From July-October 2022, I did a sponsored Million Steps Challenge for Diabetes UK. Friends were hugely generous, and I look back on it as quite an adventure, often setting off on my rounds of North London at 6am to do 15000 steps while watching villages wake up. This journal became rather fun too.

July 1.

     As I’ll be tramping round London later in the day, I went for a quick 5000 or so locally, first thing in the morning. I found a stream-side path nearby, and followed that instead of my planned route along roads. This walk in the woods would not have been possible in America. According to the various crime programmes we watch, it’s impossible for joggers, hikers or people out walking the dog to venture into woods anywhere without stepping on a decaying corpse or crunching on human remains of some sort. Every programme starts the same. ‘One morning in New Hampshire, Jenny and Jerry Hamilton were out for their morning run when they came across a grisly discovery.’ It also seems that if you were to glance out of any bedroom window in small-town America in the middle of the night, you’d inevitably see the guy across the road either digging a suspiciously large hole in his front garden or hauling an obviously full sleeping bag off somewhere, to the woods, probably. Did you know that 98% of cars on the interstates of America have either a dead body in the trunk or someone who’s soon to become a dead body? OK, I made that up. It’s probably only around 80%. Anyway, it was a nice first walk this morning. More later.

July 2.

     Having expended the rest of my steps after my walk yesterday circling a pool table, and with today’s walk a real biggie, with one dreary section along the dusty North Circular, I’m now knackered.

     This car was fun though, parked up a lane outside a restaurant.

July 3.

     As I started doing the actual walking and step counting a couple of days before the Off, choosing blocks of north London as routes, I now have a map with a series of polygons surrounding my house. Even after just 5 days they encompass a fair section of north London and look rather pretty.

     I’ve decided to ditch the useless wristband / pedometer I bought for this. My fault for buying the £6 one. Instructions like ‘The wristband is best worn after the ulnar styroid.’ and its tendency to reset itself to 0 at a random point around 13,000 steps haven’t helped. A new one arriving today.

     I think I read before this started that steps taken in your own house count towards the million, not just the steps accomplished on the planned walks. Home steps hardly count for anything anyway. If I lived in a house which was just one very long corridor that’d be different.

     Ended up on the grubby North Circular again, got a bus home this time. But delighted to notice that near the bus stop was the Catcuddles Cat Clinic. I’d love to hear the receptionist answer the phone there.

     A nice early tramp up Waterfall Road was marred by the obvious evidence of foxes frolicking during the night. One firm-jawed scavenger had hoiked an entire black plastic sack up out of a street bin and the result was all over the road. KFC cartons, bags of frazzles, a tub of coleslaw, the half empty trays from last night’s Chinese takeaway; all splayed out. One thing though, which is today’s title really: Foxes Don’t Like Bananas.

     More later.

July 4 this time.

     Sunday morning. Thought I’d walk a bus route from home, then when I got to 10,000, or somewhere after that, get on the bus for a triumphant and comfortable journey back. Good plan. Hadn’t accounted for rain though, which started coming down after about half an hour. I didn’t mind, but my glasses became full of tears so I took them off. This meant that my vision became wishy-washy and water-coloured; I felt like Monet. As I was on a tree-lined avenue, this was rather nice, imagining myself walking along a French track in the 19^th century, till a car bibbed me for wandering into the road.

     I whistled a tune for a long time before realising what it was, the guitar solo from ‘November Rain’ by Guns ‘n’ Roses. Tunes always come into your head for a reason, it’s subconscious but it’s there if you can work out why. This one was rather obvious, obviously.

     There was a lovely section where I was forced to walk along a woody path by the road. Long grass and nettles, the rain pattering on the leaves overhead. Suddenly, this cottage appeared on my right, like the witch’s hut in Hansel and Gretel.

July 5.

     Another bus route today, again first thing in the morning, today west to Finchley and Mill Hill. Finchley was a great example of walking in north London, in two ways. I went under a towering viaduct, which turned out to have a tube line on top. But rising between tall green trees with parakeets yelling in them, and a nearby creek, this felt more like the Malaysian jungle than Finchley Central. And in the High Street, the food shops, mostly Persian, are starting to open, smelling of coffee and grilled lamb and shisha. Even going down residential roads in this community you get wafted by exotic breakfasts being cooked in the houses. Though the other day, in another area, the waft was that of staccato banjo music being practiced in a bedroom at 8am. After 15 months of social hibernation, in my case mostly spent in one room writing brass band music and some short stories, these walks are great for taking you away from yourself. The constant interest as the scenery changes, the surrounding sights and sounds of a city coming to life, the smells of the cafés and early deliveries of bread and fish don’t leave you time to dwell on your own dwelling and its self-interested spaces. That suits me fine. The photo is of the Malaysian jungle, NW7

July 6.

     Last of the three nearby bus routes today, up to High Barnet. After a torrential night, the forecast was down to a 20% chance of precipitation at 10am, so I left in heavy drizzle at 9.45 and a quarter of an hour later it stopped. Amazing. In lieu of any other news today, here’s a photo from a few days ago. At a deli by North Finchley bus station, the sign painter had just one job…

July 7.

     Quick early morning 5000 then to work for the first time in months. Amazing how many steps you take just doing your job, which in my case happens sitting down. Lunchtime ramble helped, a trawl round nearby shops to buy different coloured bags of crisps. I saw a video on FB in Feb, taken from the peephole in a door in America, the house owner had put a tray of sweets and drinks out for anyone delivering to that address to help themselves, and the video showed one guy literally dancing off in glee having taken a free treat of some sort. So we’ve been doing that here since then, and the delivery drivers LOVE it. Their job has been vital and beyond the call during all this crisis, so it’s a great idea. Crisps, chocolate bars, water and Red Bull. The postman broke a tooth eating Crunchies in the first week. Today I thought I’d bolster our usual fare of the Big 3 crisp flavours with some others, which come in differently-coloured bags. Brighten the display up a bit. More later.

July 8 actually. Perhaps I’m getting used to this, as nothing to report from today. I pass lots of people walking or jogging with headphones, and I can see how listening to music is ideal brain entertainment while doing a routine activity. But I couldn’t do it, I’d get run over. Musicians are constantly listening (despite what my wife says) and especially if there’s music going on. Me walking London streets while there’s a guitar solo in my headphones would only end in ruin, either for me or the general traffic. This is why I can’t have music on while I’m driving, I try and fit the driving to the music. I get too involved and mistime things. I hesitate at roundabouts if we haven’t got to the chorus yet, I accelerate on the point of a triumphant modulation. If I know there’s a particularly juicy chord coming up, anything could happen. The car becomes part of the piece, and that’s not a good thing. So no headphones for me on these walks, they’re too dangerous.

July 9.

     No special activity on a long walk today. Foxes Like Sardines, that’s one thing I suppose. So how about this butcher, that I passed the other day? It’s great we can get things like ostrich and kangaroo nowadays, and wild boar is common. But hang on, wildebeest? Llama, zebra, emu?! Python, for goodness sake? And the last one I had to look up, never even heard of mouflon. Professor Google says it’s a Caspian sheep. Where’s this guy getting his stuff from? Have London Zoo’s attendances fallen so badly during Covid that they’re making steaks from the attractions? Probably best not to know. Though I do like the sound of a Panda Passanda, if it becomes available. Apologies for the quality of the picture.

July 10 actually. Sometimes I get behind. We had to go a framer’s in Palmers Green this morning so I walked back from there. Not far in fact but I stepped out given a forecast of an 80% chance of rain. For anyone who’s lived in a coastal town in west Cumbria, rain holds no hesitation, as even a bright summer’s day there consists of the equivalent of being constantly dumped on by one of those firefighting helicopters. So I wore my usual walking gear, shorts and short sleeves, which is scruffy to say the least, and makes me look like that dad that nobody wants. Apostrophe police looking at my third sentence today: I’m suggesting that there is one framer and there were several palmers, whatever they are.

July 11.

     One of the very early ones today, leaving before 6. Doing so on a Sunday morning it’s VERY quiet, and I had to curtail my buzzing while north London slept. I’ve started a team, which may very well stay as just me, called Buzzin’. Coming up to Southgate there was a house on the right with a large picture of the King and Queen on display, and one just of the King, Philip. I’d never seen a picture of them with the emphasis on him before but then I realised what a hugely Greek area Southgate is. It made sense then.

July 12.

     After the BIG Match last night (which was still glorious, even though we lost with the last kick of the tournament) it took me quite a while to get going today, and I only set out mid-afternoon. Across the North Circular and south to Wood Green tube, stopping to linger at the menu of a very old favourite haunt, the Paramount Tandoori. Then up Green Lanes and a quick right to find another old venue from student days, one of those pubs in a residential street which are hidden away all over London. Quite a nice moment as I hovered in the doorway looking in, and an old couple sitting alone inside confirmed that 35 years ago it had been called The Bird in Hand. A thunder storm had been clapping around for a while and I got a bus home from the North Circular just before the skies opened.

July 13. Longest walk so far by miles and my favourite, as I was joined by my very good friend Helen. We followed the Dollis Valley Greenwalk from its midway point south to Hampstead, where we then did a few much shorter walks, between 4 pubs. Tbh I’d have fared a lot worse on the walk if Helen hadn’t been there because she rescued us at least twice when on my own I would have gone the wrong way. We met at 10 and didn’t stop for lunch till 1ish but it seemed to go very quickly, perhaps that’s a benefit of company. And almost all alongside the Dollis Brook, under trees and through woods; it’s always lovely to find so much countryside in London. Magic moment about an hour in when we were stopped in our tracks by the sight of a heron, only about 20 yards away, on the path, not in the stream. I think we saw it before it heard us, as it wasn’t alerted, and just slowly strutted around. They’re always so impressively big, and this one stood easily half our height. Probably not fully grown either, as it didn’t have a crest yet. Great day. Here’s the moment we saw the heron.

July 14.

