Children have returned to school, and parents look relieved. But for all of us, September has a new-term feel. So, I too have been planning my timetable.
Having left commuting behind, the choice of how to arrange the day is mine. And I’m recalling what my late mother said about how I behaved as a small child: I always settled better if I’d been outside first thing.
So, my new-term syllabus is to be outside in the morning and at my desk in the afternoon. Of course, that involves walking.
It was on one such walk recently, that I realised just how life-giving and enriching walking is.
So many of the people that I now know in the village are people that I met when trying to re-learn to walk, invariably, but not exclusively, the dog walkers.
Birthdays, meals, parties, time with horses, cups of tea, glasses of wine, swimming, and a general sense of belonging have all come as a result of walking round the village, stopping and chatting to people.
Imagine how dull life would be if I were still just driving past, as I formerly did. I think this most particularly when a black Audi (with no spatial awareness or brakes) whizzes past me on the blind bends. ‘You may be in a hurry with your flash car, but I’m the one with a life. Currently,’ I say to myself.
The black Audi aside, people wave from their cars when they see me out for a stroll, and instantly my day is improved.
Best of all, a friend spotted me the other day as she was driving home, swerved across the road – there was no traffic – and stopped to say, ‘Happy Birthday’. In a world in which we can so often feel invisible, that was a great moment.
Walking affords incidental joys that couldn’t be experienced in a car: leaning over the field gate to say ‘hello’ to the horses; seeing blackberries ripen in the hedgerows; bumping into fellow strollers and catching up on news, and seeing how everyone else’s gardens have coped with the summer’s heat.
I have lived the life of the black Audi’s driver. (Mine was red). But now I am content to walk, happy in the knowledge that a whole new world, rich experiences and friendships have emerged because I am not hurtling through life.