The starlings have finished their shift for the night and turned in their timecards. The yappy dog has taken over the night shift and is busy barking at every car that goes past. What the appeal may be in such scrappy scamps I cannot guess. If I worked in a profession that allowed me the time to have a dog, I’d want one that looked like… well, a dog, I guess. A wolf, moreover. Like a sheepdog, a collie or a wolfhound.
I’m thinking out loud. But that, I guess, is what blogging is for. Anyway. Here’s my account of Mérida, capital city of Extremadura, former heart of the Roman province of Lusitania, and the seat of the king in my novels.
As you leave the bus station on the south bank of the Guadiana River, you’ll notice almost right away a cryptic row of sculptures on the riverbank. At first glance, they seem to spell out a word, but a closer look reveals that they aren’t letters at all, but rather figurative depictions of thrones (if they were letters, I suppose they might spell out “CEIOHAD”, which – besides looking more like Irish than Spanish – is about as easy to understand as the Muqattāt of the Qur’an).
They are the work of local sculptor Rufino Mesa, native son of Valle de Santa Ana, and they pay homage to one of Mérida’s most cherished legends: that of the Seven Chairs that once stood outside the city.
According to legend, these enormous block of stone were the seats of seven Muslim princes (or kings, depending on the teller), who sat upon these ancient thrones to discuss matters of state. Given the fractious nature of the various Berber tribes who occupied the Iberian peninsula during the period of the Muslim conquest and the ensuing Taifa period when Al-Andalus splintered into a network of warring states, it’s perfectly possible that such a drama might have played out at least once here.
Until the start of the 20th century, these seven chairs were still a visible feature of the city, sitting in a field a short distance from the edge of town: a strange but not entirely ignored feature of the city. The ring of stone had seen use as a bullring in the 18th century, and the story of the seven kings had evolved into legends of buried treasure, though no major excavation took place until the archaeological endeavours of Maximiliano Macías and José Ramón Mélida in 1910.
At the time, the site looked very different to how it does today:
Digging deep, Macías and Mélida uncovered the roots of the seven chairs, revealing an enormous Roman theatre that had lain hidden beneath the earth for around fifteen hundred years. Its remains had long since been scavenged by the Visigoths and their Muslim successors for use in other constructions – such as the Grand Mosque of Córdoba, where there can be little doubt that many of its original pillars may be found – but the greater part of the foundations remained preserved beneath the earth.
It’s not quite as well-preserved as the Roman complex at Jersey, but then, Mérida sits on the bank of a great river – the Guadiana – and has been the site of battles both ancient and modern since the Teatro Romano was first built, and has therefore been a frontline city for much of its existence.
The modern reconstruction is an impressive feat, but more impressively still, it has been partially restored as a working theatre, hosting the Festival del Teatro Romano every summer. I’ve yet to see the festival with my own eyes, so it remains a bucket list item.
I spent nearly two hours wandering around the remains of the Theatre and Amphitheatre. I’ve been here before, of course – twice, at least, as I seem to recall a brief visit with IES Meléndez Valdés – but this place loses nothing in the rediscovery.
I caught myself touching one of the ancient slabs of stone and wondering what it would be like to be hurled backwards in time to the moment it was first laid there. I’m sure I’m not the first to have had that thought and I know I won’t be the last. The plethora of books both fiction and non-fiction on the Romans are proof of our ongoing fascination with the Roman Empire – even if it does come at the detriment of our interest in any of the other periods that followed (seriously, I’ve been to several bookshops now and I can’t find even one book on Mérida’s history between the fall of Rome and the Civil War).
I’ve more stories to relate, but I think I’ll keep split them up – Mérida has more than one story to tell. As the Córdoban scholar Mohammed Ar-Razi once put it:
No hay hombre en el mundo que cumplidamente puede contar las maravillas de Mérida.
So I won’t try to do so in a single blog post – or several. Instead, like the Visigoths, the Muslims and nearly a hundred generations of Spaniards before me, I’ll take what I can and use its bricks and mortar as the foundations for my own stories. BB x
Reports written. Exams marked and feedback given. A couple of workshops with the Y12s on character strengths and interview skills given. With the exception of six lessons at the start of next week, the school year is all but finished. I had nothing to do this afternoon, so I popped into town to get some Camino supplies. In two weeks’ time I’ll be on the road, and for six weeks at that – the longest adventure I’ll have ever taken – so I need to make sure everything is in place.
One thing I won’t be short of this time is stamp space. The credenciales I ordered from Santiago have arrived: two, plus a freebie with the guide I ordered to the Camino Primitivo. Each one has space for about 78 stamps, so even if I collect three stamps per day every day across those six weeks, two should cover it nicely. I can hold onto the spare for myself, or give it to a pilgrim who is running low. I’ll take all three in any event.
Am I hoping to meet some people around my age? Of course I am. There weren’t all that many the last time I did the Camino in the summer of ’23 (compared to the spring, that is) but maybe I just timed it wrong. Being a teacher, summer is all I really have to work with, so summer it is.
I’ve been walking in my new Keane sandals, and they’re as reliable as ever. I have some new Merino wool socks that should help with the prevention of blisters, and I have dug up my supplies of Compeed blister plasters from whatever hole they’d disappeared into since the last Camino – I was surprised by how many I still had. I didn’t pick up a First Aid kit today, but that might be an airport job, as there are useful implements that I wouldn’t be able to take through security anyway.
