Una Aventura Española

About 17:09
3/3/15
Madrid Airport

Well, here goes. Deep breaths. My first solo trip. I wanted control, now I´ve got to work out what the hell I am going to do with it. For now, I am completely alone. Already my teeth feel kind of numb from lack of talking. Maybe I will become one of those mad friendly people and strike up a conversation with someone here at the airport? Dad said to treat the beginning as if I am a piece of lycra instead of some velcro. I think it has something to do with letting things that happen happen and become an observer to the surrounding scenes.





10:48am
4/3/15
A groovy cafe in Burgos

After meeting the family I am staying with for the first part of my trip, I am a little more relaxed and incredibly relieved. They are absolutely lovely. The 2 little girls- Sofia and Ana (age 9 and 7)- are what two small twigs may behave like if they were suddenly pumped full with life and laughing gas. They are bouncy and giggly and complete chatterboxes. The mum also has hardly stopped talking since I arrived it´s absolutely amazing. I wonder if she knows I only understand about 20% of whats going on. I am actually getting pretty good at laughing in all the right places and so far I´ve only laughed in the wrong place once but I think I covered it up pretty well.























18:13
5/3/15
Around the kitchen table, at home in Burgos

Right now I am being painfully punished for my recent spanish mistake and discovery. For some reason, and I am still unsure how this has happened but instead of my usual massive knickers I have packed loads of thongs. I am against thongs for many reasons and here are some of these:

  1. They´re in the same boat as stillettos/ pencil skirts/ chokers (wtf is going on there???). Yes okay there are some who abide almost religiously to the saying that you have to suffer for fashion but what on earth is to be gained from this except looking as if you have been pumped up with gas? Although thankyou for the comical walk you provide the public with a great service (and also definately deserve a medal!!).
  2. CAN I REMIND PEOPLE OF THE PURPOSE OF KNICKERS ie to keep your fanny warm
  3. You may as well either not wear knickers at all or if you find that a bit too risque then use string (therefore preserving your modesty and being more economical)
However I was obviously caught up in a hot spanish trance when I was packing because I am now left with an uncomfortable thonged predicament.
Today I also had my first class at the university, in a very grown-up sounding ´Seminar 4`. I tentatively sat down next to a mohecaned Italian becuase I loved his bag which had amazing multicoloured patterns on it. He was called Guiseppe and didnt understand anything I said. An American sat down on the other side of me, he was called Allan. Allan was really tall and had to bend down at each doorway to avoid knocking his beanie hat off. It felt wonderful to suddenly be able to talk to someone in a language that I could understand  and I think he was surprised by my excitement. I told him about an idea of changing the Qu´ran from Allah to Allan and whether the world would be a much more funny place (funnier than it already is) and also maybe he could be the face of this new. more smiley world with his long-ish hair and skateboard and looking a bit like one of those marmots but alot taller and human. Did he pronounce Allan like AllAn or AllEn? He said it didn´t matter and I said I preferred AllAn because then the new world was even more fitting. He didn´t really talk to me after that.


10:37am
6/3/15

I´ve developed a new hobby of putting in my earphones and watching people, whilst pretending that the song that I am listening to is the soundtrack to their life. Suddenly, with added music, someone becomes alot more significant, their life more abstract and colourful. It´s as if you can feel their emotions, the music notes bring life to life so even if it´s just pretend all at once you can see their passions and beauty. Try it- whack on a little Ben Howard and follow around an old man, you will feel such a sense of empathy and understanding. Or for some fun listen to the hilarious Yakety Sax and watch a pigeon.



12:20pm
9/3/15

Today Noemi left various unnamed containers out so I could cook myself lunch becuase I had classes when everyone else was home. I nodded away at her long explanation like a nodding dog on a pogo stick, doing that thing when I look very convincingly like I am listening and actually my brain has gone elsewhere.I still had absolutely no idea what the mysterious containers contained but I tried heating one up anyway and ended up eating a luke warm batter puree for my lunch. I ate quite alot of it actually before finally admitting to myself that the potato lumps weren´t potato.(now to make the kitchen appear exactly as if I knew exactly what I was doing, a little sprinkle of flour here, a candle to disguise the burning smell...)

