Inaction as a means of walking

Wanna launch a blog? About walking, say? Long walks, uphill (but rarely downhill), drenched in rain, working up a rant, heretical discoveries (eg, driving to the start turns out to be the best bit), knocking off numerical targets, talking or remaining silent, trajectories with a purpose (eg, finding a loo), forgetting and remembering, boasting about fashionable kit.

Age may reduce the above options. Shorter walks mean more attention to detail. Shapes of trees, styles of fencing, comical sign-posts, funny hats, unidentified flowers, varieties of rubbish, clouds resembling domestic vegetables. 

Greater age may compel even shorter walks which rely on literary devices. To the post office adds drama; to the plumber causes gloom. Teenagers overtake you and you look the other way. Pierre Allains (Wrongly employed but why not?) are out of place en route to the library.

Leading to the shortest walk – the one without walking. The imaginary walk. A whole new world! Huge benefits: no need to leave the house, meals need not be portable, thirst isn’t a problem. Wearing PJs is entirely acceptable. 

Take this proposition: from dozing in bed to standing, legs apart, in front of the en suite porcelain. It takes time, I kid you not. A twinge (“down there”) sets the idea in motion. Ten minutes elapse between lying down and sitting up in bed. Slippers (Damnit! Downstairs!) give way to bedsocks ; oh the bending, the contortions, the heavy breathing. Time flows like tar in winter. Finally you’re standing, but is this a temporary or permanent state? Bright spot: falling down takes no time at all

But here’s the thing. There’s no actual need to disembark for the en suite. You may simply daydream it. Adjusting the temperature. Flights of angels may accompany you. The compass gathers dust.

The other US: "Tears run down my little cheeks"*

It’s impossible not to write about the USA just now. Europeans must forgive me.

In 1965, poverty-stricken in London, a daughter just arrived, my career (That ironic word!) still fledgling if not egg-bound, I decided I’d like to live/work in the USA. VR supported me even though – for family reasons - it would be far more of a wrench for her. Getting there lasted a year. Eventually I convinced the US Embassy I would not live on the earnings of a prostitute. I flew out just after Christmas, stopping for an hour in Reykjavik. Which is in Iceland.

Many Brits envied me but for the wrong reasons. They thought I was going for the money. I wasn’t. Just as well since I lost money on the six-year stay.

Why did I go? Well, I was, and am, a wordsmith and my working vocabulary expanded enormously. Words I roll round my tongue even now. One job I applied for (Glad I didn’t get it.) was in Duluth. Just say it, it ain’t the Home Counties, Pavements became sidewalks. I watched the Pirates play the Cardinals. I yearned for the Grand Tetons even if I never got there.

I went for spoken wit. Novels suggested that ordinary working stiffs in the US spoke a terse language that appealed to me. Not all did, of course, but some were word perfect.

For central heating. I’d have died without it.

For friendliness (noticeably lacking in London). The idea sounded like tourist office fluff but it happened within one hour of my arrival.

For space. In my apartment (which wasn’t a flat) and all the way west to San Francisco, where I subsequently worked for a week.

Orange Man has poisoned these memories. I want them back.

More follows.

* Daughter PP (Professional Phlebotomist), aged 3.

Where we've been: 1

Note the sense of escape. The barely trafficked autoroute leading to somewhere distant, satnav prominent, bottle-spray of disinfectant securely mounted, relaxed hands on the steering wheel.

Look again and the car seats are occupied by two women. It’s my blog so where am I? In the back, reflecting that it’s now happening. The country I’ve come to loathe, temporarily I hope, is a Channel Tunnel crossing behind and I’m free from its incompetence and gerrymandering for a while.

The French villa where we’ve stayed before was booked almost a year ago. Ann, the generous and sympathetic proprietor, is willing to waive her rights to the four-figure deposit. But I’m not the only one with a strong urge to escape. As octogenarians VR and I are the most vulnerable to The Plague and it’s up to us to make the decision; VR was in no doubt from the start.

