Today, having not even ventured outside yesterday, I went for a walk around the park in Tonbridge. All the way around were places I recognised from my youth but they all looked small, I remember them being huge woods, massive railway bridges, fields for miles and miles. It must be the same as Mars bars and BigMacs, a world where everything was bigger or maybe where I was smaller. Of course, all the vaguely dangerous things are fenced off now too, making it difficult to get to the places holding the real memories. But thats ok, there was enough for me to go along with as it was.
Somewhere along the way I took a wrong turn and ended up by the old powder works, now part of the Glaxo Smithkline empire, making it, I suppose, a new powder works. They’re a little touchy up there, for some reason, maybe they don’t get many ramblers during the week, but they sent a couple of chemists out to make sure I wasn’t up to no good[0]. Or maybe fag breaks are so boring there that they’ll just wander around the the perimeter aimlessly for ten minutes.
On the way back I studiously followed the ‘PublicFootpath’ signs toward the town, until the first drive-way/footpath split which wasn’t particularly well labelled. I guess I got the wrong way since nothing after that point looked remotely like a footpath, but thats OK, I just followed the tyre tracks for a while until it became clear they weren’t going anywhere, then headed into the woods, along by the river and popped out onto the footpath two miles back the way I’d come.
[0] Double negative intended. Why is English the only language in which negating something again makes it a positive? Who decided that?
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