Month: October 2019

The bay in Annapolis is full of boats. All of them flying pennants. “What the hell is going on? I’m new in town,” I ask the man with the badge. Behind me a DJ cranks up the volume on “Uptown Funk,” even though the average age of the crowd here is 70. “It’s the boat show, man! This is the biggest event of the year here.” “All weekend? Do I have to pay?” “Yep. But it’s cheaper tomorrow. Twenty bucks.” It might be interesting if I was in the market for a boat…

I just spent nine on a cocktail. A Painkiller 2 from the delightfully named “Pussers.” I’m sitting here looking at the boats. It’s like watching “remember the good times” day at the old folks home. Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps and sunglasses and grey hair and smiles. These people have pain, in that they just can’t decide which boat to buy next. Still they’re making the best of the decision making process. Happy old people, rich old people. I can’t afford a boat dammit. Been working hard for years now. A boat or two of my own would be nice, sure. And a house by a lake to sail it by. But it might be a few more years before I can afford such madness.

I was recommended this establishment by my ensign, Sam. We have a Second Lieutenant and an ensign assigned to us here. Desiree and Sam. They are incredible. Recent graduates. Calm kind thoughtful and driven. Desiree is going to be a marine, but she is injured right now and looking after us. I got to know Sam a bit today as he drove Katherine to the urgent care to get a $200 prescription for antibiotics. Thankfully we have health insurance. But yeah. $130 for the doctor. $70 for the medicine. Her tonsillitis is amoxicillin resistant. This is her second course of antibiotics. Fuck knows what she’s on now. Scary to think how we are passing the point of no return with these lifesavers, mostly because of the meat industry. Both of her courses have been shorter than I would have expected. I suspect another week of the amoxicillin would’ve finished it. She only had a week. Is this habit of only giving one week of prescription in the US part of the problem?

Anyway, I was writing about Sam. Sam has nailed it. He leaves Annapolis next week to go to Florida and be a pilot. “I don’t know what I’ll be flying,” he says. “But I’ll be flying. That’s what matters.” He’s 21, maybe. Little moustache. Short and compact. He’ll do well. He wonders what his callsign will be. He thinks it might be to do with hats, as there’s the word “hat” in his surname. He hopes it will be, anyway. “There’s a guy who’s callsign is poopy. He pooped himself on a long flight. Only piddle packs are provided.” Imagine being callsign Poopy. “I’M A PILOT I’M FLYING FIGHTER JETS OH MY GOD ALL MY DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE”. “For the rest of your working life and even into retirement no matter what degree of heroism you attain you will always respond immediately and firmly to the name “Poopy”.

Sam won’t get a duff callsign. He’ll be flying over us tomorrow as he works, just by chance. This is his goodbye week to Annapolis, and he spent time helping a sick actor get antibiotics.

Still, these two highly evolved human beings, and the five of us with all of our professional empathy – none of us could overcome the civilians whose job it is to organise the parking passes for USNA.

My dears, we have all experienced blind idiotic bureaucrats. We have all experienced fuckwits with no capacity to tell the difference between theory and reality. We have all experienced human beings who take strange pleasure in obstructing other human beings. We have all had the computer say “no”, heard that the simple thing is “more than my job’s worth.” We have all been dehumanised. We’ve been overlooked, ignored and demoted. This all fades into insignificance compared to what the indifferent, unhelpful and actively disruptive humans at gate one of the USNA are capable of with smiles when they set their minds to it.

They had to do an unusual thing, to let UK actors drive rented cars onto the campus. They literally couldn’t handle it despite the forms all being filled out. Everything that could be blocked was blocked. It was almost childish in how pathetically transparent it was. The navy can roll with it, and worked it out by just sending ensigns and second lieutenants to drive us. The civilians in the accreditation office though – they are constipated minds.

As we walked away after we had been blocked enough that it wasn’t worth our time, I looked back, and our final obstructive human happened to be looking back at I turned. We made eye contact, and I saw nothing in that face but the satisfaction of triumph.

Dear USNA gate 1 civilian staff: please look at yourselves a bit. It’s almost funny how incredibly obstructive you are. You’re making work for the brilliant lieutenants and ensigns assigned to guests like us, and you are doing it by literally being the shittest humans you are capable of being. Grow up. Learn that unfamiliar things are not always bad. Expand just a bit. Don’t set yourself in opposition to these amazing humans you are trying to be gatekeepers for – they have all the empathy you lack. See what you can learn from them. The navy are great. You suck. I judge you by your actions. Go hide under a rock. I have no further interest in you.

