Walking...

i am trying to walk more. Walking and thinking seem to go hand in hand for me. I noticed at the beginning of the year, one of my work colleagues and i used to have great ideas springing out of conversations as we walked from one part of Manchester to another.

I have been reading a great book (so far) on walking, i came across it at the cornerhouse bookshop in manchester. Of course, as with most books that i start (and never finish) i initially got distracted and swept up into some other project or work-related thing and forgot all about the book until i started walking again.

last weekend i was walking - the ball of my foot is still sore from it - but it was a great walk so when i rub the sore foot the pain it elicits is tinged with the pleasurable memory of the walk.

So what was the book (Wanderlust: a history of walking by Rebecca Solnit) and what was the walk (East London in the world as part of six billion ways). I was reading the book on the train to london for the six billion ways. I had no idea that walking was an option on the agenda and it was by far the most interesting bit of the all day event.

Artist activist, Shane Solanki who took us on a walk to discover 'the radical history of East London, from anti-slavery struggles of the 18th century to anti-racism in the 1970s; from the fight for women's votes to the threat of fascism; and most recently, fights against 'gentrification' and the Olympics'.

Now, i am from the eastend and i am ashamed to say a lot of it was news to me - not the history but the spaces and the places and the detail - the interconnected stories inhabiting not one street but many and the idea that people from the 'slum' did some amazing stuff that still has its legacy today. Centuries worth of stories unfolded and flashed into the future and the present as we walked and talked and listened and looked. Time was not linear it was circular - with connections made on a multitude of levels. All my senses were engaged and additional treats for a writer's eye were uncovered en route. I will post some of the walk - talk to give a better insight into what i am trying to articulate and what needs to be imported from the east end to manchester - another slum city, borne off the back of great industry and creativity and mashed up heritage. The manchester stories that are currently missing and need to be told and played back, remixed and revisited.

its that old adage - if you don't know where you've come from - how the hell do you know where you're going?

the story passed onto through another book, one that i have carried with me in my head and only understood consciously a couple of years ago when my father died was the quote on the inside cover of chinua achebe's book 'Things Fall Apart'. I could tell you the saying but it might be more fun to check it out...

Achebe says 'the power of the storyteller lies in his or her ability to appeal to the mind and reach beyond his or her particular circumstance and thus speak to different periods and generations; the good story teller is not bound by narrow political or personal concerns or even by the demands of specific historical moments.'

This resonates with me - and where i am right now - an interloper - flitting between two cities and learning and remembering from both so that i can eventually move on, feet aching, with many new stories to tell...