Before you know it, the Last Post will be sounding for another year

NICE time of year for a walk, early November. Funny sort of time, too: still Keats’s season of mist and mellow fruitfulness – but only just. The nights are drawing in fast. Next Wednesday is Armistice Day. Then, before you know it, the Last Post will sound for the year itself. Tempus does indeed fugit. It doesn’t seem five minutes since people were letting off fireworks to celebrate the dawn of a new millennium. Now we’re almost at the end of its first decade.
Come to think of it, people are always letting off fireworks. Diwali, Bonfire Night, New Year’s Eve, Chinese New Year, every Tom, Dick and Harriett’s birthday – this year, someone in the next street even celebrated the Fourth of July; the excuses for disrupting the neighbourhood with industrial strength gunpowder seem never-ending. There, that’s that particular grumble out of the way. Now back to the matter in hand.
I needed a haircut (it happens every autumn). It was still 15 minutes before nine o’clock and I had three options: wait three-quarters of an hour until the free bus pass kicked in; pay the bus fare; or walk the two and a half miles from Chain Lane to Cheapside.
I wanted to get on, but the second option wasn’t really an option at all. You don’t get much for free these days (not unless you’re a career benefit claimant), so forking out £1.90 for the sake of 45 minutes didn’t appeal.
In any case, I have decided to take more walks. And as it was one of those wonderful late autumn mornings – cloudless blue sky, slight nip in the air – I put my best foot forward, humming a selection of George Formby standards as I went forth. And yes, before you ask, quite a few people think I’m barmy.
Anyway, I’d been plodding along for about 10 minutes when a man came up and asked if I could lend him a pair of jump leads. Strange question to put to a pedestrian, especially one giving full vent to When I’m Cleaning Windows, but he was desperate. His car battery was flat, the vehicle stuck in a bus lane and, unluckily for him, I was the only one around. I suggested Kingsway fire station, then hurried on my way before he could ask for a push.
It wasn’t a particularly illuminating experience (I’m still not sure what jump leads do) but, overall, you’d be surprised at the variety of things you can learn while walking into town. For instance, I can tell you where to find abandoned Sainsbury’s shopping trolleys, what time Uttoxeter Road cemetery closes (I’m going to explore that soon), and that the big house opposite Bemrose School is all sad and boarded up. Fifty years ago, when it was in its pomp, I used to stare at that house from a chemistry lab, wondering who could afford to live there. In those days, appearing attentive while daydreaming was a particular skill of mine.
Back in the present, it was a grand day for a good walk. Nice and still. Not too warm, not too cool. Add in the leaves in their full rustic majesty, the occasional dew-jewelled spider’s web, and you can begin to see why John Keats was moved to compose that famous ode.
Of course, it was an autumnal evening walk in early 19th-century Winchester that inspired him. What he would have been come up with had he stumbled upon Derby’s inner ring road extension on a busy Wednesday morning in 2009, I can’t imagine.
It makes you think, though. I wonder if that man ever got his car started.