The Rules.

Back in 2010 I used to start each of these posts with a handy summary of the day – miles walked, weather, highest altitude. These aren’t really going to be very interesting pieces of data this time around; the highest altitude I’m likely to reach most days will be first thing in the morning when I get out of bed; unless I go to Enfield Town and use the multi-storey car park I suppose. So for this lockdown pilgrimage I’ll offer a different set of measures; steps walked (because everyone counts those, everyone): furthest distance travelled from the house and the reason for the journey: people I speak to in person (not including Susie, Barnaby and James).

Steps Walked: 10171.

Furthest Travelled from Home: 0.5 miles – taking the boys cycling in the local park.

Face to face conversations (household excluded): 1 – thank you for the church candles Mr DPD Deliveryman.

Track of the Day: King Creosote – Pauper’s Dough.

Reflecting on my 2010 pilgrimage and this 2020 lockdown pilgrimage keeps revealing odd paradoxes.

A lot of my walk ten years ago was spent in remote parts of the Scottish countryside. Often, I wouldn’t see another soul for hours on end as I walked, but as I was starting each day in one pub or B&B and ending it in another, and as I had companions for most of the journey, I doubt if there were many days when I spoke to fewer than a dozen different people.

A decade on I’m in a densely populated part of North London, and today the only non-household person I spoke to was a delivery driver. He stood some distance away from the doorstep, and instead of asking for a signature he took a photo of me and my package of candles; that’s how we do things now. And I understand, but.

There’s also kind of paradox around the structure of my days, or lack of it, then and now.

When I was walking across Scotland, there was a lot of structure to my days. You need to follow some fairly structured routines if you’re walking fifteen to twenty miles a day along a carefully plotted route; deciding that a different path looks more interesting, or that you’ll just pack it in for the day mid-afternoon, means that you’re going to be spending a lot of time sleeping under bushes. In Scotland this is not fun, in February.

By contrast, I’m struggling to find new structures in these days of tireless change. So many of the regular waypoints in my day have been removed or obscured. So much of my time has been spent in ‘crisis management’ mode, responding to rapidly changing demands that I have no control over, and often struggle to foresee. And then there are two boys who instead of being away at school for most of the day are here at home, and who need entertaining, and educating, and loving.

Today I made myself a checklist, which I’ve simply called ‘The Rules’. A pilgrimage needs structure.

The first bit of structure I’ve imported from 2010 involves prayer. I prayed a version of ‘The Hours’ on that pilgrimage. Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer were slightly moveable feasts, but Midday Prayer and Afternoon Prayer were firmly fixed; no matter where I was, or whatever the weather, at 12pm and 3pm I stopped and I prayed; on busy roadsides and freezing hillsides, in bright sunshine and in pouring rain, we stopped and we prayed. Today I tried to reintroduce that discipline; it’s a work in progress.

And there’s one last import from 2010. Most evenings I was staying in pub B&Bs, and so I’d be writing up these posts with a pint close to hand. In a spirit of fidelity to the pilgrimage that is not, I’m typing away in the garden, with hawthorn blossom drifting across, now solitary petals, now swift flocks of white; I can hear so little traffic, so much birdsong, and two men in the churchyard who have no idea how much they’ve had to drink or how loudly they’re debating; and about six inches from my left hand there’s a cold beer bottle. It’s empty now, so I’d better go.