A rebel without a clue.

This morning, after I left the flat around 11, and since noon I have been perambulating around Leeds University Campus. It's the first time I've set foot in the Refectory and the Terrace Bar since Autumn 2001 when I was deciding not to continue with the PGCE. Knottingley High School and The Dixon Academy in Bradford didn't instill me with any confidence and I was having trouble paying any attention to lectures in the monolithic structure known as the Roger Stevens Lecture Halls. I've since grown to quite like Brutalist architecture, but back then it just reminded me of the awful 1970s, and I just didn't understand what the lecturer was rabbiting on about Pastoralism/Pastoral Care I thought pastoralism was sheep going baa baa or something related to the Romantic Poets; wondering lonely as a cloud? It's a poor day weatherwise and I think it's got everyone's mood crumpled. But the Allotment needs rain when I can't tend to the tomatoes. It's still Ma...

A patron. Someone to give me the security to know I can carry on walk, thinking and writing. All good artists struggle, but some are supported enough to reveal themselves in all their glory? When I wander, lonely on the hillside, I live in hope of meeting an immortal or some being outside of my experience to show me the path I am on is not a false one. Do I believe in magic? Well I used to be involved with AD&D quite heavily and read the Time of the Twins cover to cover, year after year, and lived in Middle Earth - Beleriand mostly, after I'd read LotR and and found it lacking - for a hell of a long time; I knew the Shire very well... *** The dawn chorus woke me this morning just before Lola climbed in next to me. She was pretty tired last night and crawled into her duvet after a little time nestled with me, head in the space between upper arm and chest on Wednesday evening *** Something I didn't expect to rear it's ugly face has come over the horizon once more: depress...

Sun pouring against my bedroom wall, like a flame licking from the centre of a hearth onto the exposed skin... And I was awake. Sleep or hayfever clings to my eyes: another season of itchiness and soreness is here: summer has occurred. Bugger... I so like spring! Summer can get a bit relentless and I just know it's a race for nature to grow, seed/fruit and then nothing... Ashes to ashes. From dust back into dust...and now I long for Pilgrimage. Yesterday I was low. I was considering visiting the doctor's to ask for be prescribed antidepressants again... I've had a good year off them. But I must find my own way out of depression. Killing those negative thoughts before they devour me... Pilgrimage... Portugal? June? Now I am wondering how Michael is since he got back to Frankfurt Hahn(which is not near Frankfurt) and drove back into his usual life with Steffi, Bad Vibel, the court work and memories...

Yesterday I felt my life had run out of purpose. A feeling that in the past my existence was going somewhere, but now seems to be going nowhere. It's a pretty bleak feeling and, no matter if it's true or an illusion, I really felt my life wasn't worth the effort anymore. That's it - I was going to end it. Some how, by the time I left the allotment with tomatoes in the ground, that feeling of total worthlessness had receded and on Tuesday morning I am with Lola once more, going up that hill struggling to make the next 24 hours not feel pointless. She's done well so far as I won't feed her until seven. It's the rule! She needed a toilet break at 4am and then she got in alongside me until 6. Six! Well done the two of us! It's usually 5:30... Blue sky all the way and it's going to be hot. We're going out at 8 to beat the heat. Up to the Racecourse the back way through Carr Lane and Swinnow Hill, I think, as it is some time since we went that way. Tim...

At 1620 I realised I didn't blog today. Too busy with nothing happening. I slept well in the Z-bed in the spare room as we've AirBNB in my room. Apparently I was making noise at 5:30, but I had to stir mother at 8 so she wasn't so disturbed. Back in Leeds now to spend money I don't have in the hope of conviviality, but I've something covering my face: fifty years of dust... How do the crows living in cities feel about their relatives rurally, who live in murders differently, do they have a concept of a city or the countryside?  I don't want to go home. It's not my home. Nothing is. These crows circle in the same manner, but over a different carrion. It's not 6. I've a heap of chard to drown myself in, but I don't want to go home. It's the end of the week and the end of a long 10 days being different with Michael. Suddenly I am missing him, it and them. Those moments. I am rock solid from English Breakfasts, but I turned the corner: if I didn...

The fifteen thousand English Breakfast. It is not good for me to eat so much the same sort of thing... I must clean myself from the toxins in it... Platform 4 on Cambridge Station and Michael has gone for one night to his digs on the otherside of the tracks. Suddenly, at the end, I didn't want to go! It's Cambridge and it's a great University town/city. Quick half in OTO (old ticket office) then I wait for this long day to carry me further. I wished Michael Bon Voyage and perhaps we'll do this again, but shorter as the Backpacking section has killed me! As I left London on Thursday the 5th May I felt like I was in foreign country until I caught the train just now at Cambridge Station and remembered I am in England heading to The North. It was an interesting feeling... The train is pretty busy and my space was taken, but as I am off in Peterborough, for around an hour, I didn't trouble the person there.. It's OK to sit on the floor for ten minutes? *** The train ...

Still a little frazzled, but had a reasonable night's sleep. We're heading on the number 12 to Beachy Head around nine this morning after breakfast, in the North Laines area. First an Italian coffee and crossiant, with butter and jam, and now a mushroom and egg bun from the Flour Pot. It's a better day so far. Not as windy. Actually it's pretty still here on Sydney Street. Gulls and pigeons wheel about expecting dropped crumbs as Michael eats slowly and I gobble mine. My best friend is definitely Lola. She makes me live. She helps me forgive. The first one and final one. And it's not long now. Gentle and happy. Warm and loving. Yes I am a little tearful today because I don't know what I am doing... *** A brief walk and wait in the Pavilion Gardens for Michael to take a call from the a Judge for a case in July. The Great Escape festival starts in Brighton from Friday. The Strawberry Fields Guesthouse is fully booked, but this is enough of backpacking for me. Noth...