The Wellbeing that Walking Creates in our Souls

First a circular route due to train issues. But then we are together, we begin. Amberley to Brighton. X hands out homemade flapjacks; delicious fuel. We mark our start with a group “Ho! Ho!” and soon are striding steeply upwards to the South Downs Way. We are well prepared, each with many layers and many waterproofs and far far too much food. We stop for scenery and to catch our breaths. The autumn colours are implausibly beautiful.

On the crest we see the sea. Crepuscular rays strike down and patches of water glow with religious intensity. We argue whether our band will be called “The Crepuscular Rays” or “Restricted Byways”. We follow gliders, and one comes excitingly, frighteningly close. Massive birds of prey hang in the sky, suspicious of our colourful party.

We stop to eat and quickly go from comfortable to numb-fingered. All of us try and give our food away, we’ve all bought enough to share, and everybody wants to reduce the weight of their backpacks. Alas, nobody wants M’s brunch biscuits!

We go through a beech-capped hill fort, with views for many miles. Wet blue toadstools and Dead Men’s fingers claw out of the ground. We wee behind trees and P and L debate whether or not the tower in the distance is the Brighton Donut.

For a while we impose a quiet on ourselves and walk in our separate worlds. Flowers are still out; Scabious and Granny-Pop-Out-Of-Beds grow alongside rose hips and spindle berries and melony blackberries. Butterflies unseasonably flitter in the late sunshine.

We meander back to civilisation. The silhouette of Bramber Castle is startlingly phallic. The sun goldens us on top of the motte and we decide who we might sacrifice. M charades a ridiculous sunset. O dreams of bathtubs. Clouds pinken as we walk to the church, which is tiny and charming and dark. It smells of warmth and candles. Outside is fresh white confetti, a pretty place to marry, fittingly fertile in the shadow of the castle.

We find our Inn, then it’s drinks and bunk bed debates and a quest for vegetarian food. We go to the Indian, and learn that Patillas are not kneecaps. We see a few fireworks, but not quite enough. We oo and aar, but realistically I’m not sure we could all stand for the length of a display. We are weary and achy and conserving what we have for tomorrow. So, time for story-telling and hot chocolate in room four. I have unsettling dreams and wonder if the Inn is haunted; nothing to do with curry and wine.

We wake to sparkling frost. Scrambled Egg and Salmon starts me well and I decide I’ll never need to eat again. Because of the cold I put on all my clothes. A takes a photograph of us being velociraptors. We wiggle through the village, twisted cottages and a river running through and then we are climbing again, staggering, steep and sweltering. I decant as many clothes as is decent but as soon as we reach the ridge I am buttoning and zipping back up.

On one edge of the seascape is the Brighton Donut, clear now, and at the other the Isle of Wight. Closer is the tower of the old concrete factory. We wave over at the North Downs, where several of us grew up. Breakfast and sunshine have replenished us and we settle at a happy pace.

Brighton seems near and far simultaneously. Before we realise it we are already at Devil’s Dyke, waiting impatiently for hang gliders to take off. Finally at the viewing point we identify what each hill is. We slip-slide around demonic folds and very gradually countryside is replaced with golf courses and tarmac and Skeleton Hove and then real Hove and then the Dials. We walk once familiar streets that I can now barely navigate. We have a beer and a final “Ho! Ho!” to mark the end of our weekend. What friends! What walking! I travel home happy.

Everything is Write

When you hold me everything is right. We are wonderful. It doesn’t matter what we do together, it is what we are together. I glide, you push, I slide. We enjoy the shapes of each other, the feel of each other and occasionally we create magic.

Oh, we’re not neat; I’m almost entirely illegible, often deliberately so. Well, everyone wants a bit of mystery in their lives, don’t they? I can’t have you reading me that easily. It’s not attractive to be an open book.
   We make so much. Sometimes it’s just a shopping list, but sometimes we capture a scrap of an idea or the shape of an emotion or a furied-out first draft.
   I have rivals. The laptop and I have an uneasy understanding. I am the beginning and he is the end. I’m the creation and he is the conclusion. I know I have to share you, can’t have me in your hand all the time. There are some that I find harder to forgive. You might be neater with a biro or pencil, but you’re a lot less free. I’m sliding and smudging and downright messy. And you love it.
   It’s because of my rivals I have to disappear from time to time. I’ll slip into unused pockets and to the bottom of bags quite deliberately. I enjoy your fevered hunts for me, I like that you have to grudgingly use others. I leave so that I’ll be missed, so that I remain special. But I’ll always come back to you and, oh, the reunions, how I dance in your hands.

Nursery Crime: How Are You My Friend?

Oh dear,

I fear

My friend

Is on the brink

Sparkle and sunshine

Overlay the grey,

A pretty disposition

Hides lying again

The veneer of good cheer

Has worn eggshell thin,

Cracked china laughter

Hints what’s within

I try to decide

If it’s my business to pry,

Break you with a well-aimed question

Or wait till you slide

As I observe I look I see

Your façade fragmenting

To reveal

maggoty anxiety

A subtle nudge is all it would need;

You think I’m your friend

But its forensic intrigue

That draws me in

So paper over your cracks

And consider who surrounds you,

Now horses and men have left to

Fight more important wars

Circular thinkers can’t tell a fake

And only the desperate

Subconsciously take

A devil for a friend

Oh, I promise I’ll put you

Together again

But, my dear,

You’ll never be quite the same

Maybe I pushed you

And maybe you fell

But there’s nobody left here

And no one to tell.