Walk on, walk on

July 25, 2017 by Ray Morgan

Some people find it strange that at almost 33, I've never sat behind the wheel of a car. Well, correction, a friend took me to Two Tree Island in her car when I was 18 and showed me how to drive, but I was so terrified after moving approx 2 metres, I stopped and never did it again.

I was talking about this to my boss the other day and he said that not driving must give a certain freedom. I'd never thought of it like that before - I've always thought of it as the other way around. Driving and having a car gives you freedom: you can literally drive anywhere, get there quicker, without having to faff with tickets, the general public, and getting places slower. He meant really that not having a car means we're not tied to it: petrol, insurance, parking (holla, this is L-O-S, parking is insane) and so on - and that we can walk places and take in our surroundings a lot more than a driver would.

I love walking. It's my main form of exercise, and I generally walk for about an hour today to and from work, and more if I can. I love nothing more than wandering the streets of our town listening to music or podcasts, spotting lovely houses, instagramming pics of trees against badass summer skies (one of my fave pastimes, see pic). Sometimes I walk down a street I've not been down before, and fall in love with strangers' front doors, or gardens, and try out new routes to my office to break it up a bit. When you walk the same route every day Monday to Friday, it's good to mix things up.

Some days I treat myself to an oat milk flat white (remember last week when I said I could behave like an obnoxious millennial?) from Natural Bake in Leigh, a groovy new cafe, so I can sip coffee and watch ships go by, and rate my top 5 front gardens on my walk into work. I'm not a fan of summer by any stretch - the recent grey clouds and big rain have filled me with goth-joy - but I've been enjoying the enormous bursts of lavender groaning onto the pavements, each stem bobbing with a bee perched on the end. Every purple plant is laden with those guys, buzzing with life, and the smell's gorgeous when you brush past.

I'm the kind of person who loves taking it all in while I'm walking, humming along to the new Haim album, or openly guffawing at the latest Guilty Feminist podcast - people watching is my fave. You don't get to do that when you're driving; anyway you people are too busy texting to look up and out of the window (kidding! but plz stop texting and driving, I SEE YOU).

I guess what my boss said is kind of true, I do have a freedom. I'm definitely getting to my destination slower than you, dear driver, but I'm having a lovely time on the way.