Day twenty-nine

29th May 2009     ENGLAND

Gruffalos and angels

I open my eyes and through the branches of a tree look up at the sky and the world around me, a world of light and shade… ‘Good morning universe and how are you today’. Last night I slept well, eight, nine hours, maybe more. I turn my head from side to side, the neck is working again, that’s good. Just five minutes more, that’s all I need … I turn to my side… a rucksack wrapped up in a bin bag is not much of a pillow. A little more than five minutes go by before I open my eyes again. A stone’s throw away I see a bunch of rabbits… ‘Threes for a girl, fours for a boy, fives for silver’… sorry wrong song these are rabbits not magpies… ‘Bright eyes, burning like fire’. With me still being in my sleeping bag makes me the same height as these guys… I cannot help but wonder what it is they see when looking across at this lump under the tree, with a number of bin bags alongside him… a Gruffalo maybe, for sure they keep their distance… they bounce the song back at me, ‘How can the light that burned so brightly suddenly burn so pale’… and I wonder have these guys (can you call rabbits ‘guys’… I’m not sure)… any road, I wonder, have these guys and the rest of creation, are they still waiting as it says in the Book of Genesis for the true sons and daughters of God to be revealed … or have they given up on us… did we really fall that far from grace?... is it that the creation is the light and that we are the shade? I don’t want to believe that… only sometimes it’s hard not to, when looking at what it is we are doing to both the creation and to our fellow humans. Hmm… don’t think I’ll be getting a call any time soon from ‘Radio Four’ to share a ‘Thought for the day’.

Ten minutes more and I climb out of my sleeping bag… the rabbits don’t hang around. I get dressed, repack my bag, boots are on, laces not yet tied. I dig out the sandwich that David had given me the day before (from the Plough Inn), I’m sitting on by bag at the edge of a meadow wasting time, watching the clouds go by... again I say a quiet thank you to both the builder and barman from yesterday, not only had they fed me, but they had also knocked a brick wall down. I drink some water, tie my laces, pick up my bag, lock my fingers behind my head and stretch, let out a groan that sounds more Gruffalo than human… the wall maybe gone but I am well aware the body is still not running on all four cylinders.

I am still heading east, I am hoping to be in the city of Birmingham by the end of tomorrow, there’s a family there that I know, they are happy to take me in for the night, it would be good to see them. From Birmingham I will have ten full days of walking left, that is if I’m to reach the church that I was baptised in within the forty days I had set myself. The church St Joseph's in the small town of Christchurch, surrounded on three sides by the New Forest and on the south side the English Channel. 

The walking is very much like yesterday… only I think a little harder, I can’t even keep a stone on the road for more than three or four kicks. Today I think I just need to knuckle down… one foot in front of the other, forget about the kicking of stones. I keep the map close at hand…I am again winding my way across the country and need to keep track of where it is I am. My hope is a little after mid-day I will be in the town of Bridgnorth.

This morning I am feeling a little lost, not on the ground but in my head... the landscape passes me by. I both question and doubt the value of what it is I’m doing. I think the questions I don’t mind; I can handle those… it’s the doubt that somehow gets to me, more so when the body is tired. Three hours into this morning’s walk (or thereabouts) I come across a small hamlet called Aston Eyre… a proper small place a handful of houses, a working farm, a village hall, an old manor house nearby and a small church. I walk up to the church; it was built in the first half of the eleven hundreds (nearly nine hundred years ago). I don’t go inside, I take my bag off, dig out my water bottle, sink to the ground and lean up against the gable wall. I mull over my thoughts… need to get myself back on track. At the beginning of this walk I wanted to somehow make an offering… whatever that might mean… I don’t think I am a very religious kind of guy, not in the traditional sense (again… whatever that might mean). It is true I am drawn to these places, be it a chapel, a church or a cathedral… this is my island in the sun, it is my culture, my heritage, a big part of who it is I am… and yet I am also conscious, that none of us get to choose where it is we are born or into what culture or even when in history… fate could have just as easily had me leaning up against the wall of a mosque, a synagogue a gurudwara, a temple or an old oak in some woodland clearing… if there is a God out there, He is bigger than any one religion… Well, I guess that’ll be those thoughts un-muddled then… great!!

This worn-out, hungry Gruffalo pushes himself up off the ground, puts the now empty water bottle back into his bag, lifts the bag onto his shoulders and makes a move… ‘six for gold... Sevens for a secret never told’.

