It was close to the time of sleep. When we are closest to death while we breathe. Weariness was creeping in. But there was A. to talk with. Always A.
This was the first day of my study holiday from work. To complete a degree in Art History through my dissertation. The morning began with taking a lady with me to the ‘Sea and Seurat’ exhibition at the Courtauld Art Gallery, an event I had booked several weeks ago. The artist had been obsessed with the sea and the light upon it. Water that gleamed. The paintings, I noted, had been enabled by the advances in rail travel at the time.
Afterwards, it was a complimentary photo shoot that I had given to a client to build up both of our portfolios. I had actually just finished editing up the shots and sending them down to him. This was followed by the Stubbs horse exhibition at the National Gallery after lunch in the park behind Holborn Station (Lincoln Fields). Stubbs wanted to be anatomically correct, an exercise I find completely pointless as an artist. But then, I have photography to be accurate, art to be imprecise and imaginative. I live in an advanced technological age.
When I had finished the contemplation of all of those glistening flanks of horse, I met up with a friend at the guitar recital at Saint Sepulchre near Holborn Viaduct followed by photos of Nathaniel the young musician which I shared on my photography account. On arriving home, the dissertation, a long shower and then eating the family bbq and booking some weekend tickets for myself and my girlfriend and a friend.
I had spent most of the evening thinking about Indian art in Britain and most of the day in the world of art, spectator, scholar and practitioner. It was an art life. A connected life with a girlfriend and friends. There had been an unexpected message from a good friend of many years too after a while. It was a good first day for a study break.
39,000 steps/17.31 miles (equivalent to 66.6 circuits of a soccer pitch)
Birds seen: parakeets, crows, possibly a raven, blue tits, pigeons, goldfinch, starlings
Highlights
The Flint Game
Strewn about all over this area, there were pieces of flint. We are hypothesising that the area might have been a major hub for prehistoric man. We were talking about the craftsmanship required to make the flints into weapons and then, suddenly, I had the idea that we should each of us have a go at doing it.
So my friend and I picked up two pieces of flint, one piece smaller and one piece larger and we placed the smaller piece onto a piece of flint that was embedded in the ground. Then, we struck at the corners and edges of the smaller piece of flint with the bigger. Unlike in cinema, there were no sparks. We were both wearing our glasses as eye protection. My friend went first and he struck out a piece quite quickly. I put it into my pocket and felt it. It was incredibly sharp. I did my piece next. It took a few goes to get going as I wasn’t firmly onto the embedded flint bed but then a satisfying sharp tooth came off. We had both reconnected with our prehistoric past. I kept both the pieces and now they are on my bookshelf in my bedroom. A reminder of what? Our ancestry? The trip? Friendship?
The Chaldon Doom Painting
After getting slightly lost, we entered Chaldon Church which was a pretty construction to do the art part of our walk. We were going to see the Chaldon Doom painting. This had been created by a monk that fancied himself as an artist and was about the sins, a bit like Hieronymous Bosch’s masterpiece, ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’.
As we entered, we came across two friends, R. and A. One was a young woman with dyed blonde hair who was the very picture of silence. The other was a stout man with black hair that chatted to us amiably about the mural because he was a local. His first words to me was that we are all a part of god so that we are all gods, a statement fit for a church. He had watched a video on YouTube about it and chatted to my friend about what he knew while I studiously read the labelled diagram of the mural and read the extended curator label about it.
The mural was reddish and quite ugly, although interesting to look at at the same time. The church was not particularly impressive but it was a novel experience to go to look at art and actually find a stranger that you could talk to about it. It never happens in London.
The View from Farthing Down
At the top of Farthing Down, there was this stone compass which pointed out all of the things on the wonderful view that you could get from this vantage point. We were looking at the mast for Crystal Palace, at Canary Wharf and also trying to see what else we could get our eyes onto. After you struggle up a hill, the view is the reward. And the rest and the sense of accomplishment that goes with it.
