Warsaw is a strange town. For a European, at least. It’s like looking at a replica – which is not so far from the truth at all, as the city was razed to the ground with unparalleled savagery on Hitler’s orders. It seems absurd that I stayed in buildings in the US this summer that were older. But, there we are. It’s a testament to the Poles’ love for their capital city that they rebuilt the place brick by brick, presumably at no small expense.
I’ve come to the centre of the Old Town in search of amber for my mother, to replace a pair of cherished earrings lost long ago. I wanted to visit the Polish Jewish Museum and the Warsaw Uprising Museum, but as luck would have it, those two museums – and only those two – are closed on Tuesdays. So I do one of my usual make-it-up-as-you-go walking tours instead.
The usual global parasites that infest the heart of Europe’s ancient cities have been mercifully kept outside the old town walls: the lurid glare of the Hard Rock Café, Costa coffee and the Golden Arches can be seen from its outermost streets, but no further. Along with the usual array of anachronistic American college jackets with Warsaw splashed across them, quite a few souvenir shops appear to be selling tee-shirts with the city’s name in Star Wars font. One even has a chibi Darth Vader next to the slogan “I love Warsaw”. It seems a little tasteless to have a man infamous for his hatred, wanton destruction, ruthless repression and stormtroopers (and who isn’t even the obvious real life counterpart) associated with a city like Warsaw, but perhaps the irony was lost on the designers.
Not far from the city centre stands a miniature statue atop a plinth, just outside the city walls. It depicts a child soldier, an anonymous victim of the Warsaw Uprising. It is a stark reminder of just how young the rebels were: the average age of the insurgents was only seventeen. One has to hand it to the incredible courage of the Poles for standing up to the might of the Third Reich, when they were all but trapped under the heel of the Führer’s jackboot.
Nothing remains of the Jewish ghetto, which was considerable. Similar ghettos in Spanish cities are minute by comparison, despite Spain once housing a not insignificant percentage of the world’s Jews. There are nods to what once was: a metal plaque cuts across the road in places, marking where the perimeter walls once stood.
In a park nearby, a woman in a fur coat walks her dog. I arrive one minute too late to catch the start of the changing of the guard, but I do see the new sentries move into position beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A fire burns steadily in an iron grate between them. The chosen shelter for the tomb is the last remaining piece of a former palace complex, of which only three arches survived the destruction of war. A short wall on either side of the square bars access to what looks like an excavation site. Beyond that, the yellow squares of ceiling lights gleam from behind the glass of the office buildings. I have always been curious as to what it might be like to work in one of those places, though it’s the same kind of curiosity I harbour for how it might feel to tumble over a cliff or to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps I’m happier not knowing.
Night falls. Warsaw puts her Christmas clothes on. I consider going without supper, but one of the restaurants in the old town does flaki and I can never say no to offal. This time I can savour it in peace, without the tutting and sermonising of the vegetarian globetrotter who was so judgemental of my taste before. The pierogi are probably a bit much and I can’t finish them all, but I do an honest job of it. I suspect that flaki appeals to me because tripe stew isn’t too far from the Spanish dish of callos or any number of dishes I have eaten in Uganda and Morocco.
Back at the hotel, I have a lot of time to think. I pack my bags. I watch Polanski’s The Pianist and try to picture those things happening right beneath my hotel window, some eighty years ago. I tell myself I mustn’t sell myself so cheaply anymore, apologise to a few matches on Hinge and unmatch. I take a shower and read back through the blog to happier times, to the Camino, and wonder whether that ought to be my next grand adventure. After all, the end of the Camino isn’t the end of the road. It’s just the start of the next 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.
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
SAUDADE – (n.) a deep nostalgic longing for someone or something absent, infused with a melancholic awareness that it may never return.
I looked up last night and saw a plane coming in to land at Heathrow. One of the big ones that comes in from across the Atlantic, like the one I flew home on nearly five weeks ago. It made me think of that Monday morning, seeing the sunrise over London, knowing in my head – even if I didn’t want to admit it in my heart – that I had come to the end of a cheery chapter in my life.
A plane like that one brought her here to this cloud-covered island many months ago. I wonder what my summer would have looked like if it hadn’t?
The Portuguese have this wonderful untranslatable expression called ‘saudade’. It’s often taken to mean the feeling of missing someone or somewhere, or more precisely a sense of longing for that thing, but many Portuguese and Brazilians will tell you that it’s a lot more subtle than that. There’s a sense of finality to it, also: an understanding that what you once had may never come back at all, an acceptance of that, but a wistful longing for it all the same. Not the raw kind that breaks you in the days and weeks that follow, but a tempered and reflective sense of nostalgia for what once was and what could have been.
It’s not unique to the Portuguese, but it is especially common in their culture – and perhaps even more so among the Brazilians. It is said that the expression may have evolved during the Age of Discoveries, when the wives of the great explorers of the day bade farewell to their husbands and lovers as they set out for the Americas (how ironic) knowing full well that they may never see them again, and that if they did, they would return as changed men.
