Events

I’ve been giving a question some thought: Can a walk (be it themed and purposeful or just ad hoc recreational) not only create a pop-up museum, in consequence, when back at home (individually and/or collectively), but also create a mobile pop-up museum itself whilst in the very act of walking? Sometimes, of course, this happens automatically, serendipitously and solipsistically, when you’re out and about: that Penny Lane feeling: “And though she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway”, and that Truman Show illusion you get sometimes when staring at the world. In short, when you’re Feeling Groovy, life seems to be a sort of pop-up museum … “Hello lamp-post, what you knowin’, I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’…” And you can get that flight of individual imagination whilst out walking in a group, too, of course, as well as on a solitary ramble … I tend to drift in and out of company while out on a group-walk; in the main, I like to let my thoughts roam free and unconstrained, making unusual connections and correspondences; but, obviously, and on the other hand, we learn a lot from conversation too: ‘Every day’s a school day’ – surely, it’s only the arrogant fool who believe they know absolutely everything … William Hazlitt, however,  wrote a wonderful essay on the joys of solitary rambling back in the early 19th century. It’s food for thought. Where do you stand on walking and talking? On rambling and ranting? On orating and hiking? I’m more of a Hazlitt strider myself: ‘One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself. I...