Day 37 was a late walk, just because it was. And I couldn't persuade anyone to come with me, so I just popped out for a quick street walk. It was one of those where I think I'm just going to be out for ten minutes, but then I find myself having quite a nice time, parading around the empty roads and pondering the strangeness of it all.
Having been on daytime walks for a few days, seeing other people taking exercise, I realised on Day 37 that I'd almost forgotten that all of this is still going on. I guess we've probably all had a few moments like that. Perhaps it's when we wake up and our brains haven't caught up with reality, and they think, 'mmm, Saturday! What shall we do today?' But then we remember that it's actually Monday, no ... Wednesday, or ... something, and we have to check our phones to find out what day it is. And that's when we remember that we're not going to be going anywhere or doing anything.
Because the roads are still empty ...
And we can still stand in the middle of them for ten minutes without fear of being run over ...
And the streetlights are still on, lighting the way for no one ... or just for people like me who enjoy walking alone at night ...
This was quite a sombre walk, you'll have gathered. But I wasn't feeling sorry for myself, because I've no right to do that, obviously. It was just half an hour to my own thoughts, in which I once again realised the magnitude of what has happened to all of us. It's happened to different degrees and most of us are pretty lucky (definitely me and my boys included), but there can't be many people in the world who are not affected at all. Has anything this big ever happened to us before?
So I've nothing funny to say about this walk because nothing at all funny happened. Something funny usually happens when Matthew's with me because he's a hilarious boy, but he was at home, keeping warm, watching some comforting series on Netflix. And who can blame him? It's weird outside.
It was silent this evening. I think it was more silent than usual. Maybe everyone was feeling a bit sombre today. Usually, as I'm walking around the streets, I can hear people's TVs or music, sometimes even a little bit of laughter. But I heard nothing this evening. No cars, no sirens, no birds, no signs of people apart from lights through drawn curtains.
Perhaps the novelty has worn off completely. Or perhaps we're all now collectively worrying that this is going to last a lot longer than we initially thought. Oh dear me, sorry, I'm getting very maudlin now, which I did not intend because that's not really how I was feeling on this walk!
On the way back home, I did see a ginnel. Or is it an alley? I'm never sure of the difference between a ginnel and an alley. My apologies if you have no idea what I'm going on about – I think 'ginnel' is a northern English word.
Anyhow, I saw this ginnel and I thought I'd spice things up a bit by walking this way back home, hoping to scare myself silly so I'd have something fun to write about (that's how I conduct my walks now, for the entertainment of my thousands of readers – the pressure of becoming an overnight internet sensation is possibly sending my a little bit round the twist).
Unfortunately, the ginnel was just sort of quite pleasant.
It wasn't scary at all, and I even stopped halfway to look back and see how far I'd come. And then, I even stood there for a bit, thinking how nice the trees looked in the dark. If another person had appeared in the ginnel, I probably would've just smiled and said hello and not been even a little bit startled.
It was a weird walk tonight, but sort of very nice. It almost felt like it didn't happen, but it did.
Until tomorrow, weirdos.
WQ
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