I thought, here’s somewhere to run to. I don’t long for London’s cobbles, arches and corner pubs the way I once did, to be a wanderer in the mechanism. I’m crowd-shy and I don’t walk tall as I used to. In Devon, I liked the beer and the sea and the overwatching moor all silent and untenanted. We stayed in a stone-block farmhouse and you could hill-stumble down to the estuary, no sight of another, no sound but the lap and the leaf. And for a day or two I dreamed of running. But it’s the running he craves, you’re thinking, it’s the break and motion. Always another place that must be different, the endless swerving of here and now. But that’s why people fly away, change jobs, partners, brand of toothpaste, why they read and why they write, to keep running. I’m with the Greeks on this one, it’s all in motion from the first howl to the final, rasping suck when you’re out of puff and you’ve seen enough estuaries and rectories and ale and you’re ready to stop running. And I don’t get out enough these days.
