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Speaking Out articles
London "walk and talk" - in search of famous stammerers
By Christine Simpson
It was a wet Sunday in late October, when a group of intrepid BSA members with a small complement of family, friends and colleagues gathered outside the Tower of London. This was the London leg of Walk and Talk around the World, an international series of walks to help celebrate International Stuttering Awareness Day. Our walk was to be five miles long and would take in sites associated with famous stammerers and all proceeds would go to aid the funding of the BSA's telephone support service. On the same day parallel walks were taking place in places as far apart as South Africa, Belgium, and South Korea.
It all started one day last June when my friend Brent Curless asked me to be one of his head coaches on a personal development course he was leading. I was delighted to be asked and said yes almost immediately. The course is called the Self-Expression and Leadership Programme and is known to its many friends as SELP. Each of the participants takes on and completes a project in their community and receives lots of support from their coaches who simultaneously pursue their own projects. I had had in mind for a long time that I would like to create some project within the stuttering community that was truly on a global scale and my partner Allan and I had also thought about organising a sponsored walk linking sites in London connected with stutterers. I put these two ideas together and the idea for Walk and Talk was born.
 I surfed the Internet looking for people to contact and noticed that International Stuttering Day fell on October 22nd, within the 3 months of my SELP program. I contacted Michael Sugarman and Amy Johnson of ISA and they were incredibly enthusiastic about the idea and gave me a lot of help and support. Allan then designed his first ever website to help promote the walks around the world. We then set about working out a route and after a few problems with the Royal Parks commission we managed to settle on a walk that would take us through no less than four local authorities and two of the main London Parks. We enjoyed great support from the BSA with Norbert particularly always being ready to help despite his huge workload.
The planning period finally came to an end and the day of the walk dawned. Twenty three of us gathered in the inevitable rain outside of the Tower of London, famously associated with the well-known stammerer, Sir Isaac Newton. Walk and talk lived up to its name and due to everybody chattering we set off a bit late across London Bridge (linked with the Roman Emperor Claudius who may have crossed the first bridge with his Elephants). Once across we meandered down the side of the Thames temporarily losing my Boss in the process! Pausing only for a group photo we passed the Globe theatre where there is a tradition of playing the Shakespeare character Hotspur with a stammer and moved on to and over Blackfriars' bridge. We proceeded to walk and chat our way down Fleet Street to the Temple, where essayist and well known stammerer Charles Lamb was born, and then stopped at a pub in Chancery Lane recommended by Allan for its good beer!
 When we left it was still raining but we continued walking and talking. We walked through Trafalgar Square, up Lower Regent Street and into Piccadilly where can be found Hatchards bookshop, associated with W Somerset Maugham, and Burlington House which has strong links to Charles Darwin. Both of course were famous stammerers. Turning off into Green Park we soon passed Buckingham Palace, former home of stammerer King George VI and then we were blessed by our first sight all day of a watery sun, poking through the clouds. After entering St James Park we walked onto Westminster which has seen a host of stammerers over the years - not least among them: Winston Churchill, Aneurin Bevan and BSA patron John McAllion MP. We then moved onto our second pub of the day the Lord Moon of the Mall, just round the corner from the Houses of Parliament. It was here than Norbert and the BSA's new vice chair Christine Menzies joined us for a drink or three and walkers and workers alike sat putting the world to rights until evening.
Allan and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that took part so enthusiastically and helped make the walk so enjoyable. Thanks also for the amazing amount of sponsorhip generated with the largest cheque received from an individual participant so far being in excess of £300! Anyone who might be interested in organising a similar walk in future, do contact me, Christine Simpson, on 0208-205-7678 or email me, or see the Walk and Talk website.
From the Spring 2000 edition of Speaking Out
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