A week in Wetherby...

Saturday,

It's 6 o'clock. What a day. But I spent less than adequate time with Lola! On Monday she'll be busy busy busy. She enjoyed sharing my sardine pasta dish. I gave her roughly a third, in three scoop shares, before I disappeared, which she ate off the tupperware lid. Managed to cobble together a rockery with the tomatoes Maureen grew and Tony helped me deposit. There were 6, but I snapped one. And I brought two leggy looking french beans with me so I tucked them into the two gro-bags I had remaining and hope the slugs don't get to them... I put one of my own tomatoes in amongst the 5. Then I planted the Maris Piper main crop potatoes next to Andy and Ellie's plot. Just got one set to plant the coming week... Perhaps on Sunday if the weather improves? It's currently raining (it was when I hit the hay).

***

Sunday,

Break down is a break through? Break through to the other side... If you reach the shore before drowning?

The present is a true gift. It is the present given by truth.

And now I know what it was, and still is, the burden I am carrying. The weight of quantity over quality. All I want from the remaining section of this point in existence is the good. No more bad. Bad is quantity. Look everywhere at all the stuff which is certainly bad for the world we are overwhelming. Goods, services and population. In the munitions factory's the dud explosive shells were a common repercussion of the amount produced by a government which valued a given number in a given time. Not that one shell is a good thing. Such quality material to be rained down as alloys of death. 

One whole day 'being' in a pilgrimage is better than days on an empty pilgrimage - when it is unseen for the magic it can conjure. Unwitnessing the bliss and being rushed to find accommodation... I never expected it of the Way in France.

***

The Trinity Church bells strike 9

And a homeless crone states

'I like your cap' as her other half,

Inanely, grins into his dirty fate.

Struggling to string his beads

Down on mucky Boar Lane, Leeds.

***

Mother, I can see her dropping dead - a brain struck by the anxiety to keep doing stuff, as she flutters desperately around the house and garden; calm down mum! Out there, briefly alighting on every bush with a watering can (during the wettest years 'on record')... oh mother I will miss you so.

Lola and I accomplished a quality morning and then I met Jason, before lunch, for an average two pints in the hubbub of a playoff final, of which I have no interest whatsoever.

Jason had to hurry up to draw the curtains and face the screen, alone, because Katherine is at some singing meet with her father over in Harrogate, and pay vivid attention to Leeds United.

There are so many matches on so many channels for ever and ever, ceaseless. What was once a Saturday affair, with the occasional midweek fixture, is literally 24/7 all around the world. I am sure you could subscribe to the Antipodean leagues in the morning, the European leagues around lunch and then the America's as the sun sets on another quantity day where the only quality appears to be the rain which is continuing to wash away humanity one drop at a time...

***

Bank holiday Monday. The music blaring from on the Ings and mother with her too loud television downstairs made tuning out difficult. I was still awake when Emma and Finley returned from the firework entertainments, late, and took Lola away. 

As the thunder and lightning played across the sky I heard Lola a little bit nervy. She didn't used to care about loud noises, but has become edgy. Yesterday, as we walked in the rain down Watersole Lane, there was the continual firing of shotguns from our left: the cargo container box where they go to fire off at clay pigeons every Sunday nearer to Flint Mill Lane: parallel but safely away for a stray cartridge, and she didn't enjoy the continued barrage and hurryed off down the lane to Crowcroft Bank.

Three days without a hangover. Being sober. No alcohol on Friday. Just a few on Saturday and a couple yesterday. The final week on the failing Way I dipped low and was drinking too much: from Figeac onwards really. Why, I don't know? Was it the weather, the place, the people? Something was undermining me. My own chips on both shoulders - and I saw them not (I didn't step back) rushing as I was through the way along La Célé and not really enjoying it properly by being there... although it was beautiful?

***

The hazards of a morning after the night before, on a bkhol, broken glass discarded pizza, left over cans of Tyskie and two forgotten fruit and muesli bars. Outside the house it's pretty cold for the end of May. And had to use fingerless gloves. The allotment may have to wait ... It'll be damp from the downpour of Sunday...

Two fat prison officers couldn't physically open the door because their hands were so full of the stuff, they were taking to their cars, to pile on more unnecessary poundage .. not quality or was the humour of it totally quality in a Larson's Farm context - I remember a cartoon of two snakes struggling to operate a door handle...