The Hive Garden in Coulsdon South Library
Noticing that there was a library around when we got into Coulsdon South, we decided to go in and check out the Ordinance Survey maps for our walk. Then, when we circled back to it to get on track onto our walk and were walking past, I noticed a charming little garden to its side. It was a delightful little construction, with little statuettes of fairies strewn about for the children. There was a wonderful yellow bench and it was wondderfully organised. Such a pleasant place for reading in the summer. We only spent a few minutes there but it was a lovely experience.
The Beauty of the Woods
We walked past decaying logs overlaid with green, green moss, past Yew trees and also delightful looking fungal growths on the ground. It was much warmer in the woods than in the outside world and also there was no rain like there was in the exposed elements. It was the usual but always relaxing and soothing immersion in nature. The birdsong was particularly beautiful, incredibly loud too. Like a concert that nature had put on for us specially.
Coffee in the morning
When we were drinking in Caffe Nero, we had a conversation with the Irish barrista. It turned out that the owner of the cafe was actually a Londoner and that he had only gone to Milan for university.
The Museum in the Pub
When we stopped for a drink at about two o’clock, the table where we sat in the pub had a framed document from the king at the end of the war, thanking the schoolchildren for their share in the hardship and struggles of the war. It told the children that they were worthy members of the sacrifices and the grit of the nation. This was an insight into that momentous time and the lives of the schoolchildren who lived then.
S: Recently, Imran Khan, a failed actor with no good films of his own and, really, a non-entity in Hindi film who was there because of his famous uncle, criticised Ranveer Singh, the hero of Dhurandhar 2 (‘The Master of the Field’). Khan said that he didn’t want to do any films portraying an angry man and this version of masculinity.
A: Thoughts? Are we preparing for another diatribe?
S: The thought is that we get all these people that are against anger. It is their culture. They want to kill anger. They think they are better than other people because they don’t have anger. They act like anger is a false emotion. In fact, anger is the most real of the emotions.
A: Proof?
S: Look at the Christian idea that you should turn the other cheek. And I remember reading a summary of a book that said the ancient writers all talked about expelling anger from the collective psyche. There is a conspiracy against anger.
A: People do not worship anger like you do.
S: I do worship anger. I worship the Dark Mother, Maa Kaali. Whose bloodlust is uncontrollable.
A: Why?
S: Do you know why The Mother has four arms? Because she is strength personified. Anger gives you energy. In the film that Imran Khan mocked, Ranveer Singh (a fellow Punjabi) says that not everyone can attain revenge. For revenge you have to have courage and energy. That’s what the film says. It is anger that gives you energy.
A: Proof?
S: Look at me. I am motivated by rage. Absolute rage. A rage that is unthinkable in this society. I got up after three or so years of debilitating illness because the Mother Goddess, Maa Kaali came to me. To get my revenge. I do seven paid jobs, more volunteering work on top of that, university study, a girlfriend, family commitments including mentoring and teaching my nephew. It is driven by absolute rage. The energy of anger. The energy of the Revolutionary.
A: You are Dhurandhar? The Master of the Field?
S: If it is not the Punjabi Tiger, who is it then? Certainly not Imran Khan. He can go back to his non-existence as an actor. India has rejected him. Me? They have accepted. I am their hero.
A: You are always telling me that you are trying to make life beautiful.
S: I do make life beautiful. Today, I had a wonderful day.
A: Why?
S: I work at the most beautiful places in the world, the most fascinating, the most interesting. However, I will not talk about work. I will talk about what I did outside of work.
A: What did you do?
S: In the first break in the morning, I shopped at the local Oxfam Charity Bookshop. I bought several books, including those on typography, writings from women travellers and also an exquisite little tome on gardens.
A: Then, at lunch?
S: I went down to the National Maritime Museum and went through the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. I had a wonderful time immersed in space, nebulae and the planets. I was travelling there. I saw a beautiful video about a couple that went on an adventure to photograph the Northern Lights, such a nice and kind woman, such an aid to the photographer. It was heartwarming.
A: The next thing?
S: Another break and this time I went aboard The Cutty Sark to gaze at the views around me on a boat. Followed by a cheap snack at Macdonald’s.