Alot has happened since I last wrote. Last Friday I attended an English lesson at the local primary school and was secretly very proud that I was pretty much the star pupil. The teacher, Begoña, genuinely loved her class and it was clear how much they loved her.

After that we had to pick up little Ana from her friend´s birthday party. I´m not sure if you´ve ever had the pleasure of being a parent in a 7 year old girls birthday party. It goes a little like this; you sit awkwardly on the sofa surrounded by the other parents while 2 mothers take up about 98% of the conversation. You must swallow down the piece of sickly sweet princess cake that is shoved in your direction, drenched in plastic icing and sparkly glitter. Gratefully gobble it up- pink goo and all- whilst telling the mother what a pretty little princess she´s got and how wonderful her new patterned curtains are! And you mustn´t mention how the pink goo is clogging up your throat, or how the tight the tiara seems to be pinching the birthday girl´s head.


After the sweeter-than-sweet fiesta, we all squeezed into their little car and zoomed off to Asturias where they had rented an apartment in Llanes by the beach. We had a very late ´cena´ and I had my first Asturian ´sidra´. Becuase it is bottled without gas, you have to pour the cidre from up high in order to spill as much of it as possible so you have to buy more. It was actually really fun and when the time came for it I showed the restuarant my Michael Jackson walk.

On Saturday, we met some family friends and went hiking in the mountains. The North-South backdrops contrasted beautifully. the cliffy coved coast in the North with it´s wild sea, and the snowy peeping mountains in the South that had been scissored out from the horizon. After a couple of hours walking, we stopped in the shadow of a sheer path that led up to a satelite signaller and cross. I decided to keep going, and so for over an hour I climbed this mountain and felt my head brushing against the sky.




When I was younger I always thought that I could fly. Maybe it was to do with the unfortunate fact that I looked like a little bird. If I scrunched up my eyes and released the pressure that surrounded me then I could soar. I didnt even need wings. I imagined that I had discovered the secret of flight; all I had to do was fill myself with a happiness and let the sparrows and swifts in my empty body dance. At the top of the mountain I thought nothing at all except that I was flying.




Sunday we went to the beach, where we ran barefoot across the freezing sand and straight into the sea- waves of maybe 10 ft crashing down. I laughed out loud at the water and I was vaguely aware that I was a crazy person but I was also aware that I didnt care.I had my swimming costume on underneath and therefore I must be sane enough. On the beach, a boy came up to me and it turned out he could speak english. He took a look at my rather unusual outfit that day (photos to come) and said he liked the ´eclectic´ look. We talked about the mountain I had climbed the day before, he told me I was a mountaineer. But with his accent the word came out more like ´mountains-ear´. I had never been described as an 'Eclectic Mountain´s Ear' before, but I liked the sound of it.




23:23pm
10/3/15
Mi cama, Burgos

Today I was invited out for churros and chocolate with the English teacher, Begoña. She had a birdpoo on the back of her jacket which meant that she must be a lucky person. Begoña also carried around a pair of castonettes in her handbag, 'just incase'. She talked non stop about her son who was a little older than me, and it took me a while to realise that she was trying to set us up. She warned me seriously that yes, her son was a little strange but I mustn't worry because he could talk about pebbles all day. (It turned out she meant marbles, I´m not sure which is better).



11:24am
12/3/15

I am starting to be able to emphasise with mute characters in films. I have turned into Hodor. Thats not to say that I'm a giant now, but by only understanding half of what is being said all the time, and only being able to say about half of what I want to say, it leaves alot more space for other things. Like thinking. I think alot anyway (so much it drives me crazy) but with this is a filtered type of thinking due to a lack of understanding and half oblivion. Quite quickly I´ve adapted to enjoy this bewilderment and turn it into something positive. My half-daze really means I have half to worry about, which leaves half a brain to think about good things. Like when today after class I walked around the park listening to ´The House of the Rising Sun´and chewing gum rudely, imagining I was in the wild west. An extra half brain to fill with whatever. That makes sense, right? It´s just maths, really.

