Writing now, I must try to lay down the ambient background of slowness, heat and modest but constant pain. ⁣ Too loud and you will tire of the moaning. Too soft and you miss a critical dimension. ⁣ Plug away, plod away, drift away. Time does the rest, turning a walk into something richer, as cream changes to golden butter under duress. ⁣ Though individual days blend together, the result becomes an experience more vibrant than the mere cumulative act of trudging towards the next sit-down and sandwich. Travel long and slow and you learn to pay attention. ⁣ Time moves strangely on the road: at once fast and slow. ⁣ There is real time, told by tolling church towers and the sun’s relentless sweep. But there is also walking time, marked by the body and mind – tortured soles and souls – that pays scant heed to the chronological order of the universe. ⁣ Weeks fly, days pass, hours and minutes drag: just me, my violin and my shadow slowly crossing the landscape with Laurie. ⁣ ‘The days,’ he wrote, ‘merged into a continuous movement of sun and shadow, hunger and thirst, fatigue and sleep, all fused and welded into one coloured mass by the violent heat of that Spanish summer.’ ⁣ This is just one day of my life. But every day to come will depend fractionally on what I do today. I must live it as vividly as I can bear to do.⁣ ⁣ (An extract from my new book, ‘My Midsummer Morning’. Available for sale now – link in my bio. Thank you / Gracias!)⁣ ⁣ #MyMidsummerMorning⁣