Read about how he’s getting on with his walk on the BBC’s website and more about his project (and forthcoming book about it) on The Independent’s.

1. Toddington Services. Distance – 53 metres. Approximate time – Four hours for a fit walker, six hours if you’re only in moderate condition.

Leave your car by the driver, passenger or rear doors. Leave it slowly and carefully, remember, nothing is more easy than to become entangled in your seat belt, or lose your way in a fug of child fart and cigarette smoke. Make sure your mobile phone is switched on at all times. If you find yourself lost during this first part of the walk nothing can be easier than to call up the mobile phone you keep in the glove compartment, and then, by employing an orienteering compass and the driver’s handbook, to take a bearing, in order to ascertain exactly where it is you may have got to. Having gained the ground thread your way between the tiny peaks and troughs of the Asphalt Surface, noting its beauty and resilience. The thick white lines may be a struggle to cross, but the views from their summits are awe inspiring. The first beauty spot is a rubbish bin overflowing with half-chewed chips, mashed chicken nuggets, mushed burger buns, crushed soft drink cans, which in summer is a breeding ground for a buzzing, multicoloured horde of flies and wasps. Many walkers will enjoy sitting down for an hour or so here – utilising a discarded fag packet as a hide – and fly watching. Pressing on after a very dry sandwich, it should be possible to reach the booth where they sell AA membership in under an hour. The steps up to the automatic doors into the service centre can prove too much even for seasoned walkers, but don’t worry, bearers, porters and a chairlift are all available. Once inside the service centre follow the rank stench of urine in the direction of the toilets, but veer off at the point when you realise you’d like to buy some chewing gum. Do not be disturbed by the way people hear wear plastic wrappers disguising their gender. Was it not always thus? You can overnight in the Travel Lodge, where prosaic dreams represent genuine value for money.

Global Coffee Price List

Espresso – £1.00

Double Espresso – £1.40

Cappuccino – £1.50

Latte (tall / grande) – £1.20 / £1.50

Cluster Bomb Latte (includes over three hundred extra little coffee bomblets, each one of which will burst to cover the customer with the products of a well established multinational brand. Make your own choice form Nike, Gap, Adidas, Microsoft, Intel, Ghost, Disney, Body News Corp, Apple, IBM and many many more) – £1.40

Extra Shot – 50p

— — —

This originally appeared in The Reader magazine, issue 15. Subscribe to the magazine here.

It was mid-afternoon and the village was still and very hot and silent. The Dunn Cow was ancient and respectable looking. I did notice some stuff in the car park out back but I blanked it, and headed inside, to the cool stone interior: it was hot, I’d been driving for more than three hours.

The Cow was empty but for two figures, perhaps man and wife, one missing some teeth, the other, with floribunda eyebrows, had the figure of Friar Tuck.  They both had on dun coloured clothing of an indeterminate nature – trousers – jackets. They were both drinking newly full pints of scrumpy. The Friar Tuck indeterminate went to get my key and came back huffing. The toothless indeterminate knew too well what that huff meant.

‘No key?’
‘Urururrr’
‘Has he gone?’
‘Hurrhuhrrrr.’
‘Not another.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Have they taken it?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Huffy, ‘There’s a spare.’  (Giving it to me) ‘Room 5. Upstairs, end of the corridor.’
‘See if the key is in the lock’ said Toothless to me. They were both staying with the scrumpy. It was a sort of order.

Let me advise you, if you ever go to The Dunn Cow, not to accept Room 5. It is situated above the kitchen and smells of old warm fat, fat that has never really cooled, never been strained off, never been replaced, a warm ancient indeterminate grease of a smell. As I entered the room that penetrating smell of warm cooking grease was present but not too overpowering. I thought it would be bearable. Inside the room everything was of the poorest quality – lamps, small and dim, beds cheap and thin, carpet thin and cheap, the walls, the doors, the curtains were  thin, the bedding – clean, yes, but heavy with the smell of grease. And finally, the door wouldn’t lock - but it was only for one night.  I opened the window and the smell flew at me, talons outstretched.

My greasy window:

My beautiful view:

I went downstairs and fortified myself with a half pint of cider. Toothless had gone but indeterminate huffer was there and when I asked for something in the cider line, offered me a taste of it. I swear he turned  his back to me and drank some of it before giving it to me (as if he feared it might be off and wanted to make sure it wasn’t) but this seemed so enormously and unacceptably odd – even in The Dunn Cow –  that I had to tell myself that it had not happened. He did not put a small splash of cider into a spirit glass, turn his back to me, surreptitiously taste it, and then hand me the glass. Even in this Cow, that wouldn’t be done, would it? The long hot drive had me hallucinating!

The event at Hay was a delight – Sold Out! Sold Out! We took photos of the sold out sign with Dave Fearnley’s Mum:

The audience seemed interested and asked good questions. Benna, an intelligent and lovely psychologist, interviewed Dave, Blake Morrison and myself and had done her research. A lot of people wanted to talk to us afterwards. I gave away all my books, copies of The Reader, forms, print-offs and business cards and left with a light basket and a lighter heart.

And turned back towards The Dunn Cow where grease conditions had worsened. My room was thick and awash with it, lapping, choking. I went downstairs to ask for a change of rooms but the Cow was full to bursting.

‘I’ve finished cooking now,’ said the indeterminate. ‘It should clear. Don’t open the window, it’ll come in worse. Open the fire escape outside your room, open your room door, create a through draught… that should clear it. It depends which way the wind is blowing.’

It’s the way he offers this culinary-meteorological certainty from his barstool that gets me. He’s not giving up his scrumpy time for a bit of a whiff of grease. I’m dreading my breakfast! What can I do but ask for a double whisky and go to open the fire escape?

