, depending on my route, of which there are about 27 general possibilities of similar length. All routes pass pubs, none of which serve the best beer in town. The highest point on any route is the bridge over the Thames. I walk to work every day, and that adds up to about 1200 miles each year. And that’s excluding everywhere else that needs or wants to be walked to.
The greyest, most yellow-brown cloud since May has just turned up, so I may get wet on the way home. But that’s just the way it’s meant to be…
*that’s from somewhere in the Bible.
Will's Walks 