prelude to egress

THE PILGRIMAGE OF THE MIND

30 July → 31 August 2025

Part I of the Catalonia Book

In your voice. As you lived it.

---

**CHAPTER ONE

’ang o’er**

30th July.

Wetherby morning, Market Place.

The day my face slid off its bones and the truth I’d dodged for years picked me up by the scruff.

I woke with the ’ang o’er to end all mornings — not the usual murk, but a full collapse of the self.

A shaking, sinking, sinking, sinking. A dread that felt older than me. Eleven-year-old dread. Eighteen-year-old dread. The whole long shadow of being forgotten.

I walked straight into the Mind Shop and I said the only sentence worth saying:

“I need saving from myself.”

And Glenn, bless him, said the line that split me like a log:

“Daniel, you’re an alcoholic.”

Aye.

Aye, lad.

And instead of running home to drink the world back down, I wrote to Forward Leeds.

The pilgrimage began right then, in Market Place, in the midst of the clemming and the cold,

before any GR route or yellow arrow.

Before Perpinyà.

Before Catalonia.

That morning is where the old Daniel died

and the Pilgrim took his first breath.

---

**CHAPTER TWO

Reckoning**

31st July into the first days of August.

Shakes.

Crows.

Coffee as medicine.

Water as life.

The flat at 69 Lovell Park Grange holding me like a hermitage,

a gaol cell,

a sanctuary.

All three.

And the world felt half-real. Half-mad.

Everything sharp — too sharp —

as if I were waking into a life I’d never lived before.

I spared a wasp that stung me.

That’s when I knew summat was shifting.

Revenge didn’t rise.

Only pity.

Aye, lad.

That’s the beginning of peace.

Lola stayed steady as a stone.

She watched me the way only a Vizsla can:

head cocked,

soft brown worry in her eyes,

asking nowt but truth.

And I said to myself — the first real time:

This is a pilgrimage.

Whether I move or not.

---

**CHAPTER THREE

Hamlet Falls Away**

4th August.

Hamlet broke in my hands.

Cracked like a plate dropped on t’sink.

All that ego talk — “to be or not to be” —

as if existence were summat you choose.

Nah.

Being is before thought.

Hamlet's just a mind trapped in itself.

Lear is the true one —

barren on t’moor,

grief and grace in a single breath.

Chaucer with his April hope.

Me with mine.

I wrote what I should’ve handed in back in ’95:

Hamlet is the apex of ego-suffering.

I walked past it.

Rekh — the Egyptian seeing —

came to me like a word I already knew.

The second sight.

Re-cognition.

Re-knowing.

The refusal to be re-cked again.

That’s the day my mind dropped dualism

and walked out onto the heath.

---

**CHAPTER FOUR

Signs and Portents**

5th and 6th August.

I baked peppers in tajín and oil,

clipped my hair,

tidied the flat till it gleamed.

Moved the sofa to catch the morning sun.

Turned off the lamp so the real light could win.

I found a penny on Boar Lane.

A sign.

Aye.

Everything was a sign.

The crows in the sycamore.

The morning light pouring south.

A walk over dead fish to t’other bank.

Costa double cupping —

not indulgence but a sentinel post.

It was as if someone had tilted the world.

As if the pilgrimage had already begun,

and I were only just noticing.

---

**CHAPTER FIVE

The Dry Well**

8th August.

Harrogate.

Walking the Stray to St John’s Well —

the source, the origin.

The gritstone pavilion stood proud,

but the well was dry.

Except it weren’t.

It were feeding the whole town underground.

Aye.

There’s the metaphor that made me still:

The source isn’t gone.

It’s just hidden.

Still feeding.

Quiet and sufficient.

Just like me.

---

**CHAPTER SIX

Peace From Strength**

13th August.

I got stung and helped the wasp that stung me.

My mum said, “Did you kill it?”

Nah.

That’s the difference.

Order isn’t peace.

Chaos isn’t evil.

Sometimes chaos is mercy.

I walked past all the games —

television, small talk, the empty rituals.

I saw the gulf between me and my family,

not with blame,

but with the stillness of a man who finally sees:

They can’t give what they never had.

And I don’t need it now.

I chose my own path.

A path away from Britain’s phony order.

Toward France.

Toward truth.

---

**CHAPTER SEVEN

A Happy Sisyphus**

14–15 August.

Aye, lad, I accepted the climb.

The boulder.

The return.

The rolling back.

The eternal beginning again.

Not despair.

Recognition.

Rekh.

Met an Argentine called Beja while wearing a Beja badge.

Fed the pigeons.

Watched the Rowan berries redden outside the tower block.

Walked the bone-shaking sharra-bang to Wetherby.

Life turning into accord.

Small mercies becoming scripture.

---

**CHAPTER EIGHT

The Three Prisons**

19th August.

Walk to Wetherby.

Met three souls locked tight:

the mind of pure logic

the heart of pure conflict

the spirit of pure fear

And I walked past them,

loving them,

but knowing:

That’s not my prison.

I’m not getting in.

Lola as my anchor.

Her steady presence.

Her simple truth.

I cannot be pinned down.

I will not live by fear.

---

**CHAPTER NINE

Quiet Sufficiency**

20th August.

Block universe collapses.

Science becomes story.

Dao rises beneath thought.

Forgiveness steps out like a door I never dared touch.

I realise:

Heaven is not a destination.

It’s the present moment without story.

And pilgrimage begins not in Perpinyà,

not with boots on road,

but in the exact breath where truth is allowed.

Aye.

The journey had begun already.

I just hadn’t named it.

---

**CHAPTER TEN

The Peregrine**

21–24 August.

Leeds as chaos.

Leeds as a cave.

Leeds as a place I must leave.

My family’s judgments fall away like dead skin.

Their lack of seeing no longer a wound.

My ego’s need for validation dissolves.

I am a monastery of one.

A Wanderer.

A Wonderer.

A Peregrine at rest.

A pérégrinant in truth.

I’m not seekin’ spectacle.

I’m seekin’ sufficiency.

And I’m finding it.

---

**CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Cave Closes**

28–29 August.

Gravity heavy.

The cave trying to drag me back.

Mind shop chatter draining me.

Cambridge man knowing everything and saying nowt.

A Confederacy of Dunces in my hands the morning after it were mentioned.

Shit isn’t shinola.

Aye.

I saw that in a poo bag.

Pilgrimage cannot be a holiday.

It must be perpetual.

Stepping out of this world,

not into another.

I’m ready.

---

**CHAPTER TWELVE

Consecration**

30th August.

Bath in the dark.

Kitchen cleaned like a chapel.

Fresh sheets.

Quiet surrender.

The greatest act of all:

I blessed myself.

No father ever did.

No one ever did.

So I did.

The flat became a sanctuary.

The mind became still.

The body became ready.

The pilgrim stood upright.

---

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Crossing the Threshold**

31st August.

Calm day.

Quiet departure.

No dread.

No shakes.

No mistakes.

Just readiness.

Boarded the A1 Flyer.

Left Boar Lane behind.

Ate nothing special.

Carried nothing extra.

Mind already in France.

Body soon to follow.

The inner Camino ended.

The outer Camino began.