A good few hours pass by, the weather is good today, blue skies and not too hot, fields all around, and the roads not busy at all. I reach Bridgnorth a little before one (a town split in two from top to bottom by the River Seven), before Leaving town I am needing to try and get my phone charged up (it’s been dead for a couple of days now… I’m falling behind on the short blog I write each evening), need to fill my water bottle, also hope to get a little food inside by belly (at the moment it feels like I’m using fuel quicker than I am taking it on board). I step into the first café I see; it is called the Whitburn. Feeling a little bit rubbish, in my head I’m thinking about what it is to make an offering and yet here I am again… on the take. I am almost wanting them to say “No, go away”, but they don’t. I am shown a table next to a socket so as I can charge my phone and five minutes later the biggest omelette I have ever seen alongside a stack of chips, salad, bread and butter plus a pot of tea are put in front of me. I look up, I see a smile… I hear myself mumbling something or other… “enjoy, I’ll bring some cake after”… and sure enough a donut and a fresh pot of tea follow. I sit quietly for a moment, look down at the chocolate donut… I feel incredibly humble… I bow my head in a quiet act of prayer and say, “Thank you”. I open my eyes, the manager is standing there, with a brown paper bag “I thought you might appreciate a packed lunch for later”… Whaa, I again say thank you, I close my eyes tightly for a moment, I think to catch a possible tear (I‘m a truck driver, I have standards to uphold). when I woke up this morning, I was feeling a little bit lost, inside the head of a Gruffalo… hungry and asking questions about the purpose and value of taking time out to kick stones, and then when doubt was again creeping in. The Universe, God, may The Force be with you, call it what you will… sent Angels to watch over me, their names Ruth, Emma and Roe. Thank you.

People watching me hobbling out of town, scruffy and unshaven probably still see a Gruffalo but inside I feel a little more human (or maybe even dancer), both the phone and me have been recharged… I’m still a little slow in the walking, but it’s a good slow… how do I know that, because my head is no longer struggling, and I again feel a part of the landscape that I am walking through… Before Café (BC) I just saw fields and After Donut (AD) I again see a living landscape… individual fields of wheat, potatoes, barley, oil seed and beans. Livestock taken out of other fields and muck spreading tractors moving in, giving the grass a chance to recover and grow… turning the grass into silage and six, seven weeks down the road it will be cut, and like the hay making in June / July turned into bales and stored in barns to be used in the winter months as feed for livestock… not forgetting the bales of hay used for bedding (Warning: truck driver pretending to be a farmer, take what I say with a pinch of sugar beet… there is a chance I’m talking the same stuff that I see being spread onto the fields). And what of the hedgerows after AD (After Donut), I see individual trees within the hedge… Beech, Hawthorn, Alder and Blackthorn, bugs and butterflies and the songs of individual birds.

I think it is something like seventy percent of the land in Britain is agricultural land… it is our farming communities, that produce the food we both eat and export, they also play a big role in keeping this island beautiful, taking care of the fields and hedgerows, planting trees and supporting our wildlife… making this island a green and pleasant land… I take my hat off to those guys (… and girls). And what about the other side of the hedges, the roadside. Many times, it’s the guy working for the Council, who is cutting the grass verges, unblocking the drains of autumn leaves or picking up rubbish that the ungrateful have thrown out of car windows… I hope one day, they really do save up enough money in their kitty to buy a dinghy and they get to call her Dignity… Yeah, this is my island, the place that I belong… Sorry, best I shut up, danger of me getting soft… I dig out the map to clear the head, really not sure where to aim for tonight. The map gets pushed back into my side pocket with a feeling of Que sera, sera… what will be will be.

Without realising it, I’m back to kicking stones, I am again thinking what it means to make an offering and how it is I turn forty days of walking without money in my pocket into such a thing… and I don’t properly know. The idea behind the walk was to, for a while step out of this busy 24/7 world and step into a world of truth, beauty and goodness… I had no idea what to expect… I knew to walk in such a world, I would need to dig out the best heart I could find. A heart that was ready to accept rejection, a heart that could see beauty in the smallest of things… a bumbling bee, falling rain caught up in sun light, a ploughed field in the morning mist, an impossible smile, the rustling of the wind high up in a woodland canopy, open skies at night… the song of a blackbird…that list could go on and on, we live in an incredible world. I also wanted to walk with a heart that was wanting to give… yeah, I know I was given far more than what I gave, which is why above all I needed a heart that understood and appreciated the value of gratitude. I don’t know how to best explain what it is I feel… I think if you take something you value, be it a skill, an experience, time spent helping others or something you have made, music, a piece of art even money and then you offer it up to that world of truth, beauty and goodness with the best heart that you can find… things happen... the world, the universe, God (again whatever you want to call it) will use that offering to create something better… yeah I know, I know, maybe it all sounds a little daft… but it is something that this truck driver senses to be real.

Lost in thought, and time moves on, it is later than I thought… I stumble across a pub called The Six Ashes… Hmm I wonder, a cup of tea maybe. I step inside and share something of my story to the guy behind the bar, his name is David (it turns out he’s the manager). “Instead of a tea, how would a meal and a place to stay for the night sound”… and again I am knocked sideways. David shows me a spare room at the back of the pub that is being used as a storeroom, he clears a space. “Will that be ok for you”. “Thanks David, that's magic”… half an later I am back in the bar sat at a table, Richard the chef has just put a plate of steak and chips in front of me. And that is how the day ended. Goodnight universe and thank you for the day.