I´ve also taken on the role of listener. Noemi will literally talk to me for hours, just to have someone listening to any problems she has is a form of release. And it´s not as if the problems are being offloaded onto me either because I don´t understand too much to worry about. The problems disperse themselves into the air and spread farther and farther apart until they are so diluted they could be forgotton. And that´s just science, really.




13:40pm
13/3/15

The family think its hilarious watching me try and skate so I've taken to skating around the neighbourhood in Burgos, stubbornly try to prove that it it is not funny and infact I could be one of those people who skate places (currently failing at this but I am optimistic and have photographic evidence of what I like to call the casual stance). --->





I don't like to give much away about the family I am staying with. All I will say is that they are honestly some of the kindest, most genuine and admirable people I've ever met. They have little to give but effort and time which they devote to living in the moment and taking so much pleasure in showing me as much of their country as they can. I do realise how lucky I am, but it got me wondering. It seems as if the more people I meet, the more and more genuine and interesting they are. Maybe I am too trusting, but far too much we are blinded by a negative and just can't see the many positives. Rafa lives his life by focusing on someone's smile, their laugh, their gracious actions and their wonderful, wonderful words. And he believes that their fleshy rudeness and their mortal vulnerability is what it means to be human. Becoming 'who we are' is a paradox as we try and forget who we are. We are anatomical machines of roly-poly flesh and carved bone, a walking mixture of absolute chemical mayhem. And as I remember from chemistry lessons, they hardly ever go as planned. Maybe there are impurities, spillages and misread measurements. Maybe these human 'errors' result in marvelously unpredictable lilac flashes, or spitting sparks, or blistering bubbles that refract the ordinary into all the colours of the rainbow.





11:41am
23/3/15
Burgos kitchen table

Let me paint a little picture with my black ink and scrawl. I am surrounded by bare mould-green walls in need of both colour and shape to inspire some imagination. ´Mujeres Deseperados´ runs on the TV- in spanish, but you don´t need words (or even acting) to get the gist. My tea is grey, but it is warming. Flakes of snow rush around outside, leading their short manic lives and reminding me of the human race. I always like to imagine that snow is God´s dandruff. That assumes that God has dandruff. And a scalp, and hair. It assumes God is human which is not too hard to believe when you think about what God is accused of/ praised for.


9:09am
26/3/15
Burgos Library

To be honest I am surprised that I can walk today. Last night I could have been mistaken for a hobbling orangutan with their lovely but uncomfortable-looking walks. What I really need, I thought, was some salt to help with my awful leg cramp. (I´m not sure if thats an actual thing or just something that Dad says). Nethertheless I prescribed myself a mental gravy bath in the hope that that peculiar image in my head would trickle down and trick my poor saltless legs. I woke up absolutely fine so it must have worked.

Anyway, the reason for all this over-the-top-ness is probably because I am still pretty excited about what happened yesterday. Basically I am part of a top secret illegal parkour gang now. Our logo is a stencil of a parkour runner with the statue of liberty´s head. Okay the first parts not even close to true, I would be the WORST secret illegal parkour gang member (for a start because I would probably tell everyone about it), but the statue of liberty didn´t actually look that out of place on a free-running stencil. What actually happened is that me and a friend, Adrian, (who may or may not be part of a secret parkour gang I am not allowed to tell you) cycled for miles through a spanish snowstorm (what on earth is going on its SPRING and its SPAIN) to reach a grand abandoned ´haunted´ house on the outskirts of the town where the famous ´El Cid´was supposedly born. After all that horrible cycling my arms weren´t really working and it took us both a surprisingly long time to heave me over the skirting boundary wall. We then had to scale up the outside wall and through an upstairs broken window. As you can imagine I was as nimble as a cat with elephant legs for paws and also an elaphant body for a body (if that makes sense). Once inside the house, it was like we had stepped into a Jonathon Creek episode. The walls were all defaced with creepy clown faces and displayed the signs of various gangs (including the even more liberated statue of liberty print). I skirted around the broken snooker table and past squatters´boxes and broken vodka bottles, all the time trying to convice Adrian that I had seen a wine cellar before and really wasn´t that keen on going down those dark stairs to visit a haunted one. So we climbed up onto the roof instead. Once up there you could see the whole of the grounds. The stagnant, mouldy swimming pool, piles of pony shit from the house´s last remaining resident. It started to snow again. What a bizarre world we live in. Adrian told me that there are two different types of parkour. One is more practical, like scaling a building in the most efficient and quick way (ie, the stairs or maybe a lift). The other is more of an art, a dance if you like, for a more visual effect. Once back in the house, I hopped across the landing just to prove exactly what kind of parkour runner I was.