There’ve been major convulsions and we four in the car are the lucky ones, unaffected by travel uncertainties. Flights for the other four were cancelled and son-in-law Darren has worked prodigies, stitching together a sequence of train and TGV hops, broken by an Uber taxi ride across Paris linking the Gare du Nord with the Gare de Lyon. Large extra sums of money have been needed and VR and I have provided them. An initial online order of food and drink from a French supermarket has been contrived by computer whiz, Daniel, granddaughter Ysabelle’s partner. It will cost over £800.

In the sense that there are laws, we are not breaking them.

So why am I not driving? I’ve done it many times before. Because I have complete faith in daughter Occasional Speeder and Ysabelle. I loll and construct imaginary conversations with French citizens.

Next post: Did the French cope?

Not being old

I'm old, lack useful employment, am tempted towards alcoholism, living tremulously under the wing of the Angel of Death. Once things were different. Not exciting, fruitful or worthy of record, just different.

A friend drives me 90 miles from London towards Thetford in Norfolk. I am to cover motorbike racing at Snetterton for the magazine that employs me. Snetterton circuit, formerly an RAF station, is utterly flat, not at all spectator-friendly. That doesn't matter. My report won't depend on visual activity since I'll see very little of the races; instead I'll infer what happens and then ask questions.

Taking part are Britain's best bike racers of the period, Mike Hailwood (see pic), Phil Read, Derek Minter. The sport is shockingly dangerous and these guys are my heroes. I would pay to see them race if I had to.

As events proceed I compile coded accounts of the races. Each racer has a number and I record their positions lap by lap as they pass by the press box. In between races I slip down to the pits and talk to my heroes.

I joke with Phil Read, a raffish bandanna round his neck. He's helped a novice rider get his first "start" at this meeting. Does Phil expect to share his unlikely winnings? We laugh.

In the last race Mike Hailwood comes off. The sole of his elderly racing boot has torn away from the upper. His damaged toe, wrapped in a bloody bandage, doesn’t seem to trouble him. He too laughs as he explains what happened. Interview over he gets into his two-seater Jaguar with three girl-friends.

Back in the van I scribble the drama then type it up at the office. It’s late Sunday evening, just time for a pint.

A different part of my life.

Easing the way back

Returning home from the French holiday villa in Creissan (22 miles north of the Mediterranean coast) is inevitably a burden. The distance, joyfully accepted a fortnight before, now seems formidable. Creissan to Calais is 660 miles (10 hr 12 min), then there's the Channel Tunnel crossing (say 1 hr 30 min with the queueing), then a further 210 miles (4 hr 10 min) between Folkestone and Hereford. Some 16 hr all told; it takes two days.

We've been doing it for over a decade and are now experts. The key lies in where to break the French part of the journey. For several years we've settled on Forges-les-Eaux, north-west of Paris. As the kilometres unreel we dream of the wine list at the Hotel la Paix.

This is where satnav comes into its own. After years of experimentation the optimum route takes us far closer to Paris than we first thought. Look at the geography. You'd like to weave your way through all those suburbs aided only by an atlas? Masochism can be your only justification. Satnavs mislead you, you say. So do atlases in a country where new roads are added every year. Treat the satnav as a tool not a crystal ball. Dominate it. We tested a small variation while in transit. It worked.

The bill for three at the Hotel la Paix was huge but then we sought catharsis. Achieved this year via a bottle of Latour's Vosne Romanée, followed by a snifter of old armagnac (VR never changes) and two doses of mature calvados for Occasional Speeder and me.

The hotel is beautifully maintained. Note the photo - the flex of the bedside light seems unnecessarily tangled. No! The switch becomes more accessible to the weary traveller. There’s a little treat.

