I am hunting around for the gratitudinous. I have come up with this blowsy breezy walk, or memory of this walk, atop and over Ashridge, led by a lovely, lovely geology scholar, okay she was on crutches, but that just shows how dedicated she is, and although it was a few weeks ago, now seems like an age, I am very grateful for that day, oh yes I am.
It puts me much in mind of that ambition I have, which is to become a tramp. I have always wanted to be a tramp, ever since I read about Mr Polly in my teenage years, and while I accept it seems an odd coming-of-age story, the story struck a chord because the chord was already there. I had seen tramps in London on a day trip aged about 5 and I thought they were wonderful. Who cared if they were a bunch of decrepit drunks? To me it seemed like a wonderfully pioneering way to live, with all your treasured belongings strapped about your middle, and anyway, I shall be a different type of tramp; I shall take a month to tramp about, and I'll do that in an empowering woman-way in the nature of a flaneuse about a dérive, the claiming of the route ahead, and I won't pioneer this in the urban environment, not bloody likely, but through a strung-out selection of English market towns, hopefully with some charming inns and hostelries like the Potwell Inn, which have a soft bed and a proper breakfast, and then I'll be out again in the bright and beautiful morning to tramp the countryside and photograph stuff. Fields, probably. And that's what I'll do, that's how I'll live, oh yes I will.
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