Not too much to report. It might not be such a bad idea to get back into the habit of blogging daily before I go – writing requires regular exercise, just like training for a hike. Maybe I’ll try to do something with the books I’ve been reading. That might be illuminating. BB x
Starting tonight, this is the last blog post I will write from my library. That was the last scroll through Instagram in here and the last YouTube video. Starting tonight, I’m making one room in my flat a phone-free zone.
I’ve already put a sign up on the door. The threshold has been established. Now I just have to stick to it.
I’ve gone cold turkey on tech in the past with variable success. The odd social media blackout that a few of us have trialled once or twice, you know? Perhaps for a day, perhaps for a month. Inevitably, we all came back. Tragically, in the world we live in today, it’s simply not possible to ditch the phone like it once might have been. Everything we do involves our phones in some way, from providing music and facilitating everyday communication to keeping time, providing torchlight and paying for goods and services. Even writing this blog post. And Microsoft Teams isn’t helping at all.
Luddite as I am, I held out against joining the rest of the world in the acquisition of mobile data, before begrudgingly bending the knee in the summer of 2016 at the tail end of my year abroad. The world has never looked back since.
Why is this on my mind tonight? There could be a number of reasons. Seeing one more wedding montage featuring old friends might have been the spark, though. It should go over my head, really, but it served as a reminder of just how cut off I have become, technology or no technology. Granted, I have allowed that drift to happen – through a combination of distance, time and a five-year-old wound – but I must admit that I can no longer hide behind the truth: my need to keep these portals open on the off-chance that my friends of old may or may not reach out has long since expired. They stayed in the city, and they stayed together. I moved away – several times – and took a job that required me to devote all my time and energy to the children in my care. I believe in what I do – it is surely one of the most sacred professions in existence – but it comes at a cost.
Like a soldier gone to war, I must accept that my job requires me to be itinerant. Rootless. And that means accepting that the close friendships I see others holding onto is, at least for now, necessarily beyond me. Perhaps it’s a factor behind the last few relationships that I have reckless thrown myself at, hoping to patch up the gaps.
But I’m done waiting. Instead, I’m going to start to take back control, and the revolution starts in my library. I’m hoping that one immediate benefit will be that I get back to devouring my books again, as I’ve been acquiring them at a significantly faster rate than I’ve been reading them. The most I ever read was in that first year abroad in Spain when I had no Wi-Fi. I must have motored through forty or fifty books that year. If I could somehow replicate that, even in just one room of my flat, it would be enough, I think.
My early thirties are upon me. My social circle has shrivelled, so I must build up the temple of my life with the stones provided to me. They’re mostly paperback, but the knowledge contained within them is strength enough. They’ll do.
Speaking of stones, did you ever consider that all the giants and monsters of myth and legend were just our ancestors’ attempts to explain the fossilised remains of the great beasts of the past? I suppose that should take some of the magic out of it, but it’s had quite the opposite effect on me. I’m now more intrigued than ever by the folklore and fairy tales of the world, and of the real life stories that inspired them.
Maybe I really should pursue that Masters. But first – let’s hit the books. My phone can do one. BB x
There’s a small oak tree that grows beside the boarding house. It shed its leaves a couple of weeks ago, briefly covering the tarmac in a golden-brown carpet, before the groundskeepers swept them all up into the back of a truck and took them away to the tip. A beautiful gift of death tossed into the trash. Word must have got around, in that silent way that trees have, as so many of the trees around the school have since held jealously onto their leaves well into the usual falling season. My oak, stripped to the skin, looks cold. Winter will soon be here and it has lost its coat.
The world seems a little darker right now. It’s not just the longer nights. The news is full of it. Abuse in the Church of England. Treachery and death in the Middle East. A self-confessed day-one-dictator returning to the White House. Politicians who once laughed at the Man spinelessly throwing in their lot behind the future power base. Shadows creeping over Ukraine. I expected to see more of it on my social media feed, but there’s been surprisingly little said about the US elections. Perhaps the folks I know have listened to the voices in the wind and decided that now is not the time to voice their concerns online. Perhaps they vented their frustration elsewhere. Or perhaps – and I suspect this to be the grim truth – most of them just didn’t care overmuch.
There’s a quote often attributed to the Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke that runs along the lines of ‘evil triumphs when good men do nothing’. As is the way with so much these days, there’s almost no evidence that he actually said such a thing. We have learned to doubt everything. In that light, how can you blame a nation for putting their confidence in a self-confessed liar?
Burke did, however, say something similar, albeit a lot more profound:
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)
He might have been writing a little over two hundred and fifty years ago, but he might just as well have been describing the world as it is today. It is always rather chilling when the voices of history stretch their pale and clammy hands into the present.
Until we learn to put our differences aside and work together – even with those with whom we do not, cannot or simply will not see eye to eye – our future will be in somebody else’s hands. Until the educated West accepts this reality, there will be no end to the head-scratching and the bewilderment. I have beat upon this drum since my schooldays, where it was doubtless drummed into me by my teachers, but I still believe this to be true: that you should always be prepared to listen and engage in conversation, no matter what you believe. Cancel culture does not work. It just fans the flames of those who feel their needs are being ignored and their voices silenced. We are marching into an increasingly intolerant age, and it worries me that those who fight for tolerance’s sake are among the vanguard, whether they know it or not. Men like Trump ride into power on the backs of such virtue-signallers.