Flights, and flights of fancy

Flying's expensive - in the foreground, an Aston Martin

 

Helicopters as well as fixed-wing planes and gliders at Shobdon

 

Drove Professional Bleeder and VR to Shobdon Airfield yesterday. Watched light planes take off and land, watched gliders towed up towards the clouds, there to be released to find their thermals. All three of us had the Full English Breakfast (barring baked beans) the unhealthiest meal known to mankind.

At Brampton Bryan the hedge goes on and on

At Aardvark the shelves go on and on

Then on to Aardvark Books "an enormous bookbarn with 50,000 titles " in Brampton Bryan, a village with the most spectacular churchyard hedge in the world, previously described here. At Aardvark there's a café where customers may sit among the books, eat cake and natter. PB ordered a cafetière of Ethiopian coffee; in an afternoon of superlatives this turned out to be the best coffee in the world.

I bought Richard Dawkins' essays and Mrs Thrale's letters to Dr Johnson.

And a score. Ten Brahms songs published in the days when London postal districts were identified by a single letter. Original cost: four shillings.

A sneaky indulgence buying scores, obviously an elitist practice. Showing off, I made sure others at the table saw what I'd been up to. With V I've already learned one of the songs (Wiegenlied - Cradle Song) but I don't suppose I'll learn any more. Nevertheless it's fun to trace the notes and murmur approximations of their sounds. One way of proving I'm not a soccer fan and haven't seen even ten seconds of A Game of Thrones.

I should be ashamed of such self-aggrandisement but the Hell with that. Music means more to me than it did three years ago and I'm in profit. If I won the lottery I'd move into a bigger house (with indoor swiming pool) and sponsor recitals with free wine. Those with tin ears could swim.

Mini-thrills

Not our Skoda (Czech plates are  a give-away) nor
 was the slush so deep. But you get some idea

We're invited to dinner at daughter Occasional Speeder's house deep in the Gloucestershire countryside. We stay the night and awake to a foot of snow on top of our Skoda Octavia. We're welcome to stay but I'm on a pill regime for my blasted sciatica (qv) and I've only brought the absolute minimum.

OS has a 4WD Dacia Duster which she loves. In it we may explore the options and we take the opposite direction because it is, on balance, flatter. OS knows the 3½-mile sub-route well, it's her way to work, but the country roads are narrow and winding, and there's an absolute bastard steep descent to a double-blind cross-roads.

But the news is good. The surface is slush, not deep snow, compacted snow or ice. The only real hazard is the possibility of a car coming in the opposite direction; moving over could involve deep snow. We're lucky and reach the main road without problems. On the return journey OS switches off the 4WD; driving requires more concentration but it's doable.

The Skoda is bigger, less nimble but it has a switchable auto/manual gearbox. I can lock into whatever gear I choose. Second's quite fast enough. I've learned a lot from travelling in the Dacia and VR, beside me, is able to suppress her worries. Way ahead I see a large Mercedes coming towards us; Bless me, he pulls to one side! So out of character.

We're on the main road and say goodbye to OS who's been shepherding us in the Dacia to the rear. One frightening discovery remains. Ridges of slush persist. A more typical Mercedes overtakes us and in cutting back plasters our windscreen. For two seconds we travel blind.

Moral: keep the wipers on

Lost 3

Swimming is the perfect exercise for my aged, whalelike body. For several years I swam a mile twice a week. Much against my will, I had to stop.

A mile is 80-plus lengths of a large pool in about 52 minutes. You're looking for efficiency and that means crawl, breast-stroke is a non-starter. With proper crawl the head is underwater for 95% of the time and this means learning to breathe in an entirely different way. Taking in sufficient air in a quick twist of the head lasting no more than 2 seconds; breathing out into the water.

The problem is psychological; fighting the mind's belief that such breathing cannot be sustained. When I first completed an all-crawl half-mile the endorphins surged through my body in a fine fizz.