A: Then after work?
S: A visit to Canary Wharf to look over the buildings and the waterfront. Then a shopping expedition to Marks and Spencer’s where I picked up some wonderful dessert and tomorrow’s lunch, Thai Red Curry and Sweet and Sour Chicken. I then ambled about in the park at Canary Wharf where I sat amidst the cherry blossoms and camelias, having a conversation on the phone with my girlfriend.
A: Then when you got home?
S: I had a feast for dinner. It was chicken and spinach curry with freshly prepared chapattis. The salad was wonderful: tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce of two descriptions, red onions and a special favourite – mooli (parsnips) with garam masala. This was also washed down with 100% lychee juice and a glass of water. For dessert, I had an M & S trifle of peach, pears and pineapple.
A: To end the night?
S: Duty, my friend. There is always duty. I sat with my mother while she watched a video of an Indian wedding for a few minutes. Then, I wrote a newspaper article for the charity that I work on, a newspaper article about Punjab, the home of my people. While listening to world music instrumentals on Spotify.
A: You pack in a lot.
S: My energy and my curiosity, my greed for life, all of these are boundless. I want to live a full life and I do. It is the life I dreamed of. The life of an intellectual, the life of a lover, the life of an artist.
A: To finish the night?
S: The girlfriend again. A hot shower. Perhaps some reading. This mind needs fuel and love.
S: Not yet. And they need something more than telling off to learn their lesson.
A: I’ve told you not to start with that. What did you have for dinner? Salmon with boiled vegetables and potatoes. Trump that.
S: Food is not a competition, whatever this culture tells you.
A: Is that a way of saying that dinner did not come up to the mark?
S: Your dinner is not bad. But actually, I had Chicken Panang Curry, Thai Green Chicken and Rice Curry and a beautifully zingy lemon tart for dinner. Even though I was completely satiated, my mouth is watering just thinking of the meal again. The wonderful concoctions and genius of M and S.
A: What did you think of while you were eating?
S: How incredible it all was. I am a sensualist. And I had never eaten Chicken Panang curry before.
A: A top meal. What are your other favourites again?
S: Chicken Shish kebabs, Doner Kebab, Special fried rice, Chicken in black bean sauce, Roast lamb, Pigs in blankets, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken biryani, Mutton curry, flame grilled burgers, Kentucky fried chicken, southern fried chicken fillet burgers, curried salmon, fish and chips, Fried aubergine curry, soured yoghurt with dumplings, chocolates of various descriptions, Turkish delight…
A: Whoa there! I didn’t ask you to list every single food ever invented.
S: I told you that I am a sensualist. I enjoy my food more than most.
A: With that thin stomach no one would ever know how much you ate.
S: I have a theory about that.
A: Pray tell.
S: You know I am a genius? My brain is massive. And the brain consumes most of the energy in the body to keep it going. Hence why I eat double or triple what other people eat. And it is all just burnt up.
A: It is just a theory.
S: I think I’ve told you before. When I was born, the nurses couldn’t believe how much milk I was drinking. They’d never seen a new born baby drinking that much milk. I’m naturally intelligent. I don’t have to work hard at things that I’m interested in.
A: Milk for the egotist.
S: I told you that I eat like a king.
A: You are proud of that?
S: You can’t tell? It is a source of great satisfaction. Whatever else happens in this world, I am always eating like a king. Whatever I want. Whenever I want. However much I want. Who else can say that?
S: I’ve lost the will to do. I have disbelief in the London encounter.
A: In what way?
S: Before, I used to sing, act, speak to all these different people in London. I used to know hundreds of people. For about three and a half years, I spent my time trying to meet people in London. It went nowhere.
A: And now?
S: I don’t do any of that stuff.
A: Why?
S: First and foremost, I have someone now that I spend a lot of time with.
A: You don’t need anyone else?
S: No.
A: And the other reasons?
S: It is like what I said. I have disbelief in the London encounter. These people are not friendly. You cannot count them as your close friends. You cannot rely on them. They are cold people.
