Author: albarclay

I come downstairs in the morning to find The Curé of Arudy drinking tea from a glass bowl. He has a morcel of bread that he is dipping into the tea. He dips. He sips. Tiago, his cat, paws at the window. Behind her, dawn breaks over the mountains. Joan Baez plays Ave Maria. “What madness is this,” I think, regarding the bread dipped in tea. Marie appears shortly afterwards, and immediately dips bread in tea. WTF? Suddenly I’m the odd one out. I say nothing. I have coffee. And bread. Separately. Shortly afterwards the cat jumps into my lap. “She knows you have a cat,” says the Curé, but no. Even when I was clueless about cats they’d jump me. I stink of something they like. Dead animal, probably.

We strike out into burgeoning light. First we have to walk down a huge bastard road full of trucks for about 3 miles. It’s hell. People do the honking thing to rebuke us. Eventually we’re back on the route. It’s sunny today and mild. The day very quickly becomes about the blister though. It’s growing, despite my efforts. We stop a few times to try and change the way it’s dressed but things eventually just come down to mind over matter. It will hurt. It will get worse. I will do everything in my power to help it get better and eradicate the root of it. Eventually I’ll have a callus instead of a blister. So long as it doesn’t get infected in which case game on!

A dog finds us somewhere outside of Buziet and gets a whiff of the curate’s cat. He is ducking down and low growling, bumping his nose against my calf, and i realise that there could be far worse things than a blister. Like rabies. He doesn’t bite us though. We march on, making good time towards Oloron. It’s Marie’s last night on the trail. Her family awaits. She’s been brilliant as a companion.

Neither of us are here to make friends. But we are the right two people to share this portion of the journey. Tomorrow it’s likely I’ll be alone again, which I’m happy about as I’m not in a rush. I am going to leave early and watch that fucking blister. It’ll just be me versus me all the way to L’Hôpital Sainte Blaise, unless I call it early – which I could as the day after is only 19km on the recommended schedule. Better look after this fucker as there’s no point stopping myself through stubbornness.

The guys in the Jacquaire are very friendly but they’ve given away all the information sheets describing the journey. I have to rely on the route markers. Marie, indignant on my behalf, say “haven’t you got a photocopier?” The guys who run the auberge are volunteers though.

Earlier today we paused on The Devil’s Bridge. We took some photos. I found myself thinking about the devil and my credencial number. 663. So the devil is three people behind me, hot on my heels like that dog. I’d better keep going all the way to Santiago. I’m not in the best shape to fight the devil yet, but in another month I can turn round and lamp him one, if I can only keep going until then.

I’m in bed now. She’s asleep. I need to be. Dawn is 7.30. I’ve already bought breakfast and lunch. All my laundry is done. Let’s Go! Blister and me are gonna take on the mountains.

I wake up in the Alberge in Asson. My saviour from last night slept well, she tells me, even if she had the radiator on full to dry her washed socks which made me restless.
While I’m brushing my teeth, Madame Loupy manifests herself – she of the refusing to answer the phone. She does exist! She wants money so it’s worth her while showing up now. She momentarily shows surprise when I emerge from the bathroom, but she masks it. She has no change. She is not in the least interested in acknowledging that she has had 6 missed calls and a message from me. She just wants money and us the fuck out of her alberge. It’s an interesting first hospitality experience on this journey. I steel myself for a month and a half of Madame Loupys.
We leave, and stop at the pharmacy. Marie (for so she is called) is not happy. Breakfast is supposed to be included. “I don’t know what was wrong with her,” she says. I’m relieved. “I thought perhaps they were always like that.” “No no. She is unusual.” Well that’s a relief at least.
The local pharmacist gives us tea, brilliantly, after Marie pleads with her. We sit on two seats in her shop, while she serves customers, sipping our Green Tea with 2 sugars. Marie insists on the sugar, for the trail. She saved my body last night, and now I’ve seen her get tea from a pharmacist. I trust her.

We head off. She’s better at this than I am. She walks long distance all the time. She has two kids, 11 and 13 and she can only spend a short amount of time away, but she loves walking and she is going as far as Oloron. I’ve got her for one more day. She teaches me the sign system. It’s easy to miss. I wish I’d known it yesterday. This one means “You’re going the right way.”