     An early extension of my forays along the Piccadilly Line. The other day I went as far as Wood Green before going back north up Green Lanes. Today I continued to the busiest stretch of the same road, from Wood Green, past Turnpike Lane tube to Manor House. But with all the bustle and business of Wood Green on a sunny day, who knew that just west of the main street is a medieval lane that appears on a map of 1619? I was walking along Mayes Road just to postpone having to join the crowds when I came across a large board with old photos and ‘A Short History…’ of the street. Wasn’t expecting that. Made things suddenly seem even quieter and calmer. Then it was out into the warm flow of Green Lanes, dominated by the awful Wood Green Shopping City, built in 1981. I passed the McDonald’s where I’d applied for a job as a student, only failing to secure the position on that occasion by forgetting that I’d applied. I wouldn’t have been any good at it. I’d have turned the chips shovel into some sort of trombone slide exercise. The Turnpike Lane to Manor House section is as diverse as London gets; if you wanted to pick a street that demonstrates the city’s eye-opening multi-culturalism, here would do it. Apart from the foundation Greek and Turkish community, I saw restaurants and suppliers of food for local Iranian, Kurdish, Polish, Romanian and Kosovan populations. There was a Bulgarian breakfast café. There was even a Brasserie Transylvania! The other day, further up the same road, I saw an Illyrian restaurant. Having looked it up, I now know that the Illyrians were an ancient people from the Balkan peninsula, a vast area. I must try it next time.

July 15.

     A Dazzling Morning. An early again, down to Manor House on the tube at quarter to 7, hoping to walk the Piccadilly Line stations to Holloway Road and catch the tube back home from there, before the official working day starts. I’ll try to stay concise. Lovely warm morning, very bright sunlight from the east. From Manor House through Finsbury Park and down quiet roads to Arsenal station. This is total Arsenal country, the Burmese jungle for a Man United fan, where the houses all have life-size cut-outs of Martin Keown behind each door.

     On down to Holloway Road itself, and I’d only done 5000 steps by now, half the target. I didn’t fancy a gloomy trek through estates to Caledonian Road and down to King’s Cross, the next two Picc Line stops, so I diverted east to Highbury. On this stretch of Holloway Road was once the club from which Jack ‘The Hat’ was lured to his cowardly murder by the Kray madmen. I usually try to do quiet streets and tree-lined paths, as there are less people around, so I don’t have to wear the stifling mask. But as you get to more crowded roads, where distancing is impossible I put the mask on. But weirdly, as it got busier today, people got stupider, and by the time I got to Highbury Corner it was like going back two years, nobody was wearing one.

     Quieter Canonbury Road is an area where Orwell placed some of his Ministries and official buildings in ‘1984’. The multi-cultural appeal of London resurfaced on Essex Road (I was now following my own ‘home’ train line and as soon as I reached 10,000 I’d get on at the next station and turn back) as I passed Ecuadorian and Peruvian restaurants. A Latino quarter I wasn’t aware of. And incredibly, as if to prove this, a genuine old London pub with green tiles and ‘Prize Ales and Stout’ written on them, which was nowadays called ‘The Alpaca’. Shifted through back roads of Islington, a strange land of amazingly long, wide thoroughfares of flat square terraces, surprisingly deserted like outlying avenues in Tokyo. With the dazzling sun and my steamed-up mask, it was a surprise I was able to see any of this. Now coming down through Hoxton and across The Regent’s Canal, a few roads had the word ‘Eagle’ in them, reminding me that the famous Eagle pub is in this block, the one in the song ‘Pop goes the weasel’, where the third verse goes ‘Up and down the City Road, In and out the Eagle…’. I was on New North Road down towards Old Street station, from where I’d catch the train home at last. But New North Road, barely changing direction south, became East Road, which prompts the question Is East the new North?

Imagine the houses all having another three floors on top, this picture is suburban Tokyo in Hoxton:

July 16.

     Another day, another bus route, this time from my house almost as far as the M25, five and a half miles. Hottest day so far, or perhaps cos I walked in the afternoon, not pre-rush hour. And that’s it for today, no more description, so here’s a question instead: How come criminal ‘masterminds’ are always caught? They can’t be that good. And here are some nice flarze, from the walk today.

July 18.

     A pitiful total yesterday, because I didn’t do a walk. By the time I got back from Cockfosters and the M25 the other day there was a noticeable ache at the bottom of my right leg. So much so that yesterday I thought about having a day off. Really couldn’t decide whether sticking to the routine (of walking) would fix it or make it worse. It’s quite common for people to run off injuries. I was aware of the ache round the house but maybe I could walk it off. Then I had to go to the shop, just over the road, and came back literally limping, so that was that. At my age it’d be stupid to force things, and doing a walk would almost certainly make it worse. Might well do the same today, have the whole weekend resting, then start back on Monday. Hopefully more later.

July 19.

     If I do start back today, to stay on schedule I should reach 334,000 steps by the end of the month. I’m on 227,000 right now. 19^th-31^st July = 13 days to do 107,000 = just over 8000/day; it’s not too bad. Seems feeble to most, I’m sure, but right now it’s the first pressure on this, and I don’t want to walking catch-up towards the end of September.

     Hurray, back on the road! I think I did the right thing by resting for two days, and as they were the two hottest days of the year anyway, with the new routine of walking after lunch I chose the right time to be ‘injured’. Simple walk to Barnet today, following the 34 route so that if the ache came back, so could I. As well as today being a relief to be stepping out again, it was also ‘Freedom Day’, when the Covid restrictions were lifted, so that was another boost. Though it’s still best to be cautious, as the infection rate of the Delta Variant is up at 50,000/day, which is huge. Seems a strange time to say ‘Mingle! Merge! Meld! Go to the beach and bask without masks. Stand together at bars then go to nightclubs.’ People seemed to be being sensible though, still wearing masks on the street and also enjoying meals as the restaurants opened tables out onto the pavement in the sun. Though today had a feelgood atmosphere on the street, I was relieved to see that most people, and you heard this here first, are Maxines. I’m a Maxine: I believe in the mask and the vaccine.

     Didn’t even try the hill up to High Barnet, but stopped instead at the lovely Everyman cinema, which looks wonderfully and intentionally old-fashioned. This is where Helen and I watched the Downton Abbey film, and were amazed to find we could drink wine while doing so. In a cinema? No rows of jammed together (often by jam from sticky children) seats, and a 9-litre barrel of Coke to drink, we had upholstered armchairs and a casual table linking them, on which was placed a bottle of white in an ice bucket and 2 glasses. Marvellous. It was worth having been a sticky kid so I could grow up and do this.

July 20.

     Discovered a very boring thing. On the other hand, it’ll make these journal entries a lot shorter. Last night I realised that instead of taking all these interesting and planned routes, following green paths as much as possible and covering polygons of ground in nearby postcodes, a simple turn round a couple of nearby streets would yield 1000 steps, therefore I could just pop out 10 times during the day, do that and I’ve hit the daily target. In this hot weather I can wear sandals that breathe instead of socks and trainers, and with this damn leg pain I need never be too far from home that I can’t just stop and be back writing or practising in 5 minutes. There are a few nearby circuits, with various step counts, and I can mix them up a bit to reach the 10,000. Even up the hill to M&S and back (1200 steps) counts. Though I should stop buying toffee meringues while I’m there.

     Mostly on any health kick of mine I fill the fridge full of low fats and zeros, stuff that isn’t wine or toffee meringues. The mornings have a good start, a Strong Virgin Bloody Mary. If this sounds almost oxymoronic, it contains the usual Worcester Sauce and green chilli Tabasco, then some mushroom ketchup, a dab of tapenade, a small teaspoon of brown crab meat, a shot of arsenic and a stick of Blackpool Rock for garnish. OK, it is only the first two, but have you noticed that green Tabasco tastes so much more like actual chilli than the red one?

July 21.

     Trying to take good care of this leg blip, and have stocked up on Deep Heat and paracetamols. Still very careful about overdoing anything, in case of longer-term failure to complete this challenge. Along with the chemical therapies, and going along with the idea that they’re designed to relax the muscle, I thought that a dishcloth tied with an elastic band round the affected bit might help. It might be a facecloth, I’m not sure. But it does seem to help, heat up the area, and it’s a lot cheaper than buying some posh ankle cuff, though I haven’t checked (£61.49). And it also exaggerates my already trampish outfit. At 55, I care less and less about what I look like, and for those who’ve known me a long time this is very bad news indeed. Almost immediately you start this Million Steps Challenge, or MSC, you get sent a Shoelace Charm, which is two small purple oblong tiles. I suppose you could fit them over hooked earrings, but the idea is to thread them onto your (walking) shoe laces. If you thread them on the inside lace of each foot, they do clink together occasionally on your travels, and I do actually find this a positive aural reminder of what I’m doing, and the good it can do.

22^nd July actually, missed a journal day out again. Not much to say, a new route going down to Green Dragon Lane, then onto Green Lanes, where I could get 2 buses home as soon as the leg started twanging, which it did so I did. Walking on a dull ache is fine, but when it becomes a sharp twang, that’s time to bail out. Not in a bad place steps-wise. 22^nd today, target of 334,000 by the 31^st (a third of the way to the Million). That’s 10 days to do 7,000 each day. Shouldn’t be a problem but I’ll keep overshooting in case the leg packs up, and also I’m back to work next week, and walking isn’t a priority then.

     Two thoughts to close. First, with this MSC and the walking in mind, I wondered if The Shadows did 10,000 steady steps a day with that dance routine they used to do? And here’s a photo of our little hill in north London a couple of mornings ago.

July 23^rd.

     Possibly the quickest 10,000 in terms of interest, as I accidentally found a path through woods only 200 yards from our front door. The woods were dense enough that you couldn’t see the houses on either side, and they made all the right noises, pigeons cooing and a chattering chaffinch with its distinctive and extended chirrup. It was woody and birdy enough to think you were in the country, and that’s good enough. Just as I was thinking that there couldn’t possibly be any wildlife in here – how would it have got in? – when I saw a flash of movement to my right. Definitely an animal. A small deer, no, it was orange, a fox? But still no, it was a large cat, but it looked great as it caught sight of me through the trees and sunlit leaves. 

July 25.

24^th. Got our beautiful new cat today from the CPL in Harrow. Mostly stayed behind the sofa (Hera, not me) but magical 20 minutes out and investigating, late evening, exploring, saying hello. Hushed voices for us, felt like Xmas.

