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: