It’s a chilly -22C but I thought I should get my vitamin D the natural way so I tugged on my boots, leggings, and other paraphernalia required for Canadian walking in November. It wasn’t as hideous as I expected, due to No Wind! I let my mind run loose, as I always do on my solitary walks. This particular walk turned out to be of rather a violent nature. First I noticed cows on the horizon which led me to thoughts of loose bulls and wondering if I would be safe running behind a tree if he decided to ram it, or would other cows come to his aid and squish me from behind. Before I could come to a good conclusion I noticed horses over on the west side of the road which caused me to wonder if the guy who built the new house over by the golf course got more than the 12 acres advertised last year since this was the first time I had seen horses on that particular quarter section. Before I got further on that train of thought I noticed random splotches of hay on the road which led me to wonder if my good neighbor Larry was feeding his cows extra early in the season and that thought naturally led me to my bête noir and that led me to all the violence of law suits, death threats and other such nasty speculations.

Then it was time to turn around to face the wind on the homeward trek. I had to readjust my scarf to cover my face and of course that got me to thinking about some creep coming up behind me and taking the ends of the scarf and thus strangling me to death. This is not the first time I’ve had this particular thought. I have it every time I tie my scarf in the back and then look to my right where there are masses of carrigana lining the road. A good place for suspicious characters to lurk. And lurking people are bound to creep up on a lone woman to strangle her with loose flapping scarf ends. This line of thinking got me to about the half point on my way home and then unconnected stray thoughts started creeping in. Thoughts about phraseology, like “shady side of forty” (is that over 45 or is that from 41 to 49 and does that mean the sunny side of 50 is 49 or 51?) and what does “pleasantly plump” mean in relation to stout, fat, or flabby? All these secondary random thoughts put me in mind of Miss Marple, who can be a bit annoying sometimes when she rambles on about completely irrelevant stuff which doesn’t further the plot at all and one always wondered if poor Agatha was losing her writing genius. Now I realize she was going through the regular mid life crisis of losing one’s memory and sense of order in the brain.

And that’s what this whole note is about, middle age woolgathering which is extremely different from teenage woolgathering which somehow always had a point, that point being that one was the centre of the universe and everyone else was against her (everyone being her parents of course). Middle age woolgathering goes from something relatively normal and apropos of something in the immediate part of one’s life and by some circuitous route ends up with stabbing someone in the eye with an icepick. Who owns an icepick anyway?

Before I am hauled off in handcuffs for having fantasies about killing innocent bystanders, let me assure everyone that I am really a very gentle person. I really have no idea where these random violent thoughts come from – why would I think a cow would come out on the road to ram me into a tree? These particular thoughts occur to me every now and then as I walk but most of the time I really do have nice country ramble kind of thoughts about birds tweeting, clouds drifting by, bull rushes and pussywillows but there is no getting away from the fact that I did read Nancy Drew at a very tender age which makes me long for adventure, spelled “murder”.