25^th. So not much walking yesterday. This morning to the Bralizian deli junction (see 6^th July) at North Finchley then down Ballard’s Lane and ended up on 382 bus route again, to the terminus this time. Early on a weaselly man on a bike passed me and said ‘Lovely colours!’, indicating something I’d just passed. I turned back to see what he was referring to, presumably a healthy garden in the Sunday morning light. It was a Union Jack in a first floor window. Git. A bit later, a sign outside a school said ‘Igniting the spark of genius in every child’, which is a pretty good slogan, except I first read it as ‘Ignoring the…’ etc.

More flarze, Dollis Lane:

     And here’s a garden near our house I passed recently. Hats off to the dad who built this or had it built. Every boy wants a tree house, look at Bart Simpson. This one’s a bit special though.

27^th July.

     Toughest walk so far yesterday, 27th. How long is Finchley Road?! Maida Vale studios right up to Finchley Central station, 15,000 steps. Gloomiest moment as the rain really started on the approach to the North Circular. But I’d planned the route and wanted to do it. And I’ve now smashed past the target of 334,000 steps – a third of a million – with four days to spare before the end of this first month. For my records, I’m on 346,560, with the next target being 668,000 by the end of August. On July 12^th I found an Illyrian restaurant on Green Lanes, and had to learn who the Illyrians are/were. So how about this place, which does Uyghur food? Sounds like a Kazakh tribe but the writing above was in a Chinese script. Another one for Wikipedia, where I learn that the Uyghurs are one of the 55 ethnic minorities of China, from the Xinjiang Province in the north west. It’s such a vast region it has borders with countries from Russia to India, which seems amazing to me. And ingredients in the dishes they love to eat represent such diversity, such as noodles, rice, mutton, Bactrian camel, roast fish, smetana, dried apricots, olives, cumin seeds, honey and peppercorns. Carrots are mentioned a lot. They often use sultanas and meat fat for flavouring. Think I might go there (the restaurant on Finchley Road, not Xinjiang).

28^th July. After the Long March of Finchley Road yesterday, and having reached the target of 1/3^rd of the steps, foot off the pedal for a few days now, and probably quieter on the Journal front. We’re back to work, the First Night of the Proms on the 30^th, so I don’t want to be pushing things too hard, off the pitch, as it were. Question for today: Can you still get Tomato Sauce flavour crisps?

1^st August.

     First day of the second month, have to say it’s gone well so far. The leg damage wasn’t fun but that seems to have fixed itself now. Certainly while it was hurting it was all I could do to walk on it, and running would not have been possible, so if anyone on a remote part of a walk had decided to mug me I’d have been a sitting duck. As it’s a new month, and I’ve reached the fund target I’m going to raise it a little, not much. And I’ll do a last re-post on the 1^st September.

     Walked back from the vet’s yesterday and came back through the vast nearby graveyard. That always takes a little longer as they’re so interesting. This one seems to have sections for nationalities, faiths, and, roughly, dates, where perhaps a new section was once opened so there are lots of graves from that period. There are also some really old, overgrown areas, spooky stuff, and I turned into a boy yesterday walking through long grass and bushes, with occasional headstones popping up, to try to find a way down to a wooden gate by the road, which has a large hole in it that I could climb through. First Night of the Proms two nights ago in this amazing building. Not the Albert Memorial, the Hall behind it.

2^nd August.

     A planned route from my Box of Suggestions today, down to Wood Green, almost, then left along White Hart Lane. Made famous, of course, by Tottenham FC naming their old stadium after it, it’s actually quite a long, winding road, and you can picture a rural lane, even a track through a forest, and imagine how it got its name. I even passed a street called Rivulet Road, which seemed an extraordinarily rustic and poetic name for a part of north London. A few years ago, Helen and I briefly considered moving to a house on an estate built on an old Tottenham FC training pitch but the thoughts of the Poltergeist films were too strong, with the ghosts of Ozzy Ardiles and Steve Perryman coming out of graves in the garden and the TV just showing snowy  repeats of their 1961 season. A sign saying ‘White Hart Lane N17’ showed me that this was the furthest east I’d walked so far. Though not so far east and astray as this New York City taxi, parked outside an N17 garage, see below.

     I eventually wound up at the new stadium – which is a pretty spectacular arena set in the surroundings of utterly normal north London streets, it sits amongst them like a tall giant, a huge, landed spaceship – then walked up to the North Circular through the ever-busier High Road. Time to put the mask on, which was a shame because it was starting to smell lovely, and it was lunchtime. Lots of restaurants and kebabs and shwarmas on either side, and an incredibly prolific fish slab inside a shop, but I carried on, reached the busy A406 and stepped onto a 34 home without breaking stride. There are no paragraph breaks built into this blog format so I’ll just dive in and say that sole is a wonderful fish, isn’t it? There’s a great fish shop that delivers from the City, and they had a special offer on last week so we went for it. I hadn’t cooked one for ages, or eaten one, but they’re rather special. Occasionally I take over on cooking duty when Helen has a tough(er) week at work. I try and vary my limited repertoire, and try at least one new dish every time, and from the last time round I can safely and wholeheartedly recommend a Georgian dish called Chanakhi. A lamb stew with peppers, parsley and tomatoes, but the killer touch is the addition of dill. Dill with fish, very common, with lamb, amazing. I usually turn these cooking bouts into little parties, just me and Alexa, some wine and Whitesnake. I call these occasions – and this is for you Allan – Cooking with Coverdale.

Aug 3^rd.

     Simple one today, went to Whetstone High Street, got attacked by a dog, came back. Actually the dog was close to home. I made no eye contact with what I could see ahead was a jet black, heavy-set Cerberus on the leash of a young lad. But as we passed each other, first thing I knew was the dog’s foreleg up on my arm. I yelped, and the owner yelped. But as I stumped off I heard no apology, so I’m sure he thought I must have threatened his little pet somehow. Good luck with that one.

     I was going to do a biggish local circuit, but on the way to the first turn yesterday’s food chat resurfaced, and as it was lunchtime, I fancied a Carbonara that wasn’t made by me. Carbonara’s one of my short list of dishes and it’s excellent, I can say that because it’s not my recipe, I just repeat what I was taught by a north Italian viola player and it’s, well, excellent. But I just fancied the classic dish in someone else’s hands today, so I didn’t make the turn but carried on through to Whetstone High Street where, in this weather, I knew there’d be several restaurants with tables out on the wide pavement, and surely at least one of them would be Italian. I sat at the first one I came to that had Carbonara on the list, or rather I asked if I could sit, the waiter eyed my old shirt with sweat spots, and nodded reluctantly. A single glass of white wine to accompany the food and I walked home. That hadn’t been the intention but having done something similar a while back, I’d noticed that, far from slowing me down, a spot of food on the walk has the actual effect nature meant it to, i.e. it gives a boost of energy. I was going to get the bus, but just kept walking.

     So much for this being a ‘simple one today’, but if anyone is actually reading any of this (and I know there are a few and I’m very grateful), this is about half of what I could be writing. This is condensed. That’s because I’m stumbling towards the finish of a second book, consisting purely of short and slightly entertaining stories, mostly based on 35 years in professional music, and to finish that, with this walking and a gradual return to work (hurray, at last!) is becoming more and more of a squeeze.

     I should have taken a picture of Cerberus to show here, but I think if I had, the owner would have just taken his hand off the leash.

August 4^th

     Very long walk today, getting on for three hours but that’s only because I kept stopping and gawping. So much to look at on these walks (even though walking east in the morning the sun was full in my face and it was difficult to see at all) so I’ll condense again. 7am tube to Turnpike Lane then the walk across to Walthamstow, where I used to live 27 years ago. One stretch of road where, during my time in the area, the police, seeing an unsteady figure trudging along with a strange-looking case at about 1am, stopped for a little chat. After it turned out I wasn’t the man they were looking for, I cheekily asked them for a lift home. They declined, but did at least laugh at me. The main thing that had me gawping today was how much the second half of this route has changed since I lived there. Walking past Tottenham Hale station there should have been a clear road ahead, with large reservoirs on either side. Instead I couldn’t see the horizon. Just solid tower blocks and a whole new community called Hale Village. Also Walthamstow Wetlands, The Paddock Conservation Park and Blackhorse View, another estate/set of flats and offices. The open end of Forest Road at Blackhorse Road station now looks like the entrance to Chisinau, which has huge wedges of buildings on either side of the road, like giant heavy gates. Then a few quiet streets where I used to live, mostly to check if a very old shop was still there, on leafy Edward Road but built out of green tiles that look about a hundred years old. The old man who used to own the shop had a Wurlitzer, and occasionally when you went in his wife would be serving while the seaside tunes burst in a jolly clamour from their room behind. The building is indeed still there, though I don’t know if it’s still a shop, it looks like it started off as a pub. It’s probably listed though.      

     Passed a barber’s shop that I used to go in because the young Cypriot hairdresser had a very pretty wife, and amazingly she was sweeping up outside the shop when I got there today. The 27 years didn’t seem to have made much difference to her as I recognised her instantly. Didn’t waste her time saying that I used to be a customer, and of course she wouldn’t have recognised me because, despite her husband’s best efforts, I had hair then. International shops and restaurants of note today: Congalese, Nigerian and Ugandan, Mauritian, and a Lithuanian café. The famous chain of Manze’s Pie and Mash, with Jellied and Hot Eels still had a shop there. There was also the pub on Walthamstow High Street where the Kray gang went to wait to hear if Ronnie had actually killed George Cornell in The Blind Beggar earlier that evening. They cheered when they found out he was dead. Sub-human stuff.

     On the 34 on the way home I passed Adam’s, the kebab shop on whose owner Harry Enfield based his character Stavros, and the spot that used to be a timber factory that all musos travelling to sessions at Walthamstow Town Hall used to look out for, as it always had a large sign announcing what Veneer of the Week was. We used to text each other what it was. It was always Walnut. Here’s the hundred year-old shop/pub, on a quiet residential road off the main streets in Walthamstow. So much for condensing. But I have, honest.

5^th Aug.

     West today, with the early sun behind me, I can see this time. Listened to the Scherzo from Dvorak 7 on YT between Bounds and Wood Greens, to make sure it doesn’t have any loud, intrusive and thoroughly unwelcome ads in it when we listen to it at Michael’s ashes ceremony in Blackpool on Saturday.

