As I walk this section I begin worrying unduly about my left knee. The pain was bearable, but my concern is that it might get worse.
The dilemma precipitates some rash thoughts: what if it got so bad that I have to give up? Cripes, I’m only a few miles out of Hastings! I’m dreading the thought of having to abort at this early stage. I imagine a few heads nodding sagely back at the marina with comments like, “I could have told him he was barmy taking it on”. Or hear condescending remarks on my return such as, “Never mind Dave, you gave it your best shot”….
***
During this stretch of the walk my thoughts, for some obscure reason, turn to my mother. I begin thinking about all the hardships she must have gone through during the early dark years of the war. She loved us kids; we all knew that, so it must have been so much harder for her to have parted with us, especially after the recent loss of her husband. Her troubles started with our father being killed in France a month or so before the Dunkirk evacuation and…
***
It was a battle of two minds once the alarm had woken me. One was saying quite sternly, “Come on get up, its 5am; you said you wanted an early start today so get moving”. The other mind was sympathetic but just as insistent, “Stay in bed, Dave, you had a really hard day yesterday and you need a break. Pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep”.
***
…the pain in the knee is still there. I have no desire to start walking and after breakfast I get down to updating my diary on Word Document. I tell myself it is essential to do this but another voice says, “Hey, you can do that at the end of the day; you’re using this as an excuse to keep from walking”
I ignore the voice and carry on completing my updates and answering emails.
***
They say that if you cast your mind back often enough on a certain event, previously forgotten details will often emerge. It’s like returning to an archaeological dig and unearthing a crucial element that had been missed on earlier visits. I delve once more into that short but important period of my life at the Outward Bound Sea School.
***
…then a six-mile run halfway to Towyn (Tywyn) and back. Immediately on our return, it was a visit to the shower block where a torrent of ice cold water was sprayed on naked bodies for what seemed an eternity; a whistle then gave us permission to thankfully withdraw and allow the next group to suffer the same fate.
***
His sermons would, with monotonous regularity, ring out dire warnings of what would happen to us if we were not good. I must have been pretty young at the time yet I still remember how frightening it was to listen to all the terrible things that would happen to you if you didn’t follow the ‘path of the Lord.
***
Our street was a hotchpotch of poorly constructed houses and an even greater hotchpotch of humanity dwelt within their walls. A street that possessed two public houses, a spiritualist church, an undertaker’s premises, an ice-cream factory and one or two dubious business activities that us kids…
***
Every sound becomes more acute, from the melodious warbling of the blackbird to the mournful tones of lowing cattle. The rhythmic sounds of the sea plays on the ear in tumultuous fashion as the waves clump on a nearby shore.
***
I think there was snow on the ground at the time, so we threw her a blanket to stop her from freezing to death and left her out there for about 20 minutes. (Jean reckons it was much longer, but she’s a bit of a drama queen!)
***
I remembered how sometimes we’d look out on a bitterly cold winter’s night and see the usual ragtag kids sitting on the doorstep of that same pub waiting for the occasional hand-out of a bag of crisps or bottle of lemonade from their parents who were enjoying themselves in the cheerful warmth of the saloon.
***
I distinctly remember him saying that he was looking forward to beating up his ‘old man’ and that he’d do it every time his father beat up on his mother. The expression on his face and the quiet tone of his voice left me in no doubt at the time that his intentions were deadly serious.
***
…no human figure infringed upon this tranquil landscape. The only sounds come from the occasional lamenting cry of a seagull and waves breaking lazily on the deserted shore, while the early morning sun squints through the elongated, orange-tinged clouds in the eastern sky.
***
Memory of the storm that came up suddenly in Cardigan Bay; the five-hour struggle to get back to Aberdovey harbour; the now nameless bearded skipper ordering tacking procedures that required hands on deck to be exposed to the waves crashing over alternate forequarters and finally the sheer relief in entering calmer waters and….
***
I actually run like mad through the herd with the bull close on my heels and I go over that gate faster than a scared cat up a telegraph pole. I reckon if any scout searching for an Olympic contender for the high jump had seen me at that precise moment he would have signed me up on the spot!
***
…it wasn’t until 1945 when the allies finally overran these despicable institutions that the few pitiful survivors were able to be rescued from their hellish existence. So was there really some all-encompassing deity up there looking down on the terrible afflictions and agonies that these people were forced to endure over twelve long, terrible years? And if so, why did it decide to do nothing….?
***
About 20 metres away on my right the surf tumbles rhythmically onto the dark sand; its whiteness and that of the breaking crests atop turbulent waves are in stark contrast to the dark steel-grey expanse of the North Sea
***
She had a big pink wart on the side of her face that sprouted three or four black hairs. When she spoke to you it was impossible to look her in the eye because the wart drew your eyes to it like a magnet. I remember thinking as a kid how horrid she was and we were all pretty scared of her…
***
The alarm goes off at 5.30am. I lie there
feeling pretty wretched. Suddenly it’s 6.30am. Boy, that hour has flown by! I
struggle out of bed to face a grey and overcast day. I still feel tired; it’s as
if I haven’t slept at all. I go to the ablutions to shower hoping it will
enliven me.
***
So if we convert 473 million years back into seconds then, by my calculation, it would have taken 14 years, 51 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes to create the Earth’s fossil fuels and just a mere five minutes of man’s tenure to fritter them away.
***
It’s an ideal walking track between tall hedgerow and farmland. Obviously it is little used for the blackbird and thrush, pigeon and crow display their annoyance at my intrusion into their world as I walk by.
***
…our maths teacher, built like a gorilla but twice as mean. If he thought you weren’t paying attention a blackboard rubber (an oblong piece of wood with felt attached) would go flying through the air and usually find its target.
***
I immediately kneel down close to the badger, raise the stone into the air then bring it down with all my force onto its head. There’s a slight shudder of the body, the eyes glaze over and the badger lies still.
***
…next comment floors me: “If only you had said, I would have let you through a gate to the coast road.” If he hadn’t been holding that damned hammer and that 3ft piece of wood I think I would have clouted the little bugger!
***
It takes me about half an hour to walk the Humber Bridge’s 2,220-metre (1,380miles) span and another 15 minutes to clear the northern approaches. I have now entered the county of Yorkshire…
***
The date must have been 14th November 1940 for it happened to be the same night the German’s had bombed Coventry. They had to stay in the shelter until the ‘all clear’ sounded in the early hours of the morning.
***
I walk close to the shoreline that stretches away into the distance and listen to the calm metallic blue water of the North Sea as it splutters lazily over the hard buff coloured sand.
***
The south-easterly blows in from the North Sea and brings with it a strong smell of the briny. It is so exhilarating just to be walking up on the clifftop track with the wind buffeting my body and the odour of the sea in my nostrils.
***
…our world population now stands at around 7 billion and that the daily population increase, after allowing for the global death rate, is thought to be over 200,000. On those depressing figures I calculated that there would be another million human souls arriving on our planet every five days.
***
The dew on grass reflecting the weak rays of the rising sun, the cacophony of sound from unseen birds in nearby foliage, a rising wind rustling the leaves of a solitary tree, the rumble of thunder signalling an approaching storm or the lazy rhythmic sound of the surf as it spends itself on some remote shore.