And this one, that I passed so many times yesterday, means “No Al No you Idiot what the hell are you thinking?” (the one in the middle. This is bad for three different routes. Often it’s good for them but bad for us.)

There’s turn right and turn left as well. Mostly it’s pretty clear if you know what to look for.
We still get lost. We end up about an hour north of bed, totally uninformed in the wreckage of a recent fire that completely ravaged the signage. I get my compass into play, and Google maps, and we make it to the Alberge in Arudy tired again after about 18 miles mostly uphill. I have a suspicion that Marie deliberately got us lost because she wanted a longer walk. Her Camino is over soon so she wants to get the most out of it. We were almost there at half 3 but she said she didn’t want to walk down a Departmental (A road). So we walked for ages into a mountainous wood to try to avoid the D road before we hit the fire patch and acknowledged we were lost. We eventually ended up limping in from the other side of Arudy on the same road, hours later.

Still it was beautiful. But I have a small blister now in the back of my left heel. I was hoping that would take a bit longer to develop one of those. Damn my babysoft feet. I’ve smothered it with compeed. Let’s see how that develops.
Dinner is with Pierre, the Curé of Arudy. He collects pilgrims. There’s a visitor’s book and a map of the world with pins. He feeds us dinner and tells long stories about cats and God, and other pilgrims. I loosely follow it but at 8pm I need to get some alone time, and time away from constant translation and difficult communication. Marie is great because she demands nothing socially. We just walk, and talk only when we feel like it. Pierre is less patient. “It’s like the story of the duck,” he says to me at one point, hard eyed, soliciting response. “You know?” I shrug. “Perhaps” I say gesturing for him to continue. He looks pissed off and starts quacking and repeating the word “canard!”. Eventually he just outs with “duck”. It’s the only English word he utters. To translate something I understood anyway. I’m tired.
We do the dishes together and now I’m up here, in this ancient bedroom full of empty beds, in my sleeping bag because if there are no bedbugs here I’ll eat my hat. It’s nice being in the off season. We both have our own dormitory. But it also means the little buggers will be hungry tonight. But it’s only 6 euro. We are going to give him 10.

Jean Paul and his wife run the Jacquaire Information Centre in Lourdes. They are located slap bang in the middle of tourist central. Lourdes is a Mecca (pardon my french) of religious tourism. Shop after shop sells bottles for you to fill with holy water, devotional tat, candles, incense, rosaries. The Info Centre has wide open doors and Jean Paul is full of energy and positivity. He gives me my credencial, and it seems I’m the 663rd pilgrim to start here this year. Three away from a much more appropriate number. The credencial is like a passport for pilgrims allowing us to sleep in various priories etc along the way, run by the faithful.

I walk to the basilica and the grotto in Lourdes to fill up on holy water, and I immediately give myself a fat lip removing my pack, butting my mouth into the top of my walking pole. Newbie error. First injury. Minor. My lip is bleeding. I fill my flask with holy water and drink some to swill my mouth. That’ll fix it. Gets all the holiness right into my blood stream. Holier than thou I finally hit the road. The first Saint statue I pass is Margaret of Scotland. Dad would be proud. Off I go. To my right the river. Behind and to my right a soaring amplified male voice singing in Latin. Beautiful.

There are a couple of reasons why I’m glad I started in France. First it’s not at all crowded on the trail so I get a lot of alone time. Second I can speak French acceptably. I’m shit in Spanish. I’m learning this pilgrimming as i go along, and I have made the schoolboy error of not packing a lunch today. I’ve got nothing at all to consume except for holy water. Coming from London I expect a shop on every corner. Where’s Ryanair to sell me that Kinder Bueno now? There are no shops here, or they’re closed for Sunday if there are any.

By lunchtime I’m starving. I’ve filled my pockets with chestnuts and I can make fire so I won’t actually starve. But I’d sooner find a more elegant solution as making fire will waste time I don’t really have.

I end up in in Rieulhes, a tiny village West of Lourdes. Blessing my French I talk to two women who are thrilled to find a hungry pilgrim. We are sufficiently rare here, it seems. I am brought into a drinks evening for St Michel, the patron saint of the village. It was his day yesterday. I’m offered beer but I really don’t want it. A teenage girl is despatched to make me a ham sandwich. She adds an apple and a nectarine. I take them with huge haltingly expressed gratitude and make my way to a brook where i crash out and eat them watching the water.

