The Blog of Lone

Luckily though the chap doing the towing was nice enough, doing his job well and teaching me all about the intricacies of the towing business, which was pretty educational.  After dropping the car off, I decided to go for a walk.  Inspired by recently reading Will Self’s collected Psychogeograhpy writing I’ve come into a new appreciation of the pleasure of walking places, as you may have gathered from the last post.  Luckily this was no early morning trek, but instead a brisk stroll from the industrial estate to the town centre in the lovely sunshine.  I got a good impression of the delights of Colchester as I ambled along.  The semi detached hinterlands border the town in a belt a few miles thick.  Tastefully decorated by multicoloured graffitti the grey concrete walls surrounding the paths provide a nice contrast to the endless tan of brick houses stretching as far as the eye can see.  There’s a nice river, liberally strewn with discarded shopping trolleys.  And for some reason Colchester isn’t designed to allow for anyone to walk anywhere.

Wandering along I grew used to the one fingered salutes and honking horns of passing van drivers.  Obviouslly they were so surprised to see someone actually walking instead of driving that they didn’t know how else to react.  Apart from drivers trying to hit me every time I crossed a sreet, I also had to contest with the slight problem that Colchester just isn’t made for pedestrians.  Sure the town centre is partly pedestrianised, but this just means that all the road signs point in a circular path around it, never towards it.  And as I had only the road signs to navigate by I kept on circling the town centre like a moth butting a light bulb, always so close but without ever being quite able to reach it.

Eventually I thought “fuck it” and decided to rely on my own somewhat unpredictable navigation skills to get where I was going.  I walked down to the river, and just followed it along, guessing that rivers always come out into the heart of towns eventually.  Come to that if you’re lost you can always just follow a river and eventually you’re guarenteed to end up somewhere.  So after passing through a park and a lot of walking I got into the town centre.  Where I found a bookshop selling the new Iain M. Banks novel I’ve been waiting so long for.  I was so excited I almost needed to change my underwear.  All in all a good morning by Colchester standards.