     Cuisine-wise, today’s newbies were Malaysian and Singaporean on Turnpike Lane. Also on TL at 7.30am, a poor young girl with the desperate air of a trapped and stoned hooker as she staggered against the grill of a shop and looked at me briefly as a mark. Sad. Further along, there was a delightful tea garden that said it was an old cattle pound. Almost a full set of clothes strewn on the grass by a park bench. Behind this was a set of retirement homes so I hope everything’s OK.

     I’ve learnt that the Uyghers, the north west Chinese tribe/race, are pronounced Weegurs.

     Odd mission today, to find a set of half a dozen concrete steps at the entrance to a house, that I helped a builder/bass trombonist friend with in 1999. Couldn’t find them, they’re in Highgate somewhere. Ironic in the middle of a million steps, I can’t find the six I want.

August 6-8. Lots of steps this weekend, and hardly of them in north London, which I notice has been mentioned rather a lot. Apologies to anyone unfamiliar with all the street names and areas I keep banging on about. The recent steps were taken in Blackpool, or rather Bispham, a suburb just to the north. First small detail of the weekend: I can report that these face masks we’re wearing do not block out the hard-hitting pungency of airport Duty Free cosmetic shops. I walked through one with my mask on just to see, and the awful, sharp odour still filtered through.

     A notable announcement from the captain of the plane: ‘Sorry for the delay to our take-off today, there was an issue with one of the doors, which wouldn’t shut properly. However, everything seems pretty much back to normal now so we’ll have you on your way…’ etc etc. Hold on. ‘Pretty much’? Tbh I usually prefer 100% assurance that everything is in perfect working order before I fly. I wish this journal could do paragraphs, but I guess most people only do one. My bad, really. The reason for this unlikely jaunt to Blackpool was so that close family (three of us) could scatter my dad’s ashes where he wanted them; because of Covid we’ve been unable to do that since he died 16 months ago. Below is the blustery outcrop where we jiggled the urn over the River Wyre as it flowed into the Atlantic. It’s what he and his wife June wanted (she died in 2002), so now it’s been done.

     Earlier that morning the three of us did a parkrun, my first ever and their eight thousandth I think. This was a straight dash up and down a small part of a coastal path, 5km there and back. Of course, doing this MSC, I parkwalked (or pathwalked, or part pathwalked) instead of running, which meant that everyone dashed off on the short course, and like the tortoise and the hare, I stepped out at my own pace at the back. This meant that the poor girl who’d been designated Tail Walker Marshal for the day had just to walk a few paces behind me for the course. She couldn’t handle my casual north London (oops, sorry) pace and soon caught up and speeded me up a bit, I didn’t blame her and we just chatted most of the way round. Later I got an email telling me that even though I was patently the last to finish, I’d still come 84^th out of 85 because one poor chap had a heart episode during his run. Next morning I did an early walk south, further down the same path, most of the way to the famous Blackpool Pier. The Atlantic blew in heartily and I buzzed back at it. Getting to within about a mile of the Pier, and the Tower and The Revolution and the town, I really didn’t fancy the approaching tat (even though sentimentally, I knew that my dad’s own dad had once played a season in a band on the Pier itself), and caught a tram back up the coast. But this rugged early walk took me over the half a million steps mark, so we’re good there.

9^th August.

     First, after yesterday’s gloomy picture, here’s A Green Patch Through the Trees in Highgate Woods.

     A hop, skip, and a hop today. The skip was the 43 up Muswell Hill, as I did from another direction the other day on a W7, there’s no way I’m walking up there. Mission today same as the 5^th, to find a set of steps and front patio I’d helped construct in 1999. Today I found them, like Mayan heads, The Lost Flight of Highgate. I thought there were more of them, it felt like at least eight heavy steps when we lifted them into position. Then a nice trek through Highgate Woods, part of the ancient Forest of Middlesex, and mentioned in the Domesday Book. Tiny muddy paths, and alleyways through the trees, lovely glades (see above) yet a real feel that, when it was silent but for the wind in the trees, you could indeed be walking in there a thousand years ago. Came out on Archway Road, the A1, from London to Edinburgh, I love that. London sprouts roads in every direction, with simple names and numbers, but which lead to towns hundreds of miles away, even right to the coast (the A2, Watling Street). Decided to take the road down to Archway, and go under Suicide Bridge. This is a viaduct high above the A1, which now has tall fences on both sides, for obvious reasons. I guess people got sick of would-be corpses smashing through their roll-back roofs in the 60s.

August 10^th.

     Another stint back at work, ever-grateful for that these days, good fun, Beethoven 6. Simple local walk today, to fill up the steps after work, a short circular, coming back through the nearby woods I’ve found. Time to mention that Australian Masterchef has started, which signals the beginning of the end of the year. They do a quick whittle (acquittal?) down to 24 contestants, then it’s a long series of tasks and tastings and triumphs and tears before we reach a final showdown in mid-November, almost Xmas already. We’ve seen three episodes and, well, see you in November. But here’s a cooking question: when did we ditch the r in turmeric? Everyone says tumeric nowadays, chewmurrik. Anyway, here are the lovely Brunswick Woods, taken a few weeks ago, warmer and brighter and dappled and very green today, the trees already thinking of autumn as a few leaves drifted down in the sun shafts. It’ll be a different picture by the time Australian Masterchef has finished.

     And here’s my first favourite picture of our brilliant new cat, jet black with amazing eyes, surrounded by lots of colourful things.

11^th August.

First, a few flarze near the doors of MV studios. I think they’re roses? One stunning red bloom and some pink ones in which you can see several Terry Pratchett trolls if you want to.

     Walked from Edgware Road Tube to work, then back again via a Shawarma Wrap, which was as messy as ever, dripping garlic sauce and lamb juices all over the pavement. Edgware Road is one of those tendrils leaving London that I was on about the other day, in this case called the A5 and stretching from Marble Arch to Holyhead on Anglesey.

12^th August.

     Another simple one because of work. Along Edgware Road again in the morning, then up through the woods and back at home, to make the 10,000 later on. Woods just as enticing in the darkening late afternoon, it was just starting to feel furtive and spooky in there. So it’s time to talk about masks. A few days ago I tested one against the Duty Free perfume shop at Heathrow, where it failed to blot out that stifling atmosphere. But they do have the advantage, especially on this team of one, of enabling me to buzz inside them on the tube and nobody can tell it’s me making the kazoo noise. I had a brilliant friend at college, a Venezuelan horn player called Raoul, who could do this with whistling. Somehow, he could sit in the middle of a tube carriage and emit a full-blown and hearty whistle, without his face changing from a bored look straight ahead. People just couldn’t locate where this noisy tune was coming from, and Raoul himself took no interest in it, pretending to be a nonchalant commuter. It was wonderful to watch people trying to figure it out. Another perk of wearing masks is that this must be a great time for people with nice eyes and terrible teeth. Perhaps there have been couples who’ve met during Covid, been drawn to each other by their beautiful and compelling eyes, like the Indian girl in the Benetton adverts, then when they got somewhere private where they could tear their masks off for a kiss, got their front teeth entangled with each other.

13^th August. I thought a brisk walk in the woods this morning would be a healthy and outgoing start to the day, but what I found, and nearly stepped on could much more be described as ingoing rather than out. I actually don’t think I’m allowed to say what it was here. Squirrels hiding round the trunks of trees, squawks and grunts from the undergrowth, even a dead rat the other day, all to be expected, and add to the forest feel. But this item, no thanks.

     The Proms are good for walking, as it’s half a mile from the tube to the Albert Hall. And in between rehearsal and show, a wander down to Earl’s Court to the best Indian café in London, for their Keema curry. As I left, and the owner asked me how it was, I told him it was great, and that I’d been eating the same dish here for twenty years. But he already knew that. My clue should have been when I went into the shop and he asked me how the Proms were going.

     Threading back through the block between the A4 and Kensington High Street, I caught sight of a turret, that looked very like the top of a Georgian church in between the tall, rich houses. I had to go round a few back streets to find it, but did so in a quiet square (Iverna Gardens), with Cyrillic script above the door. Finding a sign, I discovered that it was in fact Armenian, built in 1923. But in such a place, what a find! Realised earlier that the A4 is yet another of those roads named after paper sizes that leads like a shoot from London, this time to Avonmouth, a western district of Bristol. Later, I passed a Flying Trapeze School in Hyde Park, a fenced-off area where all the gear was set up and professional and trainee trapezers practiced their art. Another thing on these walks that you don’t see every day.

     I was here on my way to meet Eva, the lady who sits by the Memorial and sells scores of the pieces in every evening’s Prom. She’s a sort of modern-day version of the flowers- and fruit-sellers song in ‘Oliver!’ I’ve met her and bought several scores for a few years now.

     One last thing today, about The Shard. People in London and approaching London from all directions must have noticed there are an incredible number of places from which you can see it. From trains easily twenty miles south of the river, from Highgate up north, and peeping between more central buildings, somehow The Shard is visible from an extraordinary number of angles. And here was another today: as you walk along the path in front of the Albert Memorial and look east, there it is, through the trees on either side, four miles away. Amazing. Someone must have worked all those viewpoints out with a map with a hundred spokes on it when it was being built nearly ten years ago. Here’s the Armenian church. In leafy Kensington.

August 14^th. ‘There’s nothing to see here,’ said Leslie Nielson, as the cop in the Police Squad series, dispersing a crowd as a fuel tanker exploded into flames having run into a fireworks factory behind him. And there’s nothing to report here for the day really, so I’ll sidetrack a little, and not in a particularly comfortable way. I did a short walk across to Palmers Green. On the way I passed a Cranley Gardens. Mean anything? The other day in Kensington I found another Cranley Gardens. Ring any bells? But the first Cranley Gardens I passed, in Muswell Hill a week ago was the one that sent the shivers up my spine. This one is the Cranley Gardens where Dennis Nilson lived (at No. 23) in the 70s and 80s, and killed several young men before rather ineffectually disposing of them. He complained to the council about blocked drains. I resisted that human but gruesome temptation to go down the street and look at the house, and I very much doubt it’s still there anyway. We’ve had reference to the Krays, conjecture about murder sites in America, a Suicide Bridge, now we have a serial killer. I must go to Whitechapel at some point.

August 16^th.