Although the municipal pool had a section for length swimmers, most were there for social reasons; it was too crowded. A local hotel had a pool but it was irregularly shaped and intermittently crowded. I joined a proper leisure centre with two large adult pools and a smaller one for children. Most swimmers were there to do lengths. Just one problem: there were no straight lines on the pool-bottom to keep crawl-swimmers on track.

For two years I did my careful lengths but then a disabled woman swam into me. That was traumatic. The possibility of another such crash - especially involving a woman - weighed heavily and I gave up my membership.

Alone, off Karpathos in the Dodecanese, I used to swim a mile to a small beach, then back again after a short rest. But that was just two weeks of the year. I dreamed of winning the lottery and buying a house with a pool. I no longer swim.

Caring vehicles

Recently we spent two nights in Cardiff, capital city of Wales, 58.4 miles away. For reasons too embarrassing to explain I chose public transport. Train would have been quicker but at a total cost of £76. Much as I dislike buses the total cost (£0 since we used our pensioner bus passes) made buses a no-brainer.

For me this was a new world. This service (run by Stagecoach) acknowledges that the majority of passengers will be pensioners and the bus interiors are designed accordingly. Travellers who are mobile are jammed into familiar cramped seats. Their elders not only have more knee-room but adjacent space to accommodate their shopping trolleys; some seats face the bus’s centreline and allow the ancients to drop into position rather than wriggle in awkwardly. Several of the grab-posts are curved to make access even easier.

No one else did the journey end-to-end as we did and almost no one paid cash. At Abergavenny, about half way, the bus virtually disgorged itself  then took on more of the same. Some very ancient ancients shuffled in, travelled a couple of street-lengths, then shuffled off.

Had I been a Tory, firm in the belief that indigent oldsters should be punished for living too long, I’d have fulminated.  But the route took in Welsh valley towns once populated by coal miners, now home to the unemployed and to those on benefits. Pontypool was a particularly poignant example. These middle-distance services are as much a form of social care as mere transportation. When I presented my pass to the scanner I made two or three errors of positioning. Patiently the driver instructed then re-instructed me; used to people of my age.

On the back of the seats were USB sockets for re-charging smartphones. Which I found cheering.

Way to go

This year's big holiday starts with a 482.4-mile journey that's  more demanding than it looks. It involves skirting two capital cities - London and Paris; also we'll be using Eurotunnel during the school holidays, the busiest time of the year, to accommodate grandson Zach's academic obligations. Passed with flying colours I'm glad to say.

Although we've done the journey before it remains something of a 21st-century adventure. We must get  from Occasional Speeder's house near Gloucester, UK,  to our hotel, Le Gerbe de Blé, in the village of Chevilly, near Orléans, France. It should take 8 hr 17 min and since most of the route is on motorways that's a fair assumption. But we'll need to stop for fuel and to eat a picnic prepared in the UK. Why must we picnic in the gastronomic paradise that is France? Because French motorway caffs are no better than those in the UK.

The following day we'll complete the route to southern France.

OS and I will share the driving. We'll use electronics to consider route options depending on traffic conditions. We hope to leave Luddites who reject satnavs  whingeing in traffic jams. Satnavs provide directions and dispense psychological aid. On long journeys it's a comfort to know exactly how many kilometres have passed. Also to watch one's ETA converge with clock time. And to be pre-instructed about taking the right lane at complex motorway junctions. Meanwhile the front passenger will smartphone traffic ahead and, if necessary, change strategies on non-motorway roads west of Paris.

Such work passes time more quickly than staring out of the car window. VR will Kindle, doze, Kindle again. Darren, Zach’s Dad, will doze and talk to Zach. Zach will electronically manage an imaginary soccer team.

Exotica

Rare pic of RR going rural at snail's pace

Brother Sir Hugh's long solo walk from Berwick-on-Tweed to somewhere in Somerset (Check out the map, it's rather more than a step.) came to a painful end when he fell and broke his arm quite badly. A metal plate and all that. We picked him up from his home in Arnside and had him convalesce with us for a week.

