A rebel without a clue.

Groundhog Day. Dry retching from strong coffee. In Pret at the Train Station I decide not to take another coffee: I usually take a strong espresso. A ginger shot and a breakfast baguette: avocado and egg. A different approach to the same 24hrs. Usually I have a pain aux raisin and double espresso. Otherwise this day feels exactly the same as Saturday or Wednesday did. Some random guy asked if I was heading to the cricket... Must be my attire. It's how I dress - there is nothing fancy about a pair of sandals, a pair of shorts, a short sleeved shirt (guayabera) or a floppy hat: it is summer! If Australia were here I may be tempted to sit and watch that the Test Match all day.. but not against New Zealand. The rivalry isn't there and I have no connection to New Zealand at all. It is a real shame that it's so far away and that we never went there as a family, or I as a unit, when we could've done in the late 1980s. ***   And I am the first person onto the bus. On Wednesday ...

The 'working' week is nearly over: a whole 7 days since I got back to LBA and Leeds and I have very little to say to myself or anyone. I am uptight once more. Back to yo-yoing between Wetherby and Leeds which is an activity I would prefer not to be involved in... But it's a necessary evil? Luckily from Friday it stops for a while as I head back to Wetherby to dog sit Ruby on Chestnut Avenue for ten days after one more night with Mother at 42. Climbed off the bus at Oakwood Clock and there is a tedious man, but inside it's too warm. He's one dimensional. Not his fault: yesterday was one of them days. A bit depressive regardless of the weather and the good works I performed. Lola got an early hour and a half around 8, beating the heat. Walking up the right side of Deighton Road to Aire Road, onto the footpath which leads to Ashdale Lane and Kirk Deighton, up to the very top of Ashdale Lane where it reaches the bridge over the Old Railway and then back to mother's ...

It's Tuesday afternoon. Just caught the X98 from Wetherby town centre. Yesterday was a day of relentlessness from crawling out of bed with Lola at 6 until I crawled into bed in the room next to Ruby around 8. Between I walked a lot, worked on the allotment and had the first migraine of the year. Today is a day of relentlessness: walking, allotmenting and hay fever. The weather is touching the low twenties, but it feels a little higher... ... Will have a beer this afternoon. Am having a beer this afternoon. Calmness. It's Tuesday and it's dead everywhere. Perfect. The price is a sore point. ... A little hung over. Was sick early on this morning... First 'session' in ages. The Disrupter beer @ 7.4% in Belgrave is the culprit. I will never learn! But it's OK...now I wait for the X98 on Boar Lane. The 7:30am, which usually has the school children on it from Harehills/Easterly Road, Wetherby Road, etc. It is the 2nd day of rail strikes so the station was dead. Pret a...

Well apart from a very cold return to Wetherby: the temperature not the people (they're always frosty), it was a pleasant Saturday hereabouts. Lola and I had a lovely hour and a half clowning about and swimming down on the Ings and Scaur Bank. After a second walk, and before dinner, I popped to Wetherby Brew Co but it was so chilly that I had a glass of cider then returned for a quiet night in. Mum went to the Jazz night in Boston Spa and was gone around 7:30pm and, I guess, I was asleep by eight? I didn't hear anything until I awoke for a pee at dawn. Then I went back to sleep until 5am(6am Spanish time). Come the school holidays I've Archie to house and dog sit for 36 days (the confirmed the dates) as Iskara and David head off to Bulgaria for the entire school holidays... And I can't blame them as the are such busy people: flying all around non-stop with two young-uns and working working working. They're quite well of physically, but I couldn't manage even a f...

This morning, having read Down and Out in Paris and London (a slightly conceited memoir), I feel that Leeds in 2022 resounds to a similar beat. At 7am the only folks about are those who clean up from the night before and those who linger in doorways alive or dead: who knows. The litter of fast food containers, dropped food, paper cups: things blowing on the breeze down Eastgate. Wrappers dropped and forgotten as these bodies slumbers, post binge, in doorways half covered and beyond redemption. It's a town which only just hangs on. Without the universities making their six pence worth the town would be as dead as is possible: none of the structures surrounding the city would exist and those areas would appear as decrepit as I see walking through LS7 to venture over the Inner Ring Road flyover to Wade Lane: it wouldn't be dissimilar to Mansfield? On the verges nature keeps reclaiming as much as it is able. The rats and mice, pigeons and gulls do very well on our ledger of refuse...

Back through the baptismal font which is Leeds on a Friday evening. The pigs feasting on unreal truffles in the barren woods. A trial to get any positive response from people so deep in their trough. As I got back to the flat around 11, the bus at 9 didn't appear at the airport so I shared a taxi to Leeds Station with Victoria heading to York. Walking direct to Lovell Park, blinkers on, keeping out of the path of the brutish hordes swelling the greasy pavements where eyes glimmer malevolent. It's six am, I am back in West Yorkshire. It's time to prepare my face for the faces I meet.

Went to the promenade and I am left wondering how many ice cream, souvenir, discount shoe and restaurants (where someone stands forcing you in) there ever needs to be? Hundreds. In a universe as amazing and as complicated as this humanity really is so simple: give him a lolly and he'll be so so happy. Truthfully, I found myself walking at that promenading speed and shouted at myself. Leaving the pointlessness I crossed over the Ramblas and park which separates Cambrils from L'Horta de Santa Maria. Much like a warning of Dragons: there be Germans beyond the dross of commerciality. So I sat down for a beer - pitiful Estrella Damm (it's Alsatian you know) - and touched base with Nuremberger, Hamburger, and his hund(Nina), then working my way back towards this Fonda I crossed back into Nanaland, but where the locals hung out: Passeig de Francesc Marciá and ate a €5 artisanal pizza(minus the cheese) and a final beer. It's another day. I've located a café next to where I ...