     Rest day yesterday, didn’t leave the house except to buy ice, and the feeble 2000 or so steps are mostly me going to the fridge and back for wine. Solid walk today though, aiming to circle Islington and St. Pancras Cemetery, which is a lot further north and east than it sounds. I’m convinced it’s called that because the other way round, the St. Pancras and Islington Cemetery is almost as hard to say as that tongue-twister G&S line ‘Sloane Square and South Kensington stations.’ At one point along the way I decided that I’d turn right at the street after the only feature marked on the map, which was ‘The Taste of Nawab’ curry house. This of course led to the inevitable idea that one day I should set off from somewhere reasonably central, and whenever I came across a curry house, take the next right. I’d probably just end up circling a single block on Brick Lane. So how about that rule, but also that whenever I came across a pub, which can be in some fairly random places, I’d do a left. That might end up in a series of jagged squiggles in the West End. Could be fun though. Perhaps towards the end, next month, I’ll try it. Came across some more unexpected ancient greenery, called Coldfall Wood, and couldn’t resist diverting into it. The same sort of feeling as Highgate Woods the other day, that of placing yourself back 400 years and seeing ragged robbers darting amongst the trees ahead.

     P.S. Food nationalities I’ve passed, not necessarily today but in several different places, that I haven’t written down yet: Iranian, Iraqi, Vietnamese. I’ll count them all up at the end. The Weegurs will take some beating for an off-the-beaten-track cuisine. And best wishes to Joy for recovery and resurgence as quickly as possible!

20^th August.

     Bit of a gap in the journal as we prepare for a Prom. Yesterday Paddington Pret for breakfast, then up Edgware Road to MV, 4 circuits of the roads round the studios at lunchtime then a sort of continuation of the same line on the map from Paddington, up Harrow Road to Kensal Green tube after we’d finished. Three solid batches of about 4000 steps each, plus wherever the day would have taken me anyway made for a big count. Cuisines seen recently: Caribbean, Sudanese, Kurdish, Moroccan, Lebanese. Edgware Road is extremely Middle Eastern. Must try a Shisha bar for breakfast sometime.

21^st August. Pop Prom with Moses Sumney and Jules, not a huge crowd but made a huge noise, good show. I do like having a kit to play along with and this guy was great.

     When London decides to get its connections right it can really fizz you around: rehearsal finished at half five and by quarter to six I was actually eating in the curry caff in Earl’s Court Road, unbelievable. I even missed the first bus (he ignored me) but the next two landed me right opposite the Star Kebab and the guy in there reached directly for the Keema tray. If I’ve been going there easily twenty years and had five dishes each year, whether at Holland Park or the Proms, it could conceivably be 100 curries in there, and most of them were the best Keema in town so he had a point. The other day in this area I passed a Filipino restaurant I ate in once, and I’d forgotten about the Emirati place at Gloucester Road tube, so that’s another two to add to my list.

     Nice Sunday lunch of smoked mackerel and puy lentils planned today, hearty and healthy, and appropriate for these damp mid-August days. But our new cat took a shine to them as they defrosted in the night, shredded the plastic and ate at least one of them. She seems to be a cross between Tarzan and a sort of feline power ball, one of those toys that could spring madly around the house. And Tarzan likes fish, so no lunch for us, not smoked mackerel anyway. I’ve covered up the lamb that’s defrosting for tonight. Right now, sitting between 600K and 750K steps, I’m in the long haul in the middle, between badges, just solid hiking; the meat of the million. So as it is so dismal and rainy outside these days, time for some more flarze. Or this rather stunning flar anyway, from a garden by the bus stop.

23^rd August.

     Pretty functional walk today, one just to cross off my list, east along Lordship Lane, though as ever, plenty to look at. A good haul of food outlets for a start: Albanian, Portuguese and Cypriot groceries, and Jamaican and Colombian restaurants. Another restaurant described itself as African, which seems an incredibly broad description, and possibly supplied by the butcher in Mill Hill (see July 9^th) who apparently has access to wildebeest, zebra, crocodile, springbok, python and impala. And yet another new one, along with the Illyrians and Uyghurs, a country or race I’d not heard of, which has a shop called Asanteman Market on Tottenham High Road. The Asante empire was dissolved in 1957, and now sits partly in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo. There may well be items in the Market shop that are specific to each of those countries, so that counts as 3! I got excited when I saw a restaurant across the road called Can Perde Sarayi. I couldn’t imagine what cuisine this could be, as it sounds both Latino and Far Eastern, or perhaps north African. The windows had ornate curtains and blinds that made it look like a pretty nice place, perhaps even somewhere to visit if I found out what food it served. Turned out to be a curtains and blinds shop.

August 24^th.

     Lessons of Life. Don’t lower rubbish sacks into your deep council bin with your mobile in a loose shirt pocket. Or feed the cat. That second accident hasn’t happened yet but a bonk on the head of a nervous cat who we’re trying to get to eat at regular times etc is not going to help things. I take my mobile out of my chest pocket when feeding her. I just need to remember to do that when emptying the rubbish now.

     Interesting sentence in this month’s Good Food Magazine, quite a mouthful in itself really. In an article on cooking Singaporean dishes, it says ‘Another tip is that salted shrimps start soup stocks.’ Easy enough to write, less so to say. In Singapore itself there’s a mini golf course with the cleverest name, it’s called Lilli-putt.

     Back at MV today, starting up for another Prom in a few days, so the meat of the days’ 10,000s this week are lunchtime circuits of the studios, as I’ve said elsewhere. Five today, which is about 5500 paces. Here’s a picture from a circuit last week of a lady using the weather and her windowsill to cool effect.

27^th August. Good Prom of Walton Viola Concerto and Malcolm Arnold’s 5^th Symphony, unbelievably a Proms premiere. Walk round the block at teatime down to Harrods then back up Kensington Gore. Kuwaiti restaurant, opposite Harrods, of course! Got home pretty late and saw that I was on 12950 or so for the day, so to make it a round number and bring it over 13,000 I ended up trotting round the kitchen table like a sheep at a country fair.

29^th August. And 28^th, a resting weekend. But during it I’ve still made the ¾ mark: 750,000 steps. There’ll be no country fair tonight. Walk in the morning, the lane by a stream, only the third time I’ve done it since the very first day, though going the other way round this time, so I can come home through the nearby woods. Massive tree with an elephant hide just off the path, must be ten feet round the trunk, no pun intended.

     Voices approached from behind me, student voices, full of enthusiasm and too loud. ‘Your cello piece was tonal though.’ ‘Yes, but I didn’t get a very good mark for it.’ ‘Two-five-one is so over-used.’ ‘I have a friend who hates those words, ‘tonal’ and ‘atonal’. Just write what you want!’ Composition students. After they’d gone past me, discussing jazz orchestration, I called to them and asked them where they were studying, and the answer was Cambridge. Impressive, but I didn’t detain them. Good luck to them.

     Came back and detoured round the cemetery yet again. Always so interesting. A plaque with a red wreath in front of it, obviously a memorial for the local dead of WW1. But no, all the names were German. Perhaps they were still locals, but I don’t think I’ve seen a war memorial to Germans in this country. A long bank of marble plaques, like the drawers in a morgue, each one a tomb, and all Italian. ‘Sempre Vivo Nei Nostro Cuori’ was a common message, and a nice one, I thought. But everything sounds nicer in Italian. Here’s The Elephant Tree.

30^th August. I do feel a real shame in doing this. During these walks, whenever I see anyone else of my age doing it, or jogging, I think ‘I shouldn’t be having to do this, I shouldn’t be one of them.’ And considering how bad my judgement of age is, that’s any male stepper I see between 30 and 80. The shame is in how I’ve let down my upbringing. Early years were spent in an area that I’ve read proclaimed as The Healthiest Place In England to grow up, literally, that was the headline. And we didn’t eat puddings at home either. Unless it was a special treat on a day out, I doubt I had anything with sugar in it till I got pocket money, and there was very little of that. My folks did their best to boost me up for a healthy run yet I managed to contrive such a lifestyle that meant I got diabetes at 46. It’s not impressive, and I don’t want to be any of the men I see walking in the mornings and occasionally pulling out a pedometer. To be honest, they mostly look better than me, but I quite like that part. With a flapping shirt, long shorts and podgy legs I look like a cross between Caine, the walk-the-earth David Carradine character from Kung Fu in the 70s, and a hobbit. I don’t mind that. You can wear anything and do anything in London without being gawped at. And of course nowadays, lots of people walk the streets apparently talking to themselves, with these wireless earpieces, and nobody bats an eyelid. OK, there’s a tall, very thin ebony-black woman who dresses like a witch with fearsome make-up who lives near the BBC studios, and she’s pretty avoidable, but other than that, nobody minds anything, certainly not enough to make eye contact. So I can look as scruffy as I like. But I won’t be wearing the blue T-shirt that Diabetes UK sent, not in public anyway.

31^st August.

     A much happier report today after yesterday’s bleak reveal. Set off to find Bluebell Woods, how cheerful is that? This is the 3^rd of 4 ancient woodlands in Haringey, areas continuously wooded since, at the very least, 1600, and then part of the vast Tottenham Wood. I had an idea bluebells were a spring thing, so didn’t expect to find a lush forest floor of vibrant purple, but there were quite a few plump damsons on the path, and blackberry thorns grasping me from the sides. However, this turned out to be just a copse between an estate and a golf course, and after coming out onto a street, I had to do a few twists and turns to find the entrance proper. Turns out Bluebell Woods is the smallest of the four, but so far they’ve all looked similar, had the same feel; not dense but spacious, all brown and green, with birds cawing and squirrels rustling furtively in the branches. All very peaceful, especially given their long history.

     Two random thoughts before some jolly pictures. Firstly, turning for home, I aimed to come out onto a road directly opposite a landmark from a few weeks ago, the Indian restaurant called A Taste of Nawab. I looked this up last time and I suppose a translation would be A Royal Feast. Or a taste of one anyway. Perhaps a spoonful of dahl. And secondly, the composition students referral to the chord sequence two-five-one (or II-V-I) the other day reminded me that one of our local buses is a 251, and why hadn’t I clocked that before? It did get me overthinking though. So today it was with delight that I passed a 134 going to North Finchley. 134, or I-III-IV is the riff for Smoke on the Water, and as there are a lot of Shisha cafés in North Finchley… Tenuous stuff.