The course of the day has taken me through French countryside, rolling hills, pastures and – for a short while – deep  a wood. I get lost in it on purpose looking for mushrooms and then lost confidence. I run into two German pilgrims heading to Lourdes. They were in Santiago a week ago but took a train. There’s a lot of that going on.

As evening falls though, my energy begins to fail despite the sandwich. I start to crave a recharge and a rest. I eventually make it to Asson as the sun starts to fade, and I’m limping again with tiredness and foot pain. Seeing the sign for Asson is like finding the holy grail.

Shot with adrenaline I work up one last hill and get to the auberge. It’s a priory backing onto a church and it’s completely dark and closed. And Madame Loupy is not answering her phone. To me or any of the locals I find.

At least it gives me time to write. But after two hours gradually getting stiffer in the cold I resign myself. This is miserable. It’s half eight and dark. My body hurts. Thankfully there’s a little place that’s open for food. But I’m gonna be sleeping outdoors on my first night it seems. Shape of things to come? I hope not.

I made a little nest in the doorway of this Catholic priory and disconsolately chanted Daimoku. Literally just as I finished I heard a shutter overhead. I hobbled out of the porch on my hurting feet to explain the situation, once again praising my French teachers despite the fact they were mostly assholes.

There’s a bunk in her room. She only needs half of it. She rang ahead, in the morning. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Not just show up half dissolved in the evening.

I didn’t know this, plus didn’t know if I’d make it this far, plus I wanted to avoid using my phone to ring local numbers as it’ll cost the earth. She is totally cool about me bunking up with her. I drag my bag up her stairs, sit on the floor in her shower, talk with her a little about feet, get shown her missing toenails with the rest optimistically painted red – “I pulled that one out.” – and significantly improve my vocabulary.  Then I pass out after giving myself a foot massage. I’ve gone the whole day without speaking a word of English.

Miles: 21

Total Pilgrim Count: 3

In front of me at security coming off the plane in Lourdes, a young Australian woman starts talking about Camino. Her name is Matilda. She’s full of beans. She plans on doing it in stages over time. Walk, fly back to London, do some work, fly to where she left off, carry on until finally she gets to Santiago. Auspicious that she’s there in front of me. She’s getting the train to St Jean before she starts though. It’ll take me more than a week to get there on foot by the look of things.

We say goodbye and I go to the baggage reclaim. My rucksack has made it. But it’s wet. I open it. The order of things has changed. It’s been inspected. And someone has taken the stopper off my deceased mum’s sixty year old holy water to check it’s not a bomb. I’m walking the water out to Santiago – what’s left of it. They haven’t put the cork back properly. There is still some water in the flask, but the bulk of it is now soaked into my clothing. A little impromptu blessing for the trail gear, perhaps. I take that as a lesson that nothing is sacred, and I head into town. They don’t sell flasks like this tin one now. It’s all plastic. I don’t buy one. Leaky tin flask is just a little extra difficulty.

In 1858 – not so long ago really – a young woman called Bernadette Soubirous followed that great French canonical tradition of hearing voices. Unlike Joan of Arc, she wasn’t told how to beat the English. She was directed by The Holy Virgin Mary herself to a spring of water. Holy water that heals the sick. It was immediately scientifically analysed and found to contain nothing out of the ordinary. But it still has a great reputation for healing. Science be damned. Faith can move mountains, or at the very least it can change your attitude to them. I fill my drinking flask with the stuff. Then I go for a stroll.

Up the hill nearby, big gold Romans persecute Jesus in an elaborate series of stations of the cross. Groups of devotees follow monks bearing crosses, and are devotional in Latin at each stop. I’ve realised I don’t know the call and response here so I just go “mumphy mumphy mumphy” and cross myself like my mother taught me. She’s with me, her big flask, mercifully a bit lighter for the spillage but still a heavy burden. I light some expensive candles for her, for my uncle Peter and for my grandpa – all Catholics. Then, with all the holy water swimming in my veins I make a somewhat rash decision. I’m gonna keep walking until I hit fifteen miles. Even though I’m sleeping here in Lourdes. In a circle. Pointlessly. Let’s find out how this is going to be, I think.