I’m reading my way through a number of books to try to see the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s my way of dealing with the situation – particularly when my profession is to help children to make their way in the world. I’ve started with Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe in an attempt to understand the growing immigration frustration in my country (having been an immigrant myself, however briefly). Ilan Pappé is in the wings. I can’t say I agree with everything I read, but it’s broadening my perspective a little more, and that’s no bad thing.
In the spirit of remembrance, they read the list of names of former students of the school who lost their lives in the two world wars in front of the war memorial yesterday. All of the numbered fallen had one thing in common: not a single one had died on the field of battle. Died in a collision during training. Run over by a lorry near base camp. Killed by an explosive during a training exercise. Shot down by friendly anti-aircraft fire after returning from a successful mission. The senseless waste of war was never more plain. When I was younger I had the morbid suspicion I would see another such great war in my lifetime. It was only ever a whimsy, but these days I am not so sure.
Some of the students were dressed in their military uniform. I had a grim vision of a towering cenotaph. Etched into the cold marble slab were names from every corner of the globe. I hope it does not come to that.
On closer inspection, my little oak has not lost everything. Not yet. A few golden leaves have held onto life, a full fortnight after the rest bowed to the inevitable. It just so happens that they are growing on the branch that reaches closest to the light. I wonder if that is what is keeping them alive.
We can’t give up hope. Hope is one of the things that makes us human. As winter draws near and the world darkens a little more every day, remember to hold on to the light in whatever form that takes for you. It is a warm and precious thing. BB x
It’s Halloween. If the increasingly squishy pumpkins and themed sweets in the supermarket didn’t clue you in, the half-dressed ravers on the train today just might. I’m sitting in my living room, writing by the light of a standing lamp while Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is playing on my new UE Boom speaker (my old one disappeared during my move over the summer). The mushrooms in the fridge were nearing their use-by date so I threw them into a chorizo and pea risotto for lunch. I’m only a few pages off finishing The Tiger, which has taken me far too long to read, and somewhere behind the normalcy I’m hoping one of my matches from the last week will get back to me.
I’ve tactfully avoided blogging about my dating experience at large on here – it does rather feel like airing one’s dirty laundry out in public – but after reading a number of well-written articles on the web, I thought I’d throw in my few cents on the matter, for what they’re worth. You might be surprised. Or you might not!
Total transparency here: I was twenty-seven before I dipped a toe in the dating scene. I might belong to the generation that turned eighteen the year Tinder became a thing, but I had a healthy (or perhaps unhealthy) aversion to the idea of finding a partner that way throughout my early twenties, largely but not entirely on account of being in a committed relationship for six years. My experience of that world was limited to stories of friends who had had – by the sounds of things – a really rather terrible time with these strangers they had met through their phones.
I guess I turned my nose up at the whole “no strings attached” vibe. It didn’t sit right with my world view at all. It still doesn’t.
Of the various dating apps I’ve tried out over the last five years, Hinge has been by far the best. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of matches I’ve had on Bumble and Tinder *combined* in that time. By contrast, I’ve been on several dates through Hinge, most of them leading to a second date and two of them blossoming into long-term relationships (or one and a half, depending on your take on the status of situationships). There’s hardly any difference in my profiles between the three, so I suspect the trick to Hinge’s significantly higher match rate is the ability to start a conversation without needing to pay for the privilege.
You know, the basic privilege of being human and usingthe power of speech.
For those who aren’t familiar with the app, Hinge puts more of an emphasis on written responses across the board, asking its users to write three responses to a range of prompts to give their profile some colour. As such, while it’s still ultimately a swiping app like the others, it allows you to look beyond a person’s looks and learn something about their character… So what you write matters. Since I’ve been a lot luckier with Hinge, it would be easy to jump to the awkward conclusion that I write a lot better than I look. Which is probably true, but there’s more to it than that.
