Alright, so first things first – why the name change? That I can tell you in two words. Assassin’s Creed. To be precise, give me three: Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey.

Up until a few years ago, the old blog was easy to find, not least of all because my choice of a pen name is not exactly one of the most commonplace names around. When was the last time you met a Barnabas?

Then, suddenly, 2018 saw the next instalment in the Assassin’s Creed series, and would you believe it, one of the many “side quests” in the game was actually titled “Barnabas Abroad”. Curious, I read up on the mission and spoke to a couple of people who have played the game, and I still can’t find a legitimate excuse as to why they chose that title. It has seemingly no bearing on the in-game mission whatsoever (mind you, since I’ve been grounded for the last four and a half years, it wasn’t really an honest title for my own blog anymore). Anyway, what that meant in a nutshell is that hits for my blog plummeted. Time was when Googling “Barnabas Abroad” took you straight here. Not anymore. Even if you knew the name of the blog, you’d have to sift through two pages of Wikis and related forums about Assassin’s Creed in order to find any of my content.

So this is me, BB, the artist formerly known as Barnabas Abroad, rebranding.

And no, it’s got nothing to do with The Book of Boba Fett either. Nor the Gospel of Barnabas, though I’ll admit I like the connection. Honestly? I just wanted something that started with the letter B.

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I heard it said that in London you’re always looking for either a job, a house or a lover.

Amy Liptrot, The Outrun

Spring in the air. Robins singing. Long shadows on the drive. An electric blue sky and the promise of summer. Crocuses, snowdrops and daffodils. A deepening red hue in the silvery-ochre wash of the Weald. In the forest, masses of frogspawn in the usual spot, most of which will be gobbled up by the thrushes long before the hatchlings see the light of day. Hope stamped out but not extinguished. Despair has no place in the springtime.

Today was an odd day. So much of it felt like walking backwards through time. And not stepping back to a specific point in the past, I mean literally walking backwards. I spent the morning moving a tumble-dryer into the flat with a colleague. I took a taxi to the station, with the company I used to use a year ago, before our school changed its providers. I remembered the driver – you get to know them pretty well when they’re your only rapid means of getting to and from work, wheel-less as I am. I went to Victoria in the sunlight with a giant suitcase for a friend. I handed it over, talked things over, and left the station, more than one load the lighter.

I think my mind was elsewhere, so my brain went into autopilot. My feet took me into the nearest Waterstones. I found myself in the philosophy section. My great-grandfather was something of a philosophy nut, if his letters are anything to go by. Maybe, when we’re at a loss, the spirits of our ancestors come back to guide us. I’d like to think so. I couldn’t find Mill’s On Liberty (recommended to me by a student a few weeks back), so I found the nearest thing: Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech and Why It Matters. Figures that if I’m to cleave to the value I hold dearest – and the one that’s always proved the most divisive in my various circles – I should see what others of a similar persuasion have to say.

The quote at the top of today’s entry comes from a book I read while I was up at the Edinburgh Fringe five years ago. Something about the frankness of the writing style appealed to me like no other nature writer had. Nature writing lends itself very well to the sort of comfortable, fatherly, did-you-know style of speech that isn’t always what you want when you’re after a page-turner. The Outrun was something different, and I felt I could resonate with so much of it. It came to mind this afternoon, or rather, that quote did. Though to be honest, what I was really looking for in London this afternoon was a bit of peace and quiet. It’s been quite a hectic term.

I’ve been in orbit for a few months now, enthusiastic as ever in my job, listless in my spare time. Writing has helped. Reading has sort of helped, when I’ve had the will for it. Running a new choir after the upheaval of last term has been a real palliative, doubly so since my hearing has fully recovered. And yet, there it is. That sense that the future isn’t as clear as it used to be. I still have the vague notion of where I want to be, and it still very much looks like a boarding school on the outskirts of Madrid, but where before the rope bridge stretched across a river, the abyss below seems void and limitless. A myriad paths I could take, crossing and weaving and leading down roads I don’t fully understand. I don’t suppose I realised how much I had built my future upon the present, until that present shifted beneath my feet. It’s just as well that the news right now is all chaos; if nothing else, it provides a healthy reality check.

I’m hoping that my adventures in Italy break the back of this funk when they come around. I’ll travel light, I think. Take only my journal, a camera and some changes of clothes. No headphones, no travel guides, no extras. Just the one book – and a slim one, at that.

The Waterstones near Victoria looks out upon the impressive façade of Westminster Cathedral, and that’s where I headed next. There’s a silent solace in bookshops, but something greater and more powerful can be found in the holy places of this world (see my account of the climb to Montserrat a few years ago). I found a chair, made the sign of the cross and shut my eyes.

The rumble of the buses outside was drowned out by the magisterial rumble of the organ overhead, then piping and blasting, then humming and whispering. I caught snatches of Spanish in the pews to my right. Byzantine eyes burned into my temples from the glittering walls of the aisles. I counted the stations of the cross as far as I could see them and thought about my abortive visit to Jerusalem, laid low by Covid the week the schools closed. Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross, and a man propping his smartphone up against his feet in the nave to take a full-length photo down the aisle, once, twice, three times. A lady in a wimple watching three rows down with an expression that might have been contempt or indifference. Me, a pretender with a Daunt Books tog-bag I forgot I had, crossing myself once again and leaving.

I sought answers in a church once before, during a summer school trip to Crawley town mall many years back. I think I had similar questions then. But now it’s gone ten on a Sunday night, and there are more important lessons to think about. The weekend, thankfully, is come and gone. Life goes on! BB x