***

Tuesday,

First full day with Ruby; and obviously Lola. It was a tiring day yesterday for me for some reason. Everything felt heavy. I wasn't hungover. I haven't been since I returned from Bergerac, where I was hungover all day on the large return to Leeds and that deep night's sleep!

Just washed up and finishing the coffee before I run a bath. Ruby has eaten and returned to her den on the utility room sofa as we both sit and listen to the world awake on the day after the BkHol with the A1 traffic noise building and vehicle noises along Spofforth Hill increasing as we creep towards 6am.

***

Back to lunch and a siesta. Not able to completely switch off as I expect a joiner to put in an appearance - the unfinished island in the right centre of the kitchen/dining/utility room: I keep trying not to collide with it and the low hanging lampshade between it and the table to it's left.

As the the weather continues melancholy I could take some items up to the allotment and leave them, taking Ruby (who's no doubt tired from our good adventure up to Swinnow Hill, Nova Scotia Plantation and the Race Course) or leave her to relax a couple of hours? It's not yet 1pm.

***

Wednesday,

These pains! All over my body. Different issues... Although the one real agony is the left foot. I keep laughing at how much of my torso is currently 'dysfunctional', although I am sure it's the long end of the drama of life. My mental health isn't going to kill me - it has probably saved me from an earlier death? The mind has woken up from a vombie like sleepwalking and it has given me ten good years where I've returned to my essence: all be it against the current of expectancy, and returned to the things which truly matter.

As I've shrugged off obsessions, which I was driven mad by, and then returned to the simplicity of being next to Ruby at the 5:30am, with a gentle wind moving the trees in the Old Railway behind 14 Chestnut Avenue, it becomes apparent I am a different individual; all my atoms have exchanged with the universe... What today? Maybe a shower as that square bath is really badly designed and really uncomfortable. And I tend to unplug it when I go deeper into the water...

Distancing myself from materialism. I was being drowned by the phantom of possessions. But they don't matter. Essence is what matters. Being one. Being now.

All of my worldly possessions I look at and wonder why. What void I was trying to fill. A band-aid for loneliness? Somewhere I could bury myself. Things. Objects in space. Entropy. Things tend to fall apart. They return to the nothing from the something. Everything is determined to fade away.

Do I need to fold these washed clothes? Do I need a shower, bath, both or neither? Mother wants me to get her some dog food. Why she hasn't left the house I can't conceive?! Is it part of her final act? And then what?

***

Thursday,

And I am failing to hit the mark once once. My aim is distracted and goes well wide of the target; this is absolutely normal after I return from any 'truthful' activity - ie a pilgrimage.

And I feel abysmal, but it's nothing to do with a hangover. I've not had a hangover since Wednesday morning in Bergerac. Wow last Wednesday I was in France. A week since. And I wonder if the rain keeps falling along the Via Podiensis same as it is here in wet Wetherby?

That was a pilgrimage of two halves, I've surely said? Up above on the Massif Central and until Estaing(where the American diplomat unwound me) I feel it was a positive thing, but the second week was just too expensive, rushed, pushed, unreal as I tried to out run the shadow(rather than face it). Perhaps it's made me sadder than I normally am. This weather isn't helping though - I can picture all the potatoes rotting in their plots up on the allotment?

Elsa, the girl from Gay Paree, I shared the night in Maison de la Béate with said the harder you try to get away from a nemesis the closer it gets and I think I can see where she's coming from. It better to face fears?

***

I am just not feeling good. Something feels broken as I walk, heavily, back to Chestnut Avenue. She's special. Lola's special, too. But no amount of a happy wagging tail gets me above the gutter I feel I've just fallen to.

Yesterday, in the cinema, as I enjoyed one glass of white Rioja, I connected with three generations of the same family, gm, m and two juniors, on the subject of novel verses film and what is often missed out of a dramatisation of a novel. Ruby enjoyed her Bonio and we came back to supper and an early night. I couldn't fight fatigue and Ruby slept from around 9 too as she relocated to her sofa, after she'd had a visit to go toilet, from being flat out on their bed in the back bedroom.