It’s going to be HARD guys. I’m lying on my back in the Airbnb and my feet hate me. I booked a luxury stay for the first night and I’m glad of it. Hot bath. Rubbed sudocrem into my tootsies. I’m gonna find out a lot about my feet in the next month. And my shoulders. I might actually HAVE some shoulders when I’m finished here. But the little things I have today ache. After just one day I’m feeling it. I warmed down nicely but I didn’t warm up. I feel a daily routine coming on if I’m going to minimise damage to myself. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover…

Break it up into stages though and it seems smaller. Tomorrow I’ll walk to Asson. A little bit north and a long way west. About 14 miles but I’ve got the whole day. And I’ll remember to bring lunch so I don’t get to Asson starving and unwilling to walk anywhere further for food. That cost me two taxi fares this evening, to find a cheap bowl of pasta and a glass of table wine. You live and learn.

Before I leave though I’ll unpack my whole bag and seriously establish if there’s anything I can dump from my packing. Bits of packaging. Unnecessary clothing like that smart shirt  Anything. I need to lose as much weight as I can without losing practicality.

There is nothing so absurd as the queue for an aeroplane. There are no seats at the gate so I end up standing in it too like a beast for the slaughter. Normally I sit and watch until they’ve all packed in, and then saunter up to the front alongside a few other like minded individuals and fall into the plane.

Some suckers have paid for priority boarding and they’re cramming in early. We can see them through the window, flaunting their idiocy. All of us have allocated seats these days on Ryanair, to make it easier for them to match our corpses with our dental records. It’s not the Black Friday free-for-all it used to be. When you board is completely irrelevant so long as you get on the plane. But still, people are anxious. The women in front of me are deep in intense conversation. They’ve left a gap in the queue in front of them, where exceptionally excited cattle have started to sandwich themselves against the closed barrier and kettle one other. I’m in no rush so I just wait for them to notice. The woman behind me though – she’s immediately anxious. Nature abhors a vacuum. She sees an empty space and despite the fact the barrier is shut she wants to go in it. She can’t understand why I’m not moving and seeks to solve it by tutting and huffing. I ask her if she wants to go in front of me and she immediately does so, frog mouthed, and then stands there for five minutes with me looking at the back of her neck. Eventually she turns round and says to me “I could see people boarding the plane through the window,” by way of explanation. “We’ll all get on eventually.” I reply. “Or at least I hope we do.” She ignores my attempt at a joke. I might be a lunatic. It was just politeness anyway, but she’s done enough by acknowledging, with her comment, that she’s a dick. She can go back to pursing her lips until we have boarded.

And we do board eventually. We all get shoved into this streamlined flying can and we sit in our allocated seats pretending to be separate entities and flying through the air at speeds they used to think would liquify our brains. 520mph. To France, Ho!

By all accounts the head honcho at Ryanair is a poisonous little shit but for my purposes at least he’s a Catholic. £18 single to Lourdes cannot be overlooked. We are about to hurl ourselves south in this impossible contraption. The captain tells us it’s “good flying conditions.” It’s definitely a beautiful day.

And we’re off. Just over an hour in the air so they have to start selling stuff quickly. They’re immediately on the microphone pretending they want us to enjoy our flight and perhaps we’ll enjoy it more if we buy hot drinks or tax free addictives. We’ve already had to walk the undignified duty free temptation slalom through row after row of polished packages attended by bored underpaid women who have been told by the manager to stand there and look welcoming. We all have a feeling that the tax is different and therefore somehow we have to buy things. We are now stuck in this tin can trying not to spend the money they desperately want. We’re a captive audience. I guess that’s how they make up for the excellent ticket price. I’m fine thanks. I’ve eaten. I’ll just sit and write and have coffee when we land in France. The passenger on my right though – they spend €4.50 on a cup of tea and a Kinder Bueno. They manage to resist the temptation of a scratchcard despite the attendant saying “You could win a million dollars” just like they rehearsed on that desperately boring training day. And no sooner have they peddled scratchcards but one of the poor buggers has to walk down the aisle with an open duty free catalogue. “Summer Deals” it trumpets, and I can only thank God it doesn’t say “Christmas” yet. That’s next week.

Late night Al. You absolute bastard.

