Pilgrim of Grace: Ireland

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(Aside 1)

A packet of biscuits later I am into a usual routine. Sure I'll sleep very well after a Stowford Press or two or three. The skies above Wetherby High School are Gun-boat gray and this torrent has persisted since I arrived on the 561 around noon. Doves pictured against the hull of this masterpiece follow the breaks above the Wharfe and bridge. Two very drunk persons argue and then proceed out of the Swan and Talbot wavering down North Street driving forgetful of their state. Why should I worry? And so i drift to The Muse for a pint of Daleside Bobek Export a few years since that showed its head in these parts...
 
 

If I had an air gun or something stronger I would shoot the mindless old fools rattling on about 'they' 'them' having your details and using it to tempt you with PPI claims etc...

(Aside 2)
For a few days my finger has been poised but I've hung off writing, but my grief yesterday prompts me to speak of a tragedy I knew would happen eventually yet was UN-ready to accept at all, ever.
 
 

The death of Dan Laythope was such a shock that I barely believe I would cry like that over someone not family, and rarely seen enough, but an erstwhile character, confident and friend.
 
 

Yesterday I tried hard not to let this shadow push me head on into drunken bewailing or bleeding eyed fury. What a cruel hand fate is. As I surely dreamt Dan died while in Holland, but never registered it at all as it was only a dream (and really dreams mean nothing right); Dan still laid dead for weeks being reduced to an atomic state in a summer quite unlike another; oh shame of it and how annoyed he would've been too!
 
 

Every time I returned to North Bar I made sure I asked after him or said a hurried hello or goodbye while I whisked away from Leeds in my ever evolving remunerate need.
 
 

In the long past and change of seasons, years and decades, at least, while North Bar became another institution quite unlike the original institution(and is a much more successful business leader) Dan, Dortmunder Dan, mackem, teacher, clerk of court, dwp mail-man, dad, champion of the underdog and voice of reason, in a limply squemish and damnable world, vanished, and what can we all do but thank him for merging his energetic states, keeping our complacency out of relations in NorthBar and keeping our metaphysicals warm.
 
 

The last time I saw Dan he was literally collapsed on the toilet floor, speechlessly drunk as I helped him up the stairs (which wasn't an unusal thing), but I wondered, as I often had, if he was reeling from another of his lonely griefs and misfortunes; but he would never confide.
 
 

Whatever the cause of his death this man dealt with me and others truthfully, honestly and embraced passionately the cities and towns he was fond to visit; whether Barcelona, Berlin, Sofia, Paris or Prague, and we were all stung by his hyperbolic witty prose, but also accepted his naturally spiky, tearing, clasping fury from time to time.
 
 

God! Dan will never be sat at on a bench at the bar moaning at the speed in which the bar stools are removed in the early evening or how soon the lights are dimmed to gas light flickers or how much Skin-flint/Glue-pockets put up their prices. He will never be there to prove positive not all people propping up the bar are mindless wankers. Life will go on, but there will always be a space in our hearts for such an urban legend.
 
 

The king is dead: long live the king! There is a stool forever vacant and a light dimmed forever...

(Aside 3)
Have I developed a little writers block or is it me becoming an overnight alcoholic again? Since returning from Germany on Sunday/Monday coffee, dog walking, breakfast and mid afternoon boozing is all I can account for. Dan's unfortunate death reminds me alcohol solves none of anyone's problems but might create a legacy we're unable to see until it is far too late, and our bodies fail us with the heavy pressure we're always putting it under; yesterday I got pissed in Wetherby, returned with a kebab(for the second night running) and ate some ice cream before bed which meant I slept fitfully until nine am then disappeared for another coffee at Filmore & Union. Something clicked and reminded me this is not the new me, but some creeping in of the disappearing ego so I must deal with this devil before I leave for Ireland in the wrong mindset. Returning to further research the routes I could possibly take walking the west coast the weather has turned windy from the west after Friday's deluge. Perhaps a more temperate August can revitalise me again prior to taking up employment on the second September to repay some of the debt the 3 months of travelling will have created. Saturday will be a healthy day instead, and I will be unable to meet Jim in Leeds to keep my sanity safe from sinister sneering alcohol's door, I returned with banana, apple, orange, carrot, ginger, cucumber, and added a yoghurt, to create a satisfying smoothie to add to my penultimate Floxetine and I must accept the withdrawal symptoms of sudden alcohol dependence this week (including Cologne) and can not leave for Ireland intent on Guinness and all things black and creamy. Meeting Dan (another) and Peter last night might have reminded me why I had left on this trip in the first place: their needs are really not my needs, nice guys though they are, we really haven't too much in common. Dan Laythorpe's unfortunate death reminds me I only have one purpose in life currently - to pass through it, absorb it and write it. So where to from Dublin? North West to Sligo seems a logical route as I can join the Western Way through Ballina, meet some of Glenn's family and continue towards Galway. A job is in the bag from September second, well nearly as I had an interview and now have to wait for business to pick up a little, I will disappear and learn again.

