And God knows how many times this has been Ur-walk interrupted, prose and children just not a working mixture for me at the moment. So here is my earliest remembered walk, with thanks to The Solitary Walker for the initial inspiration and to the man who has just proof-read it even though he fell asleep twice whilst doing so. Don't let that put you off.
This is only Part 1 and the concluding part will follow, just maybe not tomorrow.
For what is a walk but an escape to yourself?
The how is all I can think of. How is all, all is how how how to get out. Close my eyes, open my ears, let the shake, shake, roll of the dice doll go to the back and let her noises be the listen to noise. I should not have to watch him. I should not have to look after him. I looked after him when I was his age and that’s the age he is now and I still have to look after him it is not fair. No don’t think angry, listen; and talking, I can hear talking. Talking is good. Talking may lead to the front room and the front room is best. Then the stairs are mine, and the stairs lead to Dad’s room and Dad’s room leads to the kitchen and the kitchen leads to the door. And the dice doll plays on with her weird shaking wrist and never argues when Robert cheats her and she’s the only one that will play with him now and don’t think, I can hear the voices right below me now and how is all and now, oh now, the click comes and that means the front room has been opened and that means the voice that isn’t Mum’s is an important one and that means the voice will stay for a while and that means the stairs are mine.
And I’m at the door.
It’s raining, but what need of coat me? I live in a magic land that is all ours and it is magic for you can travel the land without once having to go under the sky. And the people you meet are magic people because they are ours too, and they each do a thing, and it is their thing, which is our thing too.
First across the bit we don’t have a name for, but it’s got pink and yellow and cream paving slabs and you can hopscotch here, even when it’s raining because of the huge, plastic sky roof and then through a door and down a step into the dark, dark cobweb land of the shoe room, and this is where Aunty Doll cleans our shoes sat on an old milking stool, and if you stop and look around you can see things so old they have been here since Grandfather’s time and before; there are jars of liquid gone hard and dark brown and bikes too small now except they were never mine or Robert’s anyway, that’s how old they are and then I walk through the shoe room and at the other side is the door that takes me to bright, white, strip light; the freezer room, where the walls are painted white and the big freezers are shiny white and inside them is white and pink ice cream and peas because this is the Freezer Centre and we don’t just sell meat anymore. So I blink a bit as I pass through and then go into the passage, and if you look through the doorway opposite there might be someone in the boning room and there is; but it’s Len and he’s too big and shy and has got long hair and he never talks anyway so back to the passage and it’s uphill towards real light and here careful, oh so very careful, because soon I’ll be beside the great door to the blast freezer and that is danger because of John, and if he is about he might throw me in and I look about for John but he’s not, and inside the freezer it is colder than anywhere on the earth because it can freeze a hindquarter or a whole side of beef in 30 seconds and if John is here he will throw me in. When the door shuts it is black and colder than upstairs in snow winter and the sides of beef and the sheep are as hard as brick walls and there is no smell either but the noise of the freezer. John’s not here and I look again and hang about a bit jumping the little puddle that’s always right here, but John’s not.
So I run past the great door and the sky is above me now but the walls are like the sides of a canyon and the rain cannot touch me. On the left is the side door to the butcher’s shop and Bob is in, and he talks to me a lot but he’s got a customer so I can only go in and draw my symbol with my foot in the sawdust on the floor, then straight across the canyon, not up it to the real outside of the yard, but straight across and into the big shed where the thing fell off the aeroplane once and went through the roof; you can still see the hole and Dad made Mr George write and tell them a child could have been killed. But no child would ever come in here except me, and Robert when I make him, because you have to climb up the sacks and no one can do that except me and some are burst and the stuff inside is like little white balls and I think it’s fertilizer or salt but I’m not sure, and every time I think “Shall I lick it?” I don’t because Dad says I’m clever, but you can still skate on the balls which is funny and crunchy of balls and bones sometimes.
Then I climb through the old window of the cowshed that used to be a window to outside but now it isn’t and I’m in the cowshed, except no cows now but I can remember when there was one and John used to milk it and we had our milk in a bucket every day. Mum said it took me months to learn how to drink milk from a bottle but I don’t remember that and the cow was right here in the bottom stall and one more hop and I’m out the cowshed and opposite the fat plant.
I can see Roger but he won’t hear me from here even if I shout because the cookers are on, and Terry’s working too but he’s scary and deaf so wouldn’t hear me anyway, and I’m glad because he’s got a beard and scares me when he talks because it doesn’t sound like words at all just like all the same word and it makes my skull buzz. So I walk along the wall on the inside of the ranks of oil drums and poke the bones sticking out of them; I like that shiny bit on the ends of the leg bones which is so, so smooth and blue-white. There is a door in the wall that leads to Aunt Hetty’s but she’s not a real Aunt she just lives next door and if you went through that door you would have to go down concrete steps to her garden which is weird that it’s so much lower, and Aunt Hetty has hydrangeas and grass, and the hydrangeas are blue because she buried a kettle and the grass is brown because she’s got a giant black poodle that’s a girl.
But I go past the secret door and into the old pens, and this is where we keep the orphan lambs and now, well now is good because it’s day but at night when there’s no one in the yard and it’s dark and you have to give them their bottles it’s all different and not good; you must run very fast and hope the lambs drink very fast because it’s dark and it will be darker when you’re finished and you don’t go the inside way to get back you just rush run down the yard to the light.
I walk all alongside the old pens and look in each one, but then I get to where the new lairage starts, except it’s always been there since I can remember, and then I have to climb the wall from one big pen into the next and the next and the next and then change direction and now I’m going across the top of the top yard, one big pen to the next and if there’s sheep in them you can chase them and try and jump on their backs and ride them, and the wool is so greasy you slip off laughing but this is not allowed: it runs the meat off Dad says. We still do it though, Robert and me, sometimes even Richard. But no sheep and no hot sheep smell now, so killing must be done for today.
Then I’m over the high, solid wood door which is as big as a big gate but higher and impossible to climb from the outside and I’m at the front of the barn. The hay straw tunnels are calling and so are the lorries, for sometimes when you climb in a cab you find sweets or even a comic with ladies in it with no clothes on and these are called dirty magazines, but that important voice is not going to stay in the front room forever and the dice doll’s battery doesn’t last forever, so dash the length of the top yard to the start of the final run that takes all the animals, every cow, bull, sheep, lamb, horse and pig and goat down to the back door of the slaughterhouse. That’s the only door they can use and that’s the door they don’t never come out of.
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