The sun shone on Saturday and he suggested a gentle walk suitable for invalids or, in my case, unwalkers. Familiar with his obsessions, I knew it would have to be quantified - numbers play a huge role in his perambulations. I also sensed I must push against notional targets however piddling the distance.

A loop was devised around Dore Abbey (Cistercian, 12th century, thoroughly modernised in the 13th.) The first problem was parking: Herefordshire's rural roads are one car's-width wide and snake between high impenetrable hedges. The pedestrian route lay between a mini-river (name unidentified) and a seemingly endless field of early wheat - a word that always invites me to pronounce its internal h. Then an orchard, then narrow roads with a surprising amount of uphill.

Back in the car, surrounded by electronics, we got down to the good stuff: measurement. The walk covered 3.27 miles and took 72 minutes. Our rate was calculated as 2.85 mph which I regarded as pathetic - in my swimming days a mile's crawl took about 55 minutes. Sir Hugh, who seemed impressed by my gait ("As if you wanted to get if over with."), said it was OK... considering.

MORE ATYPICAL RR. Bought myself a stainless steel dibber, nominally £16 but reduced somewhat. Used it to plant cosmas, candytuft, Californian poppy, etc. Sir Hugh took the pix. That's it, Tone Deaf doesn't do horticulture.

Even rarer pic: RR gardening with expensive new dibber

Downhill all the way

Prelude: Brother Sir Hugh has walked heroically in his time: from sea to different sea, along mountain ranges, through gorges. Older now, he reports facing a 3-mile walk and fretting he'll lack material for his blog.
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It's upping time and a smear of light downstairs shows through the front-door windows. Fidgety dawn is arriving earlier these days.

I'm at the top of the stairs in my upping-time garb: PJs, heavy fleece dressing gown, loose furry slippers. A decade ago, half-way down, my heels slipped and I bounced on my coccyx; slippers aren't exactly secure and I must go down carefully. I too am older, plus four years more than Sir Hugh.

There are thirteen steps and I recall vaguely there was a similar number at Tyburn, the old public gallows in London. Unlucky for some. It behoves me to hold hard to the handrail but the physics isn't propitious; my grip is in line with the stairs, a grip at right-angles would be stronger.

VR has always urged a tight grip for another reason. Eventually the rail will smoothen and we'll have a patina. Not yet, though; my fingers slide over rough wood underneath the rail. Most descenders will never notice, though.

Directly above the stairs is a tall slab of wall, the backside of our bedroom’s en suite. Hanging on it is VR's huge tapestry of a cockerel. Alas, rarely seen. Going downstairs you don't look out, but down.

My feet slide over the carpeted rim between step and riser. The movement echoes the coccyx slip but today I'm aware and not at risk.

Careful at the bottom. To the unwary there is always one step more. An awful sensation: expecting the ground floor but finding only air.

Distance? 4 metres?

Oblivion denied

My Worst Journeys. An occasional series

We holidayed in New Zealand three times. Travelling there was hellish although eventually we reduced the torment somewhat by stopping off in Kuala Lumpur at a hotel with a swimming pool. Flight details are blurred since I ceased to be the person I am, became shrunken, reduced from three-dimensions to two - a poppadum dropped briefly into the frying pan, devoid of intellectual resources, desperate, inchoate. A victim of twenty-first century irony whereby modest affluence and advanced technology allowed me to undergo a form of torture previously limited to the rich.

The horrors started before take-off. Then, our carrier, Japanese Air Lines, had seating where the bum-to-kneecap dimension was 29 in. (vs. 32 in. on, say, United). As if my thighs were nailed into a cast-iron coffin. For fourteen hours.

Lunch consisted of dull western-style chicken and sushi. I opted to go native and sushi proved even duller - flavourless stodge. The small screen offered five US movies exquisitely chosen for their banality, laddishness, shouted dialogue and twanging background.

