I’ve been meaning to write all summer. And yet I haven’t. I haven’t walked much either. Why walk if you can cycle? Besides, it’s been far too hot and too still to walk. The air at least feels like it’s moving when you cycle through it.

The writing? Tja. Whatever it is that makes me write hasn’t been working.

I have tho. Mostly. I’ve been working at work and on my flat (pictures to follow) and on myself. Except when I haven’t. There have been days of doing nothing but being.

I’m working again today, which is more than I can say about my bike. It decided enough is enough and is having a retyrement party at the bike shop. Complete with celebratory cogs and a shiny chain for loyalservice and new brakes for good measure. It went in yesterday but it seems a proper celebration and recovery takes time. Especially allowing for all the breaks*..

Yesterday I walked home.

6 km (plus an hour on the sofa) of long overdue, easy flowing conversation with a friend I don’t see very often.

The world goes by more slowly when you walk but the ideas come faster when you have someone to share them with. All the happenings of the last few months, condensed into an hour, two if you count both tellings. The highlights and the lowlights. A lot of busyness contrasting with the slow steady plodding.

This morning I walked to the train station. I saw the litter in the newly cut and untypically dry grass on the banks at the side of the road and thought about how you don’t notice it so much on a bike. Or when the grass is longer and greener and lusher. Now would be a good time to go litter picking. Now, before the grass grows again or it snows on top of it all. I think I will at some point. It sounds therapeutic. Like weeding. Much easier than weeding and looking for litter in my life, although I know I should probably do that too, before it gets full again. The ground is dry too, the sand trickles out of the spaces between the roots – a perfect example of soil erosion. It’s about time it rained, the ground needs it even if I don’t want it.

***

Going to work on the train provides me with a few minutes of undisturbed writing time. So I’m writing. To prove I still can. To hopefully kickstart the idea that writing doesn’t need to be “special” or particularly interesting, it just needs to be written.

Tomorrow the bike will work again and I can go back to cycling to work.

I have no idea what my writing will do, but I hope it will stick around for a while. My mind could do with a good litter picking session. 😉

*Brakes and breaks are important. Breaking and being broken aren’t.