     Moving on, three pictures today. Firstly, an apparently Deep South villa near Oakwood yesterday. If it wasn’t for the red letterbox it could be in Mississippi. Then two from Bluebell Wood. There was an Elephant Tree a couple of days ago, now meet The Duck Tree. And then this shot of a squirrel. He was pretty close so I hardly had to zoom in. I froze, he froze, but didn’t run off. (According to the film, a forest is the place to be Frozen anyway isn’t it?). Love magical wildlife moments like this.

1^st Sept.

     After the original platelets and polygons depicting circular walks to and from the house, and since then the long strands all over north London, following bus routes and tube lines, wooded streams and as much greenery as possible, today was rather a squiggly route on the map. The map is a pretty thing that shows in multicoloured pens where all these walks have taken me. It looks like something Kandinsky might have done when handed his first set of crayons as a 2 year-old. These shapes and strands have so far covered 25 north London postcodes, with another 5 near the Maida Vale studios and another 5 round the Albert Hall. Tbh I’d done half of all that lot in the first two weeks, which would have been a more impressive stat.

     Tomorrow my team, such as it is, trebles in size as BBC section friends Helen and Sam are joining me as we plan to do an old railway track/path from Hatfield to St. Albans. Should be fun. The ‘team’ is called Buzzin’, and this morning my attempts to buzz straight notes, or any notes at all took a long time to get going, and sounded like someone trying to kickstart a kazoo. My feeble outboard motor-yanking attempts only lasted up to 2 seconds after several minutes puffing and blowing and startling morning dog walkers. But soon after, one of those many wonderful moments on these walks, as I diverted through some unexpected woods, and came across this ancient-looking set of steps, as if I was suddenly in the Mayan jungle.

     Had a good idea for a Walk To Do Soon. A long time ago there was a shop on Seven Sisters Road that had white curtains. Across the top of the shop, if it was a shop, was the message ‘Zorba, The Largest Mastiff in the World’. Just that. As if you would walk in and there’d just be this huge dog filling the room. I want to see if it’s still there, and perhaps to peek behind the curtains and resolve the mystery at last. More later.

2^nd Sept. In the middle of the night last night, 355 years ago, there was a little flicker of flame in a bakery in the heart of the old city of London, the rest we know. Just a spot of history there. I am, apparently, well on my way to becoming part of history myself. I asked at the train station about a ticket to Hatfield, and the lady in the booth asked me if I had a Senior Railcard. This is the first time this has happened, and I told her so while laughing. But with the mask on of course, she couldn’t see that I was grinning, and when I told her my age, she was extremely contrite and apologetic. She said she couldn’t see me properly through the grill in the Perspex screen. I believe her. I have to. Off to Hatfield to walk the path along the old railway line between there and St. Albans, a distance of only 6 miles, with Helen and Sam, and Sophie the Spaniel. After about an hour, having set off at 11, we turned left and crossed what appeared to be a cornfield. Treading a dusty path through waist-high grass like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, we came to a pub apparently in the middle of nowhere, called The Plough. A couple of minutes wait, then they opened for us. An amazing find by Helen, today’s navigator. It would have been too easy just to stay here, but we had just one excellent pint of Tribute, then headed back through the Field of Dreams to the abandoned railway line. We passed a small old disused platform, where they’d put the station clock on a tree on the other side of the ‘track’. After reaching St. Albans, lunch in one of the pubs that lays claim to being the oldest in Britain, Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, at the bottom of the hill from the Abbey. Despite my ‘team’ actually consisting of more than one member, very little buzzin’ went on today. In fact I tried just once to get things going but the chaps weren’t having it, and Sophie headed for the bushes. Longest walk of the MSC for me today, and a great day. Thanks chaps!

3^rd Sept.

     Supposed to just be a jaunt to the vets and then however many steps it took to get home, either via a detour or a bus. But instead I headed way off the map, north towards the M25, and did a left at a junction I’ve reached before. It’s called Beech Hill, and only as I got there did it sink in that the phrase included the word ‘hill.’ And the incline upwards started before I’d even turned the corner. This was a long trek, much harder work than yesterday for half the steps, mostly up along an avenue of palaces. But I came out at the pretty end of Barnet High Street. A sign by a small wooded area with a duckpond told me that here, in March 1471, 550 years ago, was fought the Battle of Barnet, during the Wars of the Roses. Another sign just a few yards further on told me it was fought on April 14^th. But despite this disagreement, Barnet itself had agreed to mark the 550 years, and on every single lamppost along Barnet High Street was hoisted a flag, a Yorkist or Lancastrian coat of arms. 

5^th September.

     Not a specific walk yesterday, and I don’t think so today either. But into town to meet Adam and Cristy, with a special appearance by old friend Rupert Ring. Fabulous French meal, again, at the Boulevard Brasserie. London was noisy and packed, and for the first time ever I didn’t like that so much, though this is how the city is supposed to be. Covent Garden was thronging, the entertainers were back, and that was all great to see. But perhaps after lots of peaceful walks and sitting in my attic for 17 months not so great to hear. 8858 steps only; looks like one of those numbers that form a rude word when you turn it upside down.

     Might do a few nearby circuits today, as just another 7000 steps will take me to another badge milestone, of 850,000. The milestones are a good idea, a series of targets to keep aiming for. Or perhaps I’ll nip up through the woods and wander round the cemetery for a bit, that’s probably been my most common filler. That’s one noticeable thing whilst walking, there are a lot of cemeteries around. Big ones as well, not the quaint little grounds you get round rural churches of course, but vast, spreading rows and plots and huge sections, acres of graves. There’s no morbidness in my walking around these places. I like words, so I like the exoticism of so many of the names. I’ll bring back a few if I go up there later. It’s also poignant, and respectful, and at times it makes your heart twinge, when you see the dates of a young child. There’s one up the road with the dates June-September 1975 and there’s still a picture of the baby there. And the other day, in a Jewish section I think, there was an old man singing to a grave. I didn’t investigate, of course, but I don’t think it was a recent passing, he’s probably been singing there for decades.

6^th Sept, 1.

     Yesterday’s wander round the cemetery first. Going up there through the woods, those London parakeets were squawking in the trees so the whole place, in the afternoon heat, felt like somewhere much more tropical. This was a Sunday, so the cemetery was quite busy, lots of cars driving slowly round the avenues, lots of people visiting relatives. Given the pandemic we’re (hopefully) just coming out of, there are a lot of recent graves, almost certainly mostly due to Covid19. I was there collecting attractive-sounding names, but obviously considerable discretion was needed; I couldn’t be walking around taking notes and pictures while people were mourning and trimming flowers. Even when busy, the whole place is quiet and slow-moving, and I had to be the same. And no buzzin’ today either.

     There were some lovely messages. I like that ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Sunset’ often replace ‘Born’ and ‘Died’ before a person’s dates. After one short paragraph on a grave, the family finished with ‘You’ll ALWAYS be our hero.’ A beautiful message was ‘You were my favourite hello and my hardest goodbye.’ But I was looking for interesting words and names, and I walked along many avenues glancing from side to side and trying not to feel like Eli Wallach in the final cemetery scene of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. Bahiyyih Varqa was certainly worth noting. As were Emmanuel Ademola Olumuyiwa Oguntoye, Dr. Ehsan’u’llah Majidi and Shamsi Jahl-Haghbin Navidi. In the Italian section were the tombs of Assunta Rosaria de Feo, and I was surprised by Maria Filarmonico. There was a Chief Lapido Solanke, born in 1886, who I thought might be a native American, but he actually has a Wiki entry, and was a Nigerian political activist. I was drawn to a grave that had a treble clef on it. This turned out to belong to a composer called Frank A. Wayland, who died in 2011, and who unfortunately I can’t find on the Net. But before I tried to look him up, he had already proved himself a worthy musician, as on his grave, quite incredibly, there was an unopened bottle of Abbot Ale. On lots of graves are light-catching pinwheels and ornaments. The muso gets a bottle of beer, and I was proud.  

     But what I found most appealing, to my surprise, was the collection of old English forenames, ones rarely in use any more. Percival, Balton, Aston, Urania, Uriah, Pearl, Irvin, Darnley, Alethea and May. And just to end on another beautiful word, Jacqueline.

6^th Sept, 2.

     A mission from a few days ago today: to find the shop, or whatever it actually is, that advertises Zorba, the Largest Mastiff in the World. It was just a few windows down the street from Finsbury Park station, but was also thirty years ago, and I’m afraid Zorba is no more. Gone to the huge kennel in the sky, presumably. I think I identified the shop where he used to be, or maybe just the font was similar, but Zorba’s house is now a barber.

     But Seven Sisters Road itself is today a leafier, friendlier place, and the cafés extend a lot further down it than they used to. I found three ‘new’ cuisines for the list, and realised that part of the thrill of these thriving communities and their multinational inhabitants, where people are often dressed in their national costume and with exotic-smelling food wafting into the street, is that it feels as you yourself are abroad, in these far-off and exciting places, often all at the same time. Walking is touring; stepping round north London is several holidays at once.

     However, today, after seven weeks of walking and finding so many different nationalities represented in restaurants and grocers, I may as well give up now, as the Holloway Food Centre rather extravagantly claims ANY FOOD FROM ANY COUNTRY, which is a pretty hefty claim, and pretty much overrides my rather limited search for single enterprises, one by one. Some day I’ll go in there with a pretty extensive shopping list. ‘A kilo of Dresi please.’ This is Tibetan sweet rice. It’s very strong, often stored in a yak belly, and consequently often has yak hairs in it. ‘Haven’t got that, huh? Then I’ll just take some Droo if I may?’ (Tunisian buckwheat bread). ‘No Droo? Not my day is it. I am thirsty though, a bottle of Baiga please (North Chinese wine made from millet and pigeon droppings), that’ll hit the spot. No? But what shall I have to drink with my Halaszle (Hungarian fish stew) tonight? Any food from any country my arse.’ All these are absolutely true, by the way, and I’m glad I made the list now.