Dumb aren't I? The aches of alcoholism in my hands and feet are all I have to show for a wreckless few nights. It's the gripes and shits that my body is going through that thrusts alcohol to the front of my mind. The only solution to my current dementia is more beer but that's just an illusion. Today is another day and I am going to walk off of some my illusionary guilt.
 
 

Those Berghaus walking trainers went back as the insoles disintegrated in three weeks so I might have to survive a while on my ancient Merrells from 2001. Never worn for walking really, entirely leisure in my previous obese incarnation. Mum returned to forcefully remind me of my bankruptcy in 2007: fifth time this week. Maybe she wonders why I leave the room as soon as she comes in?
 
 

Currently walking route 66 without the hound. Makes a nice change. Just testing the shoes to see if they're up to Ireland. All very banal stuff, but I managed to tracked down Dan's daughter, Laura, online just so I could send my condolence and found a fantastic still of Dan from Twelfth Night, in his fundamental element, from a couple of years ago; we'll never forget you.

Yesterday I am relieved it is gone. Battle over battle won. No alcohol was a tough confrontation. But I was early to bed and managed to switch off around ten. Time to let the melancholy since Thursday drift away on the sea as another light shines taking me upon the current towards the home of ancient Celtic Christianity.
 
 

The origins of monastic life began with Saint Anthony, who was from a very privileged and wealthy family, by the time he reached 34 he'd decided the life he lived wasn't working for him and he sought a simpler diviner life away from the madding crowd in the desert: easier to do when you're rich, connected, dependable. The call of monastic existence always appeals to me when I am slowly oblate by the maddened crowd. They must come to F&U like bears to a salmon sporning. Gone is a relaxing chilled steady Sunday; across the road the Catholics play, sign, sigh, prey and hallucinate their God is present in the slim piece of wafer. Where is this comet, asteroid, plague or alien invasion; smite me first!
 
 

The coffee here is well flavoured and beautifully created(two barista(another vain term) are brilliant), but the physical vanity is stupendously unnecessary; white shirt and anonymously young girls used to increase footfall . Why is an everyday thing in Italy, France, Spain, etc so appallingly unreal in England; I've said it before I know? Costa is owned by corporate monoliths who destroyed the pub trade and now destroy coffee so you can't go there. Or you have Morrison's, Ask, Saint Angelos, North Street Deli, the petrol stations or mother's TV breaking the dawn silence everyday. What is it with Wetherby? The one greasy spoon is too cavernous and uniquely prole. F&U care about their coffee, but also know nothing about relaxing. North Street has a relaxed atmosphere but the coffee sucks(sorry guys). So fake off; is Wetherby melting(special).
 
 

The subtle breeze blows away the sun for now and allows us to breath free of difficult sweats. It was time to write and thank the Friary of s'Hertogenbosch for their hospitality, during my passing through Den Bosch on that long hot summer's day, and then depart from Wetherby on the quarter to four bus. Hopefully I will see Lucy, late of Leeds now back home in Dublin, Monday and perhaps shed a tear for Dan; he introduced us.
 
 

(Ireland)
My last hour of Wetherby is interrupted by an alarm. Long and loud and annoying and pointless. Aren't those incessant drones some of the worse sounds we created? Chicken and Yorkshire puddings I didn't taste but am grateful there is sustainance for this long tedious journey.
 
 

The bus trundled towards Deighton Bar; frequently late once at 1545. Time for a quick one in North? Time was I would arrive in Leeds lusty. Now I feel theatened by it. Not scared of it but somewhat concerned I prefer never to hear another swearingly cheap chav, queen, dike, Asian, mother, father, teen, grandma, thief, beggar; going to Seacroft or Swinnow you must be able to construct a sentence of a few words mostly fucking/cunt tossers.
 
 

On the ferry, technically Monday, but until I leave Britain I'm still not in Ireland. Britain Sunday, Monday Ireland. Filling slowly. Managed to locate a space prior to the hordes descending; so what if I get looks because comfy sofa I have. Don't think I can hog the window seats here. There isn't any: just seats or curvy crimson faux leather sofas. Those with cabins please don't tramp forever passed my place of sleep. However a bow legged git with segs in his shiny silver shoes clomped back and forth most of the night until in one of my sweat drenched awakenings I glowered at him with such furious eyes.

Fly buzzes around me while Coldplay plays on repeat in Spar on Dame Street and Great George. Two espresso, porridge, orange, apple juice and a tired half arsed conversation with a girl from Hamilton NZ on the same damned overnight Irish ferry. Dublin is on strike, bank holiday and half a marathon. All staff this morning are again the underclass of the service sector. Passing commatosed drunks and beggars in several door ways and bags of garbage on ever street corner I feel right at home.
 
 

The best time to be a tourist is before nine. Saint Kevin's church locked, Saint Patrick's cathedral locked, Christ Church cathedral locked, Dublin Castle locked. Back to Spar for more coffee. Banana and wait for the time to turn. To wander through Trinity College is truly wonderful if one can forget the columns of Americans, Italians, Spanish and Germans (might even have heard a few Dutch too) waiting the Book of Kell. My teeth are rank and unclean, my body likewise is a sweating husk and my mind is struggling.
 