Knowing that this goes out at 6am, and knowing my inability to get up early, the late night version of me set the early morning version a challenge in order to make damn certain I wouldn’t miss this coach. I didn’t write my blog last night, knowing I’d have to do it now. But I didn’t think it through, as the coach leaves at 6am on the dot – publish time.

Now I’m on the coach. We’re headed off to Stansted, almost. Right now though I’m waiting for the driver to get over himself. I’ll call him Plopsy. He’s very alpha male, is Plopsy. He keeps stopping people from getting on his coach. He’s doing lots of loud articulate explaining to lots of upset people. He won’t accept a screenshot of the email. He’ll only accept the actual email. He has lots of stops. If he accepts these people what happens if the bus fills? It hasn’t affected me other than that I’ve watched him delay departure in order to satisfy his OCD. When I show him my valid email I casually ask “Does this bus usually fill up?” “No sir,” he says and I raise my eyebrows and gesture to my right where there are lots of upset tourists with no data. “I’m happy to buy another ticket, I just need to get on this coach.” one of them says, using his reasoning with a madman voice. Plopsy isn’t listening because Plopsy doesn’t care. If you want a new ticket you have to go to the booth. The bus is due to depart. Anyone buying a new ticket will have to wait for the next bus. Ahh London, London. “Visit London – We even fuck you when you try to leave.” I immediately and completely dislike this human being. He’s making people’s life a misery, for the rules, but he throws my bag in the back like he actively doesn’t give a fuck about anything but himself. “That guy’s a problem, right?” I say to the first people I meet eyes with as I board the coach. They both nod wryly. It’s not just me.

Now he’s walking up the aisle, this little dictator, checking everyone’s bags, telling them where to put them and insisting they put their seatbelts on. I’m the last. When he comes to me I smile with my belt on and my bag stowed. I’m still the naughty kid at the back. “You’ve already made us late, mate. This is making us later.” I say, sunny-smiling. His hesitation is momentary. He doesn’t engage. Good. He’s got driving to do.

And we’re off, Plopsy and I, before the dawn properly breaks, hammering this almost empty coach into sleepy London. Me and my little weird rucksack of things, alongside some relieved tourists who are getting out of this hellhole too.

I have packed very little. The basics. There’ll be things I regret not having, and maybe things I regret taking. I might jettison stuff like spare trousers once I’ve worked out the shape of it. Mum’s holy water is the heaviest and unwieldiest thing I’ve got. I’d love to dedicate it to the Virgin in Lourdes somehow and just get rid of the fucking thing, but I suspect that’s not how I’ll let it work. I’m walking that flask all the way to Spain no matter what I want. It’s not about easy.

My boots are springy and squeaky. Most of my stuff is brand new. Some things still have a label attached. When I hit the road I’ll be shiny and bright eyed. In a month I’ll be dusty and tired, minimal and hopefully a little wiser. Meanwhile, behind me, this dogshit human being will still be driving the National Express to Stansted. The unfortunate people with no data did get on in the end thankfully. Someone else who outranks came along in a red jacket and pantomimed for him. Go Go Plopsy. I’m glad to be leaving this town and your like for a while you unbelievable hidebound prat.

I’m fortunate to live by Battersea Park.

It’s great. There are fountains that they switch on rather than ignore. There are unusual distractions that were built in Victorian times and are loosely looked after. There’s a tropical garden, a Buddhist pagoda on a peace mile, and various little hidden bits all over the place. It’s a good place to spend a few hours and that’s what I did today. I wanted to walk in my new boots but I also didn’t want to stray too far from home. Lucy my lodger is showing up around 4pm tomorrow and I can’t let her walk into post party pre packing bachelor pad. I’d like her to immediately know that she’ll be at home in my flat.

I had a plumber round in the morning to fix the boiler. It’s that time of year again. I don’t want central heating but the heating dial didn’t work and you can guarantee that there’ll be a cold snap as soon as I leave someone else in my room. Now it’s all fixed. It’s almost time for me to jettison all of this domestic shit and get on the road.