9/9. All the nines, appropriate as today I’ve passed the 900,000 steps mark. It should feel like a home straight now, the target within easy distance, but it still feels a substantial way away. I guess a million of anything is a huge thing. After spending all of the non-working days since July 1^st in shorts and walking shoes, after my phone, the pedometer has become the most important thing when leaving the house.

     Rehearsals for the Last Night of the Proms this week, hence the minimal journal entries here. A walk through Trent Park the other day, perhaps the original Oak Wood, I don’t know. Passed a chap with two Irish Wolfhounds. I know that because I’ve looked them up, and I did that because I did a double take when I saw them. Never seen dogs that big! He was well over six foot and their backs were level with his waist. It wasn’t just a double take from me but I turned and stared after them in disbelief. They looked unreal, like oversized beasts from the armies of Lord of the Rings.

     Deliberately overshot on the tube this morning to walk back to the studios from Queen’s Park. Not a great area, and I came across this plaque, from an event in 1995 that I remember well, I just didn’t know where the school was. Violence in schools was becoming a big issue at the time, the idea that a teacher could be threatened and physically assaulted by a pupil was terrifying; this was the culmination, and there was a national outcry.

11^th Sept.

Yesterday’s steps were simply from the tube to the Albert Hall and back, then a local stroll up a bus route cos it looked like raining. So here are a few pictures I haven’t used yet.

Firstly, someone has set this up in Bluebell Wood.

I kept this place going single-handedly through one long hot (!) summer in Walthamstow a long time ago.

Here’s a rainy rural house in Totteridge, which even sounds like a Dorset village.

I was very disappointed when I saw what had become of this house in Palmers Green. Picture it dilapidated, cracked windows, tiles falling off; I’m sure it was haunted. Perhaps it still is.

By way of surreal contrast, a Flying Trapeze School in Hyde Park.

And leaving London, here’s famous Blackpool pier early on a Sunday morning.

11^th Sept, Last Night of the Proms. After 18 months of Covid, empty concert halls etc, last night was an occasion of high emotion. The crowd sang like I’ve never heard them, the organist boosted things so much you could hardly hear the orchestra; it was a big night. Rule Brittania was simply enormous.

     Sakari made his speech about the joy of having a live audience once more, and they responded by demanding that we play Jerusalem twice. Despite the clamour and insistence, Sakari had to stick to our live TV schedule and the crowd eventually calmed for the hushed National Anthem. It was close though, they really wanted that encore. Just towards the end, I realised that along with the utter elation and bursting-forth of thousands of voices in song, what was driving this on was relief. The pure joy of relief at being able to do this again. As I say, a very powerful evening, and yet again, a privilege to have been there. Here’s the Albert Hall before the rehearsal, before the crowds flooded in.

13^th Sept. A trip into town to the Nero Exhibition at the British Museum. We have guests so the steps are on hold in a way, and actually as I’m well on track to get to the million in a week or so, a few days to regroup and rest is definitely allowed. Two more nationalities in town though, Dutch and Hawaiian, the latter due entirely to a recent trend for eating poké, which, now I look it up, is traditionally cubes of raw, marinated fish, with inamona, limu, and maybe some furikake, which now I look them up, are roasted candlenuts, seaweed, and a mixture of dried fish and sesame. Also, rice, soy sauce, Maui onions, fish roe, basically there’s a lot going on. After Nero we drifted along to the superb Seven Stars pub behind the law courts, and could easily have stayed there for the rest of the day.

14^th Sept, the pattering forest. Boy it rained yesterday, too much to go too far away, so once it had eased off I stuck to nearby trudges. Up through the woods while the rain was still going, but I was covered and enjoyed the damp safety, and the sound of the rain on the leaves above. Later, when things had dried up a bit, several circuits and S-shapes of the two nearby blocks, utter bread-and-butter of this MSC and took me over the 10,000 mark, eventually. This week, due to weather like yesterday’s heavy downpour, but more from feeling tired and generally not too great, I’m trying to ease up, something I’m not very good at, especially when the end of a task is in sight, the target is well within reach.      

     We hardly ever have biscuits here, but having guests over the weekend we bought a selection tray for them. Jammie dodgers, chocolate digestives, custard creams, that sort of thing. And whatever was left after they left would be a rare treat for us. So imagine my delight when I came down this morning to find that our new cat had found them in the night, torn open the wrapper and chewed some of them. What was left was still moist, yum! So they all had to go, thanks Hera. We’re definitely getting better at covering food and generally not leaving out for this most bouncy and agile of cats, but she still wins sometimes. Years since I had a jammie dodger.

     I keep meaning to mention the best piece in the Last Night show the other night, the Barber Adagio, in an arrangement for the BBC Singers and strings. It was the Singers that stole the show, what an amazing group. In the rehearsal I turned round to watch them and they were all standing socially-distanced, at least three seats between each of them, and simply looking (and sounding) like gods. With the lighting on them, perhaps this is what a pantheon looks like. It was an emotional return for this piece too, as we were commemorating twenty years, to the day, of 9/11, and in the Last Night Prom that year the orchestra played it, and our American conductor asked the audience not to applaud after it. Strong stuff indeed.

16^th Sept.

Yesterday I did the least amount of steps in this whole sequence, 1886, though that was the year Liszt died, that great tunesmith Eric Coates was born, the world first heard Bruckner 7, and Tchaik’s final version of R&J was first performed in Tbilisi on May 1^st. Today back on the road, for my first proper walk for a week. If Café Cairo, a shack next to Woodside Park tube has anything to do with Egypt, I’m counting that as another food nationality. My very first picture on this blog was a comedy car, two more today. One a Company one, advertising home-made cakes, the second on the street, absolutely covered in stickers from about 100 countries, like an international suitcase.

17^th Sept. Complete change of scenery as I joined Sam and Sophie to walk round Farthing Downs in Surrey. This is a huge ridge, the back of a green whale in the countryside, surrounded by fields and lots of woods. It’s also where a famous field called Happy Valley lies. This field is a lighter green than others nearby, and is so named because the sight of it was a welcoming beacon to RAF pilots in the war, returning from raids in Europe and with their landing airstrip just over the next hill. As Sam commented, I’m sure they were pretty delighted to see the cliffs of Dover, but Happy Valley was the moment they knew they were home. From the top of the ridge you can see right the way to the city of London, which looked like Oz in the distance, see the first picture below.

     After tramping up and down and round fields and woods, and along lanes, dotted with occasional dwellings and an idyllic church dating from at least 1086 (isn’t England amazing, to come across places like that?), which contains a famous 12^th century Doom Mural – a fire brick and white fresco of devils and angels – on its back wall, we stopped at The Fox, another ancient building, for a few well-earned beers.

18^th Sept. As I’m nearly there, just a local road I haven’t done today, then whatever steps were taken between Australian Masterchef and the fridge. We let our cat out for the first time the other day.

19^th Sept.

     So, I’ve erm, done it. A million. Still seems a BIG number, of anything. I didn’t want to creep over the line so I did an extra couple of thousand, and to make a deal of whatever the millionth step was would have been too self-absorbed even for me. No great cheering or ticker-taping going on in my head, I suppose there’s some feeling of solid achievement, and I’m very glad I did it. It was always a no-brainer for many reasons, not least of course the money raised for diabetes research.

     This morning was a lovely sunny Sunday, a quiet walk as the world started turning. I passed this huge sunflower plant (see below). All earlyish walks have had something of the feel of that wonderful street sellers scene in Oliver! where people slowly emerge and greet each other. Paper boys start cycling past, other walkers and joggers nod at me, florist’s open, van-loads of vegetables get unloaded outside grocer’s and fishmonger slabs start being arranged. Cyclists with the same vests on shout to each other, more buses appear, and when the school run starts, it’s time to go home.

     Helen says I’m target-driven, which is true, but it also means there’s always the NEXT target, which isn’t a very satisfying way of doing things. Life’s too short to smell the roses, but it’s also too short not to. The process has been rewarding though, in a calm sort of way. But mentally I’d moved on even before I set off this morning, by promising myself to try and make some progress on a frightening brass band piece I’m starting, called ‘The Devil Rises.’ But I didn’t get anywhere with that, in fact during all this walking I haven’t concentrated or ‘worked’ on anything; I don’t know what I’ve thought about, probably nothing except what’s been going on around me, which I seriously suspect is a good thing. Today is a slightly poignant date to reach the steps target, as it would have been Michael’s 87^th birthday.

     Thank you to everyone who donated to the fund, I’ll be thanking them on FB later. Thanks Helen and Mau for keeping up with this journal; if there was anyone else, you too. I’m going to keep walking and writing till at least the end of the month, if for no other reason than to gauge what target to set myself next year. I’ll do some number- and stat-crunching in a week or so. And now I’ve got the biggest cup of tea this house can provide.

20^th Sept. Good job I finished the steps walks the other day, as this week we’re back to work with a vengeance. Two VW symphonies to be recorded in two days, which is a tall order.               (Didn’t post this.)

26^th Sept.

     Last planned specific walk today, from now till the end of the month will just be home and work steps, which can add up to a surprising amount. My multicoloured map of routes needs a green line in the north east, so it was the tube to Oakwood this morning then a straight road along the 307 bus route as far as I fancied.

     Drama straightaway, as I was only 300 yards from the station. The cars going past swept up a pretty cloud of what looked like cherry blossom lying on the road. But then I saw that they were small feathers, and I could see where from. The pigeon was on some junction markings right in the middle of the road, and it was still alive. Just a matter of time before some set of wheels crushed it straight to death. On the other hand, I could try to move it. But if I did that, what chance would it have in the state it was in; surely a quick death on the road was better than it starving on the grass verge, or lying there all day to die of fright. But as I looked at it, it seemed just a bit perky, it was swayed a bit by the gusts of cars that shot past, but there was life there yet. Fortunately this wasn’t a busy road, and I could see that where it was, smack in the wide middle section, it probably wasn’t going to get hit. Up to me then. In a lull in the traffic I walked over to it, and it watched me, there was definitely still a spark there. On the telly people just pick birds up and carry them to safety. But we all know about pigeons being laden with germs, and there was a good chance of being clawed and pecked for my trouble. But suddenly I knew I didn’t have that choice and bent down. I thought it was going to be quite comfortable with me as I grasped its big, warm body, but it flapped out of my hands. So its wings are OK then. I could see some blood on its back, but somehow the thing didn’t seem in as bad a state as I’d thought. I nudged it with my foot and it responded by flapping a few more inches away. Lots more of this and we reached the side of the road. By this time I really felt that the bird was definitely perky enough to survive, if only it could get itself going, and off the road. I nudged it the final step up onto the grass by the pavement, and that’s all I could do. It was now safe, and I felt sure that once it got its wits together, it could fly off. It had just had a bump, I don’t think anything was broken and it didn’t seem frightened, it was just in shock.