 

Monday blues in Dublin. Bank holiday and bad news. Good news and bad news. Persons being selfish, thoughtless and childish. But where did I leave my Rain Jacket? This question I cannot answer for I am unsure if I left it in our coach, break near Warrington, on the ferry or once in Dublin? Not that it was expensive, however I am in Ireland and rain might be on the agenda the next few days?
 
 

Something has made me feel pretty rough today and I am not sure if I've eaten something bad, I am really tired or a combination of both: dehydrated, yellow bile, shakes and the squits. There are a long list of food stuffs that I've consumed since I left Wetherby and arrived at Lucy's but none of them were obviously bad, but that chicken at Moto services seems the only thing that may be responsible as I think this must've been laying there for ages and it didn't taste too good.

Feeling frail had to leave the comfortable bed and close toliet and venture to Connolly Station and the bus station to see which is cheapest to Wexford and there is only a fiver in it. For personal comfort today I might go nowhere, but look into the paddywagon? Paddy Palace has all the hallmarks of a bad hostel - vacant and unhelpful staff, opiated guests and tired decor. Not for me! Feeling utterly rubbish I find another Hostel - Jacob's Inn and wait for a room to be prepared while the nausea and shits persist. Last time I was so ill was with agrophobic card playing Dutch girl at Reef O's in Airlie Beach in 1999.
 
 

Had to search out some food no matter how bad I feel so I return to The Porterhouse in Temple Bar. Trying a Plain Porter too; but I'm just not feeling the black stuff with this appalling darkness ruminating about my body. A burger and I break out in clammy cool sweats. Luckily I can return to an afternoon bed and shake off this malady? Feeling very apologetic I finish a little of the food, hardly any beer and feel woeful. Helpful barman suggests an apple, chill, but return at 9:45 pm for a great three piece band.
 
 

Those full of cracked heads, terrible anger and outright fear come to Europe from a North America. Chill out guys. Canadian guy returns to 202 (I am in bed 2 - all the 2's) finds his bed taken and his eyes flame red, yet there was nothing in the room suggesting 202/6 was occupied - tidy freshly made beds all. Assigning beds always causes grief, a bed is a bed when you have need and time should be the divider of beds not the hostel: first come. Anyway he sold me a charger for 3 euros so not all bad and my body feels a little better now. Now tense caste Indians gather on the sofa next to me and my passing illness returns. If anything teaches you the Tories and aristocratic aspirants of England have no heart or time for you and I is the hideous pointless deaths of millions in the Irish Famine; how could this woe ever have happened to any section of the United Kingdom? The modern world shakes with it's own doom.
 
 

Left Jacob's Inn to chance my receding pains, aloe vera drink and drift through what craic is forming in Temple Bar. A few minor stomach cramps sending me reeling to a pintxo and tapas bar for vino blanco and tortilla : The Port House Pintxo. Drunken Irishmen sleeping in doorways at this time remind me it is a trouble vocation of our Celtic cousins and my pain returns ten fold.

Another morning and another morning of crowds checking out, eating breakfast, showering, discussing, shouting, surfing, feeling and I must get into the Emerald soul today? A reason for me being crook is for me to get a sense of Georgian Dublin and become tranquil again. Saint Stephen's Green and I am walking through Joyce's Dublin in reincarnation; I am crossing Stephen's, that is, my green... How many persons have read Ulysses? I've read the Odyssey. Many a gull screams in sheer delight at my passage towards the Grand Canal. I am followed about my romantic journey by Herring Gull's on the coast, Cuckoo's in the Aubrac and Swallow's in 2013's heatwave. The canal is not that grand any more chocked in weeds beyond LaTouche Bridge 1791. Crossed a busy street for a Brazilian Cafe that doesn't sell Acai Porridge...Bugger that for a Brazilian idea of a non cafe. But a little further down the road lies a wall and keogh which does Maté and Bomba. Macha loaf with another Heroin induced Latino on the counter feeling the place but not the level of dismissal enthrust by low level slaves all over Dublin; why are they so glass-eyed lidless faced Zombies? This Latino is from Paris so this zeed eyed junkie lives up to the nihilism of the Parisseines.
 
 

The George Bernard Shaw. Italian/Irish twist. Time for soup: Broccoli, Leek and Potato and panino bread: focaccia Italian ham, tomato, mozzarella. Very BoHo on Richmond Street, South. What my body needs is scrumptious food while I digest a slice of Dubliners (A painful case). Go along the road to try another black product of heritage and bespoke pleasures. Chocolate Milk Stout, Chicago Blues and an untrue blind man who read a deal two beers for the price of two beers but asked for that there deal: wobbling Dubliner in Against the Grain. Admitted the barman Dublin is full of fake and fakers on some kind of trip/game. Why are there chuggers on Whizz in Dublin. All the previous fun at Against the Grain is dissolved with a tourist hungry Temple Bar and why is Oasis being klept from a dirty bell tower in central sensible Templebarhumbug. Shite. Gives Dublin a negative name. And I think I was hoping for less toxic Dubliners. My advice miss out the city slickers and the dumkoff tourist areas and the low level Lifewater and you might find Dublin. Like a pincer walk around the south west to the west from the north and pull your arse bare and clap a fart to part this gaelic cloud and blow it turdy brownie yellowing into the Liffey.
 