I’ve been trying to work out to what extent I’m going to be an aesthete. I’m bringing no books, as I want to write plus they weigh a ton. I’m bringing no music as I want to listen. I’m not going to ban use of my phone, especially as it’s my writing tool of choice now. I’ll limit games mostly on it though. Don’t want to be sitting in a place I’ll never see again killing aliens I could kill at Green Park Underground. I’m walking through some of the best wine regions in the world, so I’ll limit myself to one (large) glass a day. I think the most unusual thing I’ll be imposing on myself from my perspective is a regular sleeping and waking pattern, a necessity to wash my socks and pants at least once every three days, and walking regular hours. I want to strike out in the morning at 8 come rain or shine. And I’ll be on a strict budget. The money I get for renting my room- that’ll be my trail money. So I’ll need to get smart with food, sleep in all the bedbug alberges from hell and I’ll probably lose a load of weight by mistake which is no bad thing because I’m comparatively Hulk right now and I expect my blessed agent will be glad to see me a little lither. She is patiently observing this behaviour with the beatific “It’ll make you a better actor in the long run.” I fucking love them, and I honestly never thought I’d be able to say that about my agent. It’s not about the quality of the jobs I’ve landed since I’ve been with them, it’s about the extent to which I know they understand me. It’s second to none.

So a little walk in the park. Five miles on the Fitbit. I’m in for a shock…

I’m lying on the sofa with Brian and Mel. Tristan and I just cooked a half arsed roast chicken with some of the trimmings. We are talking about Santa Claus. It’s times like these that I take stock. Things are pretty damn good in my life.

Some of my friends clubbed together to get me boots that won’t eat my feet. The internet boots that I was trying to persuade myself were okay, they were super sweaty. I was worried sick about them over 600 miles. Now I’ve been bought boots that you can’t fuck with. Tomorrow I’ll try and strike out somewhere in them for a tester. But I reckon they won’t sweatily erode my toes. Even on a short wear, I’m sold. I’m just going to have to get very good at laundry on the road as I’m deliberately only bringing three pairs of socks

How do I write 500 words about today? I’ve done very little of consequence. This week, I’ve deliberately kept out of all of my dayjobs. I’ve earmarked the time for preparation. I got those boots thanks to my ridiculously generous friends. And also a fleecy top and a walking pole. And I went on Amazon and bought some nappy pins, a clothes line and a sink stopper. But you can get endlessly sucked in by the internet about stuff you need. For me, the key is to bring as little as I can get away with. If the internet is to be believed, everyone will steal all my things immediately, I’ll be drained of all my fluid by bed bugs, snoring people will destroy all my sleep and the path will deliberately break my ankle when I’m trying to evade the blister monster. Bollocks. It’s Daily Mail style sensationalism. I hope and trust.

Honestly. It’s not that far, surely? All this concern about distance and bedbugs and all that… It smells of nothing. I’m walking a bit. That’s all. Walking. Literally the least I could do. I might end up eating my words here, but I get the sense that the majority of people worrying about this shit are basically just batteries with legs.

I use my body as a matter of course. It’s my job. My body is still weird and a bit broken but I understand it. The people who are worried about all these little tiny bullshit details of movement… It’s maybe because they’ve been slotted into their socket for so long they’ve just become habitual batteries powering someone else’s bank. Unmoving passive little lumps generating power until they’re spent.

I’ll try and make sure I’m never walking for reasons I don’t get. It’s the very least I can do. I’ll walk knowingly and I really hope I don’t validate all the internet horror I’ve been reading, about blisters that want to eat your children and potholes that have deliberately dug themselves in order to trap unwary hikers and break their shitty pilgrim ankles.

Meantime tonight it’s lovely to lie here while people I care about dream all sorts of bonkers stuff and make it into reality. This is what keeps me alive in this city. These people, and their ilk. “Look like you did something filthy and you’re not sure how you feel about it.”

“I did some work here once,” I tell Ethan. “It was weird. People had to steal a briefcase from me. They weren’t even sure they had the right person. But they did it anyway because they had group consensus and they could frame it as a game. Then I spoke to them about how their transgressive action was arguably no different to the actions taken by people who crash the economy in that building just over there.” I point to the London Stock Exchange. “I ended up in the Evening Standard.”

Ethan thinks for a while before he responds. “CAR,” he posits in response. He’s two. He hasn’t quite sorted out differential vehicular recognition and his conversational engagement is even worse than mine. “Well, Ethan, it’s not so much a car as a cement mixer. I used to call them cemiximentors though. But I don’t want to confuse you so we should go with truck?” “CAR!” he insists.  The lights are changing. Fuck it. Car will do. One day he’ll be capable of beating the crap out of me. The cemiximentor drives off but Ethan has a new thesis that he wants to share with me. “PLANE!” he suggests, pointing to what is, indeed, a very plane. We revel in delight at this marvel of engineering as it crosses our field of vision. His grandpa was a pilot after all. We admire this triumph of man over nature and grandma comes back from the loo.

