IT’S become more than a routine, rather a highlight of the week. Every Friday we head for a walk. In times of Covid relaxation, base camp is McQue’s in Bannockburn: steak pie and fizzy water for me, macaroni and fruit juice for him. I don’t drink. He’s two years old.

The itinerary has been well established. We start at Corbiewood trotting stadium where I once threw fivers about with the abandon of a sailor on shore leave. I don’t gamble now, largely for the same reason I don’t drink and don’t hit my head off walls.

The journey has a couple of favourite spots. There is the brae at Bannockburn where my grandson seems to take sly delight in my efforts to push him towards the main street. He is a character of few words but there is always the turn of his head and the acknowledgement of the unmitigated humour of my increasingly desperate grunting. Passers-by regularly express concern. “I’m fine,” I wheeze. “And it’s his turn to push me up tomorrow.”

There is also the obligatory stop outside Kilgannon Motors. It displays a forecourt of motors. This is a veritable Musee D’Orsay to the Wee Man. His aesthetic pleasure in the wonders of the combustion engine is heightened by cars, lorries and buses whizzing past. He gives them a clap. He is rewarded by the occasional toot of the horn (particular thanks to the driver of the 38 bus that toddles through Bannockburn about 4pm) and with some reluctance he decides it’s time to return home for toast, colouring in and defibrillation for granda.

The main thrust of the journey is Bannockburn Glen. Recently, he has taken to standing up his buggy and driving me on, in the manner of a demented charioteer in Ben-Hur. He knows what is at the bottom of the hill.

There, with the rumble of nearby roads echoing gently, lies a spot of spectacular beauty. It is the sort of place that we can take for granted in Scotland. A wood that changes colours softly by season, even by day. It is now illustrated by the more prosaic signs that tell the walker of the history of what once lay unheralded in just another walk through the woods in a county blessedly sprinkled by them.

The Wee Man is impervious to the history. The burn, though, has witnessed many battles and a regal death. James III was killed – maybe assassinated – near the route in 1488 after the Battle of Sauchieburn. A stone commemorates this history in typically unassuming, Caledonian style. It’s as if it’s bad manners to point out that a king – a real yin, with a crown, knights and a charger – died on our collective doorstep, within sight of a car dealership and on the border with a council scheme, both presumably not there when Jamesie was malkied.

The Wee Man’s attention, though, is dedicated to the present. He loves touching leaves and bushes, putting his hand out in the manner of a presidential hopeful and touching them briefly in some sort of salutation as his motorcade (all right, buggy) sweeps by. He is particularly amused by running dogs, bounding rabbits and the sudden explosion of various birds taking to the air.

But his joy, his regular and unfailing source of sublime pleasure, is to stop at what I have dubbed the viewing platform. It is a steel pen that sits over a weir. The burn becomes boisterous at this point. The lazy drift of leaves and small pieces of wood suddenly becomes a frantic race culminating in a precipitous fall and then, slowly, a stately progress to who knows where.

The Wee Man loves this spot. He walks about the pen, surveying this action from every angle. Finally, he returns to the buggy and sits there assessing quietly just what nature is creating every second. He resembles, in his stoicism and stateliness, a pensioner in a bath chair who seeks reflection in the water.

It has all made an impression on his granda. The one piece of wisdom that struck me in the immediate aftermath of the drinking and gambling days was this: love is time. One can spend a lifetime formulating a precise determination of love in words or feeling but, perhaps, dedicating time to others is the most authentic definition.

It also blesses the bestower. The round trip takes a couple of hours. It now – within the definition of a childcare bubble – includes other days of the week. But it was one Friday that casually and brilliantly offered a lesson from the Wee Man to the increasingly stooped Old Man.

The viewing platform had been reached. It is a spot that forms a sylvian tunnel. The floor is the rushing water. The ceiling and walls are the trees and bushes that hold us in a benign captivity. Suddenly, a heron flew past. It was as dramatic as only an unexpected exposition of nature in full flight can be. I gasped audibly and roared to the Wee Man.

He had, of course, spotted the heron. He looked at it with the joy born of wonder, rewarded the bird with a forceful clap, but immediately went back to surveying the water tumbling over the weir as the heron disappeared gracefully round a bend in the burn.

I could not let the image go. But the Wee Man had returned to the present. It was a profound lesson.

At this time of year, columnists are condemned to look back or peer forward. It can be a desperate, fruitless endeavour. The present, after all, holds everything. The Wee Man knows this. The past does offer lessons but it can also be a repository of guilt and remorse. The future can induce apprehension, even fear.

The most powerful wisdom is to appreciate the heron, watch it pass and return to what is happening now. My questions to myself on that wondrous day were quickly formed but simple.

Did I ever have the instinctive zen of the Wee Man? If so, where did it go? And can I have it back, please?