Still Promenading ... After All These Years
In July I posted pondering the possible death of promenading on the promenade. I feared the possibility of collisions with "dumb walkers" {people so addited to their "stupid phones" that they can't see where they are going} but there is a app for this apparently {?}. GordonA warned me that this wasn't the danger: instead getting run over by bicycles and motor bikes, or even being Segwayed to death, were the real threat. Added to this I found that bar-restaurants have taken the habit of putting a huge sun umbrella outside their premises but in the middle of the prom to further hamper pedestrian progress.
Despite all of these handicaps, I am happy to report that promenading the Calis promenade is, not only still possible, but also still the pleasure it always was at the approach of sunset. Even the posts round the bend beyond Oben's are still there so I can re-enact the "kicking the bar" ritual that my parents taught my brother and me along the Aberystwyth prom on the holidays of our childhood. This ritual, which I believe was general among Welsh people visiting Aber, "proved" that you had walked the full length of the long prom, by killing the railings at each end, and not cheated at all. In Calis, lacking railings, I substituted railings for bollards. Unfortunately, the bollards beyond Mutlu Hotel have disappeared. No matter. Promenading is still alive and well in Calis. A small, but by no means trivial, consistency in a changing and uncertain world.
[This is the third time I have begun a topic about promenading in the last ten years. I must be becoming obsessive].