*I don’t know what cowardliness or kindness prevents me naming the true name of this hostelry. The public is unlikely to stumble upon The Dunn Cow, and if the public did, it would quite likely think ‘I’m not going in there. It looks too down at heel, I do not like the old washing machines in the car park nor the immersion heaters leaning against the outbuilding. No’, the sensible public would say, ‘I’ll give this Cow a miss. I’ll go on’. But this being Hay, and Thursday, I went in, because I did not think there would be a ‘on’ to go to: for miles around there’s scarce a bush that some literary festival goer isn’t sheltering under.

Forget the chocolates, flowers and fluffy teddies, dogs and almost any other kind of animal imaginable (even though they are cute) – if you really want to win the heart of your valentine, then love poetry is definitely the way to go. According to a recent study, most members of the fairer sex would like nothing better as a Valentine’s gift than to receive a love poem or letter from their significant other. Unfortunately, the male population are less than forthcoming in the literary department, with 6% resorting to plagiarism of existing romantic poetry to make a favourable impression – well, at least they’re trying. (Although, to be fair to men, embarrassment may be a major factor in restraining the poet within – Aberystwyth University is conducting some rather intriguing research into whether reading love poems get us hot under the collar.)

No need to take such drastic measures – The Reader Online can come to the rescue for your romantic quandaries with a very special Valentine’s poem. Whether it’s for an unknowing object of desire or a long-term lover (or alternatively if you’re still waiting for Cupid’s arrow to strike, for yourself), nobody will be able to resist these beautiful words courtesy of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Of course if you’d prefer to select your own Valentine’s poem, there are plenty to choose from on Poets.org. Also, The Poetry Archive and The Times Online have teamed up – together with a number of very famous names and poets – to offer recordings of love poems that can be sent to a loved one. So boys (and girls), there really is no excuse!

Lovesight

When do I see thee most, beloved one?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known?
Or when in the dusk hours (we two alone,)
Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
And my soul only sees thy soul its own?

O love, my love! if I no more should see
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,–
How then should sound upon Life’s darkening slope
The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
The wind of Death’s imperishable wing?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A Damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
S.T. Coleridge, 1816.

Coleridge’s explanation of his inspiration for the poem may clarify some of its more unusual aspects. The opening lines ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree’ immediately immerses the reader in a strange and unfamiliar environment, which the poem then goes on to explore in more detail as it progresses. Images of majestic ‘greenery’ in the poem soon give way to the supernatural, and a chasm ‘Haunted / By woman wailing for her demon-lover!’, before concluding with a warning to ‘Beware!’ the ‘flashing eyes’ of the demon, and to receive him with holy dread’. The subtitle: ‘A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment’ reminds the reader that the poem is not completed exactly as Coleridge had envisaged: the alleged interference from someone calling at his house left the dream ‘scattered’ within Coleridge’s mind: the remnants of which make up the entirety of Kubla Khan.

he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A Damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
S.T. Coleridge, 1816.

Coleridge’s explanation of his inspiration for the poem may clarify some of its more unusual aspects. The opening lines ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree’ immediately immerses the reader in a strange and unfamiliar environment, which the poem then goes on to explore in more detail as it progresses. Images of majestic ‘greenery’ in the poem soon give way to the supernatural, and a chasm ‘Haunted / By woman wailing for her demon-lover!’, before concluding with a warning to ‘Beware!’ the ‘flashing eyes’ of the demon, and to receive him with holy dread’. The subtitle: ‘A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment’ reminds the reader that the poem is not completed exactly as Coleridge had envisaged: the alleged interference from someone calling at his house left the dream ‘scattered’ within Coleridge’s mind: the remnants of which make up the entirety of Kubla Khan.

The conversation progressed to consider the personal within the fictional and to what extent the ‘author’ is part of the character(s) in their novels. Morrison, who has written his memoirs in And When Did You Last See Your Father? (the film, starring Colin Firth has just been released) doesn’t believe that there is much of ‘him’ in his latest work, “Memoir is written from your own experiences, fiction’s abot the lives you haven’t had, imagining other lives and getting into the consciousness of those lives.” However Coe admits to drawing on personal experiences for the (female) protagonist in his novel, “Maybe it’s because I haven’t written an autobiography or my memoirs, I have had no outlet for writing about my own life so it manifests itself in my fiction.”

It’s not as straight-forward as drawing a line between memoir and fiction though, is it? Surely a writer has only their own experience to draw on? Yet Coe says, “Writing allows you to get into a perspective different from your own”, even if it isn’t your ‘real’ perspective – the perspective that you have attached to your sense of identity – how could you possibly write (convincingly or otherwise) about something you have never experienced, seen, read, heard or touched. Is it a question of interpretation? When in ‘character’ an author is able to position themselves in a different mode of interpretation, to imagine a different response from normal but at one and the same time there must be the realisation that this interpretation has also come from within, from knowledge and experience.

Reading is then another form of interpretation. Issue 27 of The Reader features an essay by Raymond Tallis on Ian McEwan‘s Saturday, it also discusses the position of the contemporary novelist and the aim of literary fiction, “to leave a more lasting and different kind of impression” rather than just giving readers a “rat-a-tatting good read”. Coe made a pertinent comment about the relationship between reading and writing, “You don’t realise what book you’ve written until people read it”, interesting when you consider the extent of readerly interpretation on bringing the book to life. Thoughts in the author’s mind are deciphered into words on a page, those words are then unravled in the reader’s mind, with their own set of experiences construing a meaning. Authors interpret our world in their fiction, we interpret their fiction in our world.

Posted by Jen Tomkins