If you do one thing today, walk

There was a woman crying outside of Barclays on Kingsland Road this morning, wailing into her phone and saying she was going to kill herself. She was still wasted from the night before and accosting passers by for help, though she wasn’t sure about what help she needed. ‘Talk to me,’ she begged me, and so I did, and asked her where her home was. It was just by Liverpool St station. She wanted money, but I only had £2; I gave her that. She said her boyfriend beat her, and that she was a normal girl who just wanted to get home. I told her she could walk home by following Kingsland Road down to Shoreditch, and then she’d be close to the station. ‘I don’t want to walk,' she kept saying. I had a good look at her and couldn’t see any reason for her to be stuck by the Balls Pond Road/ Kingsland Road crossroads.

‘Are you going to call the police on me?’ she asked. ‘Of course not,’ I said.

‘I want you to, so they can take me home,’ she said.

What would I say? Someone needs a lift home?

I do that walk all the time. Somehow I felt like there was a connection between the fact she wasn’t prepared to walk a mile or two down a straight road and her Tuesday morning circumstances. If you don’t have the resolve to walk for less than an hour, how can you transport yourself to a different life? I have sympathy, but walking home would have been so simple. ‘Just walk down that road,’ I said again. 'You'll soon see where you are.'

'I don't want to walk,' she objected. 'Can you get me a bus?'

It’s then that I realised that getting into the walking habit is actually far more than just walking. Getting from A to B on your own two feet is sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself.