I’VE remembered how to walk. Not that I’d forgotten the whole one foot in front of other technique. Even someone as bad as I am at DIY can manage that.

No, I’d just stopped going for long walks. Sometimes, one fails to see the point. But it lies in the ambling itself, not in any ulterior motive.

For walking, I have rediscovered, puts one back in touch with oneself. It lets a fellow observe his inner fellow.

You know two persons live inside us all, right? One is the socially moulded dumbo, reactive, on auto mode, animalistic but with speech. The other is your daemon, your eternal self, watching your behaviour … and despairing.

Think about when you’re talking tripe in the pub. A voice in your head warns of this danger. Also, when writing a column. That’s your daemon. And it likes being taken for a walk.

Another reason I haven’t walked much is that, over summer and into autumn, there’s much to do in the garden so I get enough outdoor exercise. I also have beautiful views, so there’s little point tootling off to look at others.

City folks walk more than their country cousins. The latter take the car everywhere. The former take frequent 20-minute toddles with a purpose, even if among pollution and traffic. There are buses in the city, of course, but only a madman would get on one of those.

So, I forced myself out for a couple of 90-minute country hikes on my arboreal doorstep. On neither occasion did I encounter another soul, which was excellent, for then my daemon would have observed me talking tripe again.

Other people are problematic. On a country walk, one must anticipate if they’re “hello” sayers. I’m a hello kind of guy, and will plant myself firmly in front of grumps and say it repeatedly until getting a response. “There, that didn’t hurt, did it?” I say indulgently. “No, but this will,” they say, twisting my nose.

The weather has been inclement, of course, which keeps the saps and moral degenerates indoors. I prefer walking in winter, wrapped up and toasty.

Sometimes, only briefly, for a few yards and if no one’s looking, I venture off the official path and into the forest proper. It’s dark and still and brooding in there. I feel a frisson of apprehension. I’m not sure trees like us. Apart from beavers, we’re the only creatures who harm them.

I feel them communicating: “Aaarr” – they’re quite rustic – “one of them is here.” Then I get out of Dodge, thumbing my nose as I leave, shouting: “Ha-ha, can’t walk like us, ya wooden-skinned dafties!” Then I turn round and see a dog-walker. He doesn’t say hello.

Forky tale

THIS is what my life is like. I’ve no forks. I did not mean to spring that intelligence on you so starkly or dramatically. But there it is.

One evening, just before eating my sludge, or dinner, I discovered I no longer had any forks. It was uncanny. I couldn’t take it in. I used to have forks. I had been a man of forks.

If, at a party (in the unlikely event of my attending one such), someone had said by way of small talk,“Do you own any forks?”, I could have answered confidently: “Yes, I have forks. Three or four actually, possibly even five.”

Now I discovered I’d none. I did remember accidentally emptying one into the bin along with my sludge, and thinking: ‘A man in my position cannot be seen retrieving forks from a bin.’ So I just left it there, thinking I’d plenty more where that came from.

But, nope, suddenly they were all gone. It was sinister. Maybe someone had broken into the house, taken a look round, and decided the forks were the only things of value.

Perhaps it was mischievous pixies. You know my theology: we are put on this wretched sphere to be tormented, mostly with petty irritations, for the amusement of the gods. This was just one of these.

In my last house, I lost dozens of pairs of reading glasses and pens. So, on emptying the joint during removals, you’d have expected these to have been revealed. But nope. Nothing. Nada. They’d just disappeared into the ether.

Now, a man in my position cannot be seen eating with his hands (unless it’s a fish supper), so I tried substituting tweezers for the fork. Didn’t work. They kept crushing my oven chips.

Moreover, I was not about to make the one-hour round trip to the big village for a fork, particularly as they almost certainly wouldn’t have any. “Call yourself a haberdashery – and you’ve no forks!”

I could then drive on to the bigger village, another 15 minutes away, where the chances were still slim, or to the biggest village another 45 minutes further on where I’d probably be told they’d just sold the last one. “Don’t know what it is. You’re the fifth person today. Everybody’s losing their forks.”

This year, as previously intimated, I have bought myself some Christmas presents. Let’s hope that, tomorrow, I find there’s a fork among them.

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