WALKING BETWIXT

And speaking of gennels (pronounced jennels), or ginnels or snickets, a jitty in Leicestershire, a jigger in Liverpool, or whatever (I may not have all those spellings quite right), here‘s a picture I took a while back on a return trip to Sheffield:

This is the place where I was walking when I was about eleven years old, on my way to the library – yes, I was a swat (I said swat) - I met a man with a stethoscope in his pocket who engaged me in conversation.  He looked like a doctor and I believed he was one, but I can’t swear that he was or wasn’t, and although he neither said or did anything inappropriate, in fact he talked to me like I was a grown up, which I found flattering. When I got home and reported the meeting to my dad I could see he was troubled, even as he didn’t want to make too big of a deal out of it.  But neither did he speak to me like a grownup. Oh the hideous responsibilities of fatherhood.

This is also from Sheffield, it might be a gennel but really I think it’s just an alley:

This is in Halesworth and I've walked down it many times.  I’d say it’s not really a gennel, not least that it has a name, official name is Rectory Lane (known locally as Duck Lane) and I have a feeling that gennels, by definition, nameless, but I do like it because of the crinkle crankle wall, good for directing heat into specific areas of the garden on the other side:

On Sunday I was walking in Hampstead Garden Suburb and I learned that the word they use there is twitten. Twittens look like this:

The word is Sussex dialect apparently, and presumably it’s got something to do with ‘betwixt and between,’ though I can’t imagine how it got to NW3.

THE SAME OLD NOT THE SAME OLD

I recently came across a quotation, which may be familiar to everybody else but it’s new to me, from John Burroughs’ Signs and Seasons: ‘The place to observe nature is where you are; the walk to take today is the walk you took yesterday. You will not find just the same things: both the observed and the observer have changed.’

This seems to be the equivalent of saying you can’t walk on the same water twice, and I absolutely agree with that.

Above is a path, perhaps a gennell, perhaps a snickett, depending on which bit of England you come from, and I walk down it pretty much every day.  As far as I can tell it doesn’t have a name. 

I always see a few pigeons perching on the fences beside the path, and sometimes I see a skulking cat or two, and sometimes I see evidence that a cat got among the pigeons. Nature, don’t you love it?  I suppose I’d feel better if the cats actually ate the pigeons as opposed to just killing them, but cats, I know, don't care about my feelings,

On the path I encounter  people once in a while and words are occasionally exchanged but mostly we don’t make eye contact and keep silent, which seems to suit everybody.  

The other day I was walking up the slope and a young couple were walking behind me and arguing, and I heard him say, 'So it’s ok for you to talk to me like that but I can’t talk to you like that, is that right?’

And the girl said, ‘I wasn’t talking to you like anything.’  
This seemed a moment of transcendent Zen.

Sometimes there are big mushrooms growing in the grass alongside the path:

And sometimes there are fungi that are not just big but monstrous (that ruler’s  15 inches long).  

I wish I had the wisdom to know whether or not they’re edible, which may be just another way of saying I wish I was John Cage.

A STORY OF O

I went for a walk, to the end of Southend pier.  It’s one and a third miles apparently, and they count you in, just so you know where you are.  

And, OK I admit it, I caught the train back, and this is almost an interesting pedestrian dilemma.  Walk there and take the train back? Or train there and walk back? Actually much depends on whether there’s a train about to depart when you arrive at the land end of the pier.  On my day there wasn’t.

And I realized I’ve walked along Southend pier quite a few times over the years, not often but regularly enough, with a good few years between each visit.  

In fact when I did it for the first time, when I was wasting a year of my life doing an MA in European Drama at Essex University, the train wasn’t running in either direction.   So I walked there and back, and somehow I survived. 

This is me on that previous occasion:

And these were my walking companions:

         Even walking there and back – two and two thirds miles isn’t really much of a hike but who doesn’t like a train journey, especially in a train that’s named John Betjeman, the man who said "The Pier is Southend, Southend is the Pier,"  though I think many would argue that Southend is more than just the pier.

The current pier has a few attractions – kiddies rides (as they’re called):

and a fancy architectural ‘royal pavilion.’  I had an Americano and a flapjack – no sign of any royals.  

But perhaps the greatest attraction for walkers is that you can get a certificate saying that you’ve walked the length of the pier.  To be honest, I think it would be perfectly possible to get the certificate without having done the walk at all, but what kind of cad would do that?

I paid my quid for a handwritten certificate. They ask you to write your name on a piece of paper before they make out the certificate, no doubt to avoid spelling mistakes.  But evidently it’s not a foolproof method.  I am now Geoff Nichlson missing an ‘o.’ But you know, somehow I like it better this way.

CAGE WALKING (YOU KNOW, AS OPPOSED TO CAGE FIGHTING)

And another thing I did on my ‘holidays’ – I walked over to John Cage’s childhood home in Moss Avenue, Eagle Rock, in northwest LA.  This may be Cage junior in the garden at that house, but don’t put money on it (I mean it's definitely John Cage, but it may not be the Eagle Rock house.

Cage’s dad, also named John Cage, built the house from scratch, which may seem surprising at first, but given that he was an inventor and built his own submarine, less so.  A guy who can build his own submarine can probably build his own house. 

I went with my psychogeographic pal Anthony Miller – that’s him about to trespass and transgress, while also showing his bald spot.  

There was nobody home as far as we could tell, despite multiple cars in the driveway including this white, left hand drive Morris Minor.  How many of those were sold in America?  That's not an entirely rhetorical question.

Then we pottered around the neighbourhood, saw euphorbias springing up adjacent to the sidewalk, 

a wayside mini-library,

some very trim trees,

and some stuffed monkeys tied to other trees:

Later, rereading Cage’s Indeterminacy, which strikes me as one of the truly great twentieth century texts, I rediscovered a couple of pieces that involve walking; this one:

That’s a bit rough, even for my robust sensibilities, but this one, I really, really like:

Actually the idea that John Cage might be walking along Hollywood Boulevard, or anywhere else, with 'nothing much to do' is the real surprise.

HOUSEHOLD WALKING

Yes, I walked when I was in Los Angeles last month, of course I did.  It’s what I do wherever I am.  And despite urban myths to the contrary I saw plenty of other people walking too.  Like these good folks on Hollywood Boulevard:

And I went to Palm Springs and saw people walking there too.

And also in Yucca Valley.

And right at the very end, on my last day, I was walking in Little Tokyo in LA, and I wasn’t trying to have one of those ‘perfect moments’ to round off the trip, and I hadn’t even been thinking much about obelisks, I certainly hadn’t seen any on my trip, but then I hadn’t really expected to, and yet and yet .. there I was on East Second Street and suddenly this mighty metal obelisk loomed out at me.

My first thought was that it could be a decorative element for the nearby Japanese restaurant but it seemed a bit grand for that.  A basic online search didn’t bring up anything and I told myself that was OK.  Sometimes it’s good for a walk and an obelisk to retain a certain mystery.

         But back home further searching revealed that it’s a work of art (as to some degree are all obelisks, I suppose) but this one is called Sliver Tower and it’s by the artisy Peter Lodato, from his "Wrathful Means" series which apparently “depicts the power and ferocity of Mahakala, the protector of Lamism,” though I don’t see how you’d know that from looking at the obelisk

But … and hold onto your hat kids, you know what’s on the wall of my living room, a thing that I bought on a whim in all ignorance from the local junk/antique shop – yep it’s a mask of Mahakala.  

Spooky?  Nah, just the kind of stuff that happens all the time.  In Japan, I understand, Mahakala is a protective household god.  I can really use one of those.