As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (Penguin Modern Classics)

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I headed to Vigo in northern Spain to begin following Laurie’s route, on foot, through Spain. I played my violin to earn the money I need for food. I lay on my belly, the warm earth against me, and forgot the cold dew and the wolves of the night. I felt it was for this I had come; to wake at dawn on a hillside and look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan, in a place that still had no memories for me.

I bought a violin at Christmas, and began learning to play. I have never played music in front of an audience, and it is one of my deepest fears. Roud Folk Song Index/Vaughan Williams Memorial Library http://www.vwml.org/search?ts=1485029107580&collectionfilter=RoudFS;RoudBS&advqtext=0%7Crn%7C586#record=49 Retrieved 2017/03/06 Still a little off balance I looked about me, saw obscure dark eyes and incomprehensible faces, crumbling walls scribbled with mysterious graffiti, an armed policeman sitting on the Town Hall steps, and a photograph of Marx in a barber’s window. Nothing I knew was here, and perhaps there was a moment of panic – anyway I suddenly felt the urge to get moving. So I cut the last cord and changed my shillings for pesetas, bought some bread and fruit, left the seaport behind me and headed straight for the open country. Lee meets up with a couple of famous eccentric poets on his travels, firstly Philip O'Connor in London and then Roy Campbell in Spain, being welcomed into his home. The section about Campbell and his family is especially memorable and reminded me of Hemingway's accounts of the famous people he knew in A Moveable Feast, another book written many years later. Thefirstextract,(A,B,C,D,E,F,G)beginswiththewriter’sirrepressibleexcitement;‘’Iwasfreeatlast!’’Theshortsentenceexpresseshisjoy,hopesandanticipation;italsosuggeststhepossibilitythathemayhavebeensuppressedthroughouthisyoungeryears,thoughbywhomwedonotknow.Hisleavinghomesymbolisesmorethanjustgrowingup;heisfinallyexperiencingthefreedomhehasapparentlyyearnedfor,gonearethemonotonoustiesofhomelife.

Asbefore,hecontinuesbydetailinghisclothing,andtalkingaboutthereasonsbehindhisachingneedtoleave.Atthisstagewefinallyfindoutthebasisofthewholestory…thefactthatheisleaving.Muchmoremundaneand‘minor’happeningshavebeentalkedofbeforeit,whichtosomeextentmakesthewriter’saccountseemlessenthusiasticandlifechanging. Anyway, maybe it was the age thing, being hyper-sensitive because of the funeral, it being a windy, stormy night, or the ginger wine, but I read the whole thing in a night. Instantly it became one of my favourite books, and I read it loads leading up to, and at, college. The book Laurie Lee wrote – As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – is my favourite travel book of all time. It made me fall in love with Spain – the landscapes and the spirit – and with his style of travel. He travelled slow, lived simply, slept on hilltops, relished spontaneity, and loved conversations with the different people he met along the hot and dusty road. In the winter of 1935 Lee decides to stay in Almuñécar. He manages to get work in a hotel. Lee and his friend Manolo, the hotel's waiter, drink in the local bar alongside the other villagers. Manolo is the leader of a group of fishermen and labourers, and they discuss the expected revolution.

I felt it was for this I had come: to wake at dawn on a hillside and look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan, in a place that still had no memories for me.” Lee would walk first to London, and then south through Spain, passing en route through a country on the edge of civil war. Several decades later, he would publish a book recounting his wanderings through that shadowed land, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969), which has become a classic, celebrated for its evocation of a since-shattered world, and for the lushness of its language. Two versions by Phil Tanner are available on the CD "The Gower Nightingale". [5] Several versions by traditional singers have been published by Topic Records in the Voice of the People series. Seamus Ennis recorded Bob, John, Jim and Ron Copper of the Copper Family of Rottingdean, Sussex singing their family version in April 1952. [6] The song has also been recorded by Shropshire singer Fred Jordan, [7]

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He gathered these details as he walked, and he could not have done so had he not opened himself to the kinds of encounter and perception that travel on foot makes possible. Walking, Lee notes early on, refines awareness: it compels you to “tread” a landscape “slowly”, to “smell its different soils”. The car passenger, by contrast, “races at gutter height, seeing less than a dog in a ditch”. Lee, like Leigh Fermor, believed in walking not only as a means of motion but also as a means of knowing – and this unforgettable book is proof of the truth of that belief.