The Long Man

This morning began normally enough. My wife refused to get up until she'd read another chapter of the new Anne Tyler novel. I fiddled around on my phone, looking at a selection of pointless updates on Facebook. My older son remained asleep, while his brother crept downstairs to play on the computer.

I knew that with a little application, we could continue doing this until lunchtime, blaming the weather for our inertia. But a brief glint of sunlight from a passing car hinted at a morning that was too good to be squandered. A walk on the South Downs was the answer. I told my younger son to get his coat. 

 

We started here, in the shadow of the Long Man of Wilmington. The beauty of this hill figure, "as high as forty men", is that nobody knows anything about it. It may be thousands of years old or just a few hundred. We don't have a clue who built it, or why. 

Whether it's a fertility symbol, a warning to enemies or a simple work of art is anyone's guess. That's the beauty of the Long Man.

Erich von Daniken would probably assert that it's a signal to visiting aliens. As if.

I once had the misfortune to work in a bookshop with a large clientele of New Age fans, during which I met a number of charlatans and some people who probably needed more help than a quartz crystal could provide. As a result, I avoid visiting the Long Man when there's any likelihood of spotting a druid.

Ironically, they spoil the mystical atmosphere of the place.

My son, who is nine, looked very thoughtful and said "This is marvellous. You know, when I was younger, I preferred the city to the countryside, but I find that as I get older, I prefer the countryside."

A wise head on young shoulders.

I didn't have any particular plan, other than to walk to the Long Man, but my son seemed to be enjoying himself so much, it seemed a pity to stop. So we didn't.

The largest hill is Firle Beacon. Virginia Woolf regularly walked across it when she went to visit her sister Vanessa, at Charleston, which is probably a small dot in this photo. Beyond Firle Beacon is Lewes, where Woolf bought her baked beans and bottles of stout.

After walking for a mile or so, we saw a village in the distance. I realised that it was Alfriston and suggested that we'd better turn back and walk to the car, but my son was determined to press on and marched ahead, singing 'It's a Long Way To Tipperary'. 

My son loves singing. He has no idea that he is completely tone deaf.

The path that was supposed to cut through fields to Alfriston was flooded, so we took the long way round and walked past some idyllic, asymetrical cottages and solid, Georgian homes. It was almost the perfect, picture postcard village, but was spoiled by a constant stream of traffic.

I noticed that my son was extremely pale - he'd never walked this far in his life - so I suggested getting a taxi back to the car park. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a phone signal. The only answer was to either accost a kindly Morris Minor-owning vicar, or consume some calories.

We found the village store, where a nice woman made me a delicious sandwich that contained at least twice as much beef as I was expecting. Within minutes, I was beefed-up.

My son chose a Curly-Wurly bar and I watched the colour slowly return to his cheeks. I was unaware of the restorative properties of the Curly-Wurly.

As we left Alfriston, a pterodactyl-like silhouette circled above the flooded fields. My son had never seen a heron before and was impressed by the huge wingspan. "This is an adventure," he said. "We never know what we're going to see next. Those Disney places pretend to give you adventures, but you know what to expect."

Good, I thought, that's saved me several hundred quid and a weekend of hell at Disneyland Paris.

After a fairly steep climb, my son asked to stop and we sat down for a few minutes. I looked at the piece of grass next to me and saw that it was actually made up of many different plants, some of them barely visible, clinging on to a bedrock that was comprised of the bones of billions of prehistoric creatures. It seemed miraculous.

Then I noticed an odd, whorl-shaped object:

It was a snail, unlike any that I have found in my garden. I looked closer and realised that the whole area was littered with these tiny shells. I will be contacting the relevant authorities about the discovery of the Cochlea Steerforthum.

As we walked back, I thought of a conversation I had with a friend in the pub, yesterday evening. We both agreed that we had reached an age where we could no longer afford to squander time. We might live for another 40 years and remain in reasonable health for much of it. But we might not.