I’ve been sitting. I’m not sure if I’m babysitting or mothersitting. I’m sort of doing both, while sitting myself as well. He wants cars and planes. She wants wine. I can strike a balance here. But oh hell I’m hungover. Maybe they’re actually sitting me?! Three equally incompetent human beings, three generations, combining forces like some sort of godawful Power Rangers spin off. “I’ll have the Cote du Rhone.”

I was supposed to be there at 12, but that was when I woke up. Last night went big, you see. I threw myself into the nearest clothes to my bed and then into an Uber when I noticed the time. Waking to front door slam more or less exactly 3 minutes. Michael the driver and I made it as far as Green Park, ever northerning in the quest to avoid traffic, before we both gave it up as a bad idea and I ran onto the tube instead to hustle to St Paul’s underground that way.

The conversation goes elsewhere as Ethan has had enough of my blithering. He falls asleep in some form of protest after no aeroplanes fly over for at least 5 minutes. His grandmother and I talk about healthcare and childcare in France, pilgrims and families and all sorts. I’m quite sad to see her go when my mate returns from his meeting. But I’m glad I’ve been able to help in some way and it’s got me out of a bed I might have just languished in all day after last night’s revelry.

My poor mother divested herself of this particular fleshburden on this day, far too many years ago, in the sleepy Bailiwick of Jersey. I gradually expanded from being a good meal for one to being a veritable feast, free range, for a whole happy Christmas family. But in my adulthood I contaminated myself with all sorts of vicious chemicals and seditious opinions so now you wouldn’t like the taste of me at all. So, useless for the table, I have existed, tolerated by society, ever since – harmlessly perpetrating sedition through a blog that merely shouts to an echo chamber. And today is that special day when Facebook prompts everyone to wish a happy clickday, and it’s a Monday for once. Monday is the actor’s day off. We play when you work and we work when you play. So I’ve been rolling into lovely food and already having too much alcohol despite the sun being very present in the sky.

So I thought I’d make words now. Because words later will be largely unconnected from meaning. Not that I’m particularly connected already.

So. Hello. You mad fool. You’ve got this far. What were you expecting? Keep reading to the end. You’ll never believe what happens in the last sentence. And so on.

What happened today then? I was picked up by Tristan and Tanya and they took me to Maze Grill and fed me a tomahawk steak and lots of wine before 3pm. Now I’m back at home with a bag full of prosecco and reasonable red wines and God knows what else. l suspect that some of the people who work normal hours will start to appear in my flat soon but in the interests of sanity I’m only mentioning to people if I hear from them that I’m having friends round. I’d just as soon play computer games in my pants.

People have started giving me presents though. This is great. It’s like being a fatter less self absorbed version of teenage me. But rather than cake I’m getting socks, maps of Portugal, blister plasters and sunscreen. Apparently a conglomerate of people have offered to improve my boots, which is amazing because I was going to go with my £30 internet boots, which leave my feet soaking wet after 8 hours of normal use in London. I would’ve just pushed on past dissolving feet, as is my habit. But to have feet that work in boots I don’t hate – that’s going to be a luxury that means my walk will be about more than managing discomfort. Until my teeth fall apart or something equally shit but unexpected.

I’m giving the last fifty words of my blog to a random guest because I’m already too drunk to be any help to you. This is the bit you had to read till the end for: Hello, the aforementioned Tristan here. Now. The Barclay. Hasn’t he done well. 29 again and looking ever better. Full set of gnashers, spanking three piece, (I like to think I inspired in him the love of that all weather armour), admirable hair considering he keeps on selling strands of it to gullible farmer’s sons as “magic threads” , (you can’t move for illicitly procured cattle in his flat). He’s yomping across the Pyrenees soon into Spain and possibly Portugal as he does have a map. I’m exceptionally pleased for him and I want to take this opportunity to say that I love him and I know you do too. Let’s all wish him the happiest of birthdays and send him fulsome fervent well wishes for his pilgrimage.