11:56am
1/4/15
By the beach, Salou, Costa Daurada

I am in the midst of a storm. Not a weath-type storm, but a mental more fluffy and metaphoric-type storm. I am absolutely exhausted after nearly a week of being a non-stop source of entertainment for two little girls. Somehow I have acquired two shadows that cling to me like oil and even when I think I am rid of them they are there and their giggles and energy is somehow slightly suffocating. Atleast I can now empathise with a teddy bear/ doll/ plastic crab in my case when I was younger. I am bitten, a ´sandball´target (they can´t seem to differentiate between a snowball and a sandball), ridden the causosel a squillion times, undergone torture by tickles and had my boobs squeezed for an embarrassingly long time (to be honest any amount of time for that is humiliating enough) whilst they made horn noises, in the middle of the entrance to Portaventura.


After the fun of Burgos, meeting people and going out- and despite the unyielding tide of games and giggles and constant attention- I am lonely here. On Sunday night when everyone was sleeping I snuck out (GREAT word, snuck. Would like to meet the person who made that up), and wandered around for a few hours wondering what was wrong with me. Salou is not the kind of place I would usually come, with its model cubic town and hoards of leather skinned holiday makers. It is a plastic ants nest with troops of hen parties and stag does and chaotic families and orange British teens. All their sweat and scents and busyness mingle and humm and take over this skeleton of empty tiled rooms and sticky terraces every season. For all its illuminated beaches and fumey streets, it has a strange ability to bring a family together, or to make hilarious drunken stories, or create happy memories. As little Ana says each night when I say goodnight, after I ask how she liked today,´A mi, me encanta´.




Maybe the fakeness, thousands of empty model rooms and tonnes and tonnes of concrete is actually very real. Because in a world where the natural is preserved and ruled over and ´made sustainable´by laws and controlling methods like national parks and culling and reforestation and high walls- Salou is a scarily more real picture of what we´ve become.



15:22pm
5/4/15
Poolside, ´Paradise camp´. Somewhere on Costa Daurada

A long time ago on an Easter Sunday, probably the first, Jesus Christ rose from the dead and caused a bit of a kurfuffle. And that kerfuffle is still being felt thousands of years later which is why today we now wallow in comfort food like chocolate Easter eggs during this time of the calendar.

Unfortunately, no quantity of Easter eggs (or ´Mona Pascua´ in my case) could calm my curious case of kurfufflery that I seem to have landed myself in.

Let me give you an idea of the standard routine right now, on my holiday camp ´paradise´. Wake up on the sofa, stumble to breakfast and feed the girls more chocolate spread and biscuit which is all they seem to eat. Try not to have an argument with Sofia about hugging in the morning again, reminding her through gritted teeth that there was to be NO HUGS before atleast 10 o´clock and giving a prime example of what a ´morning person´ was not. I then race along with them to an aerobics class with lots of other bouncy happy children and wobbly old people and one giant fat man with an impressive belly that the kids like to use as a trampoline. (if you are having trouble visualising then imagine a glass tank full of tiny bouncy balls, floppy beanbags, a beach ball, and me. And then imagine that tank being blasted with Drake or Rihanna and shaken about by our gay bodybuilding teacher.)

