In Good Company: A Full-Length Wallow
...My father was a compulsive walker. On the day I was born, it must have been a great disappointment for him to learn it would be another 12 months before I could walk. My sister and I once visualised the way he chose the house we grew up in. He probably stepped off the bus, walked until he dropped, then choked out the words ‘This will do Emma, find an empty house, we’ll live here.’ ...
Enid Blackburn was giving serious thought to physical fitness when she wrote this article.
Occasionally I allow myself a full-length wallow in front of our bathroom mirror. Believe me, my image is not a pretty sight. Our recent central heating installation has definitely taken its toll. No heavy shovels to carry, no fire grates to empty, no arguments as to who saw the coal cellar last – in fact no exercise at all.
A simple flexing of finger on button and in every part of our home it is unbelievable summer. It’s like being permanently swathed in lamb’s wool. No need to ‘shut that door’ or move until supper. Fantastic, especially when the other side of the windows is so miserably rain-splashed. As you will probably have guessed – we haven’t had our first bill yet!
My reflection reminds me of the poem, ‘O fat white woman whom nobody loves.’ What I need is exercise. Cycling is out because (keep it to yourself) I am waiting for someone to mend a puncture. Walking would be all right if you could do it sitting down. The seat on my bike is its most attractive asset, I find.
Still, it worries me to observe how superfluous children’s legs are becoming. Every day I see misguided mums chauffeuring their children to and from school. Even babies are denied their pram outings in the fresh air because they spend most of their time strapped to a car seat.
Every Sunday morning my husband used to push our pram around until Yorkshire pud time. Our children knew the route from house to bowling club before they could walk.
Today’s riding habit is becoming a serious health threat. I only realised the other day – when I had to stop myself strangling our driver because he parked the car two doors away from the shop I wanted – exactly what a petrol zombie I have become. Yet I often deride friends who shop by car when they only live a ten-minute walk away from our village centre.
Because of today’s crime rate we dare not even allow children the after-school freedom to roam that we enjoyed. When I was a child the tea time air was heavy with mothers’ voices calling in their young from the surrounding woods and streams. My mother borrowed her sound-off from Tarzan and when she was on the warpath her breath control was magnificent.
My father was a compulsive walker. On the day I was born, it must have been a great disappointment for him to learn it would be another 12 months before I could walk. My sister and I once visualised the way he chose the house we grew up in. He probably stepped off the bus, walked until he dropped, then choked out the words ‘This will do Emma, find an empty house, we’ll live here.’ Everything was always a hike away. We walked two miles to school, and when we arrived home the dreaded note and basket awaited us, meaning another mile long trek to the shop.
Weekends meant a walk from Quarmby to Golcar and tea at my aunt’s. A favourite treat was a bus ride to Edgerton Cemetery. After a saunter around the gravestones, with a pause here and a sigh there, the grown-ups would sit on a seat and swap violent deathbed scenes, while my sister and I shared out all the flowers.
One reason I like writing is that you don’t use your legs. Since my father retired he was so busy that I had to see him by appointment. I took stock of his 70-year-old sparkling brown eyes, his ruddy ever-smiling face. I winced at his 6am to 10pm energy, and realised he had never taken a sleeping pill in his life. His only panaceas were a spoonful of honey mixed with Old Jamaican and I recall that his mother was still running around at ninety. I then prayed it is not too late for me to follow in his footsteps.
