I crossed the road and walked towards Jacksons Lane Theatre; a gothic church that was just up the road from Highbury underground station. I found myself in an open plan reception hall that had about thirty seats; almost all of them occupied. A woman wearing a badge that was made using a sticker and felt tip pen offered me a reassuring smile; I had found Trish, our Meetup host.
I sat next to a middle aged man who was reading a newspaper and immediately noticed that some of the walkers were curiously overdressed; walkers were wearing impressive hiking boots and carrying trendy ‘easy to hold’ bottles of juice. One member was even carrying an energy drink. I surveyed the mass of thirty or so bodies and guessed that the average age must have been at least fifty two.
At one o’clock, it was time to go; we found our way out of the theatre, and on to the street.
‘I think I’ve seen you before…’ said Stewart, a tall man in his sixties, who was wearing a smart shirt. ‘Do you go to any other groups?’ he asked. I told him that I had been to quite a few.
‘You been to the shyness group? Yes, that’s it! The shyness group! The Banker and Barrowboy!’ exclaimed Stewart, relieved that the mystery had been solved. ‘I think there’s another fella who came to that one too! He’s down there, at the front’.
We walked up a steep hill, towards what I assumed was the centre of Highgate. This was a part of the city that I didn’t know. I had only ever been to Highgate once before, on a date, where I have vague memories of a pub and a substantial amount of anxiety. My memory was of a time without much of an understanding of place. As I walked I made connections, linking my biography to geography.
‘It’s good to get out, isn’t it?’ said Stewart. Stewart had been telling me about his double hip replacement. He used to run, but he had to give that up after the operation. ‘They got you out of bed the next day, which is the last thing you want! You just want to sleep!’
As we walked along a parade of shops, I chatted to some of the walkers who were behind me.
‘I saw you earlier! In Brockley! Chicken night!’
I suddenly remembered. It was Paola who had been sitting at the other end of the chicken night table. She was walking with her friend, Francesca, who was from Spain (but had lived in London since she was about eight years old).
Highgate has a reputation for being posh, and it looked it. We walked past artisan butchers, exclusive green grocers, and numerous estate agencies advertising properties with eye watering prices. To my untrained eye, the architecture seemed to be mostly Georgian, mixed with some Victorian, followed by eighties pastiche. In the distance, I caught a glimpse of a fifties low-rise tower block. After a few minutes of walking, we crossed a road and found ourselves in a glorious park.
‘I think we’ve met before, haven’t we?’ I said to a woman who was walking in front of me, surprised by how many people I seem to know. Her puzzled expression confirmed to me that I was right: we had met before. ‘You work at Google, right?’ I ventured. ‘We had dinner together when we were at that conference?’
It had been around two years since I had last spoken to Lauren. We had met at a day long training event for university researchers. Although Lauren hadn’t been at the daytime event, we had got chatting during the conference dinner.
‘Did you know there was an event at your office that was all about male grooming?’
‘In my office? On the ninth floor?’ I nodded. ‘I work on the ninth floor. How come I didn’t hear about this?’
Waterlow Park was gorgeous. We stopped at an artificial lake and watched the ducks, which energetically swam towards us, clearly expecting something in return. It was a time to ‘refuel’, since we had done at least a mile of walking. Walkers reached for their energy drinks and I reached for the banana that I had carefully packed.
‘Excuse me, are you Svetlana?’ I asked a fellow walker who I faintly recognised. It wasn’t that my memory for names was awesome; it was more that I overheard Svetlana introducing herself to another one of the walkers.
‘Oh, I thought it was you! I’ve not seen you for ages!’ Svetlana gave me a brilliant smile. ‘How are you! What was that name of that walk we went on?’ I remembered Svetlana from the river Fleet walk, where we were told about robbers, work houses, prisons and ships. Svetlana was still an accountant and had since become a regular at the gentle walks group.
‘I recently went on a walking tour of Peckham’ Svetlana told me. I could understand that people who knew Peckham would want to become tourists, but I couldn’t understand why tourists would want to get to know Peckham. ‘It was very interesting. Have you heard of The Peckham Experiment?’ I shook my head. ‘There were a group of doctors who set up a project in the twenties and thirties. They created a centre that had a swimming pool, a gym and a theatre. It was a bit like a leisure centre. The doctors studied the people who used the centre to understand how healthy the people were. It was closed in the fifties because it didn’t fit into the plans of the National Health Service. These days everyone talks about how important exercise is to be healthy. It was like a pioneering centre, you know?’
After the walk, I did a bit of searching about The Peckham Experiment. Not only were participants given annual health checks (or ‘overhauls’ as I think they were called), but the family unit and its social setting was considered to play an important role in influencing individual health. Another aspect to the experiment was the importance of good nutrition; the ‘experiment’ also had its own organic farm.
After leaving Waterlow Park, we found ourselves climbing another hill, much steeper than the first. We passed an expensive housing complex, adorned with mock Tutor wooden beams, Victorian chimney stacks and modern double glazing. From both sides of the road, trees started to form a protective canopy. This was different London; rural London; a fragment of unexpected countryside within the steel, brick and concrete metropolis. Towards the back of the group was an elderly couple who were making gradual but determined progress up the hill. Stewart was in front of me, wobbling gently on his new hips.
After ten or so minutes, we stopped for a break. I saw the entrance to Highgate Cemetery; another landmark of London that I had never been to before but had always heard about.
‘If you look inside, you can see a building. Do you see that? Karl Marx’s grave is just behind it’ explained Trish, checking to make sure that everyone was okay. As I strained to see, I remembered my visit to the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
We were led to a nearby pub. It was busy. Our group scattered, colonising different tables. I was sandwiched between a group of friends on one side, and a new family on the other, who were struggling to manage a child that wasn’t quite a toddler.
‘Is this group a part of your quest?’
‘Erm, yes!’ I replied, surprised by the question. The question came from Adrian, who was the second member of the London Shyness Group, the chap who had the stutter. I told him that I had done around ten since I had last met him.
‘I would have expected you to have done more than that!’ he cheekily replied.
Stewart sat down next to me. We chatted for a while, mostly about jobs and computers. I suggested that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for him to continue to put his laptop in his freezer if it got really hot, even for a short time.
Trish guided us through a maze of suburban streets and towards an entrance to Highgate woods, another unexpected rural idyll, and another of the city’s secrets. We padded through an open space that doubled up as a cricket pitch, and onto an undulating path that was covered by a canopy of trees.
I chatted to Lauren, and then to Alice, who was a scientist from Sweden and was just about to start a job working in the Civil Service. We spoke about walks, London, the importance of ‘getting away’ from looking at a screen all day. Everyone who I spoke to had heard of Ken’s events. ‘They’re just too big’ said Lauren. ‘I prefer this group’.
We found ourselves on another suburban street populated by spacious semi-detached houses that were built in the thirties. I wondered who lived on this expensive street, wondering about their stories of achievement or inheritance. A right turn took us onto a footpath, and into another green space, a sign announcing Cherry Tree wood.
Minutes later, we were done. We had reached our destination: East Finchley underground station. As we walked to a nearby pub, I caught up with Trish. I had heard that she had taken over the group after the original organiser had moved out of London.
‘I only do Saturdays’ Trish explained. ‘I do it because I enjoy getting out. I originally wanted to lose weight and get fit, you see.’ Trish led the walks because she enjoyed doing them, and thought that others might enjoy them to. Her Meetup events were simple acts of selfless sharing. She didn’t give talks or share interesting anecdotes about the local area. It was all about the walk, and chatting those who decided to come along.
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