A: You have never liked Londoners.
S: Who would? All they have is a friendship of convenience. They are fair weather friends. I am lucky that I am not from London. I am lucky that I am not like them.
A: But surely you enjoy acting, singing and talking?
S: Not with fake people. Not with people without a heart.
A: What about your real friends? You have lots of real friends. You told me that when you wanted a party, about twelve of your friends rocked up.
S: We all live on the outskirts of London. They are all open and generous, accepting people. They actually have hearts. Even the one I am with, they live outside of London. The irony is that all these people live in London. You think you will meet someone there. But they are not real people. The city is full of fakes. The reality of this world is that it is hostile. You don’t have real intimacy with most of the people that you meet. You really are surrounded by strangers. They call themselves human when they have no humanity. They make every excuse. I am busy. I am tired. It is too far. But in reality, they cannot accept that you are different from them. But that they exclude on the basis of difference is a good thing. Because no one would ever want to be like them.
A: You have gone from being open to becoming completely closed.
S: I will only try to be friends up to a point. When I see that there is nothing being returned, then it is all over. Then, there is nothing.
A significant barrier to Higher Education for international students from areas of high poverty is that most of these courses are taught in English and have requirements such as the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) or IELTS (the International English Language Testing System) English proficiency exams [1]. International students are required to produce an acceptable level of English at the application stage before consideration for courses.
In the UK, the Home Office has waived the IELTS test for citizens of 18 countries where English is seen as an official language. However, the IELTS is still widely taught in Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, India, and Malaysia [2]. In these countries, cost would be a barrier to social mobility for many since just taking the exam for IELTS costs around two hundred pounds [3]. This is a sum which can be a challenge for students from developing countries.
Students therefore have to spend more money on acquiring English as a language with formal qualifications when it is already difficult for them to raise the funds for a degree abroad in the first place. In addition, gaining the level of English proficiency required to pass them requires a considerable financial and time investment. Therefore, in contrast to English native speakers, the international student community has to invest much more resources in gaining an internationally recognised degree. They have a considerable disadvantage which is heightened by the fact that many come from countries where students may not have many financial resources due to high levels of unemployment and poverty.
Singapore’s Mandarin Programs
The People’s Republic of China and India remain the biggest sources of internationally mobile students, together accounting for around 30% of numbers between 2018 and 2022 [4]. This year, four universities in Singapore, namely NTU, SMU, SUTD and SUSS, have launched new postgraduate programmes in Mandarin which would appeal to Chinese international students [1]. For such students, this therefore eliminates the need for acquiring formal English qualifications at a cost. Furthermore, compared to the US and the UK, university fees in Singapore are relatively lower and therefore more affordable [1]. According to one student on the course, an MBA degree in the US would cost about 1 million yuan (US$140,000), whereas a one-year course in Singapore costs roughly half that amount [5]. The offer appears to cut cost for higher education courses for those that can speak Chinese.
Expanding Access to International Study
Singapore’s policy may offer widened access to higher education for the less privileged. As Jason Tan, associate professor at NTU’s National Institute of Education, Policy, Curriculum and Leadership suggested to Singapore’s CNA938 radio show: “the choice of studying overseas is no longer a privilege only for richer people. We’re getting a much broader spectrum now of families in China who are thinking of a postgraduate overseas degree for their children.” [6]
The social experiment may enable wider access to higher education in Singapore and bring in a greater diversity of students around the world who are not limited by cost considerations to study abroad. Higher education is one of the most certain routes for achieving social mobility and therefore for reducing poverty around the world [7]. A recent study has also shown that foreign-educated graduates can reduce extreme poverty in low and middle-income countries [8]. As Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education at Oxford University, Maia Chankseliani has stated: ‘Returnees use the skills and knowledge they gain abroad to drive local innovations and contribute to societal changes, which can lead to systemic poverty reduction over time’.
35, 877 steps in total today (approximately 15.65 miles or 25.19 kilometers)
18.01.2026
Today, I walked the Capital Ring with a friend. The weather was not inclement. The company was not unpleasant. I was not tired.
