AWAY FROM THE RABBLE IN WRABNESS

The weekend before the start of the lockdown (aka Final Countdown of possibly The Big Gundown) we walked from Wrabness to Manningtree, part of the Essex Way, though we strayed from that route from time to time.  We knew that we'd strayed, we just didn't know how to get back on it.

There was plenty of social isolating going on, though dogs still have to be walked, children too, apparently.

There was all kinds of cool stuff; flotsam and/or jetsam

and a shipwreck

And of course things were already getting a bit frantic in the supermarkets, but there on the beach at Wrabness you could pick up an oyster or two and take it home for domestic enjoyment. What’s a good walk without a bit of foraging?  And the thing about foraging is – you don’t have to stand in a queue.

The guys in the pub at Mistley were obviously a bit sour:

And it took a surprisingly long time – four hours to walk 6 and a half miles. But once home the oysters did the job they were supposed to do.

THE DOG WALKER

In these troubled, self-quarantined times, reading a book seems like a very good idea, and although War and Peace beckons, there’s also an urge to dig out something that you haven’t looked at in a good many years.  And so I’ve found myself rereading The Dog Chairman, a collection of writings, some of them very short indeed, by Robert Robinson.  It’s a book I used to keep in my loo.

Robinson doesn’t get much respect these days.  If people remember him at all it’s likely to be because of his bad comb-over (are there any good comb-overs) and his tendency to be a clever dick, on programmes such as Brain of Britain, Stop the Week, and Call My Bluff.  He was also anything but inimitable, and he has been much imitated by everyone from the Not the Nine O' Clock news mob, to Fry and Laurie (seen at the top of the post) to Mitchell and Webb.  But I like his book a lot.

Back in the day I used occasionally to see him walking in the streets around Broadcasting House, and he was always wearing a hat, whether to hide the comb over or because he worried that the wind might ruin his comb over.

Anyway there’s a piece in The Dog Chairman titled ‘Watch Your Step’ – it’s a nice bit of people watching, observing how people walk.  ‘Top end of the social scale, people walk as though they aren’t walking anywhere in particular, bottom end of the scale, people walk as though they only had one destination.  Bottom end, people walk as though the movement were being rented rather than outright owned, top-end walks are always freehold.’  I think this is more or less true and he continues, ‘You can no more disguise your walk than your handwriting: I knew a ballet critic who’d been a policeman, and he always walked up the aisle at Covent Garden as though he were going to take Giselle’s name and address.’

         I like that.  But I do wonder who the policeman turned ballet critic was. How many can there be. Any ideas?  Or maybe just made it up.

WALKING THE IMMUNOLOGICAL SUPERHIGHWAY

And in further Covid-19 news (is there any other kind of news?) Dr Jenna Macciochi, an immunologist at Sussex University, says walking is good  because it ‘helps move our lymphatic fluid around the body.’ Who knew?  Well, no doubt a great many people, but not me.  

She adds, ‘Think of this like our immune cells superhighway enabling our immune cells to perform better surveillance.  And when you’re out walking … you are less likely to come into close contact with infected people.”

According to her website Dr. Macciochi  has over 20 years' experience 'as a scientist researching the impact of lifestyle on the immune system in health and disease.'  This is a picture on her website, it could well be her:

I think we can assume Dr Macchiochi is not a flaneuse, much less a woman of the crowd.

WALKING DANKLY

Walking in the rain is a funny business - sometimes literal, sometimes metaphoric, sometimes imbued with pathetic fallacy, and definitely, apparently, a thing to write songs about.

The one I think of first is ‘Just Walkin in the Rain’ the one made famous by Johnny Ray, written by Johnny Bragg and Robert Riley while they were in Tennessee State Prison. Bragg supposedly said, "Here we are just walking in the rain, and wondering what the girls are doing." Riley thought there was a song in it, and he was right.

Just walking in the rain
Getting soaking wet
Torturing my heart by trying to forget.

Then the Ronettes, ‘Walking in the Rain,’ later covered by Jay and the Americans and indeed the Walker Brothers.