 

Oh shame I left my charger, thoughtlessly, in South Dublin. Heartlessly this madness takes you through beserker Temple Bar when you least expect, or need, it and I must arrive back there a little breathless for a pale ale. That surely is desolation, destruction or distraction row; how so much are glued between the slim veneer and the vile slime is the answer I seek but fortune seems to forsake and answers woe!
 
 

The conflicting violent disorder of a rabble alongside the Spire, shaft, shard or sign from heaven and a man laid prone on the deck at the cross roads, where a Nelson's column, and many Irish sailors, were reduced to rubble in assured violence of another decade, while Christian soup workers look above for redemption or a bolt in the blue to reduce this role for naught to nowt and I returned to another fragmented and fidgeting Madrid room mate whose decision to share a mixed dorm leaves him shaking and unable to make grand simple resignation for a sleep he needs but forever whitters his teeth chattering against the wall in his gripped hands and hairy inner mouth about to blow him inwards to insanity. Hostels are now no longer the reserve of backpackers but Adults without finances for hotels yet no grasp of community interaction; very little bare bones anonymous smiling occurred in Dublin for me to not feel it a Little London.
 
 

Running away to Bray; beat and shout, as Dublin reduces north in a cluster of communters at Booterstown and not to see another drunken stupor with a vast tidal margin uncovered and for us to wade through soggy south. Toast and jam is little enough breakfast when my ankles are bitten by some Jacob's Inn parasites. Breakfast in Bray, lunch in Wicklow and supper in either Wexford or Waterford; and a night besides the stars looking towards Santiago? Isn't this a dream too far?
 
 

James Joyce in Dubliners seems to suggest failed attempts at flight, having some socio-cultural meaning, personal significance or an overwhelming inner subconsciously conflicting ideology that maybe an Irish mindset Joyce had/was witnessing. But I really can't help comparing seaside towns to Everyday Is Like Sunday. Bray is here and here it will stay with incorporate nursing homes and ice cream on the prom. That was a deadend town. Back to Dublin and down to Waterford for sure no trains to Wicklow until 1415 so an impossible mission. A charming eyed Russian hands back the Daily Mail to bent nosed, flatulant, corpulant, grey suited and white haired Anglo-Irish dollar slave. Second girl to smile without frontiers. Heuston to Waterford and Tramore and then west on foot me thinks.

Bottled Guinness extra-stout blows the other bloated tug out the water and I will never understand all that fuss when the Original brew was the very best. It's similar to original Blue Star Newcastle Brown Ale, Vaux Double Maxim or Theakston's Old Peculiar with that simple beery solution to a cold British/Irish northern sky. My decision to weight anchor and struggle ashore in Tramore to consume bacon ribs and cabbage in O'Neil's was a gamble Jack Sparrow would've diced. No struggling anymore. Heck even Coldplay for the fiftieth time in Ireland can't dampen what is turning into a happy yet damp day. Tayto crisps; see ya Bill, Mick.
 
 

Sinking from the top of town to the barrier between the rampant triumphant Atlantic intent on reclaiming our unsteady throne and our head less decadance dazzled in amusement twinkles and hifreq screams my day is done escaping Dublin and tomorrow I'm to Cork to fetch up a little less drowned bodily and mentally. A hard to understand Paddy regards the old bottled Guinness as having pretentions of champagne with it's cork and foil but he strikes me as a fool with rotten teef and browned gums. A tour of the amusements ends my brief time here and I feel justified for fleeing passé Dubliners who I wish weren't working down a line of world wankers for clinking coinage and seldom satisfying boose.
 
 

Dreamt of a colossal ruined garden and building complex that was like a forbidden overgrown city. Something built by a wealthy Victorian industrialist with 3 sons, who all did their own thing, gambling whoring etc so it was forgotten and abundantly overcome with leafy abounding but struck about were it's bold righteous robust brutal architecture. An old lady - wife, or perhaps a daughter, lived in the habitations still. An industrial landscape and an artist who came to love this tumbled down ravaged world, but knew there had been some forgotten significance to it building. And it had it's own zenlike radioactive charm; Tensor radiation. In other words I dreamt I was being irradiated by a vast post apocalyptic wasteland with an old woman creeping about the ruins!
 
 

Departing Tramore for Waterford I pay four euros for an espresso too far; be gone vampires.
 
 

Dropped a little way before the Bus Stop to quickly look about the town; aware of its Viking origins and before departing at ten for a local feeding while Sean Egan Art Glass/heritage glass blowing; good blowing! The weather is more coastal and the breeze brisk yet humidly still sat between. Off we go to Cork.
 
 

Why should a cardinal, archbishop or pope priest, abbot or vicar have a palace when the majority of his flock were being fleeced/coherced out of their money and their minds? Religion is a con run by god lying cadavers. Why do we peasants pleasantly provide pleasures for smug faced god fakers. These men forget forever their humility in pride torn scribbling and stammering beseeching preachers, praying for their wealth, while we all quake and furment below their terrible orchestrated and illusionary altar.

