A WALK BACK TO THE LAST LONDON BY WAY OF WATLING STREET
and
THE LIKELIHOOD OF IT ALL
or
THE SACRED VALUE OF RESTLESSNESS
(On foot from Dover to Sittingbourne in two days and thereafter London)
Historic Dover
Dover-of-the-invader
Dover the provider
Then towards the Priory
The sea to the right of me
And memories of that September night to the left of me
And the touch
Of the
Nowgone
Lost-but-not-forgotten
The pleasure pours in from the healing effect of giving the past a sense of immediacy
The here and now
The unlikelihood of it all
The sense of that smell:
Sea spray and baby oil
Diesel and Vaseline
(But not the neoprene)
We were naked save for the trunks and rubber hats
Preparing to swim the channel all those ever-so-many-neap-tides-ago
All aboard the Gallivant
He was there with us
Witnesser-moralebooster-interlocutor
It was our cross channel swim
And
Today as my train pulls in
To its’ station
There is still that early morning emotion
And
Expectation
A juxtaposed intimacy despite this distance from that shared past
The feeling of restoration
But still
The Loss
I’m at a loss-to-explain
Anyhow I’m getting off the train
SO
I move on to where Iain is waiting
He’s always waiting
He’s always there first
He never hangs around
And once the embraces have been done
We’re off and at it
Pounding the ground
Today he is in Grey
Very grey
Beusyian-pocketed-waistcoat-WATLING STREET-grey
Whatever possessed me to say
YES
The inevitability of the likelihood of it all
There’s always somewhere else to go
Something else to be dwelt upon once we’re on the road
Those foppy Situationists would have been irritated by him
He’s too-at-it
Too vigorous
Too rigorous
Always chomping at the bit of possibility
Him and his wordbloodysmithery
THOSE PEBBLES WOULD MAKE FINE SPECTACLES HE TELLS ME
Back to the first day and a chronology of sorts:
A Methodist church
Forlorn and dismal like the very fabric of the
What’s-left-of-mainland-religion
Save of course for THAT ONE
Fresh-baked with half-baked-spurious-first-hand-pass-me-down-old-world-peasant-truths-digging-their-way-back-into-the-past-truths
So seductive and alive for the have-nots
Yet so reductive and active for the feeble-of-mind
We pass it by
And move along
Bombarded by forlorn-hanging-on-for-dear-life-signage:
Massive Deals
A Penny For Your Thoughts
The Wrong End Of Town
Burger Shack
And then back to the busy road
Me in my Thomas Farthing tweed suit and flowery scarf
Itchy post steam-punk out-of-doors yob
Sophisticate
Hot
And yet
A head full of noise
A head full of noise
Biding my time
Waiting for the moment of possibility to interject
To interrupt the thing that is his waterfall of wordflow
This ex-Roman road leading us to Christ-knows-where
Rochester
Westminster
Northampton
Rugby
Coventry
AND
Holyhead?
Right across England into Wales and back again
The signs spell out their own tales
Private Property – Enter if you dare
Treelands
Hope Corner
Beware the plants
Keep off the grass
And
Watling Street
Then on towards
Shepherdswell
Woolage Green and Womenswold
On and on it goes
This Watling Street road
Now wafting across the ‘scape comes the smell of rape
The eyes and nose consumed by yellow vista
We beat the bounds of parched ground
The Two Sawyers for lunch
Signage of two men sawing whilst sitting together on the same branch
Warm beer
More bent ear and Hackney food wraps
Kendall mint cake for afters
THOSE PEBBLES WOULD MAKE FINE SPECTACLES HE has told ME
Which reminds me:
We towards Canterbury on our feet
My University stomping ground is suddenly upon us as we hit its’ surrounds
Boundaries and environs
Then a hotel in which I banter so much that I am left with the disabled bed
Low to the ground with plenty of room for the head
Rails on the windows
Rails on the bath
Rails on the sink
Rails on the soap
Don’t slip
Then downtown to Byron’s for a North Korean theme burger
Supper
And
To bed
LOUDLY – it tells me:
Thus to the second day and a continued chronology of sorts:
Farewell to Canterbury
We move headlong out of the city
Thomas Beckett’s statue bids us farewell
And as the early morning moves into rush hour
Cars surround us
Whizzing and zooming and oppressing
Until
Jackie Collins and her Hollywood Wives is found
There it is on the ground
Her oasis of verbiage by the side of the road
He then sets about a provocation:
An auto-critique for someone
Anyone
A student perhaps
‘FIND THIS
READ IT
SUBVERT IT’
Those are his instructions
His challenge
I love the way he defaces her writing with his demands
The sun pouring in all over him as the words pour out
Underlining
Undermining
Reconfiguring
And freshly mythologizing
All the time with hope against hope that the Angels of Happenstance might lead Someone
Anyone
To find this moment of his command
Headlong away from suburbia and into
Superwoman - Wonderwoman - Überwench
There she is suspended up a tree
High above a fibreglass animal safari
All static
Stasis has set in
When
All-of-a-sudden a strange wind blows cold across the clearing
A barbed wire fence
Hopefully containing all within
Shot gun in hand
Rocking on the veranda
A Man-of-Kent
Angry
With perhaps more to come
So sensing this
We move along
Heads bent
Followed by a rant about Alan Moore’s Eternalism
Chariots of the Gods and Fundemantalism
Provoked by my cajoling intent
In-the-wake-of that Methodist church (the day before)
No subtitles
The sun hammers down in springtime bliss
When we stumble across this:
NIRVANA – FREEDOM FOR SALE
A mobility scooter centre come wedding caterers come second hand car site
Ever in search of the banter I insist that we enter
Met by a salesman from behind a beige coloured counter
Another
Man-of-Kent
We indulge his sales pitch
Which takes a turn for the better
When he suggests that we might be interested in buying
Wild boar
Deer
Rabbit
Badger or even Fox for our supper
Freshly imported from Poland where the laws are slightly slacker on road kill
We settle for some frozen berries (which we don’t buy because the bags are too BIG)
Watling Street has become THE STREET has become The South Downs Way has become Frognal, Radfield and Snipeshill
We cut through woods plod across fields to the Faversham Stone Chapel and thereafter hang on for dear life as the pavement folds into a slither
Tracking tarmac roads
Bombarded by lorries on both sides
I make him take hold of my hand
Adult and child
We’re crossing the road to get to the other side
The road’s not wide
But we’re crossing it to get to the other side
Who is who?
I never know
NEVER GO WITH STRANGERS
As we approach Sittingbourne I’m left with an overwhelming sense of sadness that despite all this closeness
It is now time to go
Same as it ever was
Without a love of ridiculous endeavour would the human race have lasted so long?
Someone else has told me
Therefore
No more
Save for the next time when we will meet at Shooter’s Hill for the last leg of a journey
And thus towards London on our feet
And the predictability of it all
THOSE PEBBLES MAKE FINE SPECTACLES
THEY HELP YOU SEE BETTER
HE SHOUTS AFTER ME from the train window
“YOU TRY FUCKING WEARING THEM” - I SHOUT AFTER HIM
Andrew Kötting September 2017 @ Louyre in the French Pyrenees with a few notes – some pictures and the memory of it all.