We started outside Highgate underground station. I had been warned that the high street was a bit rough but the area we were in seemed nice enough. I have a game that I play with my friend. To collect as many conversations from people as we can. I started it off. As we got into the space between the trees on either end, there was a lady with a very big dog. I started telling her about the walk that we were doing and she had never heard of it. The dog was doing something of a wrestle with her and my friend wanted to make tracks, so we said goodbye and watched her run off with the dog.
The path was absolutely littered with runners. I had never seen so many congregate in one place before. It wasn’t cold and they were wearing their usual skimpy outfits. I felt envious of them running along. After all, it is a very pleasurable exercise. I used to run in the woods like them when I was a kid because I used to live in the woods too.
We took the Parkland Walk to Finsbury Park and stopped off in the cafe. We almost didn’t stay as the queue looked a bit chaotic. However, I was determined to sit down and we changed our mind about finding another place. My friend treated me to a cherry bakewell cake. It was delicious. The cafe had a mini art exhibition featuring artists that did brightly coloured flowers and also pretty landscapes. Some of the artworks were for sale at what I thought was a fairly reasonable price of £200. What was particularly nice about cafe were the cheery flower arrangements on each table. They had a daffodil with an orange rose that was blushing with red. Very cosy and very beautiful and warming.
I bagged another conversation for our competition. There was an Asian man from Liverpool that I struck up a conversation with on the way out from the cafe. He was a runner in a half marathon they had on today at Finsbury park. He said they did about seven laps and the gradient in the park was a bit of a killer.
We walked down through the park and ended up sitting at a bench leading up to a path with a pretty church in the background for lunch. As we were eating, a little grey greyhound in a jacket came scampering up to investigate my friend’s lunch which happened to be honey sandwiches. The owner, a middle-aged brunette with an Australian accent, came bounding down and, noticing that I hadn’t opened my packet of Scotch eggs, informed me that the dog had once stolen a scotch egg from a man’s lunch. He’d been okay with it. You always have to factor a hungry dog in your lunchtime in a park I guess.
I was counting up the birds I saw as we walked towards Woodberry Wetlands and Clissold Park. Today, I saw swans, blacked headed gulls, seagulls, a black cormorant, sparrows, crows, pigeons, Egyptian geese, ducks and coots. One of the joys of a long walk in the greenery is the animals of course. At Woodberry Wetlands, we watched the sparrows resting amongst the bullrushes as my friend was telling me that it was unusual of them to hang about there. The water looked absolutely divine in the sunshine.
There was a climbing wall at some point near a building with the water reservoirs near it. We did it after me and my friend took some shots of a big shiny mirror ball with the building distorted within it. It was dead there before we came and after we went probably. But when we went to take the photographs, a group of children came with their mums and usurped the territory so we had to wait for them to disappear to get the shot. As to the climbing wall? I had to have a go. The grips for the feet were tiny so I only did a wall and a half before I gave up. I couldn’t get the footing for it in my hiking boots and was using up a lot of upper body strength exclusively.
Next, we passed through Abney Park Cemetery. We read up on the founder of the Salvation Army who was buried there along with many other folk from them too. We compared the cemetary to Montmarte Cemetary to which we had both been too and I spent the time reading the inscriptions on the graves. They looked very picturesque with the green moss growing on them.
The next stop was Walthamstow Marshes. We followed the Lee Navigation canal to our finish point. I saw a book floating in the water and we took some shots with our cameras in our usual photography competition that we have on these walks. I also did something I’ve never done before in my life. I saw the opportunity, asked permission and I got a long handled axe and split open a log of wood. It was the third time of asking. My friend shot a video of me while I was doing it so that I could share with our other friends and so on. It was very satisfying and made me feel immensely powerful.
I managed to bag another entry for our competition to collect conversations with people on the trip. It was a brunette mother that was tethering her boat house to a post. I asked her to resolve our dispute on how cold the boats get. But it turned out that the cold wasn’t the problem. Rather it was the mud.
