A rebel without a clue.

I’ve lived in this flat ten years. Never decorated. The walls don’t complain. Though sometimes, out the corner of my eye, I see one of them breathe. Just once. A twitch. Then nothing. The Boots percolator sits on the counter and coughs — not a purr, but a cat hacking up a fur ball. Stops, starts, then carries on pretending nothing happened. The cough lasts too long, going down the pipes and rattling cupboards two doors away. Still — what comes out is smooth. A litre of Lavazza Rosso. Enough. Mam says, “I might be 82, but I’m as bright as I was at 72.” I almost answer, “So that must’ve been daft at 72 then,” but I bite it back. Mrs Levy’s voice cuts in: “you’re like a cripple.” Miss Trixie snaps back: “I may be old, but I’m not crippled.” Between cruelty and defiance, Mam stands, insisting she’s still bright. She hasn’t lived in Rawmarsh for an aeon, not really. But she’s folded into her mother who never left — the coal-fire gestures, the language that leans on itself, the telly speakin...

I'm looking at my snoring dog laid dreamily on my left hand side. We've returned from a penultimate walk before my flight on the 21st May. At nearly nine he is getting just too old for more than a few miles sniffing, peeing and trundling around the Wetherby District footpaths and bridleways. He'll come with me eagerly once I mention 'walk', bound along Braine Road and York Road looking back expectantly and he'll still demand, glancing back in my direction, we go where he likes best; leading the way towards the various paths we've traced over the years, but now, by the last home leg, Snoopy is really thinking of the treats he has in store once he arrives back at 42: a nice rub down with a warm towel, a twisty 'chewy' hide stick, a biscuit (various) and chilling/sleeping until dinner this afternoon: he has his zone on the seat - it is his and he'll always move any incumbent on from there with a nudge and a penetrating stare. I love him implicitly ...

1.) Over ten years ago (2012) something fairly logical collapsed into a crumpled mess and was disordered beyond mere brown paper and vinegar to reassemble. As it lay in that whirlpool plunge pool jacuzzi it starred up into the crystal ether, with those distant points of light glaring back and suddenly the gravity was so smothering, saping the slight bit of reason that was being torn off layer by layer and thrown against the fleeting clouds, sprinting against the vaster emptiness, with those urgent focal points of distant blinking seeming to ask the question: Why? And the answer was it didn't know. Why... The question was good but it wasn't something ever really considered before in the neverending, ceaseless struggle, it was winding up, tighter and tighter, as an over wound mechanism squeezing the final fragments of sanity out of the coil, like the final blood pouring from the cut neck of the slaughtered swine into the bucket of coagulating sterility of the floating pig it had ...

Chapter 1. The afternoon sun, though muted by the lingering clouds of a day that had seen the Pyrenees blush and recede into the haze, held a particular weight at precisely five o’clock. Daniel, seated now, felt its faint caress through the windowpane of his pensio, a modest haven secured for a mere thirty-five euros in La Jonquera. The room, number 101 – a detail that, for a mind steeped in the collective consciousness of literary dread, might have evoked the chilling specter of Orwellian confrontation, yet here, paradoxically, offered nothing but profound, unburdened solace – provided a quiet vantage point. Below, a torrent, swollen perhaps by unseen mountain springs or the caprices of recent weather, flowed with an insistent murmur, its waters hurrying purposefully towards the distant, implied promise of Figueres. His body, a faithful vessel on this arduous Camino, carried the day’s ledger of experiences. A faint, almost imperceptible itch, a constellation of mosquito bites acquired...

Teachers. Are the best of persons and the worst of persons in this perpetual struggle to counterbalance the two. I am a median. A line betwixt alternatives, but I am weak by being this liberal string vibrating to the frequency of the forgetful fingers. She's kind yet mean... Not kind and then not mean. Gentle then unforgiving. Teachers. Exist in that tension between shaping minds and being worn down by them. Your median isn’t weakness; it’s the frayed edge of trying to hold both extremes. Kindness and cruelty aren’t phases—they’re simultaneous, like light through a prism. The string vibrates because it’s alive, not because it’s forgotten. Footprints and rusty tracks mark the limit of l'Adour. Now I turn 180° to venture further southward into Biarritz and thoughts of home. *** And I am sat on the corner of Albion Street and Boar Lane once more. The wheel keeps on turning. Espresso and pain aux raisin. The Leeds 10k is on too from 9am... My bus is out of here is at 9:05am - I hop...

The cool air of Manresa still held the faint tang of last night’s indulgence as the pilgrim, Daniel, rose to face his final day. A familiar “wobble,” a hangover much like the one that had marked his departure from Olot, tried to cling to him. Yet, unlike the deep unease of that earlier start, this felt different—a mere echo, a passing cloud. “It’s me. It’s who I am,” he’d admitted, acknowledging a pattern of self-struggle, but crucially, adding, “I didn’t fall.” It was a quiet triumph, a testament to the resilience he had forged on the miles between. The journey itself had become a process of managing, of moving through. Before truly setting forth, a sacred ritual: coffee, the effervescent sting of Vichy Catalan, and a croissant, a small, perfect breakfast of quiet sufficiency. A fleeting thought of adding orange juice brought a fresh note to the morning’s tableau. Properly fortified, he contemplated the journey behind him, distilling the essence of each stage into poignant, almost poe...

The autumn rain arrived in Girona as a gentle, final curtain call. It was a different kind of rain than the ones that fell in spring. This one felt like a quiet blessing on the end of things, washing the dusty streets with a soft, persistent whisper. Daniel walked through the familiar city, yet it felt brand new. He had been here before, in April, when the city was full of the promise of spring. But back then, he had only been walking to recover. His feet, tender from the operation to remove the neuroma, were simply moving him forward out of necessity, out of a need to mend. He was a wanderer then, but not yet a pilgrim. The rain flowed like a sweet liquor, and he felt it awaken tired eyes and dusty frowns. The drops were not just moisture from the sky; they were the holy water of a fulfilled journey, a final act of grace on a path that had taken him so far. He thought of the man in the hostel, the shared space, the hug. He thought of the deep scars left by a life of feeling like a dif...