The Toilet Roll Archives (7): "These Boots Were Made Fo' Walkin'"

The Toilet Roll Archives (7): "These Boots Were Made Fo' Walkin'"

• Sunday, 19 April 2020

Two weeks ago, I did my back in on my morning run.

I fell over an overgrown tree root in the park. Yep, 21 and still falling over – my skinned knees and bruises are real proof I’m just an overgrown nine year old. Anyways, I did some damage; the kind of damage where you have to stop for breathers when climbing up the stairs and grit your teeth when you lift yourself into the shower. I can barely but one foot in front of the other at a regular pace, never mind lifting up a dumbbell or running.

Besides the fact that I’m a bit salty over no one telling you how much your body betrays you in your twenties, I’m pretty much back to normal after two weeks of rest, Deep Heat and painkillers.

However, I’m the kind of gal who struggles staying still at the best of times – like I said, I’m an overgrown nine year old. I constantly need to keep my brain occupied or my feet moving. Plus, just lying around wasn’t going to help my back heal any quicker. Keep moving and all that.

So, instead of running, I began my day with a walk – albeit, very slow and sort of painful ones at first, but walks all the same. And I forgot how bloody lovely they were.

It is a paradox that perhaps the single best way to still one’s mind is to put the body in motion. The list of what has been accomplished on walks is almost comically illustrative of this point.

Nietzsche said the ideas in Thus Spoke Zarathustra came to him on a long walk. Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field on a walk through a city park in Budapest in 1882 – one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time directly attributed to walking. When he lived in Paris, Hemingway would take long walks along the quais whenever he needed to clarify his thinking. Darwin’s daily schedule included several walks. Charles Dickens often walked as much as 20 miles per day!

I don’t think it’s possible to pick up all the names I dropped in that paragraph. But you get the point.

All of these walks, hundreds and thousands of miles over the years, were facilitating in generating the insights behind some brilliant, world-changing work.

And I’m obviously not claiming that the reason I began going on these walks was to nurture my own ideas or visions or genius because that’s a twatty thing to even remotely suggest. But they weren’t just an inferior substitute for the exercise I was missing. I went on walks and ideas for what I wanted to work on, tasks and objectives to complete that day or by the end of the week, solutions for any problems, whatever…all of it seemed to flow. Walking quickly grew on me. By the time my back started to feel better, I was a convert. I’ve always liked a good walk, but now I would classify myself as A Walker. Yep. Really.

There’s no better city for walking in than London. K, it’s a sailing city really (remember the Thames?  Not seen her in a while!) but this city is perfect for nurturing the ‘walking thoughts’ you get when you’re out and about on your own. And getting ‘walking thoughts’ and letting them flow has become kind of addictive. They’re a different kind of thought. They aren’t the racing thoughts of a worried mind. They aren’t the distracted thoughts of the working mind. They are naturally reflective. They’re calmer and contemplative and just proper lovely. A busy Stepney Green side street can be silenced with earphones and some nice, quiet, thinking.

Tbf, it’s gotten to the point where I could be walking anywhere and I wouldn’t care what it looked like, as long as I can get outside and move and do something. It’s the process that’s doing the work, not the branches of trees you have to clamber over on a forest hike or the sound of waves crashing on the beach or the lapping of water along the walls of the canal in Leigh (i miss u home xoxo).

There is evidence that memory and the mind function differently on the move. Writing this, I remember revising for school exams and walking around my kitchen and up and down the stairs memorising scripts for shows and paragraphs for French speaking assessments. A study at New Mexico Highlands University has found that the force from our footsteps can increase the supply of blood to the brain. Researchers at Stanford have found that walkers performer better on tests that measure “creative divergent thinking” during and after their walks. And a 20 year study found that walking five miles a week protects the brains of people suffering from Alzheimer’s.

So, yeah: ‘Rona and the overgrown tree root in Meath Gardens (finger emoji), you gave me the magic of long, lovely walks. Thanks, I suppose.