on the trail of the dancing bag

I often wonder what it is about walking which makes me equally happy to skip and hop up hills and trudge around damp, drizzly, dark streets for hours on end. It's not particularly strenuous exercise so it's not generating too many endorphins; maybe it's just because we evolved to do it and it soothes us deep within the brain in the same way that deep blue skies and trees can gently blur and waft away the sheer unnatural weirdness of working in concrete boxes on plastic boxes wearing ties for a third of each day.

Only three excess blips today. Some irresistible moss alongside the Water of Leith at lunchtime. Mosses are great in any situation except when you're trying to walk on a wet, mossy surface without falling on your arse or breaking your fall in some mud with the hand holding your camera. There appears to be a new set of excitingly orangey pipes keeping the river slightly too topped-up; at the bit where the walkway runs out and loops round to a little footbridge across to the other side in Dean there was about four inches of water over the path. Had we not evolved from apes I'd have had to spend the afternoon with soggy feet. Continuing the orangeytheme there were some mycological gentlepeople enjoying a rotting log; I thought fungi were supposed to turn up in August, hang about through September then turn all disgusting and slimy throughout October before disappearing but things evidently work differently here.