We are French! Why do you think we're all in Cork with this outrageous accent? Sacre bleu. Oh Spaniards and Italianos too!
 
 

Checked in to a worn, tattered looking, dirty and fully disconnected hostel above Cork - Shelia's on York Street. Copious travels about the perimeter of this dirty ole town. The fun came in a surprise location: the English Market supplies a simpering quantity of cheese, bread and other fine local ingredients to pretend we're in France but for quadruple the cost. Returning to a quantity of dirty laundry in the beetle carpace encrusted hostel where showers/bathrooms threaten to exist between fact and fiction however remote further after a chance discovery of a music bar maybe worth rocking in the free world while the chances of me locating another bite from Dublin seems so common.
 
 

My first preamble brought me over Shandon, and a chance discovery of a brew pub - Franciscan Well - but closed until three pm. Coming back about five to a drumroll ha! Led Zeppelin babe I'm gonna leave you and Ian Brown My Star. A great random night with the Apple support team and the best pizza from Ireland made with dedication and care in the brew pub. Not an Irish man or tourist in sight! German, Swedish, French, etc. Lots of Germans.
 
 

Grease. Yep always Grease the musical. This greasy room was €18 a night for a tight hard to relax space. A campsite has all the room ever, but I have fallen into another trap. Conveniently placed.
 
 

What I realise now is that what I am currently doing through Ireland has absolutely no meaning, whatsoever, compared to the way I felt, or dreamt I felt, doing the Chemin Saint Jacques through that part of France. My strength of purpose has been replaced by a thoughtless unromantic stressed and goalless tramping around overcrowded and dirty nowhere towns with occasional walking. The overwhelming noises brought upon high in my domain for repose, a bunk bed without breathing space for my head nor size eleven bootless feet; eventually I was forced to throw up this badness in the early morning and I expelled the devil freeing my self from this mistake in furious projectile vomiting.
 
 

Arguing how northern English is more German or Norse in heritage. Like being threatened by a number of teutonic neurotic twats against a French Grammar truth. We have so lost our original tongue to be hardly the echo of my Grandparents generations and therefore no longer distinct. Flee to walk Daniel you must not come unstuck when sat before your feet is the last chapter mystery - dying/rebirth year - the Mystery of Daniel Proud. Refunded my second night and for the same rate I set off for Mayo over Blackwater side, Limerick, Galway, etc. Don't cry with the fear instead try to feed from your dreams with another attempt at attaining freedom of mind in the silence of a way and I can see my room from this view; Byeeee!

Not on your life. Spend no money in Galway, Ballinrobe or Cong before washing all those flea bitten and stinky clothes and slow down this day. Managed on left over Spelt sodabread, cheese and two bananas before hitching in seconds to the village of the Quietman. Walking back away from the village with comprehensive, hands on, directions from very helpful lady down Quay Road towards the Lisloughrey I am yet to ponder why washing clothes is yet €6; get on your horse and drink yer milk! Special supper made more glorious still with the addition of English mustard and French herbs to Irish mushy peas and slightly mouldy Irish soda bread(fantastic nutty gritty coarse like pumpernickel); Entente! A night to sleep without fear of midnight revolutions or witch burnings in a silent calm natural world where my closest buddies lie east west in yonder plot of consecrated ground. By tonight I need to have concluded The Dead and Dubliners so I can close the cityscape feel for my own physical struggle and some more uplifting and thoughtful moments far away from the persistent rub of tire on tarmac. One whole euro for a shower...I thought I had paid to stay here once already? Moan moan moan moan.

My line in life has not been the shortest distance between to points but has ballooned, leaden heavily at times, like an unwieldy medicine ball, which at first glance bares a striking similarity to a 1960s lace up football, but now it feels copious yet lighter like a derigible filled with an inert gas. Something grave has faded back into the background of this performance and will be despatched before act five's resolution.
 
 

Ryan's on Cong Main Street for my first Irish breakfast. Let in by the side door away from the hotel guests. 'White pudding is exactly the same as black pudding but it has no blood in it', early morning Irish nonsense, to be sure? But one of the best breakfasts I've had this summer of petit dejourner and heading out of town to Cornamona first.
 
 

Henry the eighths regime was one of ruthless barbarism if all the Abbey's snore in ruined sleep across the entire wealth of the land. Was this a bourgeois oppression of the theological kind who just wanted to escape into a simpler cellular life but would never be consumers of material or bodies for war? Busy bossman Dennis provides a very warm bon voyage.
 
 

Leaving Mayo for Galway through a forest said to be Jurassic in appearance. Man has to be the alien he keeps trying to find. Our discord against natural order is an axe blade through a ever leading truth, although now we cut foolishly with a circular, hack or chain saw. Nature and ourselves are so ill alike that our trampling boots leave a thin sheen so glimmering like flaking varnish vanishing with each drop of rain, sheet of ice or covering of snow; blasted dry and to a mere husk in desert wastes or corrupted within by tropical uneasiness.
 
