Day thirty-eight

 7th June 2009 ENGLAND

Stepping off the dancefloor

The sun is up bright and early… a little too early… I’m still in my sleeping bag, it’s just after five. Looking outside through the shed window (… sorry the summerhouse window) I see blue skies. I shut my eyes and a Blackbird sings… morning has broken on day thirty-eight… I keep my eyes closed; I just need another hour. I remember as a kid I always thought the world stopped when I closed my eyes, and only started again when I opened them in the morning… Apparently, I was wrong… the world does continue to spin, and with the moon up close, they are both caught up with a bunch of other planets in a never-ending merry-go-round… and at the centre of that merry-go-round a proper star… like a huge disco-ball, throwing its rays of light across a dancefloor. I have read there are nearly four thousand dancefloors (solar systems) in our galaxy (the Milky Way)… and that there are close to two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe… that’s a lot of dancefloors…

…It is not just the dance of the solar system spinning around in my head… but also the thoughts of yesterday… that of battlefields and tanks. How is it a bunch of guys (mostly men) in the corner of some dancefloor close to the edge of the Milky Way are forever kicking up trouble… surely, we can do better than this… there has to be a better dance than, two steps forward and one step back.

It’s just gone six thirty, I hear Carlo make a move… the thoughts of a fight kicking off in a blue corner of some beautiful dancefloor fade. “Morning Carlo”… “Morning Paul”. Twenty minutes later our bags are packed. While sat at the table, looking at the map, there is a tap at the  door… Paul, the guy who had allowed us to stay in their ‘summerhouse’ for the night, brings in a tray… a pot of tea, milk, sugar and cups. “Diane is making some toast and marmalade… I’ll bring it over in ten minutes… she is also making some sandwiches for you to take away”. It is because of moments like this, that I didn’t really have any choice, the putting together of this story kinda needed to be made.

[The writing of this blog has taken far longer than I had planned, much of it done at the end of a working day… a laptop propped up on the steering wheel, the original diary and a coffee alongside… many times staring at the screen for an hour and more with not much happening at all … if after this walk I had not gone to Oatridge college for three years, and the having to write essays and the like, this ‘Truck Driver Walking’ blog I think would not have happened. I don’t find writing easy… I’m pretty sure some of my thoughts (although clear in my head), when written down come across a little clumsy. All that said, I am glad I opened the laptop and started to tap away at the keyboard. Many times, throughout this story I have asked the question ‘How better to say ‘thank you’ to the many extraordinary people that had made this walk possible … putting those ‘thank yous’ down on paper (screen) seems to make them a little more real… I hope so. Another reason for writing was to give a shout out for ‘Sunrise Africa Relief’ (a charity that I am involved with). What also came out of putting this story together, that I wasn’t expecting… is that it put me back in touch with guys from my mountain rescue days (earlier this year I had the chance to meet up with some of them). Sorry I’m rattling on, best get back to the story at hand…]

Tea and toast done… the map is folded up; we figure we’ll let the legs decide where it is we stop today… I am no longer in the highlands of Scotland, nor amongst the Welsh mountains, where places to stop at the end of each day needed a little more thought.

By eight we are back on the long and winding road that will lead us to the doors of Salisbury Cathedral. The roads are quiet, we pass through a number of small villages. Rivers and railway lines seem to be taking the same route in to Salisbury as we are, several times we cross over the river Wylye, a chalk stream… they are pretty rare, formed where springs permeates through a bedrock of chalk, giving them pure clear and constant water (they do not rely on surface run-off from the rain). Such stream provides a unique habitat for a whole bunch of creatures and plants. There are only thought to be a little over two hundred chalk streams in the world, 85% of them are to be found in England. I look across at Carlo and like me I think he is also lost in his own thoughts… me, I’m thinking we live in a beautiful world, a world we need to take a little more care of… it is our home… the only home we know.