It’s very interesting and very odd here at the USNA. I’m sitting on a wall. Below me, between me and the sea, young men and women run in squads. Their voices carry on the wind. Beyond them someone is laying on the horn in one of their torpedo boats. I think it might be an alert practice but it makes me think of London in rush hour.

The voices, the bells, the wind in the trees, shouts of numbers, of instructions, screams of frustration and celebration and under it all the birds. And song.

They sing a lot here. They sing about goats and guns and the sea. And they learn things. Their brains are getting well exercised. If any of the freshmen gets asked “How long have you been in the navy?” they will respond with this:

“All me bloomin’ life, sir!
Me mother was a mermaid, me father was King Neptune.
I was born on the crest of a wave and rocked in the cradle of the deep.
Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes.
Every tooth in me head s a marlinspike; the hair on me head is hemp.
Every bone in me body is a spar, and when I spits, I spits tar!
I’se hard, I is, I am, I are”

They learn it by heart. They’re all expanding their memories and their possibilities. Learning, cross disciplinary. The humanities students still all study differential calculus and engineering. They are going to be sending a bunch of extremely fit curious polymaths into service on these boats and subs and helicopters. Polymaths trained to kill. And I can’t help but admire them. I’ve often found it to be the case that the officers I’ve got to know from the armed forces have had poetic souls. My dad’s great friend was a submariner and a glorious kind man to boot.

I was in three big rooms surrounded by freshmen – midshipmen – getting them to engage with Shakespearean text, getting them to have an effect on each other with words, obliquely teaching another aspect of leadership through just an hour long class on Twelfth Night. At one point, laughing in a circle of them, I noticed how hard these young men and women were. They are all in peak fitness. I can barely drag myself to a yoga class once a month. I would lose to every single one of them in a fight. Surrounded by forty of them, they’d crush my bones to make their bread, although they all are so incredibly nice as well so that’d never happen. If I attacked them they’d probably efficiently and effortlessly restrain me and then sing songs until I calmed down.

I can’t catch up with their fitness but it makes me want to get fitter, just becoming aware of the distance between me, all wild hair and beard and words and ideas, and these lean streamlined beings with their discipline and their responsibility. I think I decided as a young man that fitness and intelligence were mutually exclusive, and since I aspired to the latter, I avoided the former. It’s to my detriment. I need to start getting into the gyms in these hotels I’m staying in across the states. And drink a bit less. Ha. Chance’d be a fine thing…

Through the high security gates we go, and past a field of old fighter planes sitting by the road. As we stroll between the buildings we are hit with a solid shot of adrenaline just at the strangeness of it all. This is a world my grandfather would have understood, but a world that feels very unusual to me. We are the only people not in uniform. We are surrounded by extremely capable looking young men and women, making their families proud back home, gaining an extraordinary education within the rigour of the US Navy. They’re gonna be Seals and submariners, but right now we’re bringing them Shakespeare.

“In another life I might’ve followed my grandfather into the navy,” I muse to Claire. “How would you have coped with the discipline?” she responds. “Yeah I think that’s the reason I didn’t.”

Nevertheless here I am now at the USNA in Annapolis Maryland. It’s technical rehearsal and they’re focusing the lights so I’m snatching a chance to write this. The days will be a very different shape here. Very high security, early morning classes, most working days finished by lunchtime apart from the shows in the evening. At 7pm, in about three hours, 600 of these young men and women in uniform will file into the theatre and watch the five of us in our little circle of light for a few hours. There are Union flags in the walls above our stage, stained with time and use and gunpowder smoke and salt damp. I went and looked at the plaques and they were all captured from British ships in “the 1812 war”. Outside our stage-right door is a wooden “British lion” captured alongside a royal standard during “the occupation of York”.

This marbled hall where we will tell our story is rank with pillage from the dying days of empire. I had to Google the occupation of York. It was when America was at war with England and considering expansion northwards to Canada, and there was a fair amount of looting, burning and general sacking going on which catalysed some anti-American sentiment among Canadians which probably worked to the advantage of the British. Nevertheless the pillage means that we’ve got these lovely old flags around us as we work reminding us of home. “I like the flags,” I remark to one of the young men in uniform who is helping with the lights. “You know how we got them off you, right?” He asks. “Well, yes. But it’s good to see them.”

