This week’s edition of Ramblings with Clare Balding did all the usual things: a walk in the country (cue breathy conversation as we followed her up hill and down dale), braving the elements (there’s always rain at some point) with a dog in tow, and in the company of someone for whom the walk has some meaning. But then the programme took off into something quite unexpected as her walking companion, Christina Edwards, began to explain why this particular ramble, in the heart of Northamptonshire, was so familiar to her, and why they were retracing her steps not in daylight, when the rolling hills and gentle fields could best be appreciated, but as darkness fell.
In Edwards, it soon transpired, the indomitable Balding had met her match, teased for insisting on donning a head torch so that she could see where she was going. Edwards was resolutely unperturbed by the gathering gloom, insisting she had never used a torch, and had never been scared. It was a walk she had done many times when she was younger, and suffering from anorexia nervosa. She would wake up at2 a.m. starving hungry but unable (or rather unwilling) to satisfy her hunger pangs. To tire her body out, she would go for a walk.
‘Do you know why? Do you know what triggered the illness?’ asked Balding.
Edwards believes she can pinpoint it to a time in sixth form when all her friends were studying subjects that led to conversations, relentlessly, pitilessly focused on war, nuclear, chemical, historical, ‘The thought came into my head, I just want to try and tread lightly on this earth. I want to take as little as possible from it.’ This could have sounded fey, but Edwards was looking back on herself as a teenager when such questions can feel of excruciating importance and it made perfect sense because she was so scrupulously honest, stripping back to lay bare.
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