CHARACTER, DESTINY AND SO ON

 And another thing about being a writer, especially one with an interest in quirks and 

obsessions, sometime you feel that the world is delivering the right kind of ‘character’ to 

your door for your delectation and potential exploitation.

 

Today a new window cleaner came to the house.  I opened the back door to be friendly and to say hello, and I noticed he was walking very slowly and gingerly down the garden path.  

That didn’t strike me as remarkable in itself but he said, ‘I’m walking slowly because I’ve got a false leg and I don’t want to end up falling down and you finding me on my back in your garden.  I’m not worried about the leg.  I’m worried about my pride.’

This was so perfect that I didn’t say anything else and now of course I wish I’d asked him all about how he lost the leg, was he in pain, was he able to get about, etc etc. But perhaps that would have spoiled it.

 

Incidentally I used to date a girl whose father had one leg.  He claimed that in his youth he’d been quite a hit with the ladies.  I can well believe that.

 

CAGE VERSUS CAGE

 

Here is a Zen parable as retold by John Cage in Indeterminacy.  It’s not specifically about 

walking, but it definitely involves walking.

 

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In this version it looks like she could have got across without any help, doesn't it?

John Cage is also responsible for the profoundly wonderful piece Water Walk, in which he walks around the stage (or in the most famous version, see below, a TV studio), and creates watery noises using a bathtub, kettle, watering can, pressure cooker and so on.

 

The best thing is that he’s wearing a suit and tie. I think more avant-gardists should try that.

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John Cage alas was not related to Nicolas Cage, though I've heard him say in an interview that John was part of the inspiration when he chose the name Cage as a pseudonym.

I can’t swear that Nic Cage is much of a walker but obviously acting always involves doing a bit of walking now and then:

 

Nor can I confirm that he’s carried women across rivers but it wouldn’t surprise me. However floating around the internet I did find an image depicting Nic performing a sort of Water Walk. 

HOPE AND GLORY

 I like land and I like art, so obviously I like land art, work by people like Nancy Holt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Andy Goldsworthy, Richard Long etc.  Some of this art, and certainly seeing some of this art, involves a fair amount of walking, which is all to the good.  And of course in some cases the traces of walking create the art.

 

Certain works of land art look like they must have been massively difficult to make, like Smithson’s Spiral Jetty:

  

But other kinds look less so. You go to some out of the way place, rearrange some stones or twigs or leaves or pieces of wood and Bob’s your uncle.  Not that art needs to be difficult.  This is by Andy Goldsworthy:

However, this sometimes raises the question is it art or just a row of rocks? 

 

Is it a JG Ballard-inspired installation of crashed cars?  Or is it just a row of crashed cars?

 

Perhaps one doesn’t preclude the other.

 

On Sunday I was in Shingle Street in Suffolk, where there was a white line of shells that led from the sea’s edge all the way up the beach, more or less to where the houses were, about 300 yards away. 

This looked about medium difficult – a lot of searching to find the shells, a chance of back ache because of all bending to create the line, but I assume that cranes and earth movers  were not involved.

 

A little research reveals that the Shingle Street line is the work of Lida Kindersley and Els Bottema who both grew up in Delft.  The former is a letter cutter, the latter a ceramicist.  The line was first made in 2005 when they’d both been diagnosed with cancer and has endured as a symbol of friendship and survival.

 

This image from their website, shows them at work:

 

I WOULD WALK 500 STEPS ... AND SO ON

  

This is Peta Bee:

 

A little while back she had a piece in the Times Weekend Section – ‘Why walking is the best midlife exercise. Peta Bee on how many steps you really need.’

 

It was variations on the usual flannel –  ‘Improve the scenery to improve your pace,’  ‘Walk faster,’ ‘Complement walking with weights,’  - but there was an interesting part in which she quoted someone called Thomas Yates who is – wait for it -  a professor in ‘physical activity, sedentary behavior and health.’  Imagine that.  I suppose later in his career he may become a professor just of sitting about.

 

The quotation runs as follows, ‘If you are someone who is very sedentary then increasing you daily walk by 500 steps or just aiming for five minutes of continuous walking would be enough to provide a reasonable health boost.’

 

You see that.  You don’t actually have to DO it.  You just have for AIM to do it.

 

However, according to a sign currently displayed at the Barbican Centre, the government takes a different view – 

 

They say you need ‘a daily walk lasting 20 minutes or more to reduce the risk of heart disease,’ though they don’t say how MUCH more than 20 minutes.  And of course it doesn’t say you actually reduce heart disease, just RISK or heart disease.

 

Now, if you find yourself between trains at Chelmsford station, as I did recently, you’ll have the time to walk from one end of the platform to the other.  In fact you’ll have time to walk from the middle, where the platform entrance is, to one end, back to the middle, down to the other end and back to the middle again. 

 

I’d estimate that the platform is 250 yards long, so that’s your 500 steps right there, though it seemed to take me longer than 5 minutes.

 

In fact if you’re at Chelmsford station and your train is cancelled you’ve got a good half hour to walk back and forth, do you 500 steps and then a great many more.  That must begged for your health, though that's not why I walk.

 

And at the southern end of the platform there was a sign, in fact a use of language, in fact a concept, that I’d never seen before:

 

‘Cess path continues at other end of platform.’

 

I'd never seen the term 'cess path' before. It was the kind of thing that makes a walk worthwhile.  Strange that it's not a category of experience mentioned in Peta Bee’s article.

BETAVILLE

  

I don’t often feel like a character walking through a Jean Luc-Godard film, but it sort of 

happened the other day in Felixstowe.

 

The film in question was Les Carabiniers (1963) in which two idiot brothers go off to war, having been promised that they can take all the loot and plunder they want.

"Will we be able to slaughter the innocent?" 

"Of course, this is war." 

 

When the war is over they return home, and the only loot they've picked up is a collection of picture postcards.

 

         Now, because I have a deep affection for dying forms, I also have a deep affection for postcards.  I’m not a collector, just a small time accumulator, but I happen to have one that shows ‘Hamilton Cliffs and Gardens, Felixstowe.’  

 

I no longer remember where or when I acquired it – the back is blank and I assume I picked it up in a junk shop somewhere.  This postcard image was on my mind as I walked in Felixstowe.  The Hamilton Gardens now seem to be merged with the Seafront Gardens; certainly I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.  

And there were also the Cranmer Cliff Gardens, which were fenced off and inaccessible and looked as though they might once have contained grottos and possibly hermits.  Also possibly a pillbox.

 

Of course we didn’t only walk in the gardens. We went as far as Felixstowe Ferry – passing two Martello towers on the way.  Also an unexpectedly Ballardian lagoon. 

 

And I tried, not very hard, to buy a postcard but I couldn’t see anything that was as good as the old one I have.

 

I suppose Les Carabaniersis a film about how some of us are just as much in love with the images of things as we are with the things themselves.  I still don’t know if that’s a bad thing or not.