A rebel without a clue.

Nearly missed the stop for Harfleur! It was a short journey. Being here reminds me of seeing Henry Vth with Tom back during university days. We were very high up so it wasn't perfect to see or hear from there and I think we had a pillar for company, but it was a RSC production so it was worth the strained necks? Once more into the breach... *** Around an hour later and I headed back to Le Havre. If I had more energy I would have walked back to Le Havre as it was only 8.5kms between it and the La Plage, at the end of the tram line(€4.50 on all transport all day). After briefly seeing the cleaners I took full possession of the yacht for the evening. Then went and had a thorough shower. This morning, Saturday, I just missed the bus towards Honfleur(122 to Caen) so that has to be another occasion: the bus left just as the travel office opens to get a ticket. You need cash otherwise... France in the 21st century. Now I am heading north on the 13 to Étretat where the French White Cliffs ...

Rouen. And west again... Train to Abancourt, waiting for the bus replacement service to Rouen. The site of a vast equipment and supplies depot, for the western front in WW1, after arrival at Le Havre and Rouen to be organy and redistributed to the front. But now there is no indication of anything like that except many lines meeting at the Gare a few miles from the Hameu... Accommodation sorted, but it's another single room with everything in it for €58 ... The one last time isn't available and that was a single room too. It's only got a sofa bed. But I am minimal anyway. And it's a place to rest prior to walking or hitching tomorrow... I could follow the Seine towards the sea and Honfleur... But it is Friday tomorrow. But I am being dragged/drugged south towards the end of my perambulations in 2014 - Chatellerault and then Poitiers? Yes. I will hitch tomorrow south towards Chatellerault and pick up where I left off or head to the Plum Village once more? No I won't T...

The fullest bus from Leeds to the airport, the fullest airport and the fullest plane, but, somehow, I coped and around midnight I found my way, after a piss across the street, to the Gîtes d'Etape(€15 with Credential) run by Les Amis du Beauvais vers Compostelle. Crept in took my sleeping bag to the room, was greeted by the guy from Amiens who was using the toilet and slept until around 6am. Having dealt with my financial difficulties for July I can forget it until August, although, try as I might, I couldn't contact the DWP to ask them to do the Mandatory Reconsideration... So I must, at some point, this couple of weeks walking the Camino speak to them and start the long ball game rolling. It has to go to appeal once more but that took from September 2016 to April 2017 to be resolved ... So here I am. Away from what can never help me towards the happiness I so sorely need: it's always so quiet on an evening in smaller French cities: although I do live directly above a coup...

So I returned to the flat just after noon, with no intention of leaving it all day, as I tried to cope with the various distractions which came from all directions. As the clock crept towards home-time, for those working around the centre and traveling through the various arterial roads around my flat, the kids were playing nehnah-nehnah on the landing, there was a clattering of metal objects falling on the construction site, which pervaded the rainy space between it and level eleven, towards my oversensitive hearing and the sounds of reversing continued like a monotonous and tedious lullaby drilling into my skull ... Oh and then there was another car alarm to add to the joy, but hew it was brief ... And then there was a siren drawing me to my doom as the JCB continued to reverse beyond 6pm. After all that I slept undisturbed until 5. When I rolled over, in the post dream haze, until opening the curtain I was greeted by rain once more, and stripped the bed to wash the linen. Heatwave i...

From 6am until late, in the early evening, there has been a JCB construction vehicle reversing, with the audible warning alarm/siren/noise, even on Sundays. The usual traffic noise around the flat and the occasional siren of police or ambulance or fire engine I've grown accustomed to, because I've been here since 2015 and can usually meditate on it until it no longer causes me grief, but the last several months of trying to accommodate this reversing sound and the additional noise of the people who have been working around my tower block, as part of the insolation upgrade, is making me go insane. The man below me with his pounding techno music and the children running around the communal space outside my flat, and belting a ball against my door, mean I am unable to switch off properly. Add to this the noise of boy racers, motorcycles without silencers and a distant sound of music over the weekend means that this flat feels like a form of torture...

Mood so low I didn't leave the flat all day yesterday and was in bed 70% of the time. Looked at the mess around the flat, sighed and went further into bed... The world needs to open up for me. It seems to be going that way, but only if I flee to France on Wednesday... I've accommodation in Beauvais,  with two fellow pilgrims, at the Gites d'Etape. Then the previous few years are completed. Will I live through this? Good question. Beginning another journey. This is the end of something ... Not cherished the period of yo-yoing the X99/X98 and beer/no beer as it's cutting my life back dramatically. I couldn't do 10000 push ups, like Robert is for charity, but I can walk while the heart and brain don't split or a canker develops hidden within this dermis.

Monday morning and I am low. How do I rise above this feeling? Things which occurred, which I feel irresponsible for, are playing heavily on my mind. As a consequence of not qualify for PIP I am almost recoiling, or is it uncoiling, in my mind. Seeing no way forward which isn't just one more pointless task trying to keep rolling the ball up that hill. Being on benefits is very hard to make ends meet, anyway, and when that income is halved due to the point scoring system, which accumulates to say this person gets PIP, but has no actual criteria purely for mental health issues (anxiety, depression, phobia, etc). I haven't seen the letter which gives me the option of a second opinion, before heading along the long road to the tribunal, but last time I didn't score on managing my life in the flat. Since moving to the flat in 2015 I have never decorated it. It's got exactly the furnishings that were already in place and the sofa emmanus provided, the washing machine Robert b...