Walking Back To Happiness

Something's changed. I can't quite put my finger on it but I feel within myself one of those quantum shifts in attitude that though miniscule in itself, causes a cascade effect that sometimes sees an entire new you crack yourself out of the cocoon and emerge, flapping your colourful wings in the crisp, spring air. For a while, anyway - until someone thwacks you with a tennis racquet and you flutter back to reality in shattered pieces.

So what has caused this potential seismic shift? That's easy - nothing. Nothing ever does - or at least nothing I can successfully chase around the living room floor and stamp my foot upon.

So how do I know such a change has taken place? Again easy - I walked down town to buy some contact lens solution and a bottle of diet coke. Astounding, eh? Well, yes it is - as the nearest pharmacy to where I work is just under one mile away, meaning at lunchtime yesterday I walked from my workplace and back, leaving my car parked at the rear-end of the employee's car park, just over a mile and three-quarters. This is the first time I have done this in, oo, ages, and it used to be a habitual … er … habit, two or three times a week. But I've found every excuse in every book I've ever read to not undertake such a walk since well before Christmas.

Yet yesterday was different. I found no difficulty whatsoever in hauling my huge backside from the dent in the chair at my desk, pulling on my coat and popping my mp3 player into my ears and loading up an old-ish Richard Herring (very much *with* Andrew Collins) podcast to fill my ears. The air held more warmth than the view out of the office window suggested, which pleased me no end as I thought I'd be suffering just under an hour with a painfully cold nose. Most of last week's snow had dissolved with staggering swiftness - indeed once I was in town you would never have been able to tell that last week things had been so bad that on the car journey to work the snow-coated road had taken me around a mini-roundabout I'd been trying to go straight on at.

Something that bordered between curiosity and difficulty occurred in the newsagents. Even though I use it infrequently it's clear the petite, blonde-haired lady behind the counter recognises me as an occasional customer - there's nothing in this, it's just her naturally welcoming demeanour. So today, as ever, she greeted me with a sunny face and a hello, totted up my purchases of a diet coke and a Cadbury's Cream Egg, and handed me back my change with a 'there you go, darling'. It wasn't until I'd stepped out of the shop I thought would the lady have been so polite to me had she known that at the time I was listening to Richard Herring expressing a comedic (obviously - he being a comic) desire to author a book upon his ambition 'force his attentions upon' (although the phrase he used was much, much shorter - an anagram of the word 'pear') every one of the actors to have played Dr Who. Even surmounting the problem of three of them being bones by now by an ambitious use of their skull's eye-sockets (he didn't mention how he'd cope if he found any of them had been cremated). Tasteless - undoubtedly, although I can honestly say I didn't find it such, being the possessor of a broad mind. Funny? Very. In my opinion, anyway. I just wondered what would have happened if I had cracked up as I was being served. Would the woman have enquired as to what was funny? If I had said 'oh, just my current favourite comedian talking about f*cking the corpses of the actors William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee' I wonder if she would have been so gleamingly friendly with me.

Actually, the previous owner of this shop showed me a fine example of what fuels my current misanthropic tendencies. I was awaiting in line behind a middle-aged guy with easy-to-define learning difficulties who bought a newspaper - and then engaged the vendor in some - what was extremely difficult for him - smalltalk. I think the subject was Robbie Williams, how much he liked him, how he had everything by him, and how if he saw anything with him in it he just HAD to buy it. Hardly sparkling conversation I admit, but it was only a few words, took about fifteen seconds and the guy shuffled off with a beaming smile. Such a heart-warming episode, and it injected me with 10cc's of faith in humankind in that the newsagent vendor had responded so positively towards this chap instead of nodding with ill-disguised dis-interest.

I too then shuffled along, as I was third in line. The vendor waited until she was sure the door behind her previous customer was safely closed, then uttered the immortal line:

"God. I know they have to live somewhere. But I don't see why they have to live here."

Crash. Burn.

I should have pointed out just how much was wrong with that sentence and just how much was wrong with her attitude, but I chickened out. But I did snatch my change (once served) rudely from her hands and only mutter a barely audible thank you.

So, with Herring (and a deal lesser extent, Collins) I strode back down the hill to work, passing familiar landmarks that I'd neglected to place my gaze upon for far too long. It felt ridiculously like revisiting a favourite foreign country.

Nothing else to report. No further reaction from Andrew (who has returned to the level of sullen interaction when such interaction cannot be avoided), and no news from Colin.

I am taking this walk as a giant leap forwards, and hope it's a sign of a change of attitude in myself. One small walk for a man, one giant hike for me.