 

Brief stop for a pint in Cornamona and I think I've travelled quite far this stage already but now the next leg will take me along a busy road, but not as busy as the guy in the bookshop made out, and perhaps a b&b will be an option in Maum Bridge will give me a restful night and not cost too much on a Sunday night - very unlikely? Walking between Knocknagussy, the tail end of Corrib Lough, R345, tough head on winds, and some coarse bold heaps of gorse it is just I a lone foot traveller. At Keane's on the bridge I waited, thumb out, but no one stopped in an hour so returned for Guinness and the craic from three Martin's and Billy before another Martin, the barman, promised to drop me in Leenane from there a weary sore footed man braved a little of the Western Way to achieve a youth hostel at the mouth of the Killary Harbour; a fjiord pointing westward Ho! All the effort is worth the view as the sun sinks into the western reaches with Mayo to the North and another adventure on Monday.
 
 

Don't you know you shouldn't do that? Don't you know it stains the carpet? Neurotic people come to work out the mystery of their strained, sprained, spluttered and sudden recoil away. Away from questions of need or want or hope or help; I walked more than 35 klicks to form up without any way to pay, create or consume. None seem to want to help in any of the situations when a little compassion could transform our astral selves. Food. Yes you have shelter but no food. To beg for food. Done resolved full and all for naught. Bed now. After sonic attack. It's time we left the world today.

The Sleepzone Connamara Hostel is crap. Packed to the rafters with late night revellers or early to beds, hoping for a quiet night's rest, like I. Oh jesus I snore but you guys come in at two and laugh like cheetah Tarzan's chimp. It is eight but I've had little sleep at all. Thank you so so much! Eight for breakfast and diagonal rains! Oh Galway in August. Quick toast, jam and flirt with Belgian sweetheart before two short hitches bring me boldly to another delightful Irish breakfast and an animated discussion on the pitfalls of Crow Patrick.
 
 

Fighting a losing battle with what has become a very tender callus stroke blister on my left second pinkie I sat down by a bend on the Errif River, ate two bakewell tarts and the remainder of my water then decided I had better hit the N59, the junction at Erriff Bridge, and hitch towards Croagh Patrick and Westport. Vroom Zoom tourists and workers speed passed waving not today; bastards I counted 5 in one convoy and none looked my way. I had begun to lose patience and felt certain my only option was to carry on left along the WWM and suffer terribly and die shortly next to a stile nibbled by fang teethed sheep with human eyes revolving in their sockets! Finally a couple of jovial Aussies, one Victorian and liberal one NewSouthWales and labour, laughed with me towards Westport with Monty Python isms and discussed the pros and pros of Q and Spike Milligan. Time to unbe, unwind and lose my way in a tranquil, if new age, town.

Decamped in Westport a while to trip about Mayo in what will be more tourist and less the pilgrim modus. Certainly I found my voice again and can talk without the boom and vroom for a few days yet, however I think some gangrenous knoring is placed out. Finally I found Ireland does exist, but only in Mayo/northern Galway(that I know). It's been shoved to the far to the west but hasn't yet sunk below the western continental shelf; Phew! Germans, French, Australian, American, Canadian and I(token English) it feels. The ring of Connemara: who came here seeking Ireland first? Fifty euros for three nights: Eoghan and Ronan are smiling happy chaps and automated Germans eat and place multiple multiplying patience.
 
 

Three female helpers perhaps a little stir crazy and I felt between a third and fourth place (a rock and a hard place). All dark, all young and two fawning over a young Aussie. I recall the battle between deux femme and the Italian pianoforte tuner in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Am I the token Irish(English) drunk in this Hostel, hic! Tats. Arse. Sex! You do it to yourself...six cans of Guinness Extra Stout. At eight thirty the simple sounds of a classical station on the radio brings our brains towards fertile homily as I stare at the 18th century plan of Westport suggesting a brewery once sat at the location this Mill now sits. There are only twelve Irish writers, all male: Synge, O'Brien, Goldsmith, Swift, Beckett, Yeats(twat), Behan, Wilde, Kavanagh, Joyce(genius), O'Casey and Shaw(never read) on this poster I've spotted regularly in Ireland. I'm fond of Wilde and Swift, hate arrogant egocentric aloof Yeats and overjoyed with Joyce; the rest(except one Ocasey play) I never chanced to read for my shame and I am so sorry GBS! The French brunette was a little blown away that I would chose to stay here for three nights more and I think perhaps she's been here too long and everything's become toxic. Four persons check in and are shown up to my room from Czech Republic more affluence in Eastern Europe or maybe they already live/work over here: so many do? Return to final brew and bed with a fear of my snoring death. Some of my summer long observances have again put me in a subtle and fractional limit where those around fail to register me. Such blatant paranoia! Heck I'm over the road perhaps? Yes to vegan options and some sauce? Where did that Connecticut yankee go to? King Arfur's Cortina I shouldn't wonder? Here's Jesus - God be praised he's back and in Westport too! What a Fauktwanger. Live music auberge Craic happens in yonder pub, where I joke but ram it home that I joke while another American thinks he is Irish; tic tac toe. They hate the Streets of Derry. Musicians are always so falsetto. Airs or music for a found harmonium is the suggestion of the fiddlers elbow wobbling and aiming. Guinness could never go bust. Before Guinness there was no Ireland! Peters song. Let no one(man) steal your thyme; help me as I am truly addicted to a good white pudding! 22:22 and I do think I'll never instagram life like I am a forgotten reprebrate; grief this male is a pole, post, gatepost. Julie of Santiago plays a south American folk so I need pee and zee, zeed and peed.
 
