We discovered (although i daresay we were not the first to do so) a
twelfth-century 'leper chapel' at the beginning of this particular voyage, hidden away near the common; I wrote down the telephone number and I think we will go there soon. Take some candles and people and things and I think that will be good. Haven’t been inside yet but you could see the ancient stories written into the stonework and it was clearly a Place of History.

Other ponderings from this two-wheeled journey into the fens:
-- Shouting at the top of your voices down steep hills feels like a cross between dreaming and flying. Especially when you have let yourselves lose the known paths and it is all dark windy lanes through silent fields; it seems you must have crossed the border into some foreign country if not to sleep.

-- Emma should probably not let Naomi decide on route choices if she has a bedtime to heed.

-- Country pubs make very excellent crumble (although to be fair, only porridge and yogurt beat crumble-and-custard, in any war of the culinary kind) and this tastes particularly exceptionally good when you are exceptionally hungry.

-- Emma is really a quite extraordinary person, if you know her I hope you have discovered this. If you do not know her or have not discovered this in a way I am envious because you have that adventure still to come.

Anyway. It turns out that said travel-companion was delivered the book (Species of Spaces, by Perec) I was revising that day in a box by accident at work (with recipe books?!) so she bought it. In fact this author is one of main idea sources for the Book of Days. SO in the light of these things and of our other thoughts on the matter, here is a recommendation...

And so here we are... thank you so much for taking the time to
email/post/spout words at me, please don't send me any more now
(well actually, feel free to, it's an interesting exercise in itself; but there is no need to.) I am excited but slightly mystified reading through the challenges I've been given... haven't refused any i've been offered (except keeping it to only one per person), but can see that half the fun is definitely going to be choosing how to interpret them (nb note for mr whittaker, we do reserve the right to insert *punctuation* as we wish!!) - how to approach 'mud bath', 'flannel' or 'holly' for example...?

But anyway, expertly randomly ordered by miss zoe wallis (thanks) this
is the final list... I like the way the toughest ones seem to have floated to the top! Tune in from 2/6 and I'll try and post fairly regularly about the adventures they each prompt...

Think there are about six others I know of giving it a go in one way or another; if you feel like joining me I recommend keeping a journal as well as/instead of blogging, as some of the most significant stuff brought up won't necessarily consist of stories to tell. Here goes then:

#1 try at least 5 new foods (fiona)
#2 take a mud bath (beth)
#3 fall in love (john-the-wit-whittaker)
#4 do two opposites at once (jason
#5 i saw this and thought of you (jerry)
#6 learn as much as you can in half a day about a sort of human love of your choice (romnantic, filial, platonic etc) and then determine how much of what you learn you believe (zoe)
#7 upside down (liz)
#8 flannel (josh)
#9 silence (roxy)
#10 sideways (marika)
#11 spend a day taking notes from the teachers that surround us without going near a school: trees, statues, market sellers... (andrew)
#12 live by the dice (daniel)
#13 spend a day going backwards (ruth w)
#14 take a photograph or draw a picture to remember by (christina)
#15 charity shops and a tour with hats (rach)
#16 bring somebody something which they could not normally have or have achieved (annie)
#17 supersize me (ruth r)
#18 seasonal (matt l)
#19 travel as far as you can in a day (in your mind, literally, to a place that is foreign, but close) (emma)
#20 stay longer than you would have done (me)
#21 spend a day in the life of an old person (katherine)
#22 holly (phil)
#23 embrace : gravity (matt i)
#24 race a fairground ride horse (nick)
#25 self raising (sian-lee)
#26 do something you have dismissed as being "impossible" (kate ob)
#27 ‘I love her because she moves in her own way’ --the kooks (chris)
#28 sing for your supper (jacko)
#29 a day of atonement (matt b)

Above all, there was Penny’s paint palette which is an ice-cream tub lid heavy with paint since she was fifteen.

But then also, before that, there was storming down the track with adrenalin wings pushing forward to pass the baton and the cries of ‘COME ON’ that resonate from somewhere else and before. And later that same day, speeches and ribbons and careful rules all observed minutely like washing lines crisscrossing through the last hundred years all hung about with pegged teatowels labelled success or defeat…

And at last, cycling home through the ghost streets of cambridge at 4am sleep-heavy: it is as if time has stopped. Perhaps the world has ended, and there is no one left; now there are only a thousand stars and the silent shadows and the cool wind circling and recircling with long gusts like the sigh of waves in the sea. The shapes of the buildings and the objects in the street are become a hundred times stranger since the passersby passing by and bypassing are all gone to sleep.

But I meet two strangers on my way, walking slowly; we exchange glances, we are each trying to work out why the other one is there. Empty streets are a beautiful thing.

With the next day: the finding of yet another undiscovered secret place. And as I was sat there in the blue velvet stalls watching out of the vast tiny-paned windows of every colour green the organist came in to practice upstairs humming to himself and it seemed like there were dancers twirling down from the ornate plaster as he hit the top notes: then in came half of a choir and filled the whole space with spiralling notes high and low. They didn’t see me with my feet up on the lectern but they watched me strangely when eventually I walked out – I wonder
if I was trespassing. It's not polite to comment.

Today in the café a new little friend of mine was playing with the floor cleaning sign. And a boy maybe eighteen, nineteen came up to the mother and asked politely whether, by any chance they might be Iranian. He thought he had overheard her talking to her daughter in a language he recognized. The couple didn’t understand at first, but suddenly they did, and were smiles all round and a torrent of arabic and lots oflaughing and handshaking and family friendliness.

It might have been rude to eavesdrop, but I don’t speak much arabic…
(although, i can ask for a kilo of apples) I don’t think it was impolite to notice the way that they were drawing together a shared field of histories and geographies, weaving together a little golden space in the middle of the cafe which said: these things, items, places; we both recognize that these things are meaningful and important, although no one else in this room would realize, would they?

A feeling of belonging. An instant informality between people who would never have spoken in the same context their home country. People talking to each other forno logical reason.

I am thinking crossing boundaries of ‘social appropriateness’ in meetings with strangers could be a very interesting avenue to meander down.