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Lovely show tonight to a sea of brown uniforms. Every venue Kaffe sings a song about the town at the end of the interval. The one he’s got this week is one the midshipmen all sing while they’re training. He had it reflected back in a wall of sound that was quite extraordinary to feel – 600 voices tunefully bellowing back at him as he stood alone in our little square of light whilst we sat behind him thrilled. It propelled us into a very connected and enjoyable second half. Semper fi…

 

You can tell we are near to the heart of bureaucracy in this country. Everybody that has sat on the other side of a counter we’ve stood at has made life as difficult as humanly possible. Those endless jousts at the counter. They somehow do get worse the closer you get to the administrative centre. Mister Enterprise was a total twerp. So was miss Marriott. But despite their obstructive and ultimately completely pointless fuckery we are still all checked in and sitting out on a balmy evening. It’s only about an hour in the plane from Boston but it’s noticeably warmer here, and chances are we’ll get to go to DC on the weekend.

Right now it’s just about settling in to a new city after travel day. But tomorrow I’ll have to get up early because everything is on fire back home. My bank has blocked my card and my appliances are flooding copiously into the flat below and we need to sort it out ASAP but I can’t pay for a plumber and I can’t let anybody into my flat and I don’t know anybody’s availability and Brian is about to open a huge show and is working like a train and I’m honestly clueless about how I’m going to get this fixed but I have to and it has likely already cost me loads of money in repairs to the flats below me who will likely insist that their ceiling was made of gold, and it’ll cost me more in bad blood in the block. It’s a fucking shitshow. 7am here is already midday in UK l. It’s hard to organise things.

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Meantime we are all bundled into the car and driving to Annapolis for dinner. The hotel has huge rooms but it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never been to this state before. For the first time this tour it’s a new place for me. I want to get to know it…

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On a first touch it’s great. We drove in and found little streets that feel like they have actual history. Like Massachusetts, you see “established 1755” on the stone front of the restaurant and you can almost kid yourself that you’re in Whitby. The food is more varied than the UK seaside fayre where the choices are: Fish and Chips, a 200 year old saveloy or “no sorry mate we’ve run out of that but we’ve got this saveloy.”

There are seagulls too, but not so many. This is a country with guns. They still want your food though but that’s what seagulls are. I see them wheeling but perhaps short term evolution has taught them not to try and steal people’s crab cakes.

I think I’m going to be happy here for a week. The sea is home for me. I’m pulled to it. “You’ve got the sea in your blood,” my grandmother used to say as a child, and I ignored her as any normal child will do when somebody older makes an incomprehensible statement. But she might have had a point. I think I do need the sea. I don’t do well if I’m parted from water.

A new city. A new week. I’m looking forward to Annapolis.

Here’s me under the same tree at Wellesley College that I took my Twitter profile underneath more or less exactly five years ago. There’s lots more grey in my beard now. I’m wiser…

I’m in an Uber heading back from Boston. My bank has frozen my account, bless them, fuck them. I’m not stranded. I’ve got an overdraft on my Starling, hence the Uber. Barclays would have me stuck in Boston for my own “protection and safety”. Because, like HSBC, they are trying to shut down competition at the expense of their customers.

Thank God I’ve got accounts with banks that are more evolved than the one I thought might be amusing to go with because of my name. HSBC did the same thing to Katherine a few weeks ago around her new Monzo. It’s the old monoliths deliberately trying to shake faith in the new contenders, by inconveniencing their own customers. I’m trying not to spend from my main account, which is Barclays, because it’s so much cheaper in terms of fees and charges if I go through Monzo or Starling.

Katherine and I hit a train into town from Wellesley. We didn’t have any plans. I thought I might catch a friend in town so I’d left the day pretty loose. We decided breakfast was important so we found South Street Diner and I ordered Eggs Benedict. Great way to start the Boston day. We had no choice, really, but to be tourists. We only had one day in the city, as happens on this tour with too many cities. I’d like to have spent more time in Boston. I was hoping that a friend who lives there might help our haphazard itinerary. But as it turned out it was us vs the city. We got a lot done.

Walking. It’s a good city for walking, Boston. It’s much more organic and walkable than many of the newer cities we have been bouncing around in. Katherine and I pounded the streets a little and it was satisfying to pound streets that are poundable. We had no real destination so we just bounced around. I like pinballing myself around an unfamiliar city and Katherine was a good companion for that. We ended up at the ICA. We wanted to see Yayoi Kusama but she had been booked out months ago. We watched and experienced a bunch of stuff instead.

