Geoff Nicholson, Blog Entry 12/4:

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I just got an email from Laura Miller, founder of Salon.com, who's set up a blog to plug her own book, and she says she thinks of it as the equivalent of a special features DVD, with deleted scenes, bloopers, alternate endings and so on. With this in mind, here's the one bit of The Lost Art of Walking that I hated to cut, though I could see the reason to do it:

I once led a walking tour of Munich. It was part of a literary festival about the writer and the city. The invited writers had to conduct walking tours, the city seen through foreign eyes - that sort of thing. I accepted the challenge, but as the time to go to Munich approached I wished I was something other than a writer; or at least somebody with an act that could be performed in the street.

I took it far too seriously, as is my way. I was living in New York at the time, and I spent a lot of time fretting about what I was going to do. I walked the streets of thinking I needed a concept, an idea. And as I walked I looked for signs of German influence in New York. In a perfect world I might have come across the Lederhosen district, or the Munich Bar and Grill, but I was prepared to settle for much less.

Eventually I found a place selling Bavarian pretzels - Munich is capital of Bavaria - and then something clicked. There was one ubiquitous Bavarian product in New York, BMW cars: BMW stands for Bavarian Motorwerken. I spent a day walking, and taking snapshots of every BMW I saw in New York. Then I had these images printed and I took them with me to Munich.

I had time on my hands in Munich, and so I walked. It was what I'd have done anyway, exploring the city, but I was still fretting, and I was using these walks as "rehearsals" for my tour. It was cold and it rained a lot of the time, so I bought a hat. It had "Hat" written on it, imitating the Gap logo. I'd have preferred it to have said the German word "Hut", but that was OK. It gave me an idea.

On the day of reckoning at five p.m., a group of people, fans of literature and walking, gathered in the Odeonsplatz to be led by me. The group was a mix of the arty young and the arty middle-aged, and there was one young man, not arty at all, who in a simpler age we'd have described simply as mad. There were also a couple of journalists and a crew from the local TV station. Some of the people definitely spoke English, others just as definitely didn't. There was no translator.

My idea was that I'd guide my charges through Munich, and each time we saw evidence of American influence, I would deposit next to it one of my BMW photographs. The cars had made their journey from Bavaria to New York and now, in image, they'd come home.

It didn't go badly at first. There was a Woolworth's, a Macdonald's, ads for Apple computers, a graffito saying "F---* Tha Police" - a universal American sentiment. I felt especially lucky when I found a clothing store called New Yorker.

(*Expletive deleted by Penguin staff)

As the tour went on the weather got worse, the temperature dropped, the rain lashed down and my audience dwindled. The TV crew slipped away. I didn't blame them. Before long even I was feeling I'd had enough, and I decided I'd end things with the tiniest attempt at performance art.

I'd brought with me three snow globes of New York. I set them out across the middle of a side street. The few of us who were left on the tour watched and waited for the wheels of a German car, a BMW for preference, to crush these fragile miniature plastic versions of New York. This was before 9/11 so it didn't seem quite as crass as it might now, thought I'm sure some would have thought it was crass even then.

It took a surprisingly long time for the globes to be destroyed. Quite a few cars drove along the street and managed to miss them. Another touched a globe with the very corner of its tire and pushed it gently out of the way. Perhaps this was a metaphor for the elusive, resilient, impermeable nature of America. And at one point the mad boy ran into the road and grabbed one of the globes, hoping to take it away as a souvenir. I told him off sternly. I'm fairly sure he didn't speak English, but no doubt the phrase, "Put the snow globe back in the middle road so cars can crush it," is the same in any language.

At last a car took out all three globes simultaneously and the stragglers remaining on my tour cheered in absolute, unhesitating delight. Partly I'm sure they were celebrating that the walk was over, and they could now get out of the rain. But more than that, I like to think they were acknowledging that destruction makes a pretty good climax to any activity, even a walking tour.

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Geoff Nicholson, The Lost Art of Walking, Pedestrianism, Riverhead, Penguin Books