These objective terrors were bad but the subjective ones were worse. I needed an occupation that obliterated time. Of course I had books but books read solely for this purpose change subtly; they realise they are being betrayed and lose their power to distract. Later I acquired an MP3 player but engine noise overpowered the lower frequencies. Mindlessness is the key. Later still I was given a device which played Solitaire and nothing else; perfect, but by then we'd given up on New Zealand.

We are endowed with the ability to think constructively, to reflect, to guess at the future and to dwell on fond memories. Long-distance flight sets these abilities at nought. An arbitrary jail sentence.

Aye, lads are like that

My Worst Journeys. An occasional series

That she agreed to a dinner! At Leylands Lane! The stiffness of it. She, her brother, I and laid-out cutlery, all foreseen. Mother bringing in plates.

While I am booted for rock on an empty road “up in the Dales”. Miles to go, too many of them.

Mother smiling artificially at this girl who means so much to me. Mother concerned at my youth, my inexperience, that I might be hurt.

Boots clump on untrafficked tarmac as I stride out painfully. Futilely.

There was a refusal, ah how that hurt. Now this, this unexpectedly formal meal. Was she simply curious...?

My calves ache, I’m walking too quickly and it’s pointless. Nearer to her, yes, but it’s pure theory. I will be late.

.... wanting to read the titles of books on our shelves? But surely she wasn’t that interested.

Late. Which can mean dead. The late lamented. Would I prefer that in a bid for sympathy?

Ash-blonde hair. Figure – no I can’t think about that. A sharp, regional tone of voice, well suited for criticism. Inaudible over the clash of knives and forks on my Mother’s chipped crockery. Imagination’s a bitch, isn’t it?

I walk on into a mist swallowed up by defective memory. Somehow the gap between the Dales road and Leylands Lane was bridged, in time, and anticlimactically. I know only that we met – foregathered sounds appropriate - and there was crisp meaningless talk. Of the meal which had seemed so inexplicable it only exists in the form I imagined it; not a single image now extant. An adolescent fever reduced to a faint uneasiness.

If wishes were bikes...

A motor-bike's attractions lie in its very nature.

No clutter, just an engine, two wheels, a frame, a seat and controls.

As a result bikes have a favourable power-to-weight ratio; eg, my car develops 112 kW and weighs 1180 kg whereas the admittedly hairy-chested Honda Fireblade sports bike develops slightly more power yet only weighs 15% of the car. Guess which has the better top speed and acceleration.

A bike has superior ergonomic logic. Car speed is controlled with the foot, bike speed with the more sensitive hand. It's the other way round for gear-changing but a car gear-change moves through an H-pattern whereas the bike's changer moves up and down, always in a vertical plane, and may be three times as quick. Quick gear-changes make an engine more responsive to prevailing circumstances.

Cars are steered manually through a complex linkage which now demands power assistance. A bike is steered via small, intuitive movements of the rider's body, usually assisted by road camber.

A bike is intrinsically unstable, adding risk which, in turn, adds appeal.

In the end, though, a bike is fantastical. Bought as pure indulgence and used selectively it has its points. But a car is superior where the family vehicle must earn its keep. Apart from its obvious flaws a bike can undermine parental obligations.

I last rode a bike in the seventies, a Velocette as illustrated though less clean. I chafed at its antiquity; would have preferred a bike that was more demonstrably beyond my control. Anti-bikers would say that was a death-wish; pro-bikers – eternal optimists – would contrarily say it was a life-wish. I am clearly far too old to ride again but the urge is still there, well buried – like many men who’ve also felt that urge, I suppose.

Road and more road

My Worst Journeys. An occasional series

This is Tryfan in North Wales. In 1955, on leave from the RAF I spent time near Tryfan rock-climbing. A main road, the A5, passes by and I intended to hitch-hike 140 miles back to Bradford. I knew the drill, had hitch-hiked to London for a couple of holidays.