A couple of guys walking down a country road, looking as if we don’t have a care in the world, talking this and that and again back to kicking stones… where we stay the night, no idea… a meal at the end of the day… again no idea. What I know is that the sun is shining, and this walk is all but done… that offering made at the top of Scotland (the forty days) and the promise to God that on the 9th of June, I would be at the church I was baptised in, some forty-six years ago … crumbs, at the time of making that promise I really wasn’t sure… I remember the first night of the walk, on the moors… sleeping on heather… looking up at the stars, the clouds moving in, drizzle not far behind… a can of Irn Bru in hand, wondering had I made a promise I couldn’t keep…

Carlo asks me if it is ok to meet up with another friend when we get to Salisbury, her name is Marion… ‘Of course, its ok’… in my head I don’t see Marion… I see a cup of tea and if I’m lucky a slice of cake… Yeah I know, I need to be better than that.Carlo points up front, in the distance we see the spire of Salisbury cathedral. Over the many centuries, cities have slowly built up around these cathedrals… but still they dominate the cityscape… and the wider landscape. I wonder at the guys that had designed and built these incredible structures (over eight hundred years back)…and of those caught up in the project, the guy’s sourcing, mining and transporting the stone, the labourers working alongside the stonemasons, the scaffolders, the admin guys keeping track of the materials coming in and the wages going out, the small army that would have kept the workers fed and watered. It must have been extraordinary to see these buildings take shape. 

Most of these cathedrals took a number of generations to build (many of those digging the foundations would not have seen the roof go on)... They thought not of the now, but a hundred plus years in to the future, the generations not yet born (that includes you and I). They understood that the tomorrows matter. I'm thinking the same can be said of those that built Stonehenge (that's just up the road) over 5,000 years ago. I wonder if future generations will look back in awe, at what it is we would have built... and did we have the tomorrow's in mind... I hope so.  

Early on in this walk, I had talked about how it is we belong in two worlds… with one foot, we stand in this physical world of wind, rain, blue skies and grit and the other foot stands in that invisible world of truth and beauty of love and faith… when stepping through the doors of a cathedral that idea becomes a little more real… outside the world keeps on spinning, twirling, dancing through a nightclub full of stars. Inside the cathedral, you enter a different realm… the noise level drops, the air is a little cooler, there is a sense of stillness… and for the moment, a chance to step away from the dancefloor… to take a breather.

I wonder... how is it a cathedral always looks bigger on the inside than it is on the outside… There is a sense of time standing still… it feels as if I could be standing on ground a thousand years either side of now (…a time machine without the Daleks). We both sit down for a moment… The stone walls and pillars of this cathedral, the high ceilings, the light coming through the stained-glass windows, the many candles flickering, all challenge me to become a better person than what it is I am… I close my eyes… It’s a curious thing, the idea of wanting to be who it is we are, only better; it would seem, that is how we are put together. It is not hard to imagine a time when this cathedral was still a building site, I see a stonemason at the end of a working day, sat on a block of stone (or maybe his labourer sat on an upturned wheelbarrow) having these same kind of thoughts…that desire of wanting to be better… to do what it is we do, the best we know how… the need of wanting to do good in this world… the idea of wanting to offer up the work done that day… to a God… to an unseen world of beauty and truth… to future generations. The question is; where do all these ideas, thoughts and desires come from… We are so much more than just physical beings.

