And Treasure All the Days
From 3rd December 2024
As I write, early on a Monday morning many a Scottish person would rejoice in calling “Driech” I’m rejoicing too, because the rain that’s falling now is forecast to last all day. Giving me the excuse I don’t truly need to stay right where I am in our warm dry house, writing, reading and listening to music to my heart’s content for, as many an old folk song would say “all the livelong day.”
So here goes, with a story of the two unexpectedly warm, dry and mostly sunny days that arrived over the weekend, before this wet one.
Audio version:
On Sunday 1st December
When I woke on this first morning of December I had a thought about doing what I call a “Quaker Walk.” Where I’ll walk into town, like I would for a while on Sunday mornings a couple of years ago, to their Meeting House on School Lane in the months when I was thinking I might be a Quaker. No more, what with me turning out to be no kind of a joiner-in. But I learned so much from the Liverpool Friends during my short time with them, about quietness and simplicity, that I still do my “as if” walk on occasional Sundays. As if I’m going on a visit and as if I’m still a Quaker. Which I am, kind of. Albeit of the solo unbelieving kind.
Walking into town thinking of the Quakers brought to mind this list I wrote down for myself in January this year, when it was about to be my seventieth birthday. Ten pieces of advice about how I could become more my kind of a Quaker as I grow older.1
1. As your future unfolds stay open to the promptings of love, truth, beauty and enthusiasm in your heart. Trust them.
2. Set aside quiet times for stillness and contemplation. Carry your inner stillness as a way of life.
3. Be honest with yourself and learn from the mistakes you will still inevitably make.
4. Respect everyone. Assume they are doing their best until people’s actions suggest otherwise. But never give up on forgiveness.
5. Cherish and care for your loves and friendships, so they will grow and flourish over time. Expecting though that some people will fade from your life as their own lives change.
6. Live adventurously. When choices come up consider whether any of them might offer you a balance of self-fulfilment whilst also being of service to those around and perhaps beyond you. Let your life continue to speak.
7. Attend every day to what a simple life requires of you. Which might not be great busyness. Every stage of life brings different choices to be made.
8. Live with the acceptance that death, your own and of those close to you, is a natural part of life. And treasure all the days before its arrival.
9. Live simply and ethically in all the ways you can. Free from wanting what you do not need.
10. And know humility. That in all of these things your reach will fall constantly short of your intentions.
I carry these around with me all the time now, and of course my reach is forever falling short of no.10’s humble intentions. Yesterday though I was thinking more about two of the other advices, nos.4 and 8. As I’d spent much of the previous day’s walking feeling, to use a couple of old words and phrases “discomfited” and “hard done by.” Who and what had caused me to feel like that is not what I want to write about. Because where would be the “assume people are doing their best” and “never give up on forgiveness” in doing such a thing, and in public, to whoever had upset me.
But “treasuring all the days” from no.8 on the list, was exactly my intention at the weekend. To see if I could get over my hard done by feelings by walking around, my usual cure for sorrow.
I left the house and walked along Smithdown to the Asda, the big one with its definite article, for something Sarah wanted. Then further along on the opposite side of Smithdown my friend Luca was opening his Italian Streetfood shop, Fritto, for the day. And stopping for a “How are things going” conversation, Luca told me Fritto would soon be ten years old. That long since the first time we met, as he and his wife Claire were setting up at Granby Street Market for the first time. Asking about me, he liked the sound of a life now where I mainly walk around, write, read and listen to music. But soon Luca needed to be back with his team, getting their lovely and highly recommended place set up for another busy day. As I walked on.
Saturday morning had also begun with me walking along Smithdown Road.
A day earlier
I’d have walked anyway on such a warm and dry surprise of a Saturday. After a mixed week of cold, wet days and with that discomfit bothering me as I walked along Smithdown, I’d turned left at the cemetery to walk towards Sefton Park.
Being still early the cemetery was quiet, except for one man far ahead of me on the main path. I’d thought he was doing what I do, looking at people’s names and dates and reading whatever’s been inscribed by their relatives on their gravestones. But as I got closer I realised he was only looking at the one gravestone. Which he leaned towards, bent over and gently kissed as I was passing. Which I’d never seen happen before and was very touched by. Appreciating for the first time why you might choose to be buried. To give your loved ones somewhere to come and visit you. And be able to kiss your memory.
I walked through SeftonPark then and Princes next, both of them wintering down now. On through the Welsh Streets and across High Park to Ringo’s, to Admiral Grove. All looking more muralled-up every time I pass these days. Even the bollards are joining in, not to mention the (not-pictured) peace and love symbol newly painted on the wall over the road.
