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Port Notre Dame

Exhausted. Nervous. Ready to collapse, but not yet. Food. La Famille - nouvelle cuisine. Nice but Petit - but it filled a hole. On the main bohemian area Carrer Paratilla. Not yet. Good vibes. It's very windy. Coming off the Pyrenees. Outside the airport I hastily removed shorts and put on joggers. It stopped me getting a chill. Lovely in the sun. There was/is no buses on a Sunday between the station and airport so I will need to plan something on Sunday for the return ... That's another story. Now I have a demi blonde biere as I struggle with the French language, again, and find my right eye missing more and more - I almost fell when I went inside the restaurant rather than get chilled on my legs. Tomorrow I am fixed for a night in the Abbaye Saint Michel Cuxa and I don't have to walk too far: 22kms, but I have fears about falling again. Doubly careful. I don't know if I will go the same way as two years back: Gerona isn't too far away. I think the Bistro opposite ...

Heading to Perpignan for fun on the Chemin Saint-Jacques!

Sleep deprived as I couldn't stop worrying about the time I would be waking - the alarm wouldn't go off or it would be silent... I had a similar problem in Murcia, with Glenn (who wasn't fretting), back in February in a frigid room, close to the station, as I wasn't 100% that there was a train back to Alicante at the time it was being suggested on Google. After that tumultuous night it appeared that there was an early train, but we couldn't book online! It was a commuter train which had a very difficult system, with no advance purchase, to comprehend. Fortunately an elderly gentleman helped us to get the ticket we needed so we got to the advised stop prior to Alicante. Once we arrived at the bus stop, just prior to the airport, the shuttle bus passed us by without stopping - panic set in again (why do I get so anxious?) - it was full to capacity. Very luckily a worker also going to the airport, who lived close to the stop, was also stranded and decided to drive us t...

Mark.

Funeral of a friend. Mark has been laid alongside his father (Dennis) at Saint Chad's here in Far Headingley. A lovely service on a beautiful spring day. It's getting greener along the byways and thoroughfares. Here is another end and also a beginning. A lot of people have turned up to wish him a safe journey onwards. Glenn played his heart out on the guitar: one a Sting composition Fragile and the last his own in remembrance. Now the bar in the Church function hall is open. And everyone comes to partake. Mark has been put under an oak tree, away from Chartreuse, the east end of the church, but he's in Garmisch drinking Asbach and eating Weisse Wurst if the truth is known...

Manchester

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

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...

White

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!

Whitby

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,...