Me and 'im indoors have taken to going on long (for us, anyway) walks. We did a few walks in Budleigh Salterton along the coastal paths (on the rare occasions when it wasn't bucketing with rain!) and, at my instigation, we made a pact then to do a gentle five miles each weekend, on the basis that life is passing me by.
(I seem to have spent all my weekends for the last two decades doing the washing. Socks are the bane of my life, just so's you know - probably in common with every other working mother in the world - I have more unpaired socks in my house than you could shake a box of Persil at!)
The weekend before last we took the car in a westerly direction and did the Maidenhead walk from Boulters Lock. And last weekend, due to 'im indoors whinging on about our carbon footprint (would be quite laudable this, were he not so wretchedly inconsistent about it all), we set off from our front door and headed south, across the river into Barnes, past the Loud Lanky Lad's school and Julian Barwick's house (doffing caps respectfully at both) and then back over Hammersmith Bridge (needs a lick of paint again, guys) before dropping into the Dove for the obligatory pint of London Pride.
I was a weeny bit stiff afterward and needed a nice hot bath but walking is cheap (well, free, if you don't count the pint of Pride), it gets air into your lungs and limbers you up (although I do slightly struggle with my gammy knee, sadly I am inexorably heading for a knee replacement), it allows me to reconnect with 'im indoors (inconsistencies and all) and - best of all - you can properly look at things.
I have lived in and around West London for huge chunks of my life but I saw parts of Barnes and Sheen last week that I have never seen before. And I hadn't really grasped how Sheen connects to Mortlake connects to Barnes.
Best of all are the lovely - and hitherto unnoticed - surprises. The huge number of hanging baskets and pot plants crammed into an elderly lady's ground floor balcony in an old LCC block in British Grove, or the fine Arts and Crafts brickwork on a house in Vine Road, or the potential gem that is a disused signal box at Barnes level crossing (who owns it, does anyone know? Network Rail? And would they sell it to me?)
A walk in a city is proof indeed - if any more were needed - that decent urban space is about the details, the study of small things. It is so very often the tiny things that immeasurably improve the quality of peoples' lives.
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