“And when I go out for a walk at night near my house, I put on my mask.”

“Well. You’re very well-behaved.”

How else was I supposed to respond?

She seemed intelligent. A middle-class professional, just about middle-aged, married with children. But she may as well have just told me she was insane.

It felt like that was exactly what she had done, effectively.

Except she wasn’t insane. I knew that, because nothing else that she said, on any other subject, was out of the ordinary. Her mannerisms and modes of speech were regular. She was very polite.

That was it, that was the problem, I realised.

She was very polite. She cared about manners, and about being seen, or heard, to be respectable.

And what was polite right now, suddenly, without anyone having checked around, was to do things that were irrational.

Like wearing a facemask alone at night…

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now and we don’t know where the hell she is.” Ellen De Generes.

BBC radio is currently hooked on programmes about walking, which can only be assumed were recorded at a time of year when rambling is a good idea, as opposed to February where the pull of the nearest pub or cafe marks the furthest reach of any expedition, unless you enjoy swearing at the rain.

It was news to me that writers even like walking. I thought they preferred thinking about that sort of extreme sport, rather than participate. But it’s good to hear that a harmless pastime is now identified as another symptom caused by compulsion to write join words together. I can see why writers might enjoy walking, as  like skydiving it’s hard to write while you’re doing it, yet it is…