At some point in Stoke Newington, we went into a second hand bookshop. I managed to get a second hand book on Art Deco and also picked up some free booklets by the Guardian on the Second World War, a set of seven of them.
The final stop on the walk was just before Stratford Olympic Park where we parted company. We went to a cafe and sat outside while my friend sipped at a tea and I demolished some chocolate.
An unaccountable crash had deafened everyone on the bus. A moment of shock and surprise. Its origin unclear, a bastard noise.
The explosion had come when he had been getting off at his stop. He had been gloating to himself about how quick his journey from work had been. He had cleared it all in about thirty five minutes. The train had come exactly on time. And then the bus had come exactly on time. It had even stopped raining.
In the first few moments, while the public were immobile and dazed, the duty of a hero called. He was a man of action and a man of quick thoughts. He was the only real man on that bus. Investigation to see if there was anyone that needed help. Instinctively, he had jumped out of the bus and gone round to the back. Without knowing what had happened. It could have been a terrorist with a gun. In the eventuality, it was an expensive white car which had collided with the back of the bus. They were fine. Stupid and incompetent. But fine.
As he had walked home, he had reflected to himself that it is never the ones that are tired of life that die. The ones that are tired of life, they are preserved. Priam in the Trojan war longed for death and it would not come. He had to watch all the ones that he loved die all around him. It could have been so easy, so peaceful. A loud noise and then sleep…
Even the stupidity and ignorance of these people around him, their sheer incompetence, these things could not kill him.
It was just a fact that the hand of the Mother Goddess was upon his head. Nothing could touch him. So many incidents in his life. So many encounters. The blood clot. Assaults. Being mugged. The bombing of London. The sickness. She had given him the strength and endurance to last in this cold and hard world of enemies and suffering. He would always live to fight another day. Whether he wanted to or not.
Absolutely superb. That’s what the weather was like for the long walk. I met up with my friend at Newbury station and we bundled ourselves onto the Tube at nine o’clock for an early start on the day.
In the morning, it took about the same time to get into Chigwell as it would take me to get into Central London for work due to a change at Hainault and a long wait for the next service. On arriving at Chigwell, I was struck by the beauty of the place and the grandeur of the big houses out there. Really a dream destination to live in. Chigwell is called Chigwell because the name derives from an Anglo-Saxon personal name, ‘Cicca,’ and the word ‘well,’ meaning “Cicca’s well”.
We came across some beautiful horses but I couldn’t get a good shot or composition. I have a personal ambition to ride a horse but haven’t got round to it yet. It is a very modest and achievable ambition but I am always too busy for it.
Almost at once, we came to a beautiful view and the farmlands. I had already got out my camera and was trying a few shots. As I did so, we came across some fellow walkers and they told me and my friend that they had been doing the walks on the London Loop for about two years. They were finally going to finish off the walk today. It was an old father with two young blonde daughters, one of them wearing a red jacket and looking somewhat like Red Riding Hood.
As we trailed after them when we were ready and they were already in the far distance, we worked out the percentage of weekends they had committed to their mission as we were arguing about how committed they were as walkers. If they had taken two years for about twelve walks on the London Loop, that would work out as them having invested 6% of their weekends on the trips over two years. I maintained that that was quite committed but my contrary friend disagreed with me.
My friend is a birdwatcher and I was trying to one up him by spotting more birds than him. I got a robin that he hadn’t noticed and felt quite chuffed but then he showed his experience and expertise in this subject. He spotted a woodpecker, a brilliantly yellow coloured creature that I had never seen before. It was winging its way through the air. He also spotted some buzzards and regaled me about the story of the corpse of one he had encountered recently as roadkill. On the trip, we saw about nine different species of bird, so it wasn’t a bad day: peacocks, hens, Egyptian geese, robins, a white egret, the woodpecker, crows, some little ones I forget the names of and seagulls and magpies. So for birds, it was certainly a great day.
It was a delight to stop for elevenses at precisely eleven on a little bench in the woods as I had a Dairy Milk with me. I shared the chocolate with my friend. I was watching the birds fly into the trees. A Dairy Milk always reminds me of the war. Probably it is because Roald Dahl, my favourite author as a boy, mentions being a taster for Cadbury’s chocolates in his biography and he fought in the war.