Most profiles will give you something to react to, provided they aren’t recycling one of a number of implausibly trending prompts. For instance, if I had a pound for every girl who, for their “fun fact”, said something about otters holding hands so they don’t drift apart when they sleep, I could make a better dent in my annual student loan repayments than my last pay rise. I’m sure it’s intended to reel in some hackneyed pun along the lines of ‘can I be your significant otter’, but such a lack of creativity really is a red flag…
Matching on Hinge (or any dating app, for that matter) usually follows the same cycle. It can be a little disheartening, to be honest, but I’m a fundamentally optimistic sort of guy, so I try not to let it get me down. It runs something like this:
Scroll for a while. Read carefully. Check for the fundamentals: for me, that’s close in age, university educated and wants children. If there’s an indication that they might be a musician, speak another language or are into the natural world in some way, that’s an instant green flag. Strangely, it’s the former of these three that’s proved the hardest to find (to my shame, I still haven’t dated a fellow musician since my teen years). Having some sort of faith would be nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker. I don’t really have a physical type, but red or brown hair and brown eyes have always been a pretty dangerous combination. I couldn’t care less about distance, since every relationship I’ve ever had has been long-distance anyway, but I tend to have my outer limit set at around 45km for practicality’s sake. I have to be realistic, as my lack of both car and driving license (a red flag if there ever were one) does hamstring my options a little
Nine times out of ten, I’ll make a point of initiating the conversation with a written message. Those times I don’t are invariably because there’s just nothing I can work with on their profile. When I started out, some three years ago, my standards were sky high and I was very choosy about sending ‘likes’. These days I’m a lot more open to the possibility of meeting up and seeing how things go, so I don’t mind throwing a few more coins into the wishing well
If I’m lucky, perhaps one in forty of those coins will come back
If I’m lucky, one in three of those will turn into a conversation that lasts longer than a three-way exchange (my opener, her reply and my response). As a rule, if the conversation makes it that far, it’s usually a very good sign
As for likes received, I’m somewhat handicapped by my habit of living outside the larger cities, which may or may not account for the fact that I might get one “like” every one or two months or so. Hinge at least lets you see the most recent of these, so I treat any incoming likes like my emails: read carefully, decide on a response and discard straight away if I don’t think it will do me any good. I tend to work on the basis that instinct is a good guide.
I’m well aware that the odds are stacked against me. The ratio of men to women on dating apps in the UK is around 2:1, and that imbalance is set to worsen with the current trend of women leaving the apps in frustration at a generation of toxic, misogynistic men. If the number of alarmingly young single mothers on these apps is anything to go by, there must be a hell of a lot of those types around. My heart bleeds a little for all the implicit hurt and heartbreak out there.
Honestly? I said “if I’m lucky” a lot back there, but I do consider myself to have been rather lucky. My experience on Hinge has been, on the whole, very positive. Every one of my dates has been a learning curve. I’ve met social workers, rocket scientists and call centre operators. I’ve met people who work with the Royal Family, people who carry a genuine ‘little black book’ and people who keep a running commentary for their followers on TikTok about every date they have. I’ve been to the cinema, gone dancing like the good old days and had a candlelit dinner to the sound of violins in Covent Garden. Every one of them has added to my life in some way.
So what if my first Hinge date led to a relationship that was doomed from the start? She taught me that I had the courage to stand up for myself and walk away when things weren’t working out.
So what if my second date didn’t light a fire in me like I hoped? She taught me that I could be honest about my feelings when they weren’t there.
So what if my thirddate led to what can only be described as a transcontinental situationship and a broken heart? She rekindled my wandering spirit and opened my eyes to a fantastic genre of music I’d never properly understood before.
So what if my last two dates have fizzled out, and I’m to blame? They have taught me that I’m just as capable of being the heartbreaker – a necessary knock to my hubris – and, more importantly, that I’m just not cut out for the modern dating scene when it comes to weighing up my options. Following up one potential date with another the following week left me with the unmistakeable feeling that my heart was rotting on the inside. Talk about Catholic guilt! I’m absolutely a one woman man, and that applies just as much to casual dating as it does to a relationship. It’s probably not the best strategy, but it is me, and I think it’s really important to be true to yourself when trying to find somebody to share your world.
I have learned so much from my experiences and still think the world of the wonderful women I have had the fortune to cross paths with, no matter how things turned out.
The wait continues. I don’t believe in harrying a person for a response (at work or in dating), so if I don’t hear back after we’ve matched, I don’t usually try to re-start the conversation. You have to keep a clear head and remember that you’re probably one of any number of conversations the lady in question is in the middle of, so if she stops replying, it could be that she’s found someone she clicks with – or she’s just hit a wall and can’t bring herself to reply at the moment. Frankly, I don’t blame her. I feel the same way about my emails.
I think the most unhinged thing about Hinge and the wider online dating scene is that most of us on there wish we didn’t have to resort to it. You can see that a mile off from the number of profiles carrying prompts that run along the lines of ‘together we could come up with a fake story for how we met’.
The trouble is that the old ways are pretty much dead and gone. Nobody meets in bars anymore. That’s just not how it’s done. The looming omnipresence of the online dating scene puts temptation at the feet of countless school-spun and university-spun romances. There was a time when families might step in and try to make introductions, and love might blossom in the workplace. Somewhere at home, I even have my great-grandmother’s dance card, with space for the names of three men she met at a village dance.
Nowadays, a preponderance of choice, a desire for total independence and a fear of accusations of unprofessionalism have pushed a generation of would-be Romeos and Juliets into the only space left: the cold and emotionless void of cyberspace. It’s quite a depressing reality, when you think about it.
I have thought about signing off on all of the options once or twice, but my choice of a career leaves me with precious little time or mobility for most of the year, so I keep my options open. In my heart, however, I’m still holding out for some of that old school romance. I haven’t forgotten that my longest and most successful relationship to date was the result of a chance encounter, the kind that becomes increasingly hard to engineer after the university years are behind you.
My recent experiences haven’t yet stripped from me that Hispanic passion for the grand geste, that same streak that has been the driving force behind, amongst other things, buying front row seats to see TheLion King with a childhood sweetheart to fulfil an old wish, booking a Valentine’s weekend at a parador, scattering rose petals on the bed and suiting up for dinner, or even catching a flight to America for a third date. (Though perhaps after this last play I have been a little more cautious of late…)
Ultimately, I think I’ve been spoiled rotten by all the fairy tales I read as a kid. I do believe I took most of the romance at face value and still hope to find that kind of selfless love in life. I’ve been told more than once that I approach the world as though it were ‘one of my books’, and I’m still not sure if that’s a compliment or a caution.
