A rebel without a clue.

Teaching Lola a new trick: waiting until seven for breakfast, regardless of how hungry she may be? She's pestered me, but now is curled up in her seat. She pawed me and crawled over me: insinuated herself quite obviously. Then she sits upright and thoughtful for a moment... As though she's learning something. She seems to be quizzical at this moment. It's an expression I like in her. Time must be very different for her to me. She's quite vocal when she wants something: whether to go outside for toilet, wants a rub, cuddle or another closeness, and when she's 'starving' she's yawny and stares directly at me. But I think I've conquered her expectation? Same too in bed. She joins me for a bit then I tell her firmly to go back to her space when we're having a 'sleep over' - there was a time when we shared a double bed, but now I put her large double duvet and smaller matress next to the single one in my old room (having removed the base of th...

A slow down Friday. Mostly I was yawning yesterday, after leaving Lola and mother. The past two days I'd done a lot of digging and, surprisingly, my hands are not so painful as they have been, but I've started to take vitamin D again, after a little gap while I was walking in France (and feeling that there must be enough sunlight pouring forth now we've passed equinox)? Yesterday my left foot was terribly painful and I read that the problem may be Metatarsalgia which if causing the issue, but what can I do except rest the foot. I am currently waiting for some physiotherapy on my right knee so perhaps I can also discuss the tenderness then? Walking is the thing which keeps me together and without it I struggle to comprehend life. The limitation of my being would definitely return me to the depressed state I was in previously - when I could see no means of leaving my unhappy existence other than by a noose. Age related injuries, walking through Köln in 2013 carrying too much ...

This morning I didn't write much before mother, and her crippled body, descended the stairway and put a stop to the journal I keep. On the X99, which is running a little late, we are passing The Windmill pub on a glorious Thursday afternoon. It might be filled to the rafters with school kids upstairs, but that is OK as downstairs is fairly civilised and quiet (except for the Kurdish (???) lady who sells the Big Issue in the Market Place in Wetherby and a couple of octogenarians - with masks still in place - who whitter constantly). We're heading up Langwith Hill, Collingham, where I once delivered mail and once asked, in utter desperation, to go for a poo-poo in a residence I delivered to off Hillcrest. That was such a long time ago: during Foot and Mouth. The Rapeseed in the field by the turning onto Crabtree Lane is the brightest yellow. It's a wonderful day. This morning was still too cold for tomatoes, and there was a slight frost in Yorkshire... I hope it wasn't on...

Crawling into bed at 18:20 because there is nothing else I feel like doing in the flat, after I ate dinner, put my dry clothes and drying rack away, washed and dried the pots, utensils and cutlery. Picked up two bags of Main Crop potatoes to get into the ground shortly - Desirée and Maris Pipers - from Wilko's around four and negotiated the meaninglessness on the streets between Albion Street and Lovell Park. Sirens outside the flat, tailbacks along Lincoln Green Road, etc, a sullen grey sky and noise from the inhabitants around me and from the dicky lift. It's possible to get used to anything? At 18:30 I am going to meditate... ... I don't feel lonely lied on my own listening to the noises around the flat, and I never feel alone when I am walking in the countryside. Yesterday the singing of birds (and now they start to permeate and interject with the motor vehicle drone) and the bright roadside blooms made me joyous. *** To live too long makes us forget the mea...

Self control. Positive freedom. So often am I out of control of what is best for me, but, as if looking through a fog, I see it not. Something inside takes control of my best self-interest and de-rails it. Some days I clearly see that I have lost control and start again from a zero point: a line in the sand. Then I step forward again trying to resist the pitfalls I put on the road I am on. Just over one week ago I returned from Limoges and the brilliant self-control required to walk and walk and walk, regardless of my wishes just to sit and give up, crying 'am I mad?' But then I return and, as though I have earned a little self destruction, fall into a banal meaningless cycle of badness. The part of my brain which I have released from the badness sees it's opportunity to become wreckless. Since that Sunday I have returned to wrecklessness, and I just can't live a life this way! It effects all my relationships, poisoning them at the root and the leaf. Yesterday I walked ...

To be sat surrounded by people who are not like you: people who seem so badly composed, where their atoms seem misplaced in a meaningless repetition: this was Easter Sunday. After a couple of draining hours up on the allotment I returned to 42 to rest and then joined Jason, Dan and Westy (people from the distant past who I still briefly interact with) for a couple of hours. Then I returned to eat and sleep until I go walkabout this morning. Something woke me around 1:30, as usual, but it can't have been cheese in the pasta meal I had for supper? Perhaps the small amount in the pesto and the few gratings I put in the dish are enough to stop my slumber. But the last voice in my head, after I'd finally found the longed for Lalaland, said don't forget Pastoral centres for accommodation on the Pilgrims Way. There are ways of being in the spirit of the Camino in the UK if only I remember the things I've learnt down the years? In Southwark there is a small Poor Clare's hou...

Back in the disappointing town. Shuttlecocking between a dirty metropolis and crisp mediocrity. It's four in the afternoon and I'm not for it! Resurrection to the same existence is pithy and false: the very first lie is the return. His death meant nothing: no death does; none would return, even if the entire cosmology changed it's structure of unchanging laws for one man, as there is no death because there is no universe; being but dream, a mental distortion, a misperception. Smoke and mirrors. Wetherby Velo cutting up the ride into a tripe filling and I hate the way some people dissect what they do. They speak as though they physically see the ride they have been on or are going on. On my wandering I never wonder what is ahead, or behind, all I want is now. The present. The fine line between something, anything and nothing: infinity. Holy Saturday passed too near to another alcohol binge as I caught up with Nick, and Co., at Wetherby Brew Co - it was always going to happen...