A few more sessions of that before I jump into the freezing pool, huff and splash around abit trying to get the attention of the guy who ran the kids mini disco last night (Yes, kids mini disco. And yes, OFCOURSE there was a giant Easter Bumblebee doing the macarena). My irresistible splashing ultimately failed to lure him, so I flopped onto the poolside sneezing and covered in goose pimples and reassured myself that he probably wasnt for me anyway; (sure he could dance but I didnt see any evidence of his farm that he definately would own if he was my future dancing farmer husband.) (he turned out to be French and actually very nice despite his strange choice of red shoes)

Then it was lunch, which is actually dinner in Spain, but at lunch and is called ´La comida´. Whilst lunch is at dinner, but lunch, and is called ´cena´or ´dinner´.

And now here I am, sitting by the pool with my senses of humour twitching (or trying very hard to twitch) before aquagym and the mini club and more giant dancing Easter bees. I look around at this new holiday camp experience for me. Everyone looks like floppy drying sardines in their own green deckchair tin, listening to NeYo blasting out of the loudspeakers and drinking apple-flavoured beer. We all cheerily wish everyone a very happy resurrection.


10:25am
9/4/15
Viva La Pepa, Burgos

Adrian said today that I look like a prawn. ¨You know! Those things in the sea, most have a moustache¨
I wasn´t really sure what to say to that. (What the hell are you supposed to say to that!!?). It is true that I have caught the sun abit in the Costa Daurada and it is also true that for the last week I have been on the tomato-end of the vegetable lookalike scale but I really thought that prawn was a little too far. Especially if the prawn picture he had in his head was one of those moustached (mustachiod?) ones.

So Im sure you´ve all been eager for an update on my secret parkouring gang I´ve secretly joined and I am happy to tell you all that I have been informally promoted to apprentice. This is probably because of an absolutely gigantic hop I did from a wall (accidental hop), my left knee felt very strong at the time and you need very strong left knees to be in a secret parkour gang if you want to be informally promoted to apprentice.

We had found a beautiful old empty hotel literally on the hillside right next to Burgos castle. It was like a palace, that had been scraped out and gutted of all its splendour and material by squatters and gypsies so only its bare graffitied skeleton remained. There were six floors, all giving dazzling views on Burgos and the snow-sprinkled mountain in the distance. And it was completely deserted, to be discovered and explored by anyone who was curious enough (and with strong enough knees to hop the surrounding walls).

Jeeez the Spanish are a strange bunch. (sorry flashforward to now again). I am sat here drinking tea out of a GLASS and there are numerous problems with this--> 1) You can´t actually pick the glass up to drink as it burns your fingers (and so you have to kind of bring your head to the table and sort of lap it up like a cat which is distressing both for you and the people around you)   2) ´Cupoftea´is synonymous with words like ´relax´ and ´unwind´ however with such poor insulation that you only have about 12 seconds between the tea being too hot and too cold in order to rapidly gulp it down.   3) How can someone ever say ´oh what a lovely cup/mug/pot of tea` when infact it is not a cup/mug/pot at all but a glass.

Another shocking thing I have discovered about Spain is that not only do they have a glass of tea but they also eat toast with a KNIFE and FORK and that concept is so disillusional that I am afraid I have decided to leave Burgos on Saturday and investigate this strange phenomenum up north.

(Quick note before leaving: today I also had my last class at the uni and I thought it was a beautiful coincidence that I happened to sit next to Allan again. (remember him? The star of the new world!!) He was still wearing his hat and I wondered what was going on underneath that hat and whether anyone had ever seen his head or if he had an accident with some glue)


20:44pm
11/4/15
Santillana del Mar, Cantabria

And so thats that. Adios Burgos. Adios wonderful family and two cheeky little girls and my secret parkour gang life and Allan.

I have come North which in my mind feels like a tricky task because North on the map is up and there is noone here to help me now. Upon stepping off the bus I booked into the first albergue that I came across which is ran by two extremely fat old spaniards who have an obsession with extremely fat old spanish antiques. Both men and antiques look as if they have sat there unmoving for a hundred years, there was dust on their moustaches. I quickly realised that I must never ever ask them any sort of question unless I decide to stay in the hostel whilst the town´s sights and walks and even food are described to me at length in a language that has all the intention of being English but without any of the result. But regardless of this I wait until they are done so that atleast someone gets something out of the conversation.