Among the Brazilians, it has taken on the sense of a nostalgia for a lost future: a golden country that never was. The American dream isn’t just limited to the States – a shard of it can be found embedded like a splinter in the subconscious of all the descendants of the colonists, I believe. Why else should they have made such a journey if not in hope of a better tomorrow?
I feel that way about Spain, sometimes. Perhaps that’s the generational shockwave of my grandfather’s death in his mid-twenties, rippling across the years to the present, an echo of a lost world that could have been. Spain calls to us. It has been calling for sixty years. Come back. Come home. Sometimes you spend hours, days and even weeks waiting for somebody to reply (looking at you,folks on Hinge) without realising that something greater has been waiting for you all the time, if only you knew how to answer.
I have been the architect of my own saudade by choosing to devote my life to gazing upon that dream from afar: teaching Spanish to the English, sharing my love for a country I can only touch a few times a year. It is a test of endurance, to look upon a thing of beauty and not to touch. Spain has always been that thing. It fills me with awe, excitement, a deep-seated admiration and an infectious appreciation for life itself, but a sense of longing all the same, knowing that it is in my heart, but beyond my reach. Like there’s something blocking the way that I can’t see. Perhaps it’s akin to sleeping beside a former lover, after the love has gone.
I wandered through the woods as the sun came down. I think the nightjars have already gone back to Africa – there must be plenty of them around for a local bar to bear the name The Nightjar – but I was followed across the heath by a pair of stonechats. In that year I spent growing up in the Andalusian sierras, that was a sound that accompanied me every weekend on my forays down to the abandoned railway at the foot of the mountain where we lived: a whistle followed by a song like the clash of two small stones.
Further in, I found a couple of kite feathers. There are so many in these woods. When I was a child, you would have been lucky to see a buzzard – poison and poor public perception very nearly wiped them out – but now they’re everywhere once again. The red kites that once quartered the streets of London before their extirpation in the 19th century have also come back with a bang, and their feathers turn up in the forest quite regularly. I left some in a small tree for another person to find – some bright-eyed kid like me, perhaps, who might take them home as a treasure. Something they can look back on in years to come, and remember the day, remember the smell of the forest, remember the one who took them there by the hand – the feel of their hand, the sunlight in their laugh. I’d like to think that. BB x
It’s 18.00 over here in Saint-Malo and the heavens have opened. An Atlantic wind is battering against the windows and the heavyset black-backed gull that chased off Hector has given up on attacking the ashtray on the windowsill and taken his leave. I might head into town for dinner later, but for now, I’m quite content curled up on the sofa of my AirBnB with a book, a hot chocolate and the time to write. So I thought I’d start today’s post with a little history.
Saint-Malo has a long and complicated past. Originally a 6th century refuge for Welsh monks, including the venerable Maclou of Aleth who gave the town its name, the rocky outpost became a haven for Bretons fleeing the advancing “North-men” or Normans some two hundred years later. In the 17th century, its strategic location made it a natural hub for state-licensed piracy or “privateering”, which elevated its fortunes considerably and paved the way for a generation of wealthy explorers: Jacques Cartier, a native malouin, is credited with giving Canada its name (via the Iroquois kanata) and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, another son of Saint-Malo, established the first European settlement in the Falkland Islands, which – at least in Spanish – still bear their original Breton name: las Islas Malvinas, from the French Îles Malouines.
The city fell to the Germans during the Second World War as part of their Atlantikwall stratagem, and the skeletons of their fortifications still dot the Breton coastline: in Saint-Malo, the levelled ruins of German pillboxes rub shoulders with 17th century Vauban forts. Surprisingly, much of what you see today was carefully reconstructed, as around 80% of the city was destroyed by the Allies in their dogged attempt to drive the Germans from the old pirate stronghold.
Allied bombers over Saint-Malo in August 1944. The fortified isle of Grand-Bé is at the centre of the blast
Most of the German fortifications have long since been torn down, but you can still see the concrete bases of many structures on the cliffs beneath the city wall and on the surrounding islets of Grand-Bé. They make very comfortable places to sit and watch the sunset.
In case it wasn’t obvious, the town’s rich history is one of the biggest reasons I’m here. But the other is its wildness: there are plenty of sandy beaches in the south, but I don’t get any real kick out of sea-swimming unless there are rocky areas to explore. The southeast coast of England with its famous white cliffs is quite a sight to behold, but it doesn’t quite have the jagged beauty that the west has in abundance, and Brittany has it to spare.
I spent many of the happiest days of my childhood scouring the rock pools of Folkestone for tiny critters: gobies, blennies, butterfish, velvet swimming crabs and even, just the once, a pipefish. Brittany is only the other side of the Channel, so much of the shoreline is familiar. I can’t help keeping an eye out for anemones when I’m out on the rocks, especially the snakelocks variety – I always thought they were especially interesting.
Across the bay from Saint-Malo stands the islet of Grand-Bé, which can be reached on foot at low tide via a barnacle-encrusted causeway. A similar road stretches on to the Vauban fort on Petit-Bé, though a small section of that road remains under a foot of water even at low tide and must be forded with shoes in hand.