I’ll find her someday, God willing. It’s very possible that I’m still not ready, even five months after the events of the summer, and goodness knows I have enough to be dealing with in my professional life right now. So despite the wave of wedding photos breaking across social media as my generation waves goodbye to their twenties, I remind myself: there’s no rush.
Tomorrow is the first day of a new life. After a long summer of alternating adventures, up-and-down driving lessons and watching the clock, it’s back to school for this bleeding heart. I’m determined to make a success of it. Once again, I find myself thinking back to my first teaching post in Uganda, nearly twelve years ago – where it all began. Did I know it then? I must have had an inkling – that was partly why I went, to see if teaching was for me – but I suspect I was blinded by the lure of seeing Africa with my own eyes. My lanyard is hanging from the door, my notebook is on my bedside table and the pen pot on my desk – a gift in the shape of a Dia de los Muertos mug – is stuffed with fully-loaded board markers. It’s nearly time to get started. But for now, let’s dive back into the realm of memories; to a remote farmstead on the banks of the White Nile…
9th October 2012 Ugandan Independence Day (50th Anniversary)
One month into our stay in Boroboro in northern Uganda, Luke Ojungu came trundling into the driveway of the Bishop’s compound in his enormous four-by-four. With Uganda on the brink of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of its independence from Britain, we had an unexpected holiday on our hands and the former headmaster had offered to take us to stay at his farm in the Apac region to the southwest. The bishop said a prayer to bless our journey and send us on our way with God’s protection, though Luke’s impressive 6’5″ stature might well have been all the protection we needed. His plan? To show us a corner of Uganda we might not see otherwise, and to put us to work herding his cattle.
No visitor to Uganda who makes it out of the capital can possibly miss the famous Ankole cattle. For one thing, they’re everywhere, and for another, their enormous horns make them easy to spot over a great distance. I wonder if that was an intentional bit of genetic wizardry on the part of the cattlemen, so that they could keep stock of their herds from far away?
Luke had several hundred longhorn cattle spread across his lands south of the river, along with a large number of goats and chickens back on the home farm, which by Ugandan standards (or any standards, for that matter) made him a rather wealthy landowner. He was very keen to point out Matthew, the hornless bull he had named after the headmaster of our school back in England. It was hard to tell whether it was an affectionate gesture or somewhat tongue-in-cheek, choosing the one longhorn bull without horns for such an honour, but we had a laugh all the same. A running in-joke was born and Matthew “the most indie cow in the world” and his distaste for anything mainstream kept the four of us amused all weekend.
We arrived in time to help with administering the inoculations, which had already taken a couple of days, what with the herds spread out across the forested hills. Maddie, the team scientist, took the lead on this one, seeing a chance to do a little fieldwork ahead of the Biology degree ahead of her. Several years ahead of the rest of us in maturity and wisdom, if not in age, she was always out in front and seizing any and all opportunities that came floating our way, whether we joined her or not. It was Maddie’s idea to go to Uganda in person to snag a better deal on the national park permits. It was Maddie’s idea to spend all night dancing with locals down the road from our tumbledown hotel in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. I should have followed her lead more often.
Mind you, it was also Maddie’s idea to ride along with the staff to a remote village in the north to the funeral of a colleague we’d never met, even though the service was conducted entirely in Lango (of which we understood perhaps four words between the four of us) and the return journey had me sandwiched between quite possibly the two largest women in Uganda.
With jabs administered, Luke left us in the care of two of his cattlemen, Alphonse and Gideon (I definitely misheard Gideon as Geryon the first time around, since that’s what I wrote in my journal, though that would have been a very fitting name for a cattle herder!). Out in the bush, I got my wish: to explore a proper African wilderness. True, it was grazed by Luke’s hundred-strong herd of cattle, but there were wild things everywhere: drongos, hornbills, cuckoos, parrots and forest kingfishers. Overhead, the awkward silhouette of a pair of bateleurs kept us company across the open marches. In the course of a single cattle drive I counted at least forty species I’d never seen before, jotting down details of what I’d seen and sketching while the memory was fresh.
In short, I’d make a decent Darwin, but a useless cowherd.
The drive took us deep into the forest, which swallowed up the herd quite capably. The going was a little hard, with thorny acacia branches poking in all directions, and we got to wondering whether we were being watched by other, more sinister residents of the forest as we cut a path through the trees: our encounter with a troop of baboons at the crossing at Karuma the day before had left me with a deep-seated awe (and justified terror) of the things, and I couldn’t shake the idea that they might be hiding in the trees, watching us from evil, sunken eyes.
I needn’t have bothered: the great herd of longhorns drove most of the forest creatures before it like a scourge. But it’s funny what gets into your head.