Going for a long walk on the Downs may not qualify as a 'bucket list' activity, but it had the sense of being what Frank O'Hara called the "real right thing" and that, I think, is all anyone can ask for.

Turning the Key

A beautiful day - a tantalising glimpse of the summer we never had. I don't know if it's anything to do with global warming, but the English summer now seems to take place in April and May, with a monsoon season in July and August. It's very odd.

I had to drive to a farm to drop off a cheque for the deposit and first month's rent for Steerforth Books. I had no idea where I was going, but had been given a postcode for the satnav and blindly followed directions which took me onto increasingly narrower and emptier roads. I'd forgotten how sinister the English countryside can be (I blame this on watching reruns of the Avengers).

I ended up driving for miles along a deserted lane, wondering if I was going to end up in a ditch with the satnav lady announcing "You have now reached your destination", whilst some grinning toothless locals began untying the string around their trousers. Fortunately this is Sussex, not the Appalachians.

The farm turned out to be a beautiful, large Georgian house, with breathtaking views of the South Downs. I handed the cheque over and felt a pang of remorse for the fact that I will probably never be able to afford to live somewhere like this.

Driving to the next destination, I listened to a podcast of 'Broadcasting House'. Francesca 'Horrid Henry' Simon, Tori Amos and a bloke whose name I never caught were talking about being in New York on 9/11. More recent events like the invasion of Iraq have faded into the recesses of my memory, but I remember September 11th as if it was yesterday.

I arrived at Steerforth Books. Peter, the gentleman farmer, was out on his tractor doing agricultural things, but another man handed me the key and at last I was able to take possession of the new unit:

It's not big, but if I'm clever about it I think I can get around 8,000 books in this room, which should be enough to generate a reasonable income. I won't get rich - most of the books won't sell - but hopefully the children will have shoes on their feet. The main challenge will be to find enough stock to reach this magic figure. I have a few potential sources.

So Steerforth Books is almost a reality. I have a business account, domain name (com and co.uk), office unit and even a little bit of stock. I can't say that I'm looking forward to the sheer, unmitigated tedium of building 46 feet of shelving (and given my track record in DIY, it will probably collapse at some point), but without it there will be no Steerforth Books.

In the meantime I'm still going into work, three days a week, getting things ready for my successor. It feels strange going through the motions of the working day, making decisions about a future that I won't be part of. I will be glad to leave the world of '9 to 5', but I'll also miss several people more than they probably realise.

In some ways it feels like a very early retirement, leaving the 'real' world of work for a John Bull Printing Set fantasy. But work can simply be work. We don't have to be part of an organisation: commuting, attending meetings and working in open plan offices. Paunches and stomach ulcers are optional, not compulsory.

But whilst a part of me relishes the idea of leaving office life behind, another part feels a deep sense of loss.

No more talking about last night's telly. No more "Did you see the quiz night Phil?", followed by detailed postmortems of 'University Challenge' and 'Only Connect'. I have met some good people through work.

I apologise if this blog has lost its 'mojo' at the moment. The amusing covers and photographs have been thin on the ground recently. I had hoped to publish one final installment of the Derek diaries, but - and you'll have to take my word for this - they are mostly very dull and I have struggled to find any more material that is worth publishing. I haven't completely given up.

So until Steerforth Books is fully established, this blog will limp along like a consumptive war veteran, looking back to better days, hoping (perhaps unrealistically), for better times ahead.

Finally, as far as a Steerforth Books logo is concerned, I have been particularly dim. When I first visited my new farm unit last week, I need only have turned my head 45 degrees to have seen one of the most striking 'logos' of all time:
Nobody knows how old the possibly prehistoric Long Man of Wilmington is, or indeed why it's there, but in theory you can't miss it. I did.

But then one September in 1995, I managed to spend a whole day travelling around Manhattan without noticing the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. The next morning I caught an American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles, blissfully ignorant of what the future held.