Carlo and I push ourselves up onto our feet, we can’t stay too long… we have Marion to meet up with. Again, we step through the huge wooden doors of this incredible time machine and head back out onto the dancefloor… into a world of noise and grit. Five minutes later we are sat on a bench in the grounds of Salisbury Cathedral, we dig out the sandwiches that Diane had made us this morning, a family of ducks waddle up to us… it seems wrong not to share our lunch with these guys… fifteen minutes later Marion turns up, holding three take-away coffees and a bag of pastries (yeah, you're right, I feel a little bad). We sit talking and sharing stories… the ducks are sat at our feet listening into the conversation… after half an hour, we stand up (the ducks as well) we say thank you to Marion for the coffee and cake, shake hands and head of in three different directions…hobbling, walking and waddling. Heading south out of Salisbury, we stumble across a ‘Youth Hostel’… hmm I wonder … it’s a little early, but could this be a place to stay the night… No it’s not happening the place is full… “Sorry, but please stay for tea and biscuits”… and we do… Thank you. I’m thinking maybe that unseen reality I spoke of yesterday wasn’t anticipating we were thinking of stopping in Salisbury… I am pretty sure further down the road someplace has been made ready. I guess I shouldn’t be thinking like that, but hard not to when looking back on the last thirty-seven days.

Church of St Laurence, Downton (Photo from web)

Out of town and back on the open road, the weather is good, blue skies, hedgerows and fields. We reach the village of Downton late afternoon, a settlement, like so many on this island, can trace its inhabitants back in time to the Saxons, and then back again to the Romans, and then back to the Iron Age and still further back… to Neolithic times. It was these guys from the late Neolithic period (2500 BC.) that we believe built Stonehenge… I wonder did they also at the end of a long day lean up against one of those huge stones, look up into the night sky and wonder what it was all for… were they also curious about those that had come before them, those that had created the earthwork henge, that they were now building on top of… I know this, to have built such things, tells me that they to also had some kind of understanding of that invisible world of truth, goodness and beauty… Hmm, my thoughts seem to be a little bit all over the place, I think I’m still caught up in that time machine from earlier. 

Once in the village we come across the Church of St Laurence (a church that was pretty much built yesterday… not that long after the Norman conquest of 1066)… the style a little bit Norman and a little bit Gothic. In finding the church, we make contact with the minister, a Rev. Frank Gibson, and again we share something of our story. We are told to follow him, and five minutes later, just around the corner we are at the church hall being told to make ourselves at home… there are washrooms, a small kitchen area (a kettle, teabags, milk and sugar). I know this kind of thing keeps happening time after time, but still, it is bewildering… I am knocked out the park for six every time… and still I don’t know how better to say thank you. We set up base camp, have a wash and put the kettle on… sat on a chair with a brew in hand, Carlo asks me “Today and yesterday… is that how your days finish?” “Not every day, but most of the days have finished with a roof over my head”. “Really… whaa”… Yeah, I can go along with that.

We head back out, in the hope of finding a bite to eat… a bag of chips maybe. Just around the corner from the church hall there is a pub called ‘The Kings Arms’. We look at each other, hesitate for a moment and then step inside. The pub is quiet, we walk up to the bar and again explain ourselves to the lady behind the counter… with the hope of being given a sandwich (this part of the walk I don’t find easy). “Does sausage, egg, chips and beans sound good”… “Wow, Thank you so much”. Tasha (that is her name) smiles and simply says “That’s ok”.

Later back at the church hall, sitting on my sleeping bag, legs stretched out in front of me, a mug of tea alongside, leaning up against the wall (or was it a block of stone, maybe an upturned wheelbarrow… I’m not sure). I close my eyes, and as best I can imagine stepping into that unseen world where truth and beauty, love and faith are caught up in some intimate dance. I think many times we over complicate faith… to step back into that time machine and to go back to the dawn of time ‘Genesis’, God’s first words were “Let there be light”… (and there was). And then after each different stage of creation, God saw that it was good… I wonder… could faith be as simple as that. Yeah, I know I’m just a truck driver... but what if that light represents… Truth… Beauty… Goodness… and I guess above all that stuff they call Love (... and when we open our eyes each morning to such a light, is that not something to say thank you for)... and what if we lived in such a way, that like God we saw the good in the world around us… we didn’t judge, compare or look down on others, but instead saw the best in the people around us.

Carlo gives my leg a tap “Hey dreamer, you want another brew”. “Yeah, that would be great… thanks”... I guess that'll be me back in the world of teabags and grit.