REFLECTION The afternoon dims as two figures cut across Kensington Gardens, west London. Me, and my grown-up son, Ollie. We slow to watch the blur of what I rate as the king of dogs, a brindle whippet, having a mad moment of the day, and I tell Ollie something he's heard before: the rumour that Queen Victoria bequeathed much of the park to the city's dog walkers. It's certainly dog central today.
Though Ollie is with me, I often lean to the lonesome. Meaning lots of my walks, long and short, are done solo. After all, it was a wise essayist, William Hazlitt, who told us to travel this way and I'm partly in his footsteps, I guess. He wrote that enjoying views and thinking thoughts are best attained alone,…
