Mr Bingo’s walk to nowhere
The artist’s unplanned escape from modern society lasted a fortnight and inspired hope in those he met along the way
Five months ago, in a different world, Mr Bingo left his east London flat and tried to get lost. It took 32 minutes.
Over two weeks the artist passed through fields, industrial estates and two major storms during an unorthodox walking holiday across southern and central England, ending up in Nottingham. Despite a faltering start – “I found myself in a Pret in Walthamstow and thought, ‘This is not the adventure I had planned’” – before long he was past the M25.
The open-ended trek was a break from workaholism and a way to combat general anxiety. “I decided at
Christmas that I needed to take some time off and learn how to do other things in life, other than go to my studio every day,” he tells The Independent.
Mr Bingo describes himself as an “artist, speaker and twat”. His work is abusive, sarcastic and whimsical at the same time. One successful project (later a book) was Hate Mail, a series of creatively profane and insulting postcards to strangers. Others include a study of a cat performing a kick-flip on a skateboard, frame by frame; a miniature concrete gravestone that reads, “Don’t forget to have fun”; and a Trump cushion, of the sort that makes an unflattering noise.
Though his long walk was characteristically offbeat, it did not seem wildly different to any other stroll – or so Mr Bingo believed at first. The Twitter thread he used to chronicle his adventure was soon filled with expressions of vicarious longing. “It was weird, [followers] were cheering me on as some kind of hero, almost,” he says. “It was almost as if I’d had a Falling Down moment, got up from my desk and said, ‘That’s it, I’m going for a walk’ and just stormed out of society. I think a lot of people following it were bored at their desks.”
He adds: “I think most people feel they have a really structured life and set of rules they have to abide by – they commute, they go to work, they come home, they make dinner, they put their kids to bed, they do things with their family at the weekend, then they do some DIY, then they get up on Monday and do the same. A lot of people just don’t have any free time so I think they were shocked. It is just someone going on holiday, but I guess it seemed different because I wasn’t lying on a beach.”
But things are different now. People have other reasons not to venture out – making the appetite for new experiences possibly even stronger than before.
“I think everyone is desperate for adventure now, big or small,” Mr Bingo says. “Having had a lot of stuff taken away I feel that people are more grateful and appreciative of the small things. In comparison to being imprisoned in our homes for months on end, a simple walk out of our local area and into something new and different suddenly feels quite appealing.”
On that February morning, Mr Bingo chose to go north. The Kent native decided there was more country to go through that way, and he would not hit the coast too soon.
Day seven, I met someone called Bill who claimed to be a friend of the Krays. I think it was all slightly
On such a long route, as might be expected, certain things caught his eye. “It sounds like a really cliche, artist thing to say, but I definitely find beauty in the mundane and the ugly. So, I like shit things, and boring things, and plain things, and things that I just think are funny. I can’t really describe why I think they’re funny.” Walking through a place “you get a total, 100 per cent flavour” for it and become completely immersed, Mr Bingo says. “You speak to actual people. You appreciate it more, I think, and you appreciate how big the world is.”
One cornerstone of British life underpinned Mr Bingo’s trek: pubs. Hard hit by months of lockdown, even now some are only tentatively reopening. Post-coronavirus, a long walk punctuated by stops at watering holes could even be seen as a patriotic exercise, he agrees.
“I don’t know what I would have done without the pubs,” the 41-year-old says. “If you’re walking through the middle of the UK, you’ve got to stop every so often for shelter, or warmth, or food, or drink, and pubs have all of that – and they have interesting characters.
“Day seven, I met someone called Bill who claimed to be a friend of the Krays. I think it was all slightly embellished, but he was definitely a hard man. He said he used to be a gypsy, was his exact words, and he’d had ‘thirty-eight fights, thirty-eight wins’. He was just sitting in a pub with a tiny little dog.”
The cliche of a stranger walking into a pub and the regulars turning in unison to glare at them did not hold true for Mr Bingo. People were sceptical but welcoming, he says. “It made me like the UK a lot more.”
His hiking gear and odd backstory inevitably prompted questions. “There was always the same conversation: ‘Where have you come from?’ and I say, ‘I walked here from London’, and the further I got the more shocked people were. Then they’d say, ‘Why?’ and I’d say, ‘I don’t know’, and they’d say, ‘Do you have a job?’ and I would say no, and then they’d say, ‘Where are you going?’ That was the really big question and I’d say, ‘I don’t know, I’m not going anywhere’, and that really confused people. Then they went from shocked to just applauding it. They were really pleased that someone had bothered to go for a walk for no reason.”
It is important to say that Mr Bingo was not lost, in the purest sense: he had his phone so knew more or less his location, if not his destination. Getting totally lost would have lessened the fun, he points out. But without a plan, did he not risk having nowhere to sleep on a given night? Fortunately, “you can find somewhere to stay in Milton Keynes in February because no one else is on holiday there”.
I went to a local restaurant and sat on my own at a table with a balloon in the middle, because everyone had to have a heart helium balloon. I sat and watched couples arguing, that was nice
Along the way it was not all birds in the hedgerow and sun in the sky – Mr Bingo trudged on through storms Keira and Dennis and braved busy roads. He even turned down a lift from a bemused van driver to continue walking in the rain. And there were disappointments, mostly in the cities. “I’m from a big city and suddenly I had everything that I was used to having … everything’s easy and there’s no challenge any more.”
But, at least once a day, Mr Bingo paused to take in his surroundings and thought to himself that yes, this had been a good idea, usually prompted by the combination of a good view and a piece of music. Other pleasures were more mundane: he spent the evening of Valentine’s Day in Lutterworth, a market town south of Leicester. “I had to find somewhere to eat that night so I went to a local restaurant and sat on my own at a table with a balloon in the middle, because everyone had to have a heart helium balloon. I sat and watched couples arguing, that was nice.”
Even that is something which has only recently become possible again. Mr Bingo is grateful to have completed his trek before Covid-19 hit, he says. “The timing of it all was very fortunate. I long to be out there again, wandering freely with no rules and restrictions.”
So, he’d do it again? “It felt like the beginning of a hobby. I’d be very happy to do at least one a year.” He adds: “As soon as it’s possible, I’m going to get to Cornwall and walk some of the South West Coast path, which is one one of my favourite places in the world to be walking.”