Notes from the Potting Shed

 🦶🌿 World Sauntering Day Reflections

by Virgil Twobyfour

Happy World Sauntering Day, my dear perambulatory comrades.

Not to be confused with Walking Day (too goal-oriented), Marching Day (too militant), or That Time I Lost My Trousers in the Underpass (unrelated, but memorable), Sauntering Day is a fine celebration of taking one’s time. Of strolling, ambling, pottering, dawdling, mooching, meandering and generally flitting about the landscape like an indecisive dandelion.

I have always been a keen saunterer. Not for me the rigid clomp of the brisk power-walker with their terrifying elbows and energetic nostrils. No. I favour the contemplative plod, the shoe-scuff of leisure, the path that meanders not because it must, but because it fancies a bit of hedge-sniffing.

Back in the day, I’d set off for the postbox and end up several hours later in a stranger’s greenhouse having an unexpected conversation about marrows and spiritual anxiety. That, my loves, is the beauty of the saunter. It opens portals. It expands time. It occasionally results in mild trespass, but always with a friendly wave and the offer of a Werther’s Original.

Sauntering is how you notice things. Like the way Mrs Pellifer’s rhubarb seems to vibrate when you hum in G minor. Or the quiet indignation of a shrew caught in a light drizzle. Or how the clouds over High Combe Hill seem to gather into the shape of a large man trying to remember where he left his umbrella.

Today I went for a purposeful saunter round the village. I paused to examine the mysterious boot that has been wedged in the branches of the sycamore near the vicarage since 2003. I stood very still while a moth landed on my collar and whispered something ancient into my ear (it sounded like "Thursdag"). I briefly engaged in a staring contest with a dog, and I lost. Fair and square.

Some say sauntering is a luxury of time. I say it’s a necessity of the soul. The world is very fast these days. Even our cucumbers come with QR codes. But sauntering? That’s the antidote. You can’t be cross when you’re sauntering. You can’t be rushed. You can’t be bothered. You’re too busy taking your time.

So I urge you, dear reader, to step outside. Pick a direction. Change your mind halfway. Stop to poke at a stick. Greet a spider. Sit on a wall. Continue only when the spirit moves you, or when your bottom gets cold. Let the world reveal itself, slowly, like an old friend returning with cake.

And if you see me out there, stooped over an anthill or admiring a puddle that looks like former Home Secretary, give me a wave. Or don’t. I’ll probably be distracted by a feather.

Yours at two miles an hour,
Virgil Twobyfour
(President Emeritus of the Local Chapter of the Institute for Sideways Wandering)