Perfectionism isn't for me, but I didn't like leaving last week's Petersfield walk so badly done, so the day before yesterday I did it again, and this time every step was perfectly placed, plus I saw two foxes ten miles apart, all the few people I met were nice of course, including a Keith-and-CandiceMarie-type couple in the early morning who were ahead of me between East Meon and Old Winchester Hill and I can't change speed, I'm not macho at all, but I never get overtaken, it's not me, it's just everyone else is slower, so altho catching up with people is always tedious it is what I did.
We fell into step and I told them fifty words about myself and he told me fifty about them - they'd spent the night at "the eco centre" - I said "oh yes" but had/have no idea what they're talking about, but it sounds their sort of place, not mine at all - me I'd rather spend the night in a narrow strip of dark dense pines up a bank of scruffy grass beside a silent path, the foxes barking throughout the night. He was a loud hearty confident talker and said they were on the march to Winchester and the west as far as the land goes.
They were about my age, and perhaps a little before it was necessary I did my sudden Goodbye and upped my pace to normal and pulled ahead, and a minute later I discovered why she'd been unchatty - she was obviously quite deaf - and as I climbed the steep slope up to the path that dog-legs left towards the top of Old Winchester Hill I could hear him shouting to her repeating everything I'd said to him - the whole valley boomed with his voice making my life sound almost interesting, I was flattered.
Even as I was walking in Wednesday's perfect endless cold sunshine, down past the line of silent always-wintry beehives that takes you into Droxford, I was saying that this will probably be my final long walk of the year - it is the only real feeling of happiness that I actually feel while it's happening - all others nowadays are retrospective - and so how can I deny myself something like this for the next three weeks ? - I don't know, but it still feels right, the trains being fucked and all.
On the path near Coldon Common I met someone else from an earlier time - he was walking towards me and I knew we'd stop and talk - he was carrying a weird contraption of rope and wood and chain and an iron hook and he asked me if this way would take him to Winchester. One of the ways I know my brain has been damaged by all the booze is that I cannot recognise accents any more - but his Welsh accent was so overpowering that even I placed it instantly, he was tall, my age, spoke slowly, distant, obviously quite friendly and also-obviously someone who was used to sleeping outdoors like the kind of tramps we used to read about in our childhood storybooks - and I resisted the (honest) news about how if I was going to Winchester I wouldn't start from here - but who would ? - it was now early-ish afternoon and the sun was still a powerful ally - I said Yes, keep going away from the sun, to the north, bear left a bit, I pointed over to my left, to the east, and told him I'd come from over there, Petersfield, and was heading towards Bishopstoke, all with reference to the sun - the sun that day was the reason I'd never got lost and he wouldn't either - it was like we were talking about a landscape without roads or Google Maps or any maps at all, just the homing instinct inside us all.
Yesterday, mooching around town, I saw no foxes or beehives and felt no overwhelming happiness, it'd mark you out as a crazy person if you did show signs of such a thing - I did witness a wonderful row between a taxi-driver and a dog-walker - near the Civic Centre - I missed the cause of it all, only arriving as the shouting was drawing a crowd, but I'd guess the taxi, sideways in the closed road, had been doing a U-turn and had nearly hit the dog walker - what I loved is as the taxi drove away the dog-walker shouted at it "you'll be hearing from my lawyer you fucking ponce" - does anyone in England have a lawyer? - I think he's been watching too many Hollywood musicals - and in another day of sunshine it would've been perfect if we had all sung a song and danced around the park.
And it is years since I heard anyone called a ponce. "Cunt" is the everyday term today. But my life is so sheltered. In the evening over at Banana Wharf for a Christmas meal there was a woman sitting alone directly behind me. I was only really made aware of her because the two people I was with were facing me and so facing her too and they said how newly normal it is to see women eating alone in busy restaurants at night - I really don't know if it is or it isn't - she was reading a book and apparently happy among the hubbub. I wasn't going to tell anyone that I envied her, that would've been rude. But for some of us it is the glancing collisions up the sides of the hills of the south downs or on the pathways to and from Winchester that give us all we need, even the arguments between taxi drivers and dog walkers and the vanishing world of ponces and tramps and friends who have lawyers and before the new eco centres come and smarten it all up and wash it all away.
(recorded yesterday afternoon, photo London last Monday)
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