 

If hostels were twined, like villages, towns and cities then The Old Mill Hostel and The Tour Anglais in Aurbrac would be a twain.

Good morning Autumn. Westport is wet, cold and preventative today. So I will muse without overlong departing to climb Croagh Patrick; the back route takes you via Ben Gorm so perhaps I'll ease my feet back into those cramped boots one final time on Wednesday. Westport needs a bypass; hurry, the town chokes! The pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick is my final jigsaw piece; peace 2013.
 
 

Something with hardworking sweating palms, trusting shoulders and thrusting hips occurs down James Street at The Purple Root Cafe. Love is your goal and hipsters trousers hang low on curves, during a 1960s Creedance Clearwater Revival, declaring free love and raw cheesecake, bold juice enthusing all beings. A bright purple Pac-Man created with beetroot, carrot and carageen gum, ginger smoothie and green tea all make amends in my body apologizing for White Pudding, Black Pudding and other morning things(White Pudding is the star of the Irish Breakfast show forever).
 
 

To kill little time and to reduce perhaps the finances of the remaining few days I've enough food and boose to keep me sane prior to Thursday night when I will visit the Purple Root Cafe for their vegan food buffet and music evening. A self taught Irish lady, with some time spent in Boston, MA, has focused in on this uniquely impoverished lower middle class approach to food and lifestyle ethics; is it for their need to feel some sense of being at the top of some food 'concept' pyramid (but whatever it is very nice and perhaps keeps the dread hands of cancer away a while longer in my conceits?).

Part of me wants to conclude the summer in some profound answer to my restless relentless questing, but my head just wants to say whatever - the answer you are looking for doesn't exist!
 
 

Bye! sod off/sling your hook!
 
 

What is the meaning of life, or
What were we put here for, or
What are we meant to do, or
Can anything we do ever mean anything?
 
 

The universe is profoundly shockingly silent, utterly unfeelingly remorseless and our goals have no external ears - no acknowledgments. It means nothing. The world, universe or you and I mean nothing; we are meaningless - nothing really matters. This thought makes me want to weep and leaves me absolutely empty. Nothing ever done reveals any truth. My bare mind or body has no hidden truths and no switches turned on while searching the continent this summer. All I know is the universe doesn't need us, the world doesn't see us, nature disregards us; we're very temporary and pointless.
 
 

Enjoy the few years given us to absorb whatever is thrown at our senses: eat, drink and be merry; pass me that Monty Python's Flying Circus boxset, six pack of Guinness Extra Stout and all the demands we level at each other and society expects can not rob us of our destiny: death, release and nothingness. Tomorrow I leave for Croagh Patrick with no wish ever to return to earth.
 
 

Wibble!
 
 

Oh! Wibble Wibble!
 
 

I knew it. Tomorrow I will end this thing and then get fucking drunk.
 
 

Did I mention I love white pudding?
 
 

So stop just thinking of myself look at my nephew he's wonderful, Snoopy is too; Dat berrydodginess! Such wonder with the universe present in those living breathing beings and beginnings not the end.
 
 

Page 175 of Dubliners and I stumble on The Dead as it recalls my very first morning at Wetherby High School, sixth form college Mr Jarvis, where I merged with a whole new universe, but I thought it dreadful and melancholy; setting the tone for English Literature 1990/91/92. Wednesday is the beginning of my life and simply the end of something charmless, fruitless and vain; it fights me like screaming mouthed, streaming eyed and fist bawling toddler, fully tired and off to the Land of Knoddle, but really it isn't there at all.

Preparation for the last climb of summer 2013 began with the enduring Irish Breakfast around eight am alone and quietly. Now I wait the arrival of a German man, Simon, who joins me to climb up Ben Gorm and Croagh Patrick; catching the 450 to Lecanvey at ten thirty takes you much beyond the usual start point for the common assent. Away lad as the hordes of Babylon snuffle and slurp their snouts through bowls of stirabout. Solisbury Hill comes on the radio and reminds me with that amazing song to set off with joy in my steps.
 
 

I've gone done it. Twenty fourkilometres with a brief stop. Now curry. Ben Gorm in the rain and then heavy clouds before those clouds split over Clew Bay and sun broadcast the news! Something good is gonna come! The bus didn't exist this morning so we walked with the hope of hitching, but the only ones to stop were Paddy and Murphy in a van. They couldn't open the door so we didn't climb in. They drove away leaving us a little short of a full fourteen kilometres before we turned about-face the back of the series of hills towards Croagh Patrick. As they drove away I noticed their number plate was 666; we were looked after by God (in the shape of a white goat peering at us from amongst the shrubberies) I suppose. Stopping for a moment in Kearns pub we were warned not to trust the two 'travelers' hanging out at the bar; first I took them for farmer types, but on route to Croagh Patrick we had passed many transits with an assortment of grubby families hanging from the sliding doors and assumed they'd descended on Westport for a holiday with the kiddies. The barman saw our need so provided a little cheese and nuts so we could make a sandwich of sorts prior to our bold attempt.
 
