Thursday back in Leeds.

On such a maudlin day I don't know if Albert Camus is the kind of author I should have turned to? Existentialism - The Outsider(aka The Stranger) . It's been on top of me for those ten years. The middle days of my life? From 40 to 50. Slightly leaning back towards old age? I've yet to touch 65... Will I get out of the crisis which seems to be making me gloomy, daily, and which is my choice to make? The weather isn't so happy either as autumn rolls on.

Most unlike me, but I've come to the Tiled Hall, within Leeds City Library/Art Gallery, for a chapter and a pot of Earl Grey. I thought that the sofas had been got rid of, but they were hiding in the corner (a server in a better mood than I am almost fooled me that they had started charging to use them)!

I much prefer to be backed up into a corner so I don't get too anxious/paranoid with people being or passing behind me.

A Canadian guy with a girl opposite speaks pleasantly of those things 20somethings find entertaining. The conversations about the most banal kind of subject: physiotherapy... But, Jesus, I need to see a doctor about something which has been inbedded below the surface of the skin on my left forefinger since the beginning of the Camino Frances and I will get a call later: 4:30pm. 

Having the fall out with mother, the millionth, was a positive thing as I went and caught the X98, out of the town which made me the way I am, before nine and back to the flat to make Caldo Gallego at noon. And I've got a day to tame the pilgrim facial hair, wash my bathroom linen and ponder the future after that final Camino Frances...

Passing by Leeds Catholic Cathedral I went in to ask about any connections, within the community, regarding people in Leeds who have either been on the Camino or are considering it, but she thought it better I look on social media... Turns out there is a group in Manchester meeting on the 9th December at the Cervantes Institute(Instituto Cervantes) in Manchester...

And I turned to bed around 7pm. My system free of constraint. Like rushing to Wetherby to see Lola, mother and its same faces: the homeless guy Tony, the guy who runs the 'corner shop' Andy and the other Andy who likes his coach trips.

Every time I return I am hope for a new aspect. The same feeling I had coming back from Australia in 2000, through a cold Leeds, to share a cold X99 bus journey full of excitement and happiness (Australia was great), but I am older, the people on the bus are mainly non native speakers and are going to work in Wetherby, when it used to be the opposite where people went to Leeds on the 8am bus and returned at 5pm. How times have changed: all those folks in nursing homes were local folks (my mother and all her friends (who were care assistants)), but now they're of North African origin. I've brought everything I could to Wetherby, but it's made no difference to it. Or that's how I feel about it... I've moved on, but something drags me back, screaming and bawling. And nothing good comes of the return of the native...