Sunday 19 February 2012

Walk Away!

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but the point of walking is to get from one place to another without rolling or need of a tarmac-based luge.  I learned to do it 39 years ago and so far, can do it quite well.  I taught my children to do it when they were a little over a year old and they’re pretty shit hot at it too, except the bits where they trip and fall on their heads.  So, given that we’ve pretty much got walking sorted, why does my Mother-in-law insist we do walking whenever we see her?
          
“Let’s go for a walk.  They’re such city children.  They never walk,” she says.

But of course, here’s the lack of logic in her statement.  They do walk.  They don’t roll around on a giant ball like a Dyson hoover made of meat and hair.  And yes, they are city children but living in a city doesn’t preclude ambulatory activity using real feet and knee joints.  We’re not all so chi chi and sophis in Manchester that even nine year olds can boast their own pimped up mobility scooters.
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Then she says, “We’re on the edge of the countryside here.”

And this is what really made me choke, before I’d even snagged my Pringle jumper on a bramble in the “woods”.  My in-laws live in Croydon.  My Mother-in-law must be wearing cow shit spectacles if she thinks she’s been living on the edge of the countryside in Croydon for over twenty years.  Streatham has some grass but it doesn’t make it the Cotswolds.  There’s a Lido in Tooting but those things floating in the water are balls of snot, chunks of polystyrene and hair, not the Maldives.  Perhaps all these years she has been mistaking the teenagers in the Whitgift Centre for comely Friesian cows.  Maybe she thinks the tram is some Trans-Alpine Express through the bucolic Swiss slopes instead of a piss-flavoured public-carrying slow death bullet, taking in the smells and sounds of New Addington, like a scene out of Deliverance with tattooed white men driving souped-up H-Reg Fiats instead of banjos, coz dey iz well fly, innit, bruv?

           
So we went for a walk.
                
Now, I hate to break it to you, city dwellers, but they have mud instead of tarmac in the twenty square metres of Croydon countryside.  You can’t wear platforms or stilettos or white trainers or brand new school shoes.  And this sadism runs in the family...

My Sister-in-law lives in proper rural Kent and I can report that she is also a keen lover of walkies and they have real mud there.  And cow shit.  Lots of cow and horse and chicken and sheep shit and rabbits that are not stylish jackets but which sit around with myxomatosis, giving you the evil eye.  There’s not a single human turd in sight.  And she likes.  Walking.  In.  The.  Shit.  Not because she’s getting from her house to, say, the shop or the pub, which would be a sensible use of legs.  But because it’s “bracing” and “fun”.  Warning: These are euphemisms for “fucking freezing” and “pointless”.

My Sister-in-law once made me do walking during the Summer because she lives in an “area of outstanding natural beauty”.  Yes, well, there are fields and I can see them from her garden and from the car.  I was wearing white linen trousers and brand new canvas Pumas, for God’s sake!  We got stung by nettles, the linen ended up hemmed in horseshit and my husband fell down a pothole and broke his anus.  This is torture, not hospitality.  We didn’t even take a flask of gin for emergencies.  All wrong.
Having begun this horror story, I’m going to stop here before some of you die of flange-failure.  My point is that walking as a pastime is wrong.  Just utterly fucking pointless.  You get mud all over perfectly good shoes and snag your favourite clothes.  There’s nowhere to go for a wee.  Face it, there’s nowhere to go.  Running is different.  That’s exhilarating and good exercise.  But walking...just save it for the bloody shops, all right?  I iz a city kid, ja’getme?


           

10 comments:

  1. Speaking as a lover of walkies for the sake of walkies, I couldn't disagree with you more about it being pointless... but this is still a v funny post and if you don't turn it into a story it will be an utter waste. (And ironically, may also render it a no longer 'pointless' experience.)
    Thanks for the laugh x

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  2. Ah, poor Wendy. Well, I know you do walkies with doggies, which is different. Sometimes, I do short walkies in Patterdale because it is really gorgeous and they haven't invented the telly up there yet and I like the sculptural qualities of piles of sheep shit. But I don't like walks sprung on me by people wot I am visiting, particularly not when I'm wearing clean posh things and particularly not in Croydon. Thanks for the comment! xx

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  3. Ha ha! I love walkies too... but I do have a hound to walk with, and I love getting mud on my boots - though I hate cleaning it off, and I love trudging through fields with the wind in my hair... I know, sickening isn't it? I just love it! I feel exhilerated when I walk and can listen to the birds... Oh, I bet you've stopped listening now haven't you? ;) Still, a fab and funny post that ALMOST made me want to hate walkies!

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    1. See, Abi, one day you might have younger relatives and their partners who may ridicule you for making them go for bracing walks to build up their appetites, clear cobwebs and walk off the Sunday lunch. Brace yourself, because those young people might be in charge of chosing your old people's home!

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  4. Priceless - how does one fix ones broken Anus...lol - ps this reminds me of a family walk in Pately Bridge - My mother in 80's stilletoes - no coats - freezing cold walking to fountains abbey through ankle deep mud. My sister was electrocuted on a cattle fence, I stood on a concrete step - only to plunge ankle deep into semi solid cow turd, my father commanded us military style to "march" when we as kids had had enough. I lost it and hurdled a six foot fence plus ditch and stormed the 45 minute walk in about 10 mins at full sprint calling my family everything I could think of. I frightened little old ladies and the disabled that morning. I was 16.

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    1. All city children have been through this hell called "walks" and "constitutionals". What happened to your Mother and Sister was unfortunate karma. One day, your Dad will pay and I'm sure the karmic punishment will involve a shower with bovine plop and a brutal attack by a rabid squirrel. Gotta take good care of them nuts.

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  5. that stuff you see floating in Tooting Lido isn't phlegm or hair nor dirty polystyrene....another crying with laughter read. thanks Marnie

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    1. Now, Del, it's a long time since I braved Tooting Lido and when I did, I was the only person fully dressed. I understand that youngsters reach puberty earlier nowadays, so I can only imagine what the replacement phlegm and head hair might be...At our local pool, we have an interesting whirlpool of green scum whizzing round in the middle at the 1.8m mark. But it's the North, so it could be anything.

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  6. You see this is what I've been missing since I boycotted Twitter for stealing too much of my precious time. Priceless comedy Marnie. You may be a city girl but at least you're an uber funny one so you're forgiven for hating walking in the wondrous mud and shit of our beautiful countryside for the hell of it. Your idea of country walking is my idea of shopping walking - hell. No idea why I love walking - EVERY day - my mum's a right old townie & has never donned a pair of wellies. Nobody has animals in my extended family yet I'm always covered in muck even when I try to keep my Sunday best clean - I am a muck magnet. Wendy Freckles

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  7. Ah...I wondered where you'd gone to, Wendy. Twitter's jolly quiet without you. Now I just don't understand where this love of crap and wellington boots comes from. I've had a pair of Dunaplops since the first year of mud in Glastonbury - 1997. Bought them in a cheap shit outdoor shop along with some waterproofs that were made from bin liners and ended up ringing wet on the inside because they were made from bin liners. The boots made my toes fall off. We camped for one night in a two man tent and froze all of our tits off. I had to wee in a paper cup. We had to hitch hike to Devizes for a poo in a real toilet the following day. This is just one episode where I realised that the countryside doesn't like me touching it and often, the feeling's mutual.

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