A bit later, along Windsor Street, I stopped for what’s become a regular Saturday tradition now of a cup of tea, a sit, a piece of cake and a read at Squash Nutrition, my favourite L8 shop and café. I’ll talk later about what I was reading there, but time and quite a lot of it passed happily in Squash. As it always does.
Sometimes after Squash I’ll carry on along Windsor Street, to Toxteth Library and the Anglican Cathedral. But this day my feet turned me the other way round, they do that sometimes. Back towards the parks, then across Sefton to the allotment where I wanted to do some more of the winter preparations the wet week had been holding me back from.
And again, time and thinking passed over me. So when I’d done as much as I wanted the afternoon light was already fading, at not much after 3, as I walked home along Penny Lane. The bothers of the week beginning to fade too. Already seeming not to matter as much after my beautiful walking around of a Saturday.
Back to Sunday morning
Sunday had begun well, even before the dawn came up. December and with it Advent’s arrival having prompted a whole day of choral music and carols on Radio 3. Since half six I’d been listening to Tom Huddlestone on there, broadcasting from a bird-hide and then from a canoe out on Martin Mere, the wildbird and wetland centre not far from Liverpool. The calls of the wild swans and geese from the Mere blending in beautifully with the local choir, singing to me on the radio as i walked, from inside the bird-hide. Exquisitely done.
By the time I was leaving home the broadcasting had moved on to Sarah Walker over at a hall in Barnsley, with brass bands. Then later, as I walked, I’d listen to bits of the day’s other programmes from Cornwall, Cambridge, Derry, Swansea Bay and, gloriously, Kate Molleson. Out on the beach at Moidart on the edge of the Western Highlands with a lone piper. Note-perfect public service live broadcasting all day, that soundtracked, and sacredly, the whole of my own day.
In the morning on Sunday, after talking with Luca, I’d gone right along Smithdown to the Lodge Lane crossroads, then from Falkner and Crown Streets to the University Library. For what’s already becoming a weekly gathering of new books since I declared myself an Emeritus Student of there a few weeks ago. I like the place best on a Sunday when it’s almost empty and I can explore in peace. And again, time passed there, as serendipity happened and next week’s interesting books were duly found.
Finally then, and as intended from hours before, I walked on into town. Not to visit the Quakers but for a walk around I don’t usually do once December’s begun. And true to my expectations the streets were tumbling with people obviously Christmas shopping. Along Bold Street2 whole groups of them were dressed all in red for two clearly different reasons. The ones with hats and medals on had just been on a Santa-Dash charity run. While the others, mostly with scarves, were on their way to pubs or maybe Anfield, where the LFC match against Manchester City would soon be starting. Me, I went into the Bluecoat for a cup of coffee and a read.
And before long, as the light faded again, I was walking home along Huskisson and Princes. Absolutely all the hard done by bother of the week left long behind me now by two treasured days of walking along, reading and listening to music. Where the walking had worked, like it always does.
Perhaps, and this is just a thought to end on, walking around works through its step-by-step unravelling of the tendency so many of us have, me anyway, to overthink almost everything. The walking working by constantly presenting us with other things than ourselves to focus on and think about. Like that man in the graveyard, the swans on the mere, my friend in his shop, the books in the library, and all those plants in the parks and on the allotment, wintering down now.
All is calm, all is well.
An End piece
For all the talk I’ve been doing in here about sitting down and reading I haven’t got a completed book I could recommend since I wrote my last one of these journal pieces. “Silas Marner” failed me, and not for the first time. Of all the George Eliot books so far I can’t seem to get on with that one at all. It reads too much like her version of one of Grimm’s Fairytales for me. With Silas as the shunned miserly goblin who turns out to have a heart of gold. Then also, and during this writing, I’ve given up on an Elizabeth Jane Howard book I was so confident about there’s even a photograph of it ready to include above this paragraph. Her story’s unusual in the way she works back and takes the long view of a marriage from 1950 to the 1920s. But by page 155, when I was half way back through 1937, I’d fallen so much out of interest with her two main characters that, late as that is to give up on a book, I have.
But I have hopes, because there are always hopes in more books, that one at least of the mixed bag I gathered up in the University Library will be positively talked up by the next time I write. We’ll see.
Developed by me from their own much longer list of “Quaker Advices & Queries.”
On Bold Street that’s Rennie’s former art supplies shop, reopened as something different now. And whatever you think of yet another food place along there, at least the new owners have made good use of Rennie’s beautiful shopfront.
Radio 3 was just perfect on Advent Sunday. Thank you for this lovely piece.
Full of quiet joy, a meditation in the streets, thanks for this Ronnie, & knowing these streets so well too I felt the rhythm of the old places.