Perambulations on the Perimeter of .... SE22:Ghosts of Lordship Lane.

The fourth walk of my 'Perambulations' series didn't end in the same way as the first three (around SE23, SE15, and SE4) and it didn't end in the same way as last week's London by Foot walk around Hampstead. Those walks, like most walks I do, all ended on a pretty positive note but my trek around the edges of SE22 didn't. It ended, as many walks do, in a pub (if not a curry house) but it also ended with me feeling more down than I had at the start.

A most irregular state of affairs and one I'd like to say I can't really understand. But, truth be told, I can. I felt lonely. Not alone - I love, enjoy, and crave company but I can manage quite well on my own - but lonely. As if I was missing out on some important part of life. I watched couples with their kids in the beer garden of The Plough, thought about them going home to have lunch together and put those kids to bed, and I realised that one of the most fundamental joys, and one of the most hard earned, in life was one I cannot share with them.

When I woke on Saturday morning I read the news that the Texan country and folk singer Nanci Griffith had died and listened to her cover of John Prine's lovely and moving Speed of the Sound of Loneliness (this morning I went further into musical meditations on loneliness by listening to Soft Cell's Soul Inside and Hank Williams singing Long Gone Lonesome Blues) and it remained an earworm throughout the course of the day.

But it wasn't just that song, or even my very real circumstances, that made me feel lonely. It was the location. SE22 is, to all intents and purposes, East Dulwich and East Dulwich used to be my playground. The gang I used to play (for which read drink) in East Dulwich with is no more. One of them moved to Bristol and hasn't spoken to me for years, another one became such a vile and abusive alcoholic that I had to extricate him from my life, another moved to Northern Ireland when his wonderful wife was tragically and heartbreakingly diagnosed with terminal cancer, and another moved to California in much happier circumstances where he now lives with his absolutely lovely American wife.

So - we don't meet in East Dulwich anymore. Even the other characters from the scene at the time who still live in London tend to be more reclusive or, if we do meet, we meet elsewhere. East Dulwich, for me, is a graveyard of memories and though the pubs and Indian restaurants are still great I go there much less often than I used to.

Oddly enough it was in a graveyard that I started yesterday's walk - at least after I'd purchased a copy of Saturday's Guardian in the ambitiously named Wood Vale Supermarket. Oddly enough, in that graveyard (Camberwell Old Cemetery) I was alone but I was not lonely. I have written, many times before, about graveyards and how though they are sad places they are not depressing ones. They often show the best of humanity and on a sunny August day it was impossible not to again reflect upon that as I passed through.

Camberwell Old Cemetery, like many in London, is the final resting place of a diverse selection of bodies from all over the world. Seeing the names, and inscriptions and flags, I am reminded of how much London, and the UK, owes to those who moved here from Jamaica, Bangladesh, Turkey, Poland, Greece, India, Nigeria, and so many other places. London's multiculturalism is, without a doubt, one of the city's great strengths and anyone who seeks to threaten it will be proved to be on the wrong side of history.

As I have done so many times, not least in the last seventeen months, I walked down Brenchley Gardens - pausing only to take a close up photo of some berries on a yew tree. At the end I turned into Kelvington Road and when I saw the sign for Athenlay Road I, as ever, found myself singing Fields of Athenry.

I have walked past it hundreds of times but had never been in to Mem's Corner Cafe so I thought I'd give it a go. It's run by a load of noisy middle aged Turkish football fans and I was served an enormous, it ultimately defeated me, plate of cheese omelette, chips, and baked beans with a couple of slices of bread and butter, a cup of milky tea, and a can of Coke and I sat reading my paper.

The headline was about the incel killer from Plymouth Jake Davison and his misogynistic online rants about not being able to get a girlfriend (top tip:if you're looking for a girlfriend, maybe don't continually post misogynistic online rants - it tends to put women off) and I remembered being a teenager and being upset about not having a girlfriend. Instead of shooting a three year old girl in broad daylight I took a different approach. I had a wank and then went out and got drunk with my mates. Something Jake Davison should have done.

While the news from Plymouth, and from Afghanistan where the Taliban look certain to take Kabul any day soon, was depressing I was not, yet, depressed. I was alone but I was not lonely. I followed Cheltenham Road, past the lovely house above, to Peckham Rye Park and entered it. I had a look at the gym equipment, the geese in the pond, the (big) fish in the pond, the squirrels darting around, the bowling green, the river Peck (barely a ditch, at times merely a trickle), and the Japanese Garden with its huge, and empty - lonely even, barn.

On Peckham Rye Common, with my stomach way too full of chips, I led down in the sun and fell asleep to the sound of a group of young lads playing football (pretending to be Messi, Mbappe, and Ronaldo and arguing about VAR) and when I woke I felt I had digested my lunch enough to carry on - so did so.

On East Dulwich Road I saw Evans Cycles (not so much these days) and the old entrance to the Dulwich Public Baths and was reminded how, walking aside, my regime of gym, running, cycling, and swimming has become non-existent in the last few years. I saw an advert, too, for the delayed Nunhead Cemetery Open Day. I'd attended several times, and written about it in 2016, but will not be able to this year as TADS duty calls and that's non-negotiable.

