h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just saw at BBC2 the documentary about a man called "Alfred Wainwright". I did not know the man and neither his books.

For the rest, I got frightened, because his weird, unhappy way of living came very close by. A continuous suffocating loneliness within his marriage that could only become worse every day of their lives.
At least the same can be said for his extremely loyal wife who even made notes for him so he could take care for his own while she had left the house after rumors about a new woman he was meeting.

It is my conviction, that in most cases, both parties/persons have about the same weaknesses, but is often shown clearly by just one to the outside world. I agree with our Dutch choreographer in modern dance, Hans van Maanen, that it’s very, very often a fifty-fifty situation.

Alfred Wainwright (1907–1991) was a British hill walker and wrote a guidebook in many, many chapters about the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966. The books - beside many others - were and still are a great success.

While copying it at my video, I many times halted. Things were irritating and really frightening for me. Soon I discovered why.

His suffocating loneliness in an even more suffocating marriage, in a time and culture where men and women were not educated by examples in society who speak their minds openly ,let alone their emotions and not to speak about neurotic feelings and obsessive thoughts.

So to me, his wife had any better life. I estimate her suffering was even more, because she had no status and above all, she could not escape by following an obsessive goal, as far as I know.

As I wrote, some moments in this TV program frightened me, to imagine the sheer hell of silence in their house, in them, without ever been able to reach out just one inch to each others. I recognize that from my early childhood. Silence, almost as a killer.

Alfred Wainwright worked since 1941 at the Borough Treasurer's office in Kendal and every weekend he went to the lake district and walked in search for peace of mind by feeling the wind, seeing the clouds and enjoying the views.
Everything in his life was going according to his extremely detailed plan, as if their was a war going on, and to me, there was a war going on.

Because of his incapability to do something about it with his wife and only son, he turned a new born passion for the mountains in the Lake District into a complete obsession to walk and describe and publish any detail of what he'd done and seen in the lake District. A German clerk could not have done it better, just now looking at the bureaucratic aspect of it all.

His obsession became his survival, as nothing disturbed his plan for fifteen years ahead (!) while his writings were even all being published.

I hate to say it, because it feels almost like a camp in the Second World War, but all went according to his 15 year-plan, while he was finally finished writing one week ahead of his own 15 years-timetable.
I just got sick to hear that. Not as a statement, but as a reaction.

I did and do recognize a lot; the marriage, ultimate loneliness, forceful neurotic behavior, almost autistic personality and the first sunshine in his life by seeing the mountains in the Lake District.

I guess, he experienced for the first time in his life a feeling of
connection, of alliance and that sensation became the key for his emotional survival route in a life he experienced as close to death.

It made me more relaxed to see him in the end of the program in some family movie pictures rather relaxed with his second wife who was fifteen years younger and was also interviewed in this TV program some time ago. Yes, in those latter days he became more open towards the world and love around him.

I hope his first wife had the same kind of final destination. I did not hear anything about her anymore in the program, but it was a program about him and not about their marriage.

Yes, a moving experience for me, that I want to leave behind by writing about it here in my Journal.


Alfredo, July 2007


(I hope the editors won’t delete it, as too often happens)

Sometimes seeing things about someone else can trigger similarities in our own lives and as we watch them waste their (only) precious life being unhappy, it can make us make our own life better/happier if only because realisation dawns that what life boils down to is, we should strive to be happy.

I wish you happiness in the rest of your life.

Thanks for your reply and support!

Recognition can sometimes be uplifting, but in this case, at this moment, it came sometimes to close.
F134334?thread=304449

His behavior was clearly an example of manic depression.

I did find my way out in the Pyrenees, around 1995 and later on for a few years. To fragile now, to continue that walking.
An old Catalan song about the Pyrenees comes into my mind;

P Y R I N E O S .

"Ahora si que voy a dar,
un golde mas qua solida.
prque parece que va
el baile con alegria.

En los montes Pyrineos
me tengo de ir a vivir.
que dicen que alli se gana
la gloria a antes de morir.

Despedida y no partida
tuve anoche con mi amante.
despedida y no partida
porque el amor no se parte.

Translated in English;

p y r e n e e s .

Today I want to celebrate
a bit more than usual.
Since it seems the dance
is in full swing.

In the Pyrenees mountains
I ought to go and live.
For they say that there you get
to paradise before dying.

A goodby and not a farewell
did I bid from my lover last night.
A goodby and not a farewell
for love cannot be broken off".



And in 2007 I was still going on in my exodus.
F134334?thread=4170360


Times are changing; I hope for the better

Keep going strong !

Greetings from Amsterdam

and from a very wet east coast of England

Thanks !

We , in Holland , have a mild autumn this year

I once saw old Wainwright in his twilight years. It was in a remote location in the Howgills, a range of hills to the east of the Lake Distict. He was sitting on a chair on a grass verge by a stream with two silver-haired ladies similarly seated and they were enjoying a picnic which was spread out on a small table. A small red car was parked nearby. He gave me a friendly smile and a nod as I jogged past. It was a sunny day and a good day.

What a wonderful story !

Thanks; this is great !

Hi Alfredo.

I am so happy to hear from you and your Messages. was really great.
I just dont know how to start this conversation as you know. i dont even know how is work though. it was so great tapics what you have just written. and i wish i could also write all my thoughs in here without being distructed anyone or distruct my feelings. somehow, life is great! but is also very difficult when you dont know exactly where and what is your locations around the globe your into. means? i am so much travelling out side my world. if you care to tell me that, this is a great place to write and open up of some life history written??
to public knowing all about my past history. bad and good!

please tell me all about it.

I'll reply in a few days. At this moment I am in Belgium and very rarely surfed at h2g2, because there was something bugging my mind.

I'll ask to explain yourself; emotions and thought, what you would like to share and why (not defending yourself, but discovering/exploring yourself.

We'll meet again in a week from now.

Take care and greetings from Alfredo