(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning striders and strollers, welcome to Day 359 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
Today is a day where I feel very stiff and sore, primarily due to all the walking I have been doing for the last couple weeks. As someone who lives in a very walkable town, most of my errands are conducted with me walking all over the place to get what I need.
Though, my affinity for walking comes down to both enjoying the ability to take in the sights, sounds, and smells… alongside the fact I am a cheap bastard where if my options are to take a bus for fifteen minutes or to walk for forty minutes, I will inevitably pick the option that does not involve spending a small amount of money and instead put my legs to work.
This came into full effect whenever I needed to take a trip to London for something related to work, where I would usually enter in from Victoria Coach Station and need to navigate to a more central part of the city such as Euston or Kensington.
Most normal people would walk the short distance to Victoria Tube Station and take a Victoria Line train that would take approximately seven minutes to whisk them away to their destination.
Me, on the other hand, who is both cheap and despises going on the London Underground with all my soul, will invariably decide that the almost hour long walk (or in real terms, anywhere between one-and-half to two miles) is the better idea, however bad it might fuck up my feet, my joints, or in the case of doing this exact thing in the summertime, my overall disposition and appearance when the sweat inevitably kicks in.
However much I complain about the pain my legs and feet are in though, I do not think I want to change how I operate in the slightest.
First off, I recognise the fact I am able to walk these long distances with only avoidable pain to show for it is an absolute blessing. Being able-bodied (if severely lazy) is something I do not take for granted and am thankful for every time I am able to breathe deep and pound the pavement to my destination.
Secondly, and this definitely applies more to when I take this approach to navigating around a city, but there is so much to organically discover when walking around a new location. This especially applies to whenever I would walk around London as part of a work trip, as my usual plan was to commute in via coach/train very early in the morning – both to avoid normal rush hour traffic and because there was no value in me working for an hour in the morning to then spend most of my time travelling anyway – and do my best to navigate to where I needed to be using only tourist maps, seeing what places I could see as I made my way to the meeting venue.
I also incorporate “getting lost” time into my schedule whenever I have to walk somewhere new, with the planning stage me being looking up how long the walk will take on Google Maps, subtracting about five-to-ten minutes to account for my naturally faster walking speed… and then adding on half an hour to take into consideration the fact I will get distracted and will find a place that catches my eye so I have to spend a short while browsing in there.
This especially came to fruition when my partner and I visited Manchester on Good Friday for him to have an initial consultation with a dress maker, they had a lot of clients before us so asked us to leave a phone number and they would call us back when they were ready.
Main benefit for me was that this dressmaker was based in a part of Manchester I had never been to before, so we were able to kill an hour or two by letting my instincts guide me around the city whilst I went “ooo look at that thing” and “hey I wanna go in here”, finding new places to discover and seeing how chain shops in a big city compared to the same I had back home.
Of course by the time we returned to the dress maker my feet were absolutely shredded and all I wanted to do was sit on the floor for a little bit to let myself recover… and even then my legs felt like they were out of action for the entire weekend afterwards, but again, I recognise all my pain is self-inflicted.
It is a worthy payoff though, cause I feel my legs are my best aspect – both in how strong they are when I actually put my mind to using them, and how fucking shapely they are because of how much I walk, naturally toning them as I go and making them look fantastic in leggings.
Now if only I were not a glutton, then I might be able to trim my waistline down just on virtue of how much I roam.
Think I will be grabbing something from the backlogs for today’s review, partially because I had an Umamusume idea to tie into glutton and legs cause they run, but I ended up getting too distracted and not taking the required screenshots or having the brain power to explain one of my favourite characters.
So instead, I will be talking about a simple burger and chips I ordered from a small local cafe, about a thirty minute walk from my place: The Tasty Table
This cost me £9.50, extremely cheap in terms of food, but there are no frills here. No Aberdeen Angus or Wagyu beef, no brioche or sourdough buns, and no triple-cooked duck fat chips. This is a catering style burger patty, with a slice of plastic cheese, served in a floury bap. Add in a bit of mayo for moisture, and you have the perfect brunch as part of a walk to go mattress shopping.
Whilst it does not look impressive, and I have certainly eaten more flavourful burgers, it is important to partake in the simpler things in life, both to remember how good things can be, and to never forget where you came from. Simple burgers from small cafes are a particular pleasure of mine – I even have a pipe dream of opening my own cafe one day – and I will always savour the most basic ass burgers I can find.
More of a story focused review today than an actual review, but I am still proud of it. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing well. Friday is upon us soon, and for me it is going to be a busy day, but I hopefully have a good idea to try make a good review out of it all.
We shall see how things go.
Rosalia Rambles 