My improvised nap (a luxury I am not afforded under the TADS rules of engagement) as well as the tea and fizzy drink had resulted in me desperately needing a piss so when I came to The Cherry Tree (opposite Rice & Peas takeaway, once a regular haunt on my way to the old Uplands quiz) and saw that they were using that afternon's Dulwich Hamlet v Chippenham Town Isthmian League fixture (a game that ended 0-0) to lure people in I didn't let the fact I had no intention of attending the game stop me popping in for a wee and a cold pint of Estrella.

It went down well though I would have enjoyed some company, somebody to shoot the breeze with. I resisted a second and continued under the railway bridge where the train from London Bridge and Peckham Rye pulls into East Dulwich and on the steep Dog Kennel Hill turned into the amusingly named Quorn Road.

Along Quorn Road, Pytchley Road, and Bromar Road there are several large brown brick buildings (and the new builds in the area are sympathetic to this style too) which are actually rather pleasing to the eye. I used to run along here but, at walking pace, it's easier to admire the architecture.

From the top of Grove Hill Road you can admire panoramic views across South East London and it was at this part of the walk that I ventured, for the first time, down roads I had not passed before. Champion Hill starts off as a series of tower blocks but as you pass down it you find quaint, quirky, and surprisingly large houses. I was stopping to admire one when a kind lady approached me and asked if I was lost. I wasn't, how could I be - I was on an aimless walk, but we chatted for a while about our love of walking and exploring. These chance encounters are one of the things I most love about getting out for a walk. We said goodbye and I now think she probably has no idea how her small act of kindness improved my day.

The next stretch was absolutely lovely. Green Dale is a cycle, and pedestrian, path that cuts from Denmark Hill to Townley Road in East Dulwich and, remarkably - I've lived locally for over twenty-five years, I have never been down it before. A fairly steep descent leads to fields and the distant sound of Dulwich Hamlet fans cheering and singing. 

There's a sign telling us that Sir Henry Bessemer once had a conservatory here and that that conservatory once held the world's second largest telescope and there's another sign that informs us that local schoolchildren are taking part in attempts to rewild much of the local area with both plants and insects. It had me reflecting on that old line about London really being a collection of villages and it had me reflecting, also, on the idea that some outsiders have that Londoners are selfish and isolated and don't care for nature.

It's not something I've bought into and it's not something I believe. The evidence for it simply does not stack up. There is, however, an element of society that can be selfish and isolated and that is reflected in the private playing grounds of Alleyn's School (motto:God's Gift - I ask you).

Alleyn's Old Boys and Girls (at least it's a co-ed) include C.S.Forester, Jude Law, Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen, Marc Bolan, Pixie Geldof, Terrence Higgins, Jessie Ware, The Chemical Brothers, and Frank Thornton who played Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? A group of young lads (who may one day grow up to be pop stars or play stuffy floorwalkers in department store based comedies full of saucy double entendres) had just finished a game of football and one was stuffing his face with a packet of Walker's prawn cocktail crisps. I can't imagine that being the snack of choice for Raheem Sterling although Gary Lineker may beg to differ.

Across the playing fields, the green spire of St Barnabas reached majestically into the blue sky and I followed the graceful arch of Townley Road back to Lordship Lane. Lordship Lane was the epicentre of my East Dulwich playground and though I did not visit the East Dulwich Tavern, The Bishop, or The Palmerston (and Inside 72, one of my favourite bars ever, is long gone) I did attempt to go in the Lordship. A pub that has changed names so many times I struggle to remember them all.

Maer One's riff on Murillo's The Madonna of the Rosary (which can be seen in nearby Dulwich Picture Gallery) made for an attractive exterior to the pub but it turned out that Louise and Simon (whoever they are) had booked out the whole place for their wedding reception. Perhaps they were fearful of being over run by celebrating Dulwich Hamlet fans or maybe they'd heard the Chippenham 'firm' were in town. Either way, my plans to sup a pint in there were well and truly scuppered.

No need to worry. I walked a little further up the hill, past a blue plaque for former Dulwich resident Enid Blyton, and plopped myself down in The Plough beer garden. A pub I had quizzed in with the old gang many many times and one that is so vast it always feels empty.

My Peroni went down well in the sun but when the wind picked up (and my phone needed charging) I popped inside for another. My neighbours had invited everyone in the neighbourhood round for a barbecue (and they were threatening Hungarian plum brandy - palinka) but I wasn't in the mood. I didn't feel social. I felt alone and, now, I felt lonely.

More beer probably didn't help but I had it anyway - I was now actively trying to avoid having to talk to my neighbours - what is wrong with me? I read The Guardian, I played with my phone, I watched pretty girls walking down the street, I started out in to space, and I thought about all the wrong turns and mistakes I'd made in life and all the people I lost along the way. I reminded myself that I do have (many) good friends and that soon I will be with them but I just couldn't escape the funk I was falling into.

A text from my friend Dan asking me out for a Sunday roast today cheered me up (though I didn't go) and by the time I got home my neighbour's BBQ had finished and they were sat in their garden quietly alone (I worried it had been a flop and felt a bit responsible - I did say I'd try to pop in) and I, too, sat home on my own watching some Netflix thing about dictators (Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Papa Doc Duvalier, Idi Amin, Stalin - all your favourites) before going to bed. Unlike most walks, this one left me feeling sad and lonely. The ghosts of Lordship Lane still linger in the back of my mind somewhere and my attempts to exorcise them had been a failure. Maybe writing about it will help.