Though sometimes we'll fight, I won't really care
And I'll know it's gonna be alright 'cause we've got so much we share 

Like walking in the rain (like walking in the rain) 

The song is attributed to Barry Mann, Cynthia Weli and Phil Spector.  I don’t imagine Phil ever did very muchwalking in the rain, what with the wig and all, but like Briggs and Riley, as he currently sits or walks in jail, there must surely be moments when he wonders what the girls are doing, though I’m not sure which girls.

And of course, ‘The Sky is Crying’ – many, many versions  - but originally by Elmore James

The sky is crying,
Can you see the tears roll down the street. 

Well, yes, sometimes you can, and t’other day I did. For no very good reason, except my ongoing fascination with suburbia, I went off for a walk in Highams Park, in north east London, and to be honest a large part of the attraction was that I knew I’d have the pleasure of walking down Hollywood Way.

As you see, it was sunny when I started out – and of course there was plenty in the area to look at.

gnomes (well, one gnome)

topiary and yuccas

fine bungalows 

an equally fine concrete shed

streamlined bay windows, which are always a favorite of mine

But as you also see in that last picture, I hadn’t done much drifting before the rain came down (see ‘The Day The Rains Came’ made famous by the somewhat less famous Jane Morgan  ‘The day that the rains came down/ Mother Earth smiled again.’ Well yes and no.

From time to time it would pelt down and I’d run under a tree – no pennies from heaven there - then it would stop for a bit and I’d walk on and it’d pelt down again. If I’d had a specific destination in place I’d have continued but since I was just wandering it wasn’t long before I’d had enough.  My point of return was De La Warr Court.

Now obviously when you see the name De La Warr you think of the De La Warr Pavlion in  very vaguely resembles. 

The pavilion was named after Herbrand Edward Dundonald Brassey Sackville, 9th Earl De La Warr, and the first hereditary peer to join the Labour Party.  If he has any connection with Highams Park, I’ve not been able to discover it.

Incidentally, Hollywood Way has one small point of interest, it was the childhood home of jazz man John Dankworth. There’s a plaque to that effect.

In the course of a long career he recorded plenty of songs about rain, including, many of them with Cleo Lane from ‘Come Rain or Come Shine,’ to ‘Singing in the Rain.’  Rather fewer songs about walking.  And I do hope this was his car, not just a prop for the album cover:

MY FAVOURITE WALKING MAP

WALKING AND RECOLLECTING IN SOME VERSION OF TRANQUILITY

I went for a walk in Colchester. I hadn’t been there in years, not since I spent a year at the university studying European drama and making myself unemployable.  Inevitably some parts of the city seemed very familiar and surprise, surprise some things had changed out of all recognition.

This piece of sculpture on the High Street was a great addition, ‘Woman (walking)’ by Sean Henry – that’s a good, snappy, unpretentious title you’ve got there, Sean. 

And I walked in Castle Park, the grounds of Colchester Castle, a fine castle however you look at it, even if you’re not all that interested in castles.

The gardeners were out planting. 

And I suppose they probably plant all year round, because all at once I came upon a crowd (I’m not sure I’d really call it a host) of daffodils, and I don’t honestly know if there were ten thousand of them - counting daffodils is a tricky business - but there were certainly plenty of them.

And then, all at once, again, I came upon an obelisk.  To be fair I knew it was in the park somewhere but I hadn’t actually expected to find it.

It’s not that big as obelisks go but it’s an interesting one.  It was erected in 1892 by Henry Laver, a local dignitary, when the park was opened. It commemorates the death by firing squad on that spot in 1648 of two Royalist commanders: Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, after the siege of Colchester.

Both Lucas and Lyle are regarded as Royalist martyrs in some quarters. Lucas left a manuscript titled Treatise of the Arts of War, but it was written in cipher and was never published, which I suppose is understandable. You don’t want the polloi knowing all the arts of war, on the other hand it does rather cut down your readership.

Henry Laver was an Alderman, a Justice of the Peach, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, which looked like this. He was also the author of The Colchester Oyster Fishery: Its antiquity and position, method of working and the quality and safety of its products,  which looks like this:

LEMMY TAKE YOU BY THE HAND

The streets of London are paved with fruit, which has been left out in the rain.  (Macarthur Park reference, should some of you young 'uns have missed it.)

ROCKING ON

I like rocks.  I don’t know much about them but when I’m out walking and I see a rock at my feet and I like the look of it, I tend to pick it up.  

