Walking, Always Walking

My legs are not sore or anything, if anything they throbbed in a satisfying, healthy way. My feet have taken a battering mind; scuffed and torn a little; rock-hard at the heel sand the balls of my feet. My feet tell a story.

A story of how I’ve walked. Thousands and thousands of miles around all the many neighbourhoods I’ve lived in. Walking and fretting mainly, or walking to waste time, though sometimes luxuriating just in the act of walking. Shouldn’t be taken for granted, some folk can’t do it at all.

I walked extensively in Kilmarnock, a town I lived in by mistake. I knew more of that town than natives of many decades who’d never found it necessary to leave their own locale. Maybe they’d go into town to visit the ‘big shops’ but mainly they’d keep to Riccarton or Shortlees. The world is huge but its people are territorial. Doesn’t do to stray from what you know. Who knows what folk got up to in Louden?

I walked extensively in Liverpool as I did in various parts of London. I walked around Southport, only glad I was no longer wandering around Birkenhead.

In Birkenhead, my next door neighbour was an extensive walker too. He’d lived with his elderly mother and, when she’d died, he lived alone. A couple of times we’d set out walking almost simultaneously, he from his front door, I from mine. We were then forced to walk in opposite directions. I wouldn’t have chosen to go walking around Higher Tranmere and neither would he – no-one would!

There were times we’d arrive home simultaneously too. A brusque ‘hullo’ then we’d each retreat behind out respective doors; cursing again at this unwanted pedestrian rival. I’d meet him mid-walk. Maybe I’d be coming out of Prenton up to Oxton and I’d see him coming straight toward me. ‘Cunt!’ I’d mutter under my breath and no doubt the same oath was muttered by him. Another ‘hullo’ and we’d pass on the street. At least I’d know he was going in the opposite direction from home so I could relax the rest of the way. He eventually moved out Bebington way but I’d still run into him.

Pyschogeography is a thing I only understand by instinct. Locations, vistas, buildings can have atmospheres that can invoke feelings inside of me. There’s a rugby pavilion out at Musselburgh that fascinates me. It has a spiritual quality of reminiscence. I could look at it for some minutes and let it inspire these inexplicable emotions. It looms a past-life. I can sense places I’ve remembered from childhood. It means something to me but I don’t know what or why it should. I didn’t grow up anywhere near this building, yet it has been here waiting for me. It is mysterious like déjà vu. You have to try and interpret its meaning before it evaporates. Yet everytime I see it, it exerts a power over me. There are many places like this. I like to seek them out.

I sometimes walk up a road and it’s very aspect tugs at something inside. The way it wends and turn, the sun glints on its tenement windows. High tenements; tenements after the rain has darkened them. There are places in Glasgow, one in Langside that I haven’t visited since childhood that are included in an album in my pyschogeographic soul. I’m scared to go back there incase it no longer contains the evocation; an archway in Eastbourne, one in East Finchley (something about archways maybe – portals, entrances, exits?); deep dry-docks give me the shivers and make me giddy; barren, scrubbly fields; destitute buildings. They’re all there in my psychic album.

These days I walk upon Portobello beach and feel generally more content than I've ever felt. I paddle if I’m seeking a real thrill.