***

Friday,

I am a puzzle to myself and I know something is missing from this puzzle which I simply can't locate anywhere outside me. Nothing is outside me. But I forgot forgot forgot. Glenn came over yesterday, but we weren't close. I haven't seen him in ages. I was grateful he visited me. And we enjoyed spaghetti Bolognese and entertained Ruby, but I am looking at something inside myself, which I have been for a long time, which I am trying to work out. Like a heavily indented splinter it is clinging to the matter of my mind and won't come free.

Stillness. As I lose interest so quickly at the beginning of the discussions around the table on either In Our Time or Freethinking I return to the room. But in the room the clocks tick-tock insanely. I guess that the owners of this property never notice? To them it's a complimentary sound of their garden Eden - with the new kitchen island - which I try not to collide with - and the stoneware sink - which will fracture because it's a bad fabric for pots and pans to bash.

Glenn is correct. It's nothing. The perfection is a cover for reality. Tony was quite apologetic about the new items in the kitchen. And I can see why. Both are retired and both only have this to content them. They've invested externally in what is missing internally. It's the human condition. Feeling empty.

***

They'll be back mid morning, I suppose. I am cleaning, stripping the beds, etc., but I do wonder why they got rid of the toilet brush? Leaving the house as I found it. Putting stuff in compost and in the bins.

It's a breezy chilly final day of 'spring'. Summer will come along when it will. I've not looked in on the allotment and yesterday I was discussing what I need to do come with it at the end of summer... But summer hasn't arrived yet. I saw a couple of swallows circling overhead yesterday, but very few.

And I might need sedating. I am truly pissed off. At everything around me. Worthless. It's making me berserk. What's the point? Why bother. Peter fucking Rabbit.

***

Five days in Wetherby. It could be worse. But it was getting to me again. Thankfully back to Yo-yoing from the 1st June. No more Wetherby consecutively until Ruby, then Lola, again in July.

Andy, proprietor if Bottle & Bean, told me to be normal... I am not normal. I simply don't like him. Glenn says I could've done what Andy is doing, but more than 12 years ago. I am not interested in the relationship he has to have with his clients. I sit and listen to him being normal, and also insincere? He might be sincere though. It's important for him to gather all these people to him and present an Unreality (no truth)? I don't know. It leaves me cold being surrounded by his venue. Such a shame the wine and beer is good...

After lunch and our lay down, Lola and I, I almost went back to Leeds. Which would've been a glaring mistake. So I did catch up with Ian and Andy, in The Mews, for the first time in a while. We had a laugh. Then I came back to 42 and had a large fish, before I hit the hay. I was awake around midnight once more: I think a solitary chilli which I ate at lunch, in the spaghetti Bolognese, is the culprit? Then slept until around 4 when I went to the toilet.

No rush today. It's the allotment, back here, then back to Leeds...

***

Four solid hours on the allotment. Back to collect my backpack, then to Leeds for a number of beers. Back to the flat around 5pm. Awake at 4:30 with the sunrise. And the sweet smell of June. And it's over. Back to normal tomorrow. Off the booze. Appointments all week... Lola and allotment all week. But not today... Calm day today... A day off. It's Sunday the 2nd June 2024.

The insanity since Figeac seems to have passed. It reached it's peak on Friday and was abating yesterday. Two bad weeks. Too much badness. Too many flights from my true Being. Too many glasses of fine wine. Too many fine beers. Too much meat.

Some people are shouting down below. Revellers heading home along North Street leaving ecstasy, weed, wizz and ketamine to run out of their bones for another week. Oh the carnage. I knew that carnage too until a final night at The Mint Club and the night called Technique around 2006 I guess - before I went and fled the apartment in Whitehall Waterfront for the YHA and sanity... Yes sanity. I drew a line under dance clubs etc.

It's day 28 since the lunacy began with my grand departure to Paris Beauvais.

Sanity begins at 6am on June 2nd with wholesome porridge. Will I ever go on a pilgrimage again? Perhaps... Back to Mallorca on the 12th June... Santuari de Lluc.

***

Nice morning for a meander through Chapeltown (Markham Avenue) and the top of Gledhow Woods, along Well House Road, etc., to Oakwood Clock.

I went away looking for my spirit. Saw it briefly and retreated from it... I don't know why I did that? It's not my normal way in The Way.

The End.