Whenever I consume somebody else’s art a part of me always wonders where my particular art in that medium lies. It seems my art is twofold at the moment. To live a life. To write about it. But there’s so much more to be made. Of course I make stories with time. Time is my primary medium. Then it’s whatever. My face. My voice. Your head. Hello, I am time face head bazzzzzaaaaaam. The bulk of my art dies the moment it’s created and I don’t give a fuck about it until some tit with a suit on asks me to prove myself.

Words. I just hope that people get something out of this ongoing deluge. I’m tired tonight. Of course I want you to go “I get this” about this human I’ve become and the thoughts I’m expressing. But I’m done now. Night.

I’m tired tonight. We are post show, a tight knit little group just hanging out in the green room. Julia is playing Irish folk tunes on guitar. There was quite a lot of pizza and probably a spot more beer than strictly necessary. I’m just soaking up the atmosphere in the corner, letting it wash over me, knowing we are pretty much done with Wellesley once more. I’m still joining in the chorus when I can. There’s lots of singing in here.

Julia is great. She came to Much Ado five years ago and watched every show. She managed the same with us this year. She’s an alumni and a superfan. She was front row centre every night. A reliable presence. And now she’s entertaining us all as we wind the week away together.

I was tired in the show already. One of those nights when, instead of thinking the ogrelike simplicity of character thoughts and connections my brain was extremely conscious that it was on a stage doing the acting. I was aware of my heart rate at one point at the start of the show, quietly noticing the adrenaline kicking in, curious about how I couldn’t switch my brain into the show entirely, skipping over the surface like a stone until I finally managed to sink into it about halfway through act 2.

One more day in Massachusetts and then we are off again, this little welcome crowd of rogues and vagabonds. The Wellesley crew have been kind to us. Charlotte and Marta have a good handle on our needs. Free food and booze, a warm place to consume it, music perhaps and good conversation for certain.

Right now I’m being plied with beer, pizza, cookies, crisps, chocolates, STRAWBERRIES, music and conviviality. The live music makes us feel more at home especially as we aren’t making it. Some of us have taken our shoes off. At some point we will have to get over to our beds with the show in tow I suppose. It’s all packed up in the suitcase again. My horrible sweaty costume is quarantined in a canvas bag next to the accordion. Everything needs to get back somehow but I’ll work that out later. I’m going to plug back into the party for a wee while, and likely finish this exhausted in an hour or so…

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Jono was sober enough to drive us all home. Now I’m in my room and ready for sleep. Boston tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll get to see Dustin from Camino. I want to consume lobster and clam chowder and will likely have to hive away from the group to do so, as there are two vegetarians one of whom is allergic to shellfish.

The problem with this whistlestop tour is that it’s exhausting. Teaching in the day, acting at night then drinking with good people. Next week it’s a naval academy, so the days start in the morning, but we’re done early. Also I imagine next week will be reasonably sober by comparison – and perhaps that’s for the best. I’m knackered.

 

This is late. It’s inevitable. I just got home from the Shakespeare House at Wellesley.

Five years ago it was the same, but I wouldn’t be writing this for another three hours. I found the time to leave and managed to do so.

The Shakespeare Society is a very old society at Wellesley College. There are no sororities but there are societies. They have a replica of Shakespeare’s birthplace on campus. It’s done up in mock Tudor, made entirely of wood, with a great big fireplace built into it which nobody has ever lit because the whole place would probably burn down if they did. The members of the society are all the geeky fun people I would’ve been friends with at university. After the show on Friday we are traditionally kidnapped and brought there for a party.

This evening I was reminded of my attempt to cook beer macaroni and cheese at about 3am five years ago. It was successful, as much as anyone involved is able to remember it. Most culprits have moved on in order to become astronauts or supreme court judges or leading biochemists. This place isn’t fucking around. These women are being taught by excellent humans, and these excellent humans are doing the best they can to teach well. It’s a remarkable institution, and one that I’m so thrilled to be able to teach masterclasses at. This afternoon I taught a memory class. About ownership of the words in a poem. Trying to get them to know the meaning of the words for them. Helping them learn a frame of memory that is not just about rote. I worked them through sonnet 29.