On my way here I met two aupairs from America and Canada, who were on a day trip here from Santander. Kelly from New York had a thing for children´s customised t-shirts and was the kind of person to go to the local candy store and buy pickles. Lara from Canada climbed up a tree in the park and invited me to ´come join!´ and then to also ´come join!´ in a whole list of places and events that she had planned in her head. They were both lovely and I realised that everybody is totally crazy nowadays and actually Ive decided its more totally crazy to be normal.

And now I am sitting in a field with a local beer, an apple and a coconut which I am becoming increasingly concerned about.

I left Burgos barely 8 hours ago and I miss it. My chest feels all spacey and all I can really think about is the girl´s sad little faces as they became smaller and smaller as the bus drew away. I racked my brains for familiar places of Burgos to fill myself with memories and adventures and tried to stuff them into my empty, sad lungs.

But now thats that. And I am here with my concerning coconut and I wonder whether it was unintentionally intentional to replace my one spacey problem with another, more solid one.


17:59pm
12/4/15
Outside el museo y fundación Jesús Otero, S.D.M  (basically loads of oldish stone statues of farm animals)

I have been horse riding today for the first time since being in Spain and it was just what I needed really. Went for a gallop around the field on ´Bubbles´or Burbujas en español, and the owner´s daughter Isobel who was about my age let me exercise another mare who then tried to rear me off. The tack was western style, and they also had about a dozen teeny tiny ponies.

I am getting a fare few looks lying here amongst the statues. Have decided to become very still, with a slight whimsical expression to see if maybe I can blend in a little more and nap in peace.




15/4/15
Oviedo

A couple of days ago I popped my head up from behind a wall in Cantabria where I was doing some drawing, and like a large furless prawn-like meerkat glanced around the crowd to see Dad, walking barely 5 feet away. He had some time off work and so had come to see what happens in Spain too, and it was so good to see him. With no time to lose we rushed to a tea-shop and bitched like true British snobs about Spain's embarrassing knowledge of tea. He was staying in Spain for the next few days and we drove around in the hire car finding strange little Spanish villages and eating great food.


I think ordering food in foreign places is always an entertaining experience. The innocent errors of translation in some menus is a beautiful thing. Many a time I have come across a steamed crap or a chicken noodly and have a lovely little chuckle.




Today I my brain stayed snoozing by mistake and left a homunculus in charge. I'm not sure if thats the correct word but I use it to describe that little passenger in your head who takes over the flight when you've gone elsewhere. They bravely steer and control your actions and words, dazily putting one foot infront of the other to keep propelling you forwards. They sit there inside your brain cavity between your eyes a little like a numbskull from the Beano (but called a homunculus). And this little pilot stayed watch all day today as I directed dad the wrong way and babbled on with my completely unfiltered and ungrateful self, through the 'shit-hole' of Llastres, or Aviles and Cudillero. I was in a thoroughly bad mood. Fortunately, we came across 'La Playa del Silencio', with its ancient jutting cliffs and creamy icecream rocks. The rain gave it an atmospheric, moody look that was even worse than mine and jumping into the freezing sea spooked the homunculus away and woke Alice up. And she felt much better.



13:29pm
18/4/15
Oviedo, on way to Leon

Whenever I start thinking too much about breathing I get quite panicky because I can forget how to breathe. My brain over-complicates things by taking control of the rhythm of my muscles and body. It is the same with swallowing, and blinking. Suddenly every action which you remember being so simple becomes awkward and self conscious and BOOOM there you go another crap metaphor for life (which it seems I am becoming rather too fond of). If you filter everything through your head, forcing thoughts and actions and ifs and whats and whys through the small funnel of your brain then it becomes too stiff and sticky. I'm not sure what form a feeling is in, but even if it is abstract then surely by still being abstract then it cannot be forced too far?? We continually disrupt and jar the rhythm and as a result we do not permit ourselves to be who we are. With the flow, freedom and acceptance of a non-judgemental brain we can dance and hop and twizzle our way to the sky with a great fat smile. We can revert back to that childhood innocence and look at the world, look at ourselves, with wide and wonderful eyes.

