By: Blonde One
You might think that a Blonde walk is a Blonde walk and there can’t be much difference between walks but I had evidence this week that in one day, two very different walks were had.
In the morning I went for an hour long walk (not bimble) with Mrs Christmas (not the actual Mrs Christmas, but a friend with another very seasonal name) and the afternoon was spent with Blonde Two on one of our favourite parts of Dartmoor. Here’s the list of differences:
Woodland not moorland.
No rucksacks.
No long distance views.
No stops (to admire view, drink coffee or catch breath).
Choice of one path.
Different mud (woodland mud is the disgusting sticky brown type that clings to boots and makes them 10 times heavier than when you started walking).
No slow speeds (power walking only).
Lots and lots of children in brightly coloured wellies (not annoying) and dogs (usually annoying as they try to play with you).
Smells of leaves and trees instead of peat and bracken.
Although the two walks were hugely different, I enjoyed them both immensely and felt very lucky to have such nice places to walk in and such lovely friends to walk with.
You have the good luck, it seems, not to have to commute. Often this requires an aller et retour five times a working week. These are all walks and those who lack imagination would call them boring, no differences. Yet all differ widely. We ponder, reflect, ratiocinate, condemn, enthuse, regret, behave unforgivably towards, etc, etc. All raw material for an infinite number posts.
Just imagine. How do I measure the intensity of boredom I experience during this daily walk? Is boredom an admission of defeat, an inadequacy in me? Is the suppression of boredom a good thing? Bet that person, there, is bored, he has the look. What is the look? Boredom in childhood and in old age. Does boredom have different forms – baroque? rococo? gothic? Is boredom communicable?
There’s only one restriction: these topics must not be explored boringly. They must – by defintion – be anti-boredom.
Oh, I could go on.