It’s not one I knew, so I took a walk around the lake beforehand and learnt it as I walked. It’s about an hour, the walk, and it took me the walk to know it, but not safely. Still, I wanted to test the memory methods I’d be teaching empirically, as otherwise how could I have faith that my method works for anyone? I think I gave them a frame. I reckon one or two of them will take on my advice to refresh it before sleep, and test it before opening eyes for two days running. If they do that diligently it’ll be theirs forever. If they don’t it’ll go the way of all short term learns. Three sleeps is how you make a short term learn permanent. Or spongebrain. I’ve learnt it now. Nice to have another one.

I’d have loved to be at this college. It’s remarkable. These young women have such space to create and examine their creativity. There are walls and walls of pictures of significant graduates, in all walks of life, some famous, but many more significant without being immediately recognisable. For every Hilary Clinton and Nora Ephron there are thirty huge influencers who haven’t hit the public eye in the same way.

As we walk home from the Shakespeare House, one of the members tells me how, on the day that the blonde haired entitlement narcissist actually won there was a sense of mourning generally on campus. I get that too. I’m sure there would’ve been a similar atmosphere in the huge branded penis substitute I encountered in Chicago had it gone the other way. But I find a lot more in common with these incisive and unusual thinkers. The president of the society was wearing a “Six the Musical” T-Shirt. I’m happy to lay out my ground – these are my people. I’ve had a fun night, and great chat. Now I’m publishing this with an arbitrary photo.

We are all in a great big wooden room post show. It’s upstairs at the college club here in Wellesley Massachusetts. We are listening to Bob Dylan. It’s cold, by our standards.

Behind me as I write, huge black windows open onto a vista down to the lake. Were it not dark we would see the trees around the lake as they start to shine with drops of blood out of Deer in the heavens as she runs from Wolf and from betrayal. They aren’t fully spun to red yet, the trees, but they are shocking enough to be unusual and beautiful. And so are we, the five of us, in our little circle of light after the show…

I didn’t want to get out of bed this morning because it was cold in the world. I had forgotten that feeling and there’s a little spot of melancholy at knowing that the winter is coming. We have been avoiding that reality, hiding from the weather in Texas. Now I’m in my coat as I walk through the woods in Wellesley. It’s time to acknowledge that the winter will fall. It always does. There are things to find in it that are beautiful. But it’s happened somewhat quicker than usual, after flying out of San Antonio. And many things are coming to an end. Brian will be moving out soon. Pickle will have shared custody. I’ll return to a home life that tastes different from the one I left. And I’ll return to a winter. And I’ll return to CHRISTMAS CAROL, baby!! It’s confirmed. So that’s a triple snowball.

This is the last stop for me that’s familiar. From next week it’s all new. I love this college though. I wore the T-shirt out completely and now I’ve got given a new one just after the last one went to charity. Next week I’ll be in completely uncharted territory. I’m ready for that. I’m looking forward to it. But it’s nice to be here in the familiar. Julia came to the show tonight. I remember her well from five years ago. Dustin from Camino might come tomorrow, which would be amazing. Katherine did Camino a year before I did and had a friend come tonight. This job and my Camino are linked deeply.

I walked the Camino a year ago because I knew there was a company doing this job that had almost included me but didn’t. I didn’t have anything in the diary and I had mum’s holy water, which I didn’t know what else to do with. It made sense to me to go and walk off the professional angst alongside the remains of grief. I didn’t want to make friends on the walk. I wanted to be solitary. But even despite that desire I started walking with Marie by mistake. Then I had a week or so alone. But despite my desire to be “antisocial Joe” I didn’t manage to remain solo. I made more friends than I could’ve expected.

I’m enjoying retrospective Camino. I might dedicate tomorrow’s blog to it, as it’s the anniversary of the day I had a comparatively short walk and took photos of every single marker. Meanwhile here’s a silly dressing room shot.

The title of the course is “Speaking Truth to Power.” I’m at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. One of the Seven Sisters. A women’s college, and one of the best liberal arts colleges in the world. This old and beautiful campus. Space to think, to make, to learn and to be. I go in early to meet the professor. She walks with two sticks so she doesn’t get up to greet me. We shake hands and before long we are talking about the political situation here and in England. These narcissistic demagogues who literally cannot see beyond their own meaty grasping fingers, and the permission they give for the trickledown of hatred and fear. If the head is sick, the body suffers. This is Hilary Clinton’s alma mater. I wonder what the world might have been if people had put aside their instinctive inbred misogyny. She doesn’t offer her position when I ask such questions. She just lets me talk. “I try to keep politics out of my class,” she tells me. “I’m giving them a voice. That’s it.”