What was waiting for us, however, was a tropical storm. We had reached the heart of the forest, where the bush was at its thickest, when Alphonse brought us to a stop at the sound of a heavy drumroll from the north. Gideon went on ahead to divert the herd, but we had gone no further than a hundred metres when the heavens opened. It did not happen gradually, as rainstorms do in the British Isles, but in an instant: one minute the sky was grey with promise, the next it was sheet-white and bucketing it down. It was as though somebody had turned on an almighty showerhead, the way it just came down all of a sudden, and it went on for the best part of an hour. At Alphonse’s suggestion we sheltered beneath the scant cover of the trees, holding the herd at a standstill while we waited for the worst of it to pass. The waterproof hiking boots which had endured similar conditions in the Lake District were waterlogged within minutes, and we were all of us soaked to the skin – it was hard to imagine that only moments before it had been a balmy thirty degrees and we had been bemoaning having run out of sun lotion. I don’t think I have ever been so utterly drenched. If I remember correctly, I was quite miserable. We all were.
Luke came to the rescue around midday, picking us up from the side of the road when we finally broke free of the forest and saw the Nile, our intended destination, winding across the valley ahead. Regardless of the conditions, it would still have been another couple of hours’ march to the river, and Luke was quite anxious that we would not catch our death of cold on his watch, so we were whisked back to the farm for a warm cup of tea and fresh clothes. Alphonse and Gideon bade us farewell and pushed on toward the river, even as the clouds threatened a second deluge with flash and thunder.
We conceded defeat before these incredibly hardy cattlemen and their herd, and returned to teaching the following week with a renewed sense of purpose: we had a lot more to offer in passing on what we had learned than in wandering blindly through the bush in the wake of men who had been herding cattle since they were children.
I said I was miserable – which, according to my diary, is a fact – but like most things that get me down, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat, if only to see the rain come down as ferociously as it did that day, and to feel that shudder in my heart when the first drumroll of the rainy season came thundering in. Matthew wouldn’t have thought all that much of it. After all, there’s all manner of cliches when one gets to talking of a thunderstorm, and Matthew is far too indie for any of that nonsense. BB x
Back in April, I made a flying trip to Prague to spend a few days with my dear friends Andrew and Babette. I’d never been to the Czech Republic before, so I used the opportunity to see the sights: the statue of Jan Hus, the Jewish cemetery and the tomb of Rabbi Loew, creator of the legendary Golem of Prague. But I was in for an unexpected treat when Andrew took me to see an evening show of Moje Sibiř, a spatial composition centred around the spirit of Siberia. Over the space of 45 minutes and seven movements, Roman Zabelov and his troupe dimmed the lights and carried the audience away into the endless forests of the Siberian taiga by the power of music alone.
Roman led the suite with his voice and his accordion, conducting much of the composition with eyes closed tight in the manner of a shaman weaving some kind of ancient magic. Speaking of spellbinding, I have never seen an accordion played so creatively: it is obvious that Roman is a something of a frontiersman, combining unorthodox techniques with a quasi-mystical, body-and-soul engagement with his craft, like a Belarusian Pan of the Far East. Zabelov’s ensemble, stationed in various locations around the performance space, worked together to turn the hall into something far more intense than a simple performance space. Through a clever combination of ethereal singing, haunting vocals and long, whooshing breaths, it felt as though they were summoning the arctic wind itself into the room. I had to close my eyes for one of the movements and let it carry me away.
The setting might have been showstopping in its own right, with seating arranged beneath the myriad paintings of the Baroque Refectory of the Dominican Cathedral of St. Giles, but a combination of technical wizardry and clever vocal choreography transformed the gallery into an illusory space: shadows seemed to leap from the paintings and follow the echoes around the room, while the heavens above rippled beneath the rusty iron waters of a tundra pool. I might as well have been holding the heart of the taiga in my hands.
Whether or not it was Roman’s intention, I have been spellbound by the idea of Siberia ever since. I suppose it’s the instigator behind my current fascination with the Amur region and its tigers. If it weren’t for the fact that any and all possibilities of traveling out there are off the table because of the current tension between Russia and the West, I might well have been looking into making my own way out there. It’s amazing what a little musical hypnotic suggestion can do. BB x
There are places that whisper and shout. There are places we return to and that we look for all our lives. These places are both real and imaginary, but that doesn’t detract from their reality. Such is My Siberia. Roman Zabelov
Today is a day for farewells. I caught the early train to London Paddington to take lunch with the family of a former student and two of my colleagues. These are not just acquaintances, no mere ships in the night: these are people who I have shared my work and (quite literally) my world with for the last six years. When the time comes to say goodbye, I usually make a habit of leaving a parting shot in the form of a lengthy card or letter, but I wasn’t in the right headspace today. I’d have probably stayed longer if She wasn’t in town.
It’s been a very long and painful summer. I can’t remember one quite like it. It’s nearly over – thank God – and work, the Great Healer, will soon put me right. But heartbreak is a hard thing to manage when you live alone, far from everyone and everything you know. How do you move on when your heart is still broken, nearly two months on, and your world is at a standstill?
I’ve been reading a lot. I’m working through John Vaillant’s The Tiger at the moment, which deals with a much starker isolation in the Russian Far East than the one I’ve known this summer, albeit much less melodramatic. One quote from this morning’s reading has stuck:
The most important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation. Alone and with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself – who is he really? Because nobody’s watching, you can easily become an animal… […] You can run in fear and nobody will know. You have to have something, some force, which allows and helps you to survive without witnesses.
