We met at the station. Each of us had chosen two sites we wanted to revisit. I’d arranged these into a circuit of the town. It took most of the day - we laughed, learnt new things about each other, remembered old friends and gawped through the windows of the workshops where once we had done metalwork lessons.
When I got back to my home, I wrote the following.
QUESTION: If six men of near seventy years walk twelve miles, what might be their purpose? (Please show your workings).
Possibilities
To gather uncertain memories – to check. Did that happen? Was it here?
To beat the once newly trodden ways of youth into old goat paths?
To assemble around the watering hole, count heads, compare scars and frighten the wildlife by telling tales of times now unacceptable?
To peer through classroom windows at lathes on which they learned to turn mild steel.
To talk again of tapping and dying?
If six men of some seventy years walk twelve miles…
Pitches once played on are re-marked
Bones and muscles are brought back into play
Memories are rubbed together
And there’s a spark perhaps.
It makes a profane pilgrimage. An affirmation of sorts.
That happened. Then. That was good. Mostly.
Lucky boys. Fortunate men.
