January
2023 begin much like it is today: wet and windy. In keeping with the last seven years, the year began somewhere new: this time, in an AirBnB in Wilpshire, some two hundred and thirty-five miles from home. It had been a wonderful New Year’s Eve, but a fleeting one: cracks were starting to form in my relationship. I decided to ignore them and looked inwards instead. A few weeks later I saw a pheasant on a stroll around Wakehurst and had no idea that the very same bird would seek me out when things began to unravel several months later. Hindsight is a curious thing.
February
The villagers of South Willingham lost their bid to save the local forest from being turned into a bike park. I know it will bring much-needed money to the area, but a part of my heart always breaks a little when somebody carves up another patch of the earth for human entertainment. I wandered among the trees and soaked in the winter light. No footpath leads through the woods, so I might be the last person to do so. I also passed my driving theory test, but didn’t tell anybody about that for a while.
March
The man who doesn’t take a day off unless he’s dead or dying was very nearly brought down by a fever this term, reaching its peak the day of the House Music final. My very conscientious partner drove all the way up to my place to drop off a get-well-soon care package and gave me clear instructions to rest, but I dragged myself to the school theatre to support my boys in their bid for victory – and was not disappointed. Rutherford took home the House Music shield for the first time in over a decade. I didn’t fully recover until the following Monday, but I rode the high of their success for months afterward.
April
Seeking answers, I sought out the Camino – and the Camino provided. Within days I had found an incredible cast of characters, and had the Easter holidays been longer, I would have gone with them all the way to the end. I walked a hundred and thirty kilometres in just under a week with a Brit, a Dane, a Canadian, a Spaniard, a Dutch girl, a couple of Californians and the most charismatic Italian I have ever encountered – and I have encountered more than a few. I told myself I would be back to finish the job, but I didn’t think at the time that I would throw myself back at the Camino a few months later.
May
Matters of the heart came to a head. I drifted back to Wakehurst and sat on a grassy bank near the American plantation to clear my head. The pheasant appeared and sat beside me, keeping me company for the best part of half an hour. Say what you like, but animals seem to have a sixth sense for when humans are in distress. My mother’s cat made a beeline for my brother when he was in the doldrums in much the same way. It did not heal my heart but it did a lot to patch it back together. In the meantime, I went at my living room and restructured the place, hoping to find a new sense of direction by altering my perspective and my surroundings. It’s a lot easier to move a bookcase around when you don’t possess several hundred books, though.
June
I broke things off with her and felt awful about it – but seventy-eight reports, a bout of vomiting sickness in the boarding house and preparations for the school trip to Seville helped me stay on track. The Leavers’ Ball was more of an event than a formality this year, seeing as it meant saying farewell to a cohort of students who had joined the school at the same time I had. An immensely nostalgic music tour to Salzburg rounded out the month and found me playing the violin at the same bandstand I had played back in 2006, some seventeen years ago. In a very up-and-down year, June was a particularly erratic rollercoaster of a month.
July
I’m quite convinced that the answer to most questions can be found on the Camino, and I had unfinished business from the Easter holidays, so a mere two days after returning from Austria I was back on a plane and bound for Bilbao once again. You’ve probably followed me on that particular journey already, but if you haven’t, you can always start again right here. Three weeks and nearly five hundred kilometres later, I arrived at the end of the world and stared across the Atlantic to America. Someday soon, I’ll take my adventures across that ocean. But not yet.
August
August was a quiet month. August always is. I popped up to London a couple of times and saw some old friends, which was much needed – I have distanced myself from a lot of old acquaintances after the way they upbraided me over the Gospel Choir fiasco, and it took quite a bit of courage to resurface, even though it’s been some two years since. The social current flows fast in the capital city. London remains a charming place to visit, but I’m sure glad I don’t live up there. I’m a lot better at dealing with cities than I used to be, but I’m definitely a country boy at heart.
September
Term started late this year, meaning August was already over by the time the students returned. It wasn’t a scorcher like last summer, but the warm weather stayed with us for quite some time. A new wave of weekend activities and a house camera kept me busy at weekends, and I finally managed to host a party in the flat over the first Exeat of the year, using the old projector to beam karaoke onto one of my walls. I also got back into drawing, completing a giant poster for one of the walls.
October
Storms Agnes and Babet tore across the British Isles and put an abrupt end to the long summer days. Sussex remained relatively stable while the roads of the Lincolnshire Wolds turned into rivers. I spent the October half term with my parents and even made it to Manchester to see my brother’s first ever publicly exhibited artwork on the first floor of a fancy riverside hotel. I also wrote a pantomime for my school, but internal politics made it impossible to get off the ground. At least I have the backbone of a script that I can carry over to whichever school I head to next.
November
We lost the first round of House Music, but only by a single point – so there’s hope for my boys yet. More importantly, I bit the bullet and started learning to drive. Finding the time to schedule in two hours of driving during a working week is ridiculous – and probably the biggest reason I’ve put it off for so many years – but, steadily, I’m starting to get the hang of it. Or rather, I was, until a combination of sickness and cover lessons made it impossible to schedule in the last two lessons of term. Here’s hoping I can pick up where I left off in the new year.
December
December hurtled around at the speed it always does, though this year the last stretch did seem longer than usual. I managed to strong-arm Riu Riu Chiu back into the Carol Service at last, which the kids seemed to love, and helped to draw up the motion for the Students vs. Alumni debate, though I was not especially fond of the heavy economical slant in which it dragged the proceedings. My brother spent Christmas with his partner, so it was just my mother and father and I this year. Midnight Mass was bizarre – half an hour of forced carols before the Mass itself began at midnight (rather than the usual 11.45pm start) – but, traditions must be maintained. I blew the dust off Duolingo and got back into learning Italian after more than a year’s hiatus, though I daresay I’ve picked up a little in that time from my students.
This time tomorrow I’ll be in Madrid. Since leaving university I’ve made a point of seeing in the New Year somewhere new, but this year, for the first time since we met, I can finally celebrate it with my Spanish family, so I’m headed for the pueblo to see in 2024. I haven’t seen some of my cousins since my youngest counsin’s first communion back in 2019, so it’s a reunion that’s been a long time coming. Here’s to a good one, folks. BB x
The Book of Barnabas 