Woke up at 7 this morning and there was a weak, grey light coming through my curtains. The days are gradually getting longer.
I feel better today. I flew into the most violent of rages yesterday. I had to spend my car insurance excess on my car yesterday. I dumped the hire car at the place I was picking my car up from. A couple of hours later the car hire people emailed me saying that there was a huge scratch on the bumper. Not me. They took my excess too.+ £500. No questions.
Could be worse, I know, but at the time I am convinced that these things only happen to me. 40 years of being thoughtless and accident prone and it never getting better. I was shouting and screaming to the point that I felt a bit traumatised afterwards.
I keep telling myself it’ll pass but I have to walk and hyperventilate until the waves subside.
The cleaners came today and so I was forced outside, a lovely accidental surprise. In 10’minutes I’m across the bridge – the entrance and exit to the West of the city – and into rolling hills. The thrill of the escape and mini adventure giving me goosebumps.
And now I’m so calm and happy like a boy I can’t recognise the person that I was yesterday. It doesn’t matter. The moment has passed.
At Failand I always park in the same place next to the woods before you get to the church with the views across to Avonmouth, the mud coloured channel and Wales beyond. It’s my midweek treat.
It has rained for days on end. It could be weeks. I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun. Rainfalls on previously saturated ground. Every time I walk it’s slimy, slippy, mud splashing up over my boots up to my knees. I don’t care.
Something feels different today though. There’s a bit more light; a bit more strength to the light. I feel an expectation, something unspoken but pressing in the cold air.
There’s a metallic sheen on the grass.
The sense of expectation grows inside me. It’s a faint hope that I’ll see sunlight. I turn around and above the ridge with the road the sky is starting to rearrange itself.
I continue North. Grass rolls away from me up a gentle slope while the sky continues its unfurling drama. Will it happen? Will it break? It’s indescribably complicated what it is going on up there.
Above the Welsh horizon patches of blue have appeared where there was nothing but grey a moment ago. To my right Shirehampton and Lawrence Weston start to shine and the grass between here and there has turned a bright, luminous green.
I’m getting close to where the A369 meets the M5 and I can see lorries passing regularly over the flyover that passes over Avonmouth, their lives seemingly unaffected by Covid.
I’ve been heading more or less due North and now I turn West into a thin strip of woodland. The gradual buildup of the drama has now risen to a crescendo like a symphony and the change is so sudden, so serene it catches me completely off guard.
The Slow Walker 