 

Miracles do happen. The mist cleared briefly to present, in bright white, the chapel; we had no visual knowledge we were near our goal until, like a dinosaurs graveyard, structures were suddenly thrust up at us. Simon and I clambered over a pile of fossilised dinosaur eggs and took a couple of photos of ourselves guarding this clutch.
 
 

On the way back the first attempt I made to hitch resulted in a German and his collie cross, Sally, picking us up and delivering us speedily into Westport town. Simon left north to hitch again to Achill Island, I cracked open my first Guinness Extra Stout. Now I come for homemade soda bread this damp noisy penultimate morning. Thank you Liam our third host, but strange Irish man never ceases to be strange. The way he looks about himself and peeps from behind doors is most odd indeed - even now I am laughing at his schnide long glances.
 
 

Why do any persons set off in their own minds and never, perhaps, be with any others ever? They are greatly troubled yet they have left their family, friends etc to put themselves in this distant place; is the world so occluded for them suddenly? I made a joke about chain smoking Italians who now would cling to the very walls if it were at all possible to keep a virtual league away from any sense of my pending invasions, questions, jokes; hee hee. Lift your feet girl...shuffling sleepy feet don't do it really do they? Could I really be seeing a reflection of myself in these ways?

Quick discussion of the merits of certain Irish and English novelists with a genuinely thoughtful Dubliner(finally) and find out the reed cross is in fact a symbol of Saint Brigit, but by any judgement I feel compelled to rest today. Yesterday was very challenging and I slept fitfully; yes I am bushed.
 
 

Westport is not that interesting really and I would appreciate a little less cliched Ireland; oh to be sure - apparently it's better (zero tourists) in winter.
 
 

Like a millionarie in spendthrift mode I have give away, all summer, money which wasn't essentially mine but was trusted to me as long as I would, in good faith, repay it, to our western society, over a short period(without interest compound). Although I no longer feel any connection with capitalist material existence I am still trying not to exclude myself entirely from the dreaded fact of the cancer western democracy and the freedom to buy it has allowed us. All to see if I couldn't create something unique, and beneficial, to all persons willing to hear my voice and earn something within this human world that would mean I am not worthless; my writing skill can mean something to this meaninglessness (I'm just so full of contempt for myself.)?
 
 

Finish black stuff and white stuff and Guinness too tonight I be a vegan. John is giving me information this afternoon to present me a modern interpreting of Ireland nearly a century after the partition. But my body has resisted the fun of ruinations and dancing galloping into the misty night for so long I hardly know how once I used to bounce my body to the box.
 
 

The more I will it the more I won't it. And pathetically. Meeting an endurance drinker and eating the three courses of rightfully frighteningly brilliant fayre (cucumber and mint soup, sundried tomato burger, peach and lavendar slice(all raw)) and drinking a quantity of fantastic Burgenland Blaüfrankisch but now the noisy cooler of a food service truck points back at inescapable routine BWG and clanking driver like a beast in chains threatens to enslave us all once more and rob my memory of Thursday night's fruitful fun. Human life carries on in Westport unaware of the pain it inflicts on itself; fucking stop that noise now and I am truly sorry for my snores!
 
 

On this way I have walked, wined, winned, winged, wondered, wandered, worried, wasted, watched, waisted, weighed, waited, warbled, welcomed, willed, whiled, wankeled, winckled, wrinkled, whistled, whooshed and wished now I hang about for another link of the shifting gears and cogs where people come and go in such short and silently blinking stares; confided in duets cubed and squared lacking a binary or uniary reality. Knock three times on the floor and send this bleached brigade to purgatory; or is coffee time a waiting time for us gathering at Saint Peter's gatehouse. Someone one asked me wasn't I looking forward to going to heaven after I died and I almost bit my tongue twice into a serpents lolling wheezing venom breath at her insidious suggestion I would be meeting a maker soon; I mean how did she know? Her husband, Liam, ran into my room last night and departed with a mattress under his arm sheepish like; as though we would not notice! Eoghan confiscated a ton of vodka off five girls up from Galway with a flight of wheeled cases, casually pink, red and white none backpacking hen party; not Zen! Now I feel the wheels of time picking and linking up my matrix loop again; 127.0.0.1 no longer and The Dead is not stiff yet so a final flourish 216 unto 225 of Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics published 1992(£4.99); measured in coffee spoons and minutes waiting for a final bus Eireann in some Western Irish sun and facing still east of directly above reminds me my summer is not complete until a job yawns it's jowls beckoning me with low slung arms and dragging clawlike palms. Swiss Flück Reisen clunks into view a moment prior to 440 to Aerfort; oh charmless people let us depart away East again as we gradually undertake the sun fleeing West like a desperately drunken clown spinning on a rusting wheeled unicycle. Best of luck from all in Mayo - why I thank you! There isn't anything wrong with me, at all, but it is the remains of society that is rotten, mad, choking and blinded; listen to the frantic news and you'll realise society is ill not I and at €4 burger chips coleslaw and sauce I'm waiting full up at least.