EARLY WALKING SYSTEM

 Look, I don’t know much about Nadiya Hussein but I gather she’s a lovely woman, famous 

for baking cakes.  Beyond that I remained in happy ignorance until I saw this headline in the 

Times, ‘I make my kids go on 6 am walks.’  

 

This strikes me as both cruel and unusual, but that isn't the half of it.  If you read the article you discover the line ‘The family wakes each morning just before 5am to pray.’  'For me,' she says, 'it's about making the most of the day.' -  I mean, really?

 

Naturally I was reminded of the blessed Christopher Hitchens’ remark that he thought teaching religious knowledge in schools was a very good thing because it guaranteed an ongoing supply of atheists.  I assume much the same can be said about waking children at 5am for prayers. 

But I do worry that waking children at 6am, and making them go for a walk is most likely

guaranteed to create an ongoing supply of pedestrians and couch potatoes.

        Christopher Hitchens didn't look like a man who ever willingly went for a walk, but I 

could be wrong. Nice bookshelves.

IT WAS THE NAZE, WITH GOD-GIVEN WHATEVER

 We went to the Essex seaside, specifically Walton-on-the-Naze.  

 

I like the seaside, though I only like a doing a certain number of the things people are supposed to do at the seaside.  Eating fish and chips is OK, swimming’s OK too though I don’t do it very often and in Walton neither do many others – I saw exactly two people in the water.  And I absolutely hate sitting on the sand getting a suntan.  

 

Mostly I just like to walk around looking at things and people.  The fact that many seaside towns have a main street named the Promenade suggests that walking is what most people do there.  The road along Walton’s seafront is named the Parade, though it becomes Southcliff Promenade at the southern end, and Prince’s Esplanade at the other.  Good names.

 

Walton is full of good stuff, such as this seat carved from the trunk of a dead tree, for those who aren’t too wide in the hip.

 

This I think is one of the most substantial public toilets I’ve ever seen:

 

And then there was this abandoned ice cream:

 

My immediate thought was that it was the symbol of a kind of tragedy – somebody, possibly a child, dropped their ice cream and that ruined their day.  But maybe the owner of the ice cream wasn’t really enjoying it and therefore tossed it aside to make a still life, something to do with transience and vanitas.  

 

But finally what made it all worthwhile was this shop with its gorgeously punctuated sign.  No, I have no idea.

I'd been to Walton just once before, not so very long ago, but I really didn't remember it 

very well.  On the other hand, Mel, one of our group, had spent many a childhood holiday 

there.  He was able to remember the beach as the place he'd played, that block of flats on 

the Parade had been converted from the hotel his family had stayed in.  For all I know he 

might even have dropped the occasional ice cream cone.  Proustian moments are

everywhere; even in Walton.

WALKING STRANDED

 

Look, I find this whole renunciation of the gender specific pronoun thing as perplexing as 

anyone else does, and this headline on the BBC website didn’t help much:

 

The first confusion here is obviously whether it was one person or several people, but as you read on it becomes apparent it was just one, which was a partial clarification, and then the sub headline read: ‘A walker who was left stranded on a sandbank had not heard warnings from lifeguards because they were wearing headphones,' - so far so gender-neutral but then, 'his rescuers said.’

         ‘They’ suggests multitudes, ‘his rescuers’ confirms it was one bloke.  

The report in the Telegraph, which didn’t doubt that it was a dude, reported an RNLI spokesman (NB) as saying ‘Please be aware of the tide when visiting the beach.’

         Given that the RNLI had been called out to rescue this (male) walking fool who was too busy grooving on his playlist to notice that the effin tide was coming in, I think the spokesman might have said something a bit gamier.  But he, or possibly they, is or are, a model, or models, of restraint.  

          That’s a good thing, right?

 

JUST LIKE CROSSING OVER

I wouldn’t say I ever had serious ambitions to be a ‘real’ photographer, but I did used to 

fantasize about it once in a while.  I suppose I still do. I never wanted to be a fashion 

photographer or a war photographer or a landscape photographer: I wanted to be a street 

photographer, you  know like Winogrand, Cartier-Bresson, Bruce Gilden.  It’s a genre that 

allows, in fact demands, the photographer does a lot of walking.

 

Susan Sontag backs me up on this. ‘The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world "picturesque".’

 

Well that’s good enough for me, although over the years people have come to disapprove of the term ‘shooting’ to describe taking pictures so lord knows how we’re supposed to feel about being ‘armed.’

 

Therefore, given the previous post about Rainbow crossings, I thought you might like to see some street photography of people crossing the road, in some cases waiting to cross the road.

CROSSING THE CROSSING

  

What better way of celebrating International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia than by painting a pedestrian crossing blue, white and pink?  

Councillor Jake Short, lead member for Equalities, said: ‘I’m delighted to see this celebration of the richness and diversity that our transgender community brings to Sutton.  Our hope is that this trans crossing will pave the way for more trans crossings around the UK which in turn would lead to more inclusivity in our society at large.’  Pave the way – you see what he did there.

In fact Sutton already had a Rainbow Crossing in St Nicholas Way:

 

There are a few of them around the place – this one’s in Nottingham:

        Gotta say all those crossing look a bit straight.

        I don’t know much about Sutton but I do know that the Rolling Stones were ‘spotted’ 

there by the legendary Giorgio Gomelsky.  Yes, they walked diversely:

And I know that Sutton was the birthplace or temporary home of Sally Bercow, Joan Armatrading, Noel Coward and Quentin Crisp.  What a rainbow of talent!

I haven’t been able to find a photograph of Quentin Crisp crossing the road, in Sutton or anywhere else, but I dare say he didn’t need a special crossing – he took a rainbow with him everywhere he went. 

 

 

^I