John Vaillant, The Tiger
After thirty summers I know who I am, and I know my weakness for acting on heart over head. So instead of buying an off-peak return – which would have given me the time to say the goodbyes I wanted – I booked myself onto the 5.30 train home, with no room for manoeuvre. I suppose I wanted to stop myself from doing something rash.
In another universe, I would have watched the sunset from London’s famous Sky Garden with her tonight – my idea of a final goodbye to the city where we met – but in this reality, I must be the gentleman and let her go without another word. So this is me, the dichotomy: the gentleman and the animal, doing the right thing and running away.
My head, for once, is talking to my heart.
My only regret is leaving before I could say a proper farewell to my dear colleagues. I will make it up to them with a handwritten letter this evening. I’ve always been a lot better at conveying my feelings in words written rather than spoken, anyway.
My force – the thing that keeps me going without witnesses – is Hope. Hope that, someday, my heart will heal and things will get better. Hope that these things are sent not just to try us, but to bring a moment of light and happiness into our lives, even if, like a match on a winter’s night – or even a shooting star – that light is followed by a temporary darkness. Hope that somewhere out there is a future where somebody falls for me just as hard as I do for them. Where “sorry” and “thank you” are not our watchwords.
I have not given up on old fashioned romance, and I never will. It is out there, shining, somewhere beyond the stars.
Heartbreak is good for you. It brings you to your knees, but that only makes it easier to look up. It forces you to look inwards and to love yourself again. It reminds you that you were not afraid to love with your whole heart, even if you had no idea that was your intention.
Ride north, Macumazahn, for there you will find great happiness – yes, and great sorrow. But no man should run from happiness because of the sorrow.
Henry Rider Haggard, Allan’s Wife
Feeling with your whole heart makes you vulnerable, especially in affairs of the heart, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Because, hand-in-hand with the gut-wrenching lows come soaring highs, an ecstasy of joy and excitement that is impossible to convey.
I cannot escape it; it runs in the family. My great-grandparents found each other in the middle of a bloody civil war that threatened to tear their country apart, and they held onto each other even as the regime started to eliminate their loved ones for their beliefs. And still they believed.
My grandfather put his whole world on the line for an English girl who captured his heart one summer, risking everything to hold on to the happiness he had found. Would their love have stood the test of time? I will never know – he lost his life in his early twenties in a hit-and-run incident that tore his future apart – but I am convinced that it is that whole-hearted Hispanic passion for life that runs in my veins.
Today is a day for farewells, and I have made mine. The next chapter is about to begin. BB x
Another school year comes to an end – this time a full week later than the last, owing to a start-of-the-holidays school trip to Austria. It’s been quite a year. I knew this was going to be an emotional year, watching the graduation of the cohort that joined when I did, now five years ago. All the same, I did not expect it to be quite as golden as it was. I’m still riding the high of victory in house music, and that was back in October, and my teeth are still chattering from the nerves of debating in public for the first time against our indomitable student all-stars in May. Couple that with a run of surprise parties and heartfelt parting gifts, this is the year when I have felt happiest as a teacher. And quite right, too – it’s been the perfect panacea after last year’s nightmarish run of bad luck.
Not that it hasn’t been without its trials. I had a particularly memorable birthday, which saw my partner and I part ways for good, and in case that wasn’t enough of a gut-punch, I spent the rest of the night mopping up vomit and bile with my own hands as a wave of violent sickness swept the school. Somebody up there must have taken pity, because I never came down with the bug myself, despite being right at its heart for the best part of a week.
I have had moments this year that have brought me crashing down. But I remain unflinchingly true to my principle of hope. Wishy-washy as it sounds, I am convinced that a fervent belief in the light we carry inside of us will always carry us through, no matter how dark the world beyond. The torch I carry is the same one my ancestors bore before me, and that’s a massive help. So while this year I have sometimes felt more akin to Eccleston’s Ninth Doctor (“coward, any day”) rather than Tennant’s Tenth – upon whom I now realised I have modeled so much of my day-to-day teaching persona – I have held on to the belief that somehow, whatever happens, all will be well. Call it God’s plan or whatever you will. I call it hope. And in a world where people fill that uncertain void with TikTok, Netflix, and mindless gym routines, hope is a bloody good thing to have in your pocket.
August is looming, and August means the long-delayed intensive driving course (which I have wisely stopped calling a crash course, for all the obvious reasons). Previous plans would have left July wide open, but as I’m not really the planning kind, I tossed a coin a week ago and made the decision to press on with the Camino – perhaps all the way to the end, this time. I certainly have the time, for once. And after a bumpy end to a golden year, I can think of no better way to seek healing.
I haven’t packed quite yet. I still need to book a taxi to Gatwick for tomorrow morning, and I haven’t got around to reserving a hotel yet. And I haven’t even looked at what the flight home might look like, as I’m keeping my options open on that front. But that’s OK. This is me as I am, without any pretenses to normalcy. I was originally due to fly yesterday, but given that it would have left me with all of twelve hours to recover from the music tour to Austria, I got sensible and booked a different flight. It’s all the same in the end, but my head (and my feet) will appreciate the respite.