     A few yards further on, on a side road, there was a frog which had also had a bump, but this time the bump was fatal, the frog was squashed flat, and not for the first time I thought how ugly cars are, and man is.

     It was a nice enough Sunday morning, and the moon still hung in the morning light, above some rooftop early birds. But Enfield town itself brought me down. I used to live here, and now it seemed decimated by the virus. Hardly any of the shops I remembered had survived. Of course, Sunday morning, after Saturday’s revels, is never a good time to see urban centres, and there were McDonald’s paper bags all over the base of the war memorial. Enfield’s market square can be almost medieval, in that it has an old pub, a small Market House rotunda in the middle of the cobbles, and a church in the trees behind it. If the square is empty it looks like a scene from 500 years ago. This morning it was, and this would have made a great picture but for a big blue burger van, parked and closed right in the foreground. Pity. Modern man getting in the way again.

     Further along my straight route I came to a garage. It wasn’t open yet, but was just about to, to start serving the queue of about sixty (yes, easily 60) cars. Everyone has been told not to panic-buy petrol in the last couple of days, but of course everyone knows better, and garages all over the country are jammed, and with tailbacks like this one. Ugly cars and selfish people. This was getting depressing. Having lived in the area, I knew that the walk wasn’t going to get any more cheerful, the surroundings more upbeat, and when I got to the crossroads at Ponders End, after passing another line of forty queued cars I’d had enough. Sod the green line, I’m going home. I got on the next 307 (which had always been the plan, but perhaps further along) and sat as a masked minority upstairs. At every stop, there was the announcement that You Must Wear a Face Mask… etc. How come so many more people are suddenly ‘exempt’ now that restrictions have been eased? I’m obviously old-fashioned, but I was brought up to do as I’m told. If I’m told to wear a mask and not buy petrol, that’s what I’ll do. It seems being brought up well simply makes you the frustrated one, instead of the blithe millions who selfishly do their own thing.

     By now I was pretty low on people, but I had an idea that might provide a positive note to end on: I’d get off the bus a stop early and go and see how the pigeon was doing. Or rather, I hoped I wouldn’t find it. And I didn’t. It wasn’t still where I’d left it, the grass was clear, no feathers or blood, and there was absolutely no sign of it having gone into the road again; I have to assume that it had recovered, and found the strength to fly off. Nature wins. Here’s the early Sunday moon.

27^th Sept.

     No plans to do anything special today, no hiking. It’s possible I’ll end up with a total 100,000 steps more than the target, which would be good, but it doesn’t really matter. Four days to go. So just a few facts and figs today.

     During this MSC I’ve walked through thirty north London postcodes, a further ten around Maida Vale studios and the Albert Hall, at least two along the old railway line to St. Albans, one in Croydon tramping the fields round Happy Valley, and I’ve no idea about the ones I covered in Blackpool.

     Walking gently at my own pace, starting and finishing when I want to, I don’t envy the hard hat workers, really putting in hard labour at 8 in the morning. I walked under some boarded scaffolding the other day, on which about five of them were straining to heave what looked like a jet engine onto a winch. Presumably some huge part of an aircon system in whatever they were building. They were being very carefully guided by a man with a megaphone at street level, so it was obviously a serious manoeuvre. That’s hard. They had a day of this to go. About a hundred yards further on I turned and I could see the giant contraption way up in the air, swaying heavily on the cables of a massive crane.

     In contrast, I passed a guy smoking outside his newsagent shop early one morning, a quickie while he had no customers. As he stubbed it on the pavement and went back inside I caught the aroma; this was no ordinary cigarette. And before I was out of earshot I heard a tzzz as he opened a can inside the shop. I wondered what that might have been. If you’re going to loosen your mind that early in the morning why not go all the way I suppose.

     Nobody doubts that London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities on earth so I’ll just launch these stats and pretty words under that fact. I’ve been noting the multiracial restaurants and grocery shops along the way, and during the course of a million steps, there have been forty-one interesting and exotic cuisines available. These do not include the ubiquitous Indian, Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Thai, Korean (yes, that’s big enough now) and Greek places, and as I’ve been going up and down Edgware Road a lot, Lebanese as well. Also, though I haven’t actually seen any but I know they’re there, they must mostly be in Central London, Spanish, French, Japanese (proper edamame and bamboo bars, not just Wagamama) and Mexican. Favourite and most exotic to me (and prettiest words) have been Ecuadorian, Emirati, Hawaiian, Ugandan, Transylvanian (!), Illyrian and Uyghur. The Illyrian Grill on Green Lanes has a sign portraying Queen Teuta (the Untameable), who was in power BC 231-227, and was at least as terrifying and as Roman-bashing as Boudicca, 300 years later.

     A shop on Seven Sisters Road rather put itself forward with the claim ‘Any food from any country.’ And a shabby, run-down shop on the dirty North Circular claimed to be a German Kebab café. Actually, a different chain is now appearing, called German Doner, which I must check out sometime, seen a few of those. I’m guessing it’s a pork kebab.

     There are still a few snippets from walking diaries, but that’s more than enough for today. I didn’t mean for this Challenge to become a book! There have been lots of pretty pictures of flarze along the way, here’s one of an eye-catching fruit and veg stall in Walthamstow market.

28^th Sept.

     A few more steps than yesterday as we’re going into town tonight to see a recording of The Unbelievable Truth. Been to two of these before and seen a host of stars, Sandi Toksvig, Graham Garden, Marcus Brigstock among many others, and of course the host, David Mitchell.

     Very flattered indeed to have a fellow walker reading this journal, Jan Mather, we’ve been supporting each other from the start as she tramps the beautiful north York moors with buzzards overhead.

     A few more snippets to wrap up as the deadline approaches. 1. The distance, of course. I’ve done the million steps, but how far is that? I originally miscalculated, and thought it was 420 miles, it’s actually 550. That’s as if I’d walked from Trafalgar Square to Mallaig, the beautiful little port on the west coast of Scotland that’s the end of the West Highland Line, known to the world nowadays as the Harry Potter train.

     2. I’ve had a couple of dents. My right shin made it impossible to go up hills for about three weeks and the whole house smelt of Deep Heat. And I cricked my neck while sleeping, so for a while I couldn’t turn my head properly to look right and at junctions I’m surprised I didn’t get run over. I can say that now it’s mended. But the whole venture is something of a success for me, as a few years ago I physically (which led to mentally) wouldn’t have been able to do it.

     3. The buzzing idea, however infrequent, has certainly helped keep my embouchure ticking over during this enforced period of not working, which is coming to an end now, thank goodness. Annoyingly for the residents of north London, I seemed to burst into a flurry of buzzing mostly on early Sunday mornings, walking along deserted streets as people were trying to sleep. I did do silent breathing exercises as well, in my defence.

     4. There’s a funny sign on a public loo in Barnet, which someone has taken from an old railway station and nailed up there. It says ‘This is the First Class Toilet. The Second Class Toilet is off the edge of Platform 3.’

     And lastly for today, 5. Early on, I noticed that the North Circular is a pretty grim road in places, and fuels my distaste for cars and grubby machinery. Cars seem like bullies to me. The houses by the side of the ever-busy and noisy road are often dilapidated, ghost houses with crumbling stone and torn net curtains, whose spirits have been broken by the incessant weight of traffic, like the tattered banks of a flooding river. But on the other hand, very early morning tramps along quieter roads have often been beautiful, strolls along leafy lanes and among quiet suburbia, watching a city wake up. The foxes are just going back into hiding, there are pigeon coos in the trees, overnight snail trails are lit up and glistening on sunny pavements…

29^th Sept.

Last night’s radio show, ‘The Unbelievable Truth’ was great, with star guest for us being Alan Davies, who employed a Radio 4 voice throughout. Today to work, and if there’s one musical reason to play the trombone it’s the end of Brahms 2. Or maybe the climax of the 1^st movement of Shos 5. But Brahms this week, and that’s a huge treat. It was an excerpt that re-lit the fire at times during the Covid year and a half, so to come back to it live was big. Personal milestone in that I’ve achieved my secondary target of an extra 100,000 steps today, on top of the million, a day before the end of the Challenge. As it all ends tomorrow and I’m at work again, and not doing any local tramping, here’s the coloured map of north London and the many walks in the area, sometimes setting off from home, sometimes taking buses to further away points. This site might be shut down tomorrow. Hopefully more later.

Sept 30^th.

     Final day, and nothing much left to say. I’m amused to see that, without aiming for this, not only have I passed the million, and yesterday the million plus 100,000, I’ve continued on that road of ever-diminishing targets, of an extra 10,000, then 1,000, until the perfect total to reach for a target-driven walker would of course be 1,111,111. And now stop.

     I’m not a good diabetic, not a good and saintly role model. When I was first diagnosed I wanted to be the best, the best diabetic in the world, and I spent three years eating tinned fish and fruit. But during the three years so much conflicting advice (‘Don’t eat fruit, just eat dried fruit.’ ‘Don’t drink fruit juice either, especially grapefruit.’ Well what the hell can I eat then?) got so contradictory and led me to believe that I wasn’t the only one being misinformed, and that in the end, my life was just too exciting to spend nibbling seeds on an exercise bike. So I drifted off whatever righteous (or erroneous) path I’d been on and I feel fine. See? Not a good role model. But hold on, isn’t that what this has all been about? Helping to fund diabetes research. So that sooner rather than too late, we’ll know a lot more abut the condition, and exactly the best ways to deal with it, live with it, and someday even beat it. That’s the ultimate target. And the walking has been fun, and rewarding, and I doubt if it’s done me any harm.  Still don’t know about next year, but if I do it, the walking target will almost certainly be the same, a million steps. Or maybe 1,111,111. Now there’s a challenge.

FINAL TOTAL: 1,112,121 STEPS.