I reached the northern coast road quite quickly and turned east to pass through (preferably bypass) the resort towns Llanfairfechan, Conway and Colwyn Bay en route to Chester. A sunny summer day, lots of traffic.

You may stand forlorn at the roadside, cocking your thumb. I prefer to walk since it provides an impression of progress. But the more you walk the more you have to walk. You see a significant junction or a roundabout some way ahead and you must get to the far side, otherwise you may stop a car that's turning off. That morning and early afternoon I passed many junctions and roundabouts.

How far did I walk? It's a blur. At the worst bit the main road met an estuary and I traversed a network of unproductive suburban roads. I departed Wales, entering the land of Transport Deprivation. I knew myself to be cursed, a modern-day Walking Dutchman. I ran out of intellectual resources, unable to think constructively, unable to hold the unremitting labour at bay. My target was meaningless, the road led nowhere and I lacked identity.

A smallish pick-up stopped and I luxuriated on sacks that contained the remains of slaughtered chickens. But only for a few miles. Thereafter the processes that compile memories broke down completely and I have no idea what happened that evening. A train perhaps?

Years later I drove that road but uneasily. Rhyl is Hell, see my long short-story, The Little Black Book.

A niggle avoided

My new car allows me to check tyre pressures electronically at the steering wheel. And, if a tyre starts to deflate an icon lights up. This is a worthwhile step forward. I always carry a pressure gauge (several in fact) and will continue to do so, but its application seems rooted in the dark ages, slightly hit and miss, with consequent small loss of air.

In fact it requires a knack. Knacks are for men who reminisce about old cars, boasting about how their skills overcame a vehicle's shortcomings. In the twenty-first century there should be no shortcomings to overcome, and for this reason: even the feeblest modern car can exceed the motorway maximum speed. Often it takes a crash or a near-miss for an inert driver to realise just how much dangerous energy is involved in a ton at 70 mph.

Check, too, the local newspaper for road fatalities. They appear to be split between the very young and the very old. Reflect: the very young are probably too young to have picked up knacks, the very old are quite likely to have forgotten them.  Yes, I'm well aware which category I belong to.

I've switched from diesel to petrol for speculative reasons I won't go into. A veritable sea-change, whatever that is (Please don't explain; I too can use Google). With the diesel at slow speeds I used to loaf along, my right foot merely hovering over the loud pedal, torque being developed at tiny rpm figures. Now even the mildest acceleration requires conscious foot pressure; occasionally I forget.

“Start-stop” switches off the engine at traffic lights, saving fuel; re-starting is instantaneous and virtually unnoticeable. For Trump voters and other climate-change deniers there's a disabling switch. The car is thus politically neutral.

The auto/manual gearbox is seven speeds.

Not quite LEJOG

Belmont Road's old council flats, now happily replaced

LEJOG stands for Land's End to John O'Groats, the sort of long-distance walk brother Sir Hugh goes in for. He's at it now in the West Country. I attempt to compete with more modest projects.

They’re laying new gas mains in Belmont Road; murder if I want to drive down to the city, but walking I can race the immobilised cars. More than two months and my hair needs cutting.

I walk hard along adjacent thoroughfares - Dorchester, Stanbury, Chichester – then suddenly bethink myself: I’m an old man hurrying. What’s his problem, people will ask? If it’s his bladder he’s going the wrong way.

Past Tesco’s car-wash, a noisy, thrashing device frequently labelled Out Of Order. I’m not a patron; pay six quid and it rains. Hereford mud is reddish and stands out on a car’s flanks.

Beyond is Tesco itself, convenient but never surprising. No, I tell a lie. This year strawberries were superlative. And robust champagne at a tenner, identifiably from Rheims, not flat prosecco nor insipid cava. Now I’m into Belmont Road and my feet, softened by wearing trainers, start to ache slightly. I should be proud of this self-mortification but at my age you start to worry: am I overdoing things? The alliterative image of a pensioner prostrate on the pavement, other pensioners pondering and powerless.