Of course the question of what it means to ‘like the look of a rock’ is a strange one, and I’ve thought about why one rock appeals more than another. It’s obviously got something to do with general aesthetics but it’s also about personal taste (I’m especially fond of flint and obsidian) and maybe it’s also to do with pareidolia - everybody likes a rock that looks like an animal or a face, or not wholly like a rock.  

No doubt John Ruskin had a lot of say about it.  These are some of Ruskin’s rocks, though not picked up while walking, as far as I know.

Now, if you’re on a long walk and you pick up every rock you like the look of  you can end up carrying half a ton of geological samples in your pockets and rucksack.  So my technique (call it that) is to pick up the first rock I like and carry it with me until I see another rock that l think looks better, then I pick that one up and drop the first.  It’s not a very sophisticated process.

I never made any great claims for the originality of this practice but I also never met anybody else who did it until I was in Quartzsite, Arizona, one hell of a town, a centre for rock and fossil hunters, and depending on the day and time of year, you may find any number of dealers there selling rocks, most of which I think they’ve picked up in the desert.  I understand this is perfectly legal in those parts, though by no means everywhere in America.

Buying a rock from a dealer always seems like a bit of a cheat, but of course if the dealer is a hands-on kind of a guy he has all the time in the world to go hunting for them in the desert, whereas I’ve only ever been a tourist in those parts.  So the dealer has much better stuff.  And I got talking to one of the dealers, and without any prompting from me he said sometimes when he was walking for pleasure rather than business, his method was just the same as mine – go out there, pick up a rock, keep it until you find a better one, then swap it.  I can’t say I felt like I’d found a kindred soul but it was somehow cheering.

And then, blow me down, I was reading Richard Long’s Walking the Line and there it is on page 53, a text piece titled “Walking Stones.” This is what it looks like:

Walking 382 miles in 11 days strikes me as pretty good – over 34 miles a day - but I do wonder how he selected the stones he picked up.  Was it based on aesthetic choice or random selection or something else?  You might also wonder when does a stone become a pebble, or a rock.

Of course Long ended up with no rocks in his pockets or rucksack.  I, on the other hand, always end up taking at least one home with me.   In due course I get rid of them.  Over the years I must have got dispersed hundreds, some of them a very long way from where they started, but a few always remain.  This is the current selection (definitely not a collection) lined up in the Nicholson atelier:

Here's Richard Long at work:

SPEKE MEMORY

If you’re looking for a catchy but modest (possibly faux-modest) title for your travel book then you could do a lot worse than A Walk Across Africa, James Augustus Grant’s 1864 volume, especially since it has the knockout subtitle Or, Domestic Scenes from My Nile Journal.

Grant’s book tells in part the story of his expedition with John Hanning Speke in search of the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria: they found it, more or less.

Speke was a profound, and in some sense perhaps ultimately a mortal, enemy of Sir Richard Francis Burton.  They too travelled together in search of the source of the Nile, and failed to find it, more or less.  

The two men loathed each other.  Speke shot himself (accidentally? we don’t know) the day before he was about to have a public debate with Burton.  This is Speke being chased by Somalis, on an earlier expedition with Burton.

There’s a tendency, and I share it, to find yourself ‘supporting’ either Speke or Burton as though they were opposing football teams, and I’m totally with Burton, even if I accept that at this point in history it’s a fairly meaningless kind of support.

Burton’s great memorial is his famous tomb in Mortlake in the shape of a Bedouin tent. 

Speke’s memorial, which I only recently discovered, is an obelisk made of Aberdeen red granite, which is located in Kensington Gardens, not a million miles away from the Peter Pan statue.  A plaque set in the ground tells us the memorial was sponsored by Sir Roderick Murchison of the Royal Geographical Society, and paid for by public subscription.

My unscientific observation when I went there is that the people who walk through Kensington Gardens, often with their dogs, pay very little attention to the Speke obelisk, although one or two of them did pay attention to me because I was looking at it with such intensity, and taking photographs, and they probably thought I was a nutter, so they walked on that much faster.

The memorial, as all true obelisk fans with observe, is not a true obelisk since it’s in three parts.  A true obelisk is made from a single piece.  I suppose that Aberdeen granite doesn’t come in big enough chunks.