18:00pm
19/4/15
Train to Galicia

What a ridiculous couple of days. Spain you are quite mad and I love you. Went to go stay with Adrian and his friends in Leon on their comfy sofa with their terrified dog and high gerbils. We went out and had 'cortos' and 'pinchas'. The only unfortunate event was when I mistook someone for saying in slightly broken English that they were a 'surgeon'. It set me off excitedly babbling about how I wanted to be a doctor too and was starting uni this September and asking him loads of questions about how he became a surgeon and so young aswell! It turned out he actually said 'searching' not 'surgeon' and I felt like a massive moron.

The Spanish have lots of multicoloured eyebrows. I had some very strange conversations with Adrian while listening to 1960s Greek music ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDI6D7Dx9oA ). His favourite animal is a jellyfish and he wonders why we have Movember instead of Moustmarch or Febeardry.



17:03pm
20/4/15
Neigriega (on El Camino de Santiago)

Today I have had a 19 1/2 year crisis (yes today is my 1/2 birthday HAP BIRT to meee) because I woke up in a little room in Santiago de Compestela and started walking to the sea on pilgrimage. The sea was nearly 100km away and with my rucksack I hadn't anticipated how difficult that would be. Infact, I hadn't really anticipated anything. I didn't really know the reason for doing it was. I didn't really know what I would find out from doing it. I just wanted to do it.

One thing that immediately became apparent was the kindness of the people I met. Everywhere I went- and maybe because I looked slightly distressed with sticky up hair and prawn cheeks- but people were very keen to help me out. For example last night, when I was still wondering the streets past 11 with nowhere to stay, the locals gave me food and rang around places asking for a spare bed or room. I guess it should come as no surprise that people ultimately want to be kind and helpful. Or maybe word just got out that it was my half birthday.




22/4/15
Finisterra

And that's that!! I have finished, and with maybe not quite such an 'enlightened mind' you would expect from pilgrimage, but definitely with very very sore feet and body. The most enlightening statement I head was from one stoical, grumbly old man who said 'when walking up a hill, you ain't going down again. Until you reach the top of the hill, that is.'

'to the END'

The other thing I have learnt, from a guy who gave me some tea and a poncho in the pouring rain, is that I am a 'mujer con cojones'. After some initial confusion, I worked it out. Soy una mujer con cojones. I am a woman with balls. (NOT that balls are the source of bravery or guts or anything like that says the feminist within). Although, I am not sure I entirely agree that I have cojones. I would say maybe that I am a woman who just loves to try out a bit of everything. (Because if you don't try it then how do you know if you like it or not??) But mostly I am a woman with very sore feet after walking 100km to the sea.






20:27pm
23/4/15
A Coruña (eating 'pulpo')

I have been the most 'free' that I could have ever dreamed of. I have set out by myself with no attachments, no schedules or commitments, post-it notes, to-do lists or alarms. The sea was my destination and I need only walk into the horizon, with my sketch book, paints and music. But how could I have been so naive. The road to the horizon is paved, ripped from the earth and littered with obstacles; with my heavy heavy rucksack, my aching body, with money, food, people, and with my head. Always the same head. I think that people think that by 'being free' you can kick up your heels and run to the horizons. But you can't run without a head. (unless you are one of those headless chickens that can survive without a head). And often what you are running from is right there with you, like a shadow.

You are not free on that horizon. Being typically human, you will want to reach the next and the next until you run yourself hopelessly into the ground. Perhaps if you look back from where you have come, you can get a lovely viewpoint and some perspective. I looked back from where I came and knew that my freedom wasn't at the next horizon (that was all a trick). I didn't like being by myself. Yes, I like being by myself each morning for about an hour and when I am terribly dazed and grumpy. Or I like 5 minutes to appreciate the sky in silence and awe. But my solo trip has taught me that long-term appreciation of the sky only leads to random mad events (eg pilgrimage) and actually I need someone else there for some grounding.

I chased that fucking horizon with determined, aching feet and a heavy brain and now I am realising that every which way there's a damn horizon but I am already standing on the one that counts.
















1 comment:

  1. Genetics has a lot to answer for 😍. Keep avoiding Velcro x

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