Our fourth guest post is from Sarah Eden. Sarah cooks and bakes at home and in Pentonville Prison through Liberty Kitchen. She tests cookbook recipes and develops baking courses. She misses going to movies with Jenny and bumping into Mehrunnisa at Fortitude. She walks a lot. You can read more of her writing and recipes at Grocery Stories. The post is dated 25 June 2021.
The sun is out again, almost back to the shorts weather of a week ago. Nettles and blackberries grow up and out and they reach far enough across the path to leaf my shins and drag against my outer thighs. It’s pleasant, this nettle stinging, like the fizz-burn of that first sip of an ice-cold Diet Coke and it sticks with me.
I’m vaguely aware of the stinging as I walk through SW London, along the Beverley Brook Trail, gently through threatened lowland acid grassland, and past a bench engraved with the sentence: “I told you I was ill.” I guess it’s supposed to be funny; it rings a tiny alarm in me. I circuit Barnes Pond or the Leg o’ Mutton Reservoir and I look out for birds, especially shovellers, ducks I didn’t know existed until late last year when I was engrossed by the sight of a pair of them swimming in tight circles with their heads under water.
I rarely walk alone without my headphones on and a podcast playing. These days I don’t track what I listen to very well unless it’s funny. Every once in a while I laugh to myself and see someone smile, seeing me laughing. I like that and it sticks with me and maybe it sticks with them too.
On my way home cut across a big field where, unlike this time last year, kids play cricket and people watch on in clusters. The tennis courts here are unchained now and almost always in use. Wheelchair racers whip around the track and Canada geese move out of their way. I walk between two huge oak trees to get to an unruly part of the sports field. Here the gardeners have let thistles, weeds, and grass grow tall on either side of a short woodchip path. Bees buzz, snails suck on stems and leaves, flies hover and fall, tiny burrs stick to my socks, and my shins hum ever so slightly – that stinging lingering.
So wonderfully written. As one reads along, one can virtually feel oneself walking along with the Author