Walkies

          On reading Ian McEwan’s novel, Lessons, I was taken aback, initially, by how much I have in common with its protagonist, Roland. We were born in the same year and, at the age of thirteen, because of our fathers’ itinerant military careers, sent to old-fashioned boarding schools. As a birthday present, we were both given a ‘Perdio’ transistor radio – the short-lived, British-made answer to the ultimately unstoppable flood of post-war Japanese electronic imports. By chapter two, however, our experiences began to diverge radically. At the age of fourteen, Roland was seduced by his young, attractive, female piano tutor, while I was developing a defensive wariness of the sexually repressed, celibate Irish Christian Brothers to whom my education had been entrusted.

          I haven’t quite finished the book, but Roland is now my age and I’m feeling smug that he’s not in as good a physical condition as I am. Perhaps he should have kept up his youthful enthusiasm for hiking, a habit I acquired around the age of 30 and have nurtured since.

          These days, I don’t like to walk more than ten miles or so. Any more than that and I find it tiring. What’s more, the beneficial effect of outdoor stimulation turns toward mild boredom and a desire to be back in civilisation. But the other day, in bright weather and bright company (my Other Half), I enjoyed a lengthy, circular coastal walk (it’s a peninsula). Halfway along, we stopped at Kingsand, a former fishing village turned twee holiday destination, where many of the businesses close for the winter. I speculated on the possibilities of renting their temporarily vacant premises to establish some form of reverse-season business. The capitalist in me hates to see assets lying idle, but I suspect I would not be the first to come up against the buffers of there being insufficient potential customers outside of the summer months. Still, the hike served as an informal ‘date’ for us to catch up with each other without the distractions of life’s routine interruptions and it exercised me into a pleasant state of weariness so that I took a nap later on the sofa, while my OH went for a supplementary work-out at the gym.

          There’s no doubt that I enjoy walking with a fellow human in ways that I cannot with a canine companion, as was reinforced last week when I was ‘volunteered’ to do our friends a favour by taking their dog, Rosie, for a bit of exercise. I’m not saying that I found it uninteresting. I was fascinated, for example, by Rosie’s thoroughness and persistence in sniffing out whatever it was that so strongly attracted the attention of her olfactory organ. Ideally, I would have liked to have had a conversation with her about it while she sat feigning patience as I savoured a lonesome flat white in a hip café. Later, she found a use for me as a ball thrower in a seemingly endless game of ‘fetch’ that stretched the boundary of my enthusiasm but not hers. A moment of drama did liven-up the proceedings when a snarly little terrier-type dog barged in and turned nasty over ball possession. Its owner was slow to arrive on the scene, leaving to me the business of separating them, which proved difficult given their lack of response to reasoned argument.

          On the way home, I soothed my nerves with a swift half at a newly opened pub, done up in the modern style and with coffee and tapas to attract a broad clientele. “They’ve made a good job of this, Rosie”, I said as she lay at my feet dreaming, perhaps, of a nice game of ‘fetch’ or another bout with the razor-toothed terrier. It would have been nice to share a drink and conversation with, say, Roland about the things we have in common – such as not keeping pets.