A rebel without a clue.

Retreating east, slowly. Got off the direct train to Manchester at Oxford Road connecting my feet towards Oldham Street and a return to Oi Polloi which appears to have moved from where I recall it being back in the early naughties. As I really need a replacement for the worn out Paramo Halcon, but perhaps not willing to pay £400 again as I don't have the money coming from looking after Emma and Neil's dogs(they're in Southern Spain pursuing all things 'flat'). Yesterday I tried to get what I needed from Adapt, but the midlayer was too small (medium size - I am definitely a large). But I was out of luck there as the stock had been removed as they have been taken over by JD Sports... Just like Hip Meanswear was?

Liverpool is a suprise. It's really interesting ... I've no idea why I've never visited here ... All my life a 'Liverpool FC' fan (having only been to Anfield once; damn it!), a Beatles fan and a culture and history vulture... I have to say better late than never. Apart from the piles of litter, which is a British problem and not Liverpool's sole responsibility, it's been a weekend I will treasure. Fine I got a little carried away yesterday, after my left foot flared up again and I dragged myself through Cain's Brewery (awful) and sought The Belvedere (where Alysha was very warm and an elderly gentleman gave me a potted history of Liverpool (warts and all)) I crawled into my upgraded room 505 and woke up with a stomach upset. Possibly from too much beer, wine and a slice of much too tempting Victoria Sponge... Upgraded as the initial room, 301, had mould in one corner of the room hidden behind the bunk bed which probably hadn't been moved since the H...

The impression of white, which is also an expression of light, on the psyche: as I starred on the monotony of yesterday's grey and opaque clouds there was a brief visual halo hanging in the southern sky. The sun, being brightly whitened behind the thick cover of the rain clouds, made me wonder if there is a similar spectacle on Venus, as it lays shrouded beneath a dense covering of sulfuric acid? ... A snow covered landscape makes all the anger disappear as the 'ten thousand things', banging about in the mind, are hidden below like the buried subconscious - for a moment the burden of thoughts is forgotten. On this plateau I write a blank script and blink back tears! Oh joy to let all trouble be whitewashed and forgot... Please! Not to pounce back, rip open, furious and unforgiving, the badly written page - crossed, scribbled and scrunched up, which glares off a page most malevolent!

Escaping from Wetherby and Leeds since Madrid (walk) in December and Cartagena in February (holiday) has been next to impossible with numerous health issues, lack of funds and little motivation. Pain in my left foot and right knee, partial blindness in my right eye from a cataract and too much alcohol poisoning my body are becoming everything, or were ... Last weekend, for mum's 80th birthday, we went and stayed in a cottage on the coast at Whitby which allowed me to venture outwards once more. Luckily the weather was good, after sunshine and showers on Friday afternoon, for two solid days walking. On Saturday Lola and I went north along Upgang Beach and up at Sandsend to Mulgrave Estate for around 10 miles. Lola loved the experience and we shared a banana cake at Wit's End before catching the bus back to the cottage. On the evening Lola and I stayed in while Emma, Finley and mother went out to eat. Lola was pretty tired on Sunday so, after I'd taken her for the usual hour,...

We are heading towards spring, in a stuttering fashion, with some cool days - a bitter northern wind and consistent showers yesterday and Saturday put me off heading to the allotment, and today mum has a date - first for ages as I think she's getting lonelier as she approaches 80? Her friendships seem to be thinning out? As a perennial loner I've never really been concerned about being on my own most of the time. In my youth I couldn't understand why I was always left to oneside, picked last(or not at all) and never asked for my feelings, opinions or justifications ... ... I've had little to report for the preceding couple of wintry months ... Now, as we approach Spring, I had a morning where I just couldn't keep killing myself slowly - I have realised, since whatever broke in my mind, quite apart from what's happening in the body, that for the preceding 10 years I've been a slow death - a suicide through wanton destruction of being. How foolish I have been?...

Why am I pissed off already this morning? Feelings of meaninglessness linger everywhere. Even, comfortable as I am with Lola tucked between my knees and thighs, breathing deeply, after her breakfast, there is something floating in my head which is making me feel rotten and beyond redemption. But this cannot be true, can it? There is always another way, and it is the right way out of this maze, in which I keep turning further and further into confusion, because I do have a choice between the Ego and the Holy Spirit - free will to choose a single point to save me from myself... Last night I didn't get drunk, I retired to read a third chapter of the historical fiction The Pillars of the Earth that my friend David gave me to read, and slept pretty well when Lola had stopped cleaning herself, in her bed, alongside me in my old bedroom at my mother's and didn't wake up fully until 7 am - which is a lay in for me! On the edge of my unconsciousness I was aware of the storm blowing...

Purposely I've given it a break. As I wrestle once more with A Course in Miracles, which I left alone for almost the entirety of 2022, to see what effect it had had on my being for the previous several years from 2013. And while battling demons, and failing, and getting filled up with a feeling of worthlessness, again by the end turning of the year I was left staring into a uncovered grave which I was sure I had, finally, covered, with me not buried within, but it yawns greedily once more. The Course will certainly be with me for the remainder of my mortal life, unless, of course, I truly become the individual it is pointing me to be? When I am in the pits of despair, screaming silently, the Course is the sound which cuts beyond the immaterial meaninglessness and reverberates to a clarity signalling a way better; there must be another way? And there genuinely is: the Truth is true and nothing else is. Yesterday I began considering the life inside a monastery as a potential goal onc...