You dont ramble in the city, you may wander but you don’t ramble.
Wandering through Soho. Wandering round Tower Hill.
You don’t ramble up Regents Street you wander and mooch.
When I moved down to East Sussex, 40 years ago, I didn’t wander or ramble anywhere.
I was fixated on my work.
I could have been living in Lithuania for all that it mattered.
I was working at TVam, writing two scripts a week and performing them on the other days. I was young, energetic and looking up the next step on the ladder.
Life took on a different kind of urgency. Catching trains and practicing patience. I took the 6.20a.m. and watched the other regular travellers.
I lived in the country and worked in the city.
Then one day I took a walk behind the cottage.
A long and winding road. Next to the golf course. The road just wide enough for a single car.
Frosty in the winter and lush green in the summer.
The back road has three distinct terrains.
The first has a woodland for sale. Light and airy with primroses lining the verges.
Then the road levels off.
Part two. A huge windmill in the garden of Lynn’s organic farm shop. The gate only open at weekends.
A small shed with bacon and cabbages, ice cream and blackberries and if so desired a whole pig in the freezer. Lyn and her partner butcher it, the chops and loins kept in their fridge. I never bought a whole pig. Can’t eat them on account of their intelligence, like octopuses.
But it is good to know that the pigs had a good life.
I remember Aldo Zilli, the Italian celebrity chef, telling me about his role in q pigs life. One of nine children, he was born in the small seaside town of Alba Adriatic, his job when pig slaughtering came round, was to hold the curly tail and catch the pouring blood in a bowl.
Everybody played their part.
Past Lyn and a downward slope to the wood yard.
It’s not there any more.
The silence of the road save the chattering of birds and the occasional pheasant ambling on the roadside and home to the occasional herd of cows crossing from one field to another. The first time we took my mother on the walk she came face to face with a herd of shiny brown cows.’
‘Help me mummy’ we heard her whisper under her breath. Up until then the only cow my mother had ever encountered was on a plate with carrot and potatoes in Whitechapel. Blooms’ kosher brisket was legendary.
Part three, was downhill to a sharp bend. In the summer the hot sun would warm the watery ditch where tadpoles darted.
A childrens’ image of the countryside, sheep dotted in the field and rabbits hopping.
Then up a really steep hill.
Celandines, cow parsley, snowdrops, dandelions, each season throwing up its signature flower.
On the left a little slope and a style, which later became a kissing gate.
Squeaky hinges and monster oak trees.
Flat land and past another ancient kissing gate.
When we moved in the kissing gate was visible through the hedges. Through it down a slope to a pond on the right. Ducks quacking and splashing. Through to a field that made for perfect picnics. Crab apple trees their fruit like yellow bullets. Through the field and back on the road where the woodyard lived.
The farmer closed the kissing gate with a metal chain. I wrote to the council.
‘I didn’t move from the East End of London to be locked out of free standing fields and sparkly ponds.’
Of course I won, the farmer had to take the lock and chain away. We felt unwelcome so didn’t slide down the hill for fear of being berated. Now you can’t see the rusty old gate unless you part the brambles.
The farmer has erected CCtv and has put up signs declaring the avenue private land. I take no heed.
I wrote to the ramblers association for information about my rights.
I am a natural protester.
I discovered roaming through footways keeps them open, walking the edges of pea fields, past bubbling brooks and over wild garlic patches keeps the land common.
It is my belief the land belongs to all of us not just the privileged few.
I understand the need to protect the countryside but a group of rambling seniors with their scraggy dogs doth not post a threat, Most of them have clean kitchens and a very light footfall.
Now back to the present and I lust after rambling. I lust after my hot walks in the summer and icy walks in the winter.
I remain positive but dialysis renders me useless. I’m either fighting for breath or wobbling like an egg man. I lust for life Before Dialysis.
BD. Meant freedom and spontaneity
AD. Has turned me into a spectator.
The daffodils are coming to an end but the magnolia is in full bloom. I walk round the garden picking a sage leaf, nibbling on a thyme sprig and marvelling at the wintry beauty of hellebores.
I will not use a walking stick – out of pride – but stumbling around counting my footsteps is still better than nothing.
I believe that things can only get better, after all most of us have to live with some kind of discomfort, lying in a pristine clinic having my blood cleaned is way better than having to be the recipient of the orange ball bags war games.
I wouldn’t wish dialysis on my worst enemy but I do wish it on that fat fuck.