A Long Walk and a Coincidence.

Today I did my longest walk yet since the leg underwent its procedure five weeks ago. It took in the three major roads in the Shire (although the term ‘major’ must be viewed in relative terms, since two of them are only wide enough to accommodate a single vehicle comfortably) and covered a distance of around 2½ miles. 2½ miles doesn’t sound like much, does it, but when you consider that six weeks ago – and for a year and a half before that – I had difficulty walking 400 yards without serious discomfort, today’s accomplishment was suitably pleasing.

An aside

Do excuse me if my prose style emulates the tortuous characteristics of the late-period Henry James tonight. I’m currently reading his The Turn of the Screw again – slowly – in a valiant attempt to put flesh onto the bones of the many film and TV adaptations I’ve seen over the years. It’s a favourite story of mine, but what I don’t understand is why so many people who have, one assumes, better things to do with their time will insist on arguing as to whether it’s a supernatural story or a psychological one. There are ghosts in it, but whether they’re actual ghosts or figments of the governess’s sexually repressed imagination is the point in question. I really don’t see why it should matter. If you want to believe they’re ghosts, then do so; if you don’t, don’t. What’s the point of arguing about something which the author himself never made clear? It is fiction after all.

But to continue with today’s little adventure:

The route takes in the finest view across the river valley to be found on the far side of the Shire. It’s a panoply of recently mown meadows, woods, hedgerows, copses, and many fine individual trees, and culminates in a range of low, bare hills in the far distance. The Shire trees this year are particularly colourful, and so the vista is a veritable potpourri of still-green summer leaves splashed among the reds, oranges, browns and yellows of autumn. I swear it comes close to emulating the famed panoramas of New England in the fall. And the day was damp and misty which made the view all the more magical, the earlier heavy rain having stopped just before I set out. (By an odd coincidence, this is an exact copy of the weather described in tonight’s chapter of the Turn of the Screw. Maybe it’s fortunate that I didn’t venture into the churchyard. I might have seen a misty and malevolent character moving among the crenellations on the church roof, and have been shaken to my boot laces as fictional governesses are wont to do in such circumstances.)