I’ve only ever done week-long stints of the Camino, and if I intend to reach Santiago, I will be on the road for a little over three weeks. I will have to look after myself if I don’t want to end up like the Americans I met at Easter, sporting heels all shades of iodine. Fortunately, I’ve packed plenty of Compede blister plasters, and being a reasonably experienced peregrino, I know what not to do: that is, keep my trousers short and my breaks long. I’ll also try to hang back and not rush to make it to Santiago for the saint’s day on the 25th, which is roughly when I would arrive if I don’t stop once – as that tends to be a focal point for pilgrims on the trail. No, I think I’ll take it slow. The meseta is capricious at the best of times, and should not be trifled with. And it’s likely to be hot.
I’m feeling pretty well-traveled at the moment. This time two weeks ago I was in the gardens of Sevilla’s Real Alcazar, humoring our tour guide with a smile while my students sought refuge in the shade as the temperatures neared 40 degrees. One week ago I was unloading my violin from the coach in the valley of Huttau, staring up into the snow-bound peaks of the Berchtesgaden Alps and reminiscing on seeing that same sight through the eyes of a child, seventeen years ago. This time tomorrow I will be back in Burgos, journal in hand, on my own at last and savouring the free air and the knowledge of the open road stretching for three-hundred miles before me. I can’t wait!
As always, I will keep you posted. Until then, chavales. BB x
I’ve just finished re-assembling my entire music collection on Spotify. It’s taken me the best part of three days, since I amassed a pretty sizeable library in the years before Spotify had pretty much everything. Time was when iTunes was where one kept all one’s digital music, ready for transport onto this or that hand-me-down iPod Shuffle, bought from a friend for £20 or so. Those early models could only store so much music, and you had to decide which 240 songs would make it. Those were trying times.
My parents grew up with mixtapes and CDs, but I belong to the generation where music went digital. If a song came out that you liked, you bought the CD, burned it onto iTunes or some other software and uploaded it directly to your device (alternatively, you could take the cheaper route and just find any one of the YouTube to MP3 converters that were occasionally dodging the censors). My first walkman – a bizarre pen-drive device that might just as easily be taken for a vape pod today – had a small collection of music, mostly hand-me-downs from my parents: Michael Jackson’s Greatest Hits, Spiceworld, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. This was back in 2008, and Spotify was still a few years away from hitting the big time, so most of us turned to YouTube for our music. YouTube, ever-growing, seemed to have almost everything, and I’m not afraid to admit it was a major conduit for musical discovery in those early years (and still is!).
Carving up my library into playlists has made one thing glaringly obvious: my taste in music has changed little over the years. The range of artists has certainly exploded, but the genres are almost exactly as they were in the first playlists I drew up in iTunes years ago – that is, a motley collection of Folk, Klezmer and Gypsy music, with a similar number of Classical musicians (my parents were both music teachers); a broad range of World music and edited highlights from the major Pop hits (largely selected for nostalgia purposes); and in the top spots, a virtual eternity of Soundtracks, and – constituting the greatest majority by far – Soul, Funk & Disco. The last ten years have seen Afrobeat, Hip-Hop and Flamenco occupy an increasingly large section of the library, while Rock remains miserably underrepresented (it’s quite simply a genre I’ve never really been that drawn to). What Spotify doesn’t have is the absolute mine of videogame soundtracks that I’ve also collated over the years, but perhaps that’s for the best…!
Yes, I’m a heathen because amongst the thousands of songs in my collection I haven’t got a single song by The Beatles, or the Rolling Stones, or even Bob Dylan (I feel I ought to apologise to somebody for this). But I do have every single track James Brown ever laid down (even the bad ones), a fair grasp of obscure Balkan folksongs and a burgeoning playlist of sevillanas that I am trying to learn off by heart. And thanks to Spotify’s constant suggestions, which get smarter as the playlists grow and grow, the fact that almost all of my favourite artists died a long time ago is no barrier to discovery: every week I find something new.
The music we listen to has a profound impact on who we are. Equally, I’m sure who we choose to be has an impact on the music we choose to listen to, but I’m more inclined to believe in the transformative power of music. With very few exceptions, my taste in music veers towards the upbeat. Fast-paced, feel-good numbers dominate. I wasn’t counting, but if I were to go back and have a look, I probably couldn’t find more than one or two dozen slow or sad songs amongst the thousands. Those that are there are there for a reason: Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On holds the line as one of my favourite albums of all time, and Whispering Winds from Don Bluth’s The Land before Time is just there to make me cry on occasion. The reason for the lack of slow music is quite simple: I’ve always turned to music as a cure to my doldrums. I’m not one for wallowing in my sadness. If you want to conquer misery, loneliness or fear, there’s no use getting stuck in a rut. You have to face your demons head-on. I’d much rather shake off my blues with something that puts a smile on my face immediately. That’s why my most-used playlist is called Smile! (feel free to vomit)
Personal music curation is an unending process in the digital age, but Spotify is one of the few technological advancements to which I’m not afraid to be a committed disciple. A virtual library where you can find almost all the music ever produced, anytime, anywhere? Yes please! BB x
P.S. I’m a fervent believer that music should always be shared, so if your tastes align with mine, or you’re simply curious to explore, please feel free to browse the following playlists I’ve put together:
The Book of Barnabas 