The council flats on the right have been replaced with smart terraces and I’m glad the city can afford this. What I’m not glad about is the bookie’s shop next to the mini-market. Should the nominally poor be tempted?

This is the tedious bit, I can see half a mile ahead, under the old railway bridge, Beeching-ised in the sixties, now a grossly over-engineered footbridge. On the left the new Polish deli which I welcomed; until I picked out a chunk of smoked pork and found I couldn’t buy it. It carried no price.

Not far now to Body Beautiful, a salon I don’t usually admit to. For obvious reasons

Lump-bagging

Sir Hugh (left), dressed to withstand blizzards;
 RR (right), obviously a townie but note the boots

Brother Sir Hugh is staying, partly for social reasons, partly to feed his obsession for walking. But not simply ambling to Tesco for a litre of semi-skinned, there are rules. Once he walked from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean along the Pyrenees. These days, sere and tortured by his exertions, he pursues more modest projects: bagging all the landscape lumps in England of a certain height. He invites me to climb a trio of lumps within spitting distance of where I live.

I'm older than Sir Hugh. Years ago I foresaw there'd come a time when I'd only be capable of  a sedentary life. This has now happened; it's one reason why I compose sonnets. Sir Hugh insisted his lumps were hardly distinguishable from the flat.

My “walking” boots were last worn thirty years ago. Dust had stiffened the laces, making them hard to tighten. But the thick leather had maintained its contours and despite the boots' enormous weight they were a reassurance. I felt I could kick to death any importunate mugger.

I'd forgotten about going uphill. When my breathing started to scare cows Sir Hugh tactfully stopped for unspecified strategic reasons. Resuming I made no more noise than a slumbering spaniel. The eventual panoramic view encompassed the distant Malverns and the even more distant Black Mountains (in Wales).

The second lump was wooded, diminishing any sense of altitude. Alas we picked up an Ancient Mariner figure, in favour of Brexit (England's departure from the European Union) and much given to interference.

The final ascent was deceptive: the initial lane was unpleasantly steep and filled me with hatred. On my return I was able to jog-trot down this section and thus take my revenge. Walking is sustained by many similar delusions.

On two wheels in Lincolnshire

Over sixty years ago I'm cycling towards a youth hostel in Lincoln. The flat roads offer no respite for free-wheeling. It's raining and a plastic cape covers me and much of the bike; a mobile yellow gazebo.

My thoughts are aeons away from the rain and my pedalling legs. I'm envisaging a movie poster I saw in London two days before: Susan Hayward in a sheathlike dress stretched tight over every contour from neckline to ankles. Despite her name in the movie - Harriet - I'm revelling in Susan's rampant curvature. I'm fifteenish and stuffed with testosterone.

A bike travels four times as fast as a pedestrian. Had I been walking my revelries would have been even more intense. There is a point to all this.

Theoretically I was on a biking holiday. About eighty miles a day with regular changes of scenery to divert me. Yet that day my mind was detached from the physical experience; scenery was passing by unnoticed.

Biking and walking are slow enough to allow thoughts to wander. Oh sure, there'd be times I'd look at my watch, feel the need to push on, wonder what I'd get for evening meal. Other times I’d send my mind on its own holiday.

Two combined pleasures: the smug virtues of exercise plus Susan's barely controlled eroticism. Well, why not?

Was I unique? I suspect there are others – hard men and women - who, nevertheless, have allowed their minds to dally. Not Susan daydreams, perish the thought. Perhaps herbaceous borders, or "I wonder where my Meccano ended up?", or days in Benidorm, many years ago.

But you wouldn't know it from their despatches. Not a hint. Bikers/walkers only write about biking/walking; there’s no other existence. Susan? She’s a map reference.