“What do you guys think when you look at us over the pond?” she asks. “It’s the same on our side.” I reply. “There’s a dangerous self serving idiot inciting violence as he clings to power. And I genuinely think that the worst is yet to come.”

She points at my T-Shirt. I’m wearing a Wellesley shirt that I got in my goody bag. “This college was founded ten years after the emancipation proclamation.” She points at herself. “Now I teach here. We are all in a better place than we have been. But as I say, I keep politics out of my class. Let them make their own minds up.” I adore this woman. Utterly.

I’ve got 45 minutes with them. It’s not enough, but it’s something. I take them through a full actor’s vocal warm-up. All of my voice teachers at Guildhall were incredible women too. I cannot even begin to credit how lucky our year was with that. I select from my toolbox the things they taught me that I hope might be useful to these young women going forward into potentially incredible changing existences in whatever is left of the world.

I can give them the nuts and bolts of speaking out. Resonators. Intoning to speaking. Taking up the space and the time. Connecting their voice to their breath. Basic stuff, to make sure their voice doesn’t shake when they say the important things, or that at least it doesn’t shake utterly. I want two hours with them. I’ve got time for the exercises but not the discussion and the back and forth that clarifies the exercises and embeds them. I hope they’ll take things from it. I’m sure they will. But…

Well I just got a text from the professor saying the work showed in their presentations. So there’s a start. It’s a hell of a thing to have been asked to do, and it carries a weight of responsibility, to come in as a practitioner and to work with people at this age. To try to give them their own voices. We mostly have our voices taken from us by habitual tensions over time. Everything magnifies on stage, or under pressure. It takes awareness and time to win back the ability to speak clearly in public with relaxation and clarity – without our habits and tensions and blocks coming in. But gentle awareness without judgement is a starting point. And hopefully I’ve sewn some seeds here in America at a time where we need to hope the future will grow brighter. “It’ll take two generations,” someone said. God. Really? Maybe.

 

The crazy people are more eloquent in Harvard.

I’m here by the college and somebody is trying to sell me their poems. Someone else attacked us verbally earlier and wished us all a horrible day. So far it hasn’t manifested itself. Quite the opposite. It’s been lovely here.

I’ve been soaking in the feeling of familiarity. Talkative mental people. Airy autumnal streets. Wearing a jumper. No more wet heat. The sky is a reassuring and familiar shade of threatening grey. Buildings are made out of stone. There’s a bit more logic in the layout. It’s more haphazard than the layouts in Indiana and Illinois and Texas. It feels like it responds to reality rather than an idea of a plan. There’s a bit more history up here in Massachusetts compared to where we were for the last two weeks. There are graveyards from the early 1600’s, old enough to actually feel like they’re old. Memorials in stone. Lots of stuff about the war of independence.

I went and touched John Harvard’s foot. This college area is named for him. He died at 31 and left money to the college. They took his name. That’s one way to make yourself immortal, I guess. Already have money and then give it to someone when you die. Everybody wants to touch his foot, this long dead clergyman from Southwark. Most of his family died of plague. He came all the way over to a new world after leaving Cambridge, and died of TB, bequeathed money to the college and now people touch his foot so much that it’s really shiny.

I bought the street lady’s poems. Tammy, she’s called. They’re eloquent and sad. I’ve been reading them and thinking about how much ground I’ve covered already and how much more there is to cover. Christmas work is sorted now, and I think I’ve found a friend to move into my flat. This time last year I was striking out, challenging my body, walking long and hard in heat and dust in order to lay to rest the vestiges of inner pains long carried unobserved. Now I’m here. Boston. Wellesley. Harvard. New England. Just a stone’s throw over the ocean from home.

Our accommodation is on campus in Wellesley College. This beautifully landscaped women’s college. There’s a lake, flanked by trees bleeding to red and gold in the Massachusetts fall. We have all been given pamphlets warning us to put on bug spray because they’re worried about the mosquitos carrying an equine encephalitis that’s untreatable and often fatal. It’s also incredibly rare and I’m not going to let it stop me strolling around the lake taking in the colours. If my brain swells up just trepan me. Then if I survive I’ll have a different head on things (ha ha). You can take this as permission and intent if I’m lying in a bed mumbling like Rocky post bout.

I think I’ll go into Boston tomorrow and fill up with seafood. One of my Camino buddies lives there. Perfect opportunity! A full circle, and a great thing to be able to see someone from that huge walk here on the other side of the ocean.