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Showing posts from December, 2019

In Praise of Sauntering

In Praise of Sauntering I am writing this on the evening of our General Election, with the outcome unknown in this most significant of elections for some time.   I’ll probably wander downstairs at around 4am to get the result as I have done with quite a few in recent years.     What’s sauntering got to do with any of this?    Well, the origin of the word appears to be ( though this is not conclusive) in the medieval period when there were numerous religious pilgrims on their way to various holy sites, including of course the Holy Land itself.    The Latin Sancte terre literally means holy ground and the idea was that although they could not all go to the Holy Land, because they were on pilgrimage, wherever they walked was holy land.    The abbreviation to saunter reflects the nature of such walking which was different from the ordinary busy and hurried walk of folk going about their business.   Pilgrimages in those days would take as long as they took, sometimes years and