Around Chigwell and its forest, we came across an Islamic chapel with Christian gravestones in the garden which was quite an example of religious amalgamation. We didn’t go inside but looked at it with intrigue from the outside wondering what it was.
The next phase of our walk was Hainault Forest Country Park which is not too far from our local area. Hainault Forest was an old royal hunting forest. I had gone there many a time with the family. We saw the two daughters with their father there and I shouted out to them that ‘it wasn’t a contest, but…’ and they all laughed which was pleasing. They were sitting on a bench looking out at the lake. We kept on walking and didn’t see them again and probably won’t in this lifetime.
Hainault gets its name because its original Old English name, recorded as “Henehout” in 1221, meant “wood belonging to a monastic community”. The Abbey of Barking owned Hainault Forest. The name’s spelling later changed because it was incorrectly associated with Philippa of Hainault, the queen of Edward III.
We stopped for a hot drink in the cafe and it was absolutely chock-a-block with young families. So we sat outside. Lazily, I watched two brightly coloured aeroplanes flying about in the sky and the families with their dogs all making their usual Sunday walk around the park. I was telling my friend that I should buy a dog so that I could also talk to the dog people.
After that I persuaded my friend to go to the farm and look at the animals. The goats were all butting heads with each other and the peacocks were sunning themselves. I got a few okayish shots on my camera as the light was quite good but missed a dramatic fight that the goats with brown hides were having as people had stopped to watch them and I didn’t want any people in the shot.
We walked through the golf course next and then we were back in the forest and in the farmland and then the forest again. There was a rough swing rope that someone had put up in the trees. The only way to get to it was up some precariously placed logs, so it was a challenge of balance. I climbed up it childishly and recklessly. It was only a few feet off the ground but felt like I was walking in the atmosphere and slipping about. I managed to get to the swing rope with my hands but then there was no way to get any momentum to swing about! I had almost fallen off once, but only once. And I hadn’t. So man nature was appeased. My friend shot a video of me doing it.
When we had walked through an enchanted pine soaked place with a delicious scent, I decided that we should stop for lunch. I had brought chicken satays from the reduced aisle with me and the scent was too much. Because we were accosted by two dogs that wanted to partake of the feast. The first one was a giant and was very forward and slightly menacing. Two young boys had to run up and grab him by the leash to get him away. The other dog was a black miniature hound and his owner, an elderly lady, said that he was ‘incorrigible’ as she rushed off with him.
After the forest, with its beautiful light and soothing smells and ambience, and after watching the little trickle that was the river Rom, the next thing, we were sitting in a pub called The Deer’s Rest which was in Romford itself. The whole pub was tricked out in Halloween decor. I got us some drinks and downed an ice cold Pepsi. It was absolutely delicious in a way that Cola is not always. My friend told me that I had worked enough so my body was rewarding me for the work with that delicious sensation. He said that he was having it with his drink as well. The pub had this wallpaper of framed butterfly specimens and it was something that I quite wanted for myself as I thought it looked very sophisticated and cool. And much nicer than real specimens of butterflies which I have always found slightly creepy. Because they are dead beauty.
We walked on through the beauties of nature talking about life, the universe and everything. At some point, we found ourselves in a park. I was keen to watch the young people at the skate park but it was disappointing. They were not doing any tricks! The kids were quite young, but then that Olympics gold medallist had been about thirteen. As we progressed through the park, we came across a father at the top of the slope throwing around a brightly yellow coloured glider aeroplane towards his son. The son was babbling away at us as I remarked that the dad had made a good throw. It was a really touching scene of family and its happiness, the joy of children.
The last stretch of the walk took us to Harold Wood. The name Harold Wood refers to an area of land associated with King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. It was about four o’clock. We had initially decided to do a bit more but decided to pack it up before the light started going and we’d done about thirty thousand steps. It was about eleven miles well spent.
diary of a lone man 