Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Surrey on Sunday

No, not the title of an exercise in how boring reality television could be if left unchecked, just a fitting headline for a description of a fairly pleasant walk from central Surbiton to Kingston. As I'm going to be spending a lot more time at home from now on, I figure I'm going to need to get out of the front door at least once a day in order to avoid turning into some kind of nerdy troglodyte.

The walk's quite a pleasant stroll even on an absurdly hot day such as this one (foreigners may snigger here). After crossing the station footbridge and getting irritated by the ticket touts hanging around, head down Claremont road. Try not to get irritated by the ultra-trendy types sitting outside the coffee shop wearing those irritating sunglasses that are very, very trendy but don't seem to actually cut out much sunlight. Fork left onto the Crescent, turn left down Grove Road, and at the bottom cross Portsmouth Road carefully at the zebra crossing. Be irritated by the drivers who don't even bother slowing down despite your making eye contact with them well in advance. Be even more irritated when one of them gives you a little half-wave which means "Yes, I can see you, but I can't be bothered to stop, so get stuffed. Peasant.". Enjoy the further frisson of irritation at tubby men in head-to-toe Lycra who seem to think tubby men on bicycles don't have to stop at pedestrian crossings and other red lights. Get distracted from your irritation by wondering exactly why tubby middle-aged men think that head-to-toe Lycra is a good thing to wear in public.

Drop down onto the path that runs along the Thames. Marvel briefly at the almost unbroken line of benches stretching from here to Kingston, each of them dedicated to someone - fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children or just friends. Ponder the way in which this represents generations of people who've loved this stretch of the Thames, and the many other people who've felt sufficiently strongly on the subject to have a bench installed and dedicated to them with a little plaque or a carving.

Your best bet is to use the lower gravelly path right next to the river, as this means you're less likely to get run over by the folk who seem to think that "NO CYCLING" painted on the path at regular interval means "No cycling unless you look faintly apologetic about it". Observe the ultra-cute ducklings bobbing about on the river and go "Awww!". Observe the pairs of swans taking a break from mugging terrified small children to do a little bit of preening and necking and go "Aaaahh!". Observe the men who seem to think that wandering around in public without a shirt on displaying acres of pallid torso is a good idea and go "Ewww!".

When you reach the trendy yuppie-habitat housing development (provided you haven't already been diverted by the siren song of the Ram's beer garden), feel faintly irritated and suppress the urge to accost a couple of passing DINKYs to ask exactly why sunglasses which don't seem to actually cut out any sunlight are this year's essential fashion accessory. Neither should you yield to the temptation to stop people and harangue them for thinking that "FCUK" is still even faintly amusing, let alone shocking or dangerous. Instead, turn right through the maze of trendy caffs, up the alleyway and left into the calming atmosphere of a major chain bookstore. While enjoying the air-conditioned, bookish ambience that is mercifully free of very trendy people as very trendy people don't usually associate themselves with books which aren't fat magazines full of pictures of other trendy people, have a sudden flash of realisation that "Bat Out Of Hell", currently playing on your iPod, is in fact an irritating self-indulgent piece of cod cock-rock rather than the piece of masterful rock opera you've thought it to be for the last twenty years. Console yourself by buying a couple of Asterix books, pausing only for slight irritation at the price as they're mostly only available in hardback at the moment.

Later, head for the Kingston Odeon by the station with with the intention of seeing a film. Realise in the ticket queue that you're wearing sunglasses and haven't brought your regular glasses with you. Feel slightly irritated about this, head for home and have a nice glass of chocolate milk before realising that you're - shock, horror! - down to your last teabag and Waitrose is now closed until tomorrow morning.

Write a very boring entry on your website about what you've done this afternoon, then get extremely irritated when Safari crashes when you're halfway through writing it and you have to start again. Reflect that this is probably your own fault for running a development version.

[Later edit: I should add that most of the above was not actually all that irritating in reality - the snazzy new flats in Kingston are probably actually quite nice and if people want to wear sunglasses that aren't then, well, that's fine with me too, but I'll stick by my guns in describing nearly getting run over on a zebra crossing as "irritating".]

Posted by mpk at August 1, 2004 4:40 PM | TrackBack