Grand-Bé offers a glimpse of what Saint-Malo must once have been: a windswept escarpment just off the mainland, inhabited only by lizards, gulls, a small colony of shags and a company of oystercatchers that can be heard all across the bay. Two of these noisy seabirds were standing in attendance upon Chateaubriand’s tomb, as though to keep him company. From this spot, on a clear day, you can hear the twittering of goldfinches, the cries of gulls, the occasional grunt from one of the shags and the endless piping of oystercatchers on the rocks below or in the sky above – and, of course, the ringing of the bells of Saint Vincent’s cathedral across the bay.
I wonder if the old Romantic was as bewitched by the wild birds of his native Brittany as his writing implies? He certainly had a real flair when it came to writing about nature. Perhaps that’s why he chose this spot.
I spent some time last night watching the sunset over Grand-Bé. I had left my Camino bracelet in the apartment, but I had brought a few other tokens with me. I often take a number of “lucky” objects on my travels: little souvenirs and keepsakes to remind me of home when I’m on the road.
Well, not home exactly. With no fewer than ten moves under my belt at the age of thirty (and just under half of them international) I’m still not entirely sure where home is. But they remind me of friendships and memories that mean a lot to me, and that helps with the loneliness that is a natural side-effect of traveling alone.
In my satchel, ever at my side, I carry my journal, my fifth and longest-serving since I took up the art twelve years ago. It’s coming apart at the seams and bound inexpertly by sellotape – hardly surprising for a little book that has come with me to work every day for the last five years, as well as on every adventure I’ve been on in that time. Concealed within is my lucky dollar, a ticket to the Prado in Madrid, a tawny owl feather, the plectrum that one of my Rutherford boys used to win House Music two years in a row and a perfumed letter.
There is one more keepsake that has been sharing the road with me this summer. It even came with me to America, traversing the Bayou, the Mississippi and the bright lights of Nashville. It’s a card from one of my students, one of many I received in my last week at Worth. The lengths this particular student went to so as to ensure I got the card, as well as the maturity of its message from one so young, are just two of the reasons this one in particular has come with me. I am many things, and a great many less, but I would be a writer – and so that is why I have always believed that the greatest gift I can ever receive is in the form of words. No physical object can ever surpass the depth of feeling that comes from such expression.
I have a bad habit of making people cry when I write them farewell letters (an equally bad habit I’ve adopted for leaving students), but I very nearly met my match with this one. The student in question signed off with a favourite quote of theirs from Lin-Manuel Miranda: “sometimes words fail me”. There’s any number of reasons they could have chosen that one for me – I might well have said the line verbatim in reaction to the behaviour of that class at least once – but it’s a powerful message for a would-be writer.
Words do fail me, and often. There have been moments this year where I have been genuinely speechless, from shock or awe or wonder. It is comforting to know that such a consummate wordsmith shares that affliction.
Tomorrow, I have decided upon a rather spontaneous adventure. I have already bought my ticket. All I can do now is hope that the weather holds. Then – we shall see what we shall see. BB x
It’s 17.09, it’s been over nine hours since I last ate something and I’m somewhere in the Alabama woods between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. If we were running to schedule, I’d be arriving in Birmingham in the next few minutes. But, as every American has gone to great pains to explain, the trains in the US never run on schedule. If you’re not in any particular hurry, it’s a phenomenal way to see the States, provided you’re happy to gawp at trees for most of the journey. Lucky for me, I’m easily pleased, and it’s been all I can do to peel my eyes from the window for the last eight hours or so.
The American South reminds me in many ways of Uganda. There’s something familiar about the immensity of the sky, the redness of the earth, the rusting abandoned vehicles and – especially – the enormous homemade painted advertising on homes, cafés and storefronts. The most American thing I’ve seen so far – beside the lone bald eagle standing on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain – are the countless colourful billboards advertising private law firms, demanding your attention with Colgate smiles in nauseatingly familiar language: Bart’s always got your back, Call ya girl Desi, IYKYK, that sort of thing.
Let’s forget any time pressure for a moment. Riding an Amtrak train is actually a really comfortable experience, and I’m surprised it isn’t more popular. There are charging stations for every seat, curtains for the windows, sturdy WiFi and a cheery Southern burr over the tannoy to replace the cold, automated replay of British trains. I’ve even got enough leg room to stretch my legs, and that’s taking into account the fact that the guy in the seat in front has put his chair back into full recline. I haven’t seen as much wildlife as I’d have liked over the course of my vigil, but I’ve still managed to clock a few deer, a whole lot of egrets and a few birds of prey, including the symbol of America itself. That’s not too shabby for a bit of on-board birdwatching.
To be honest, the only thing I’d change is the seat numbering, which is baffling – and very obviously a new concept, as even the ticket inspectors seemed to get muddled up by the numbers (which don’t really correspond to any of the seats at all). Folk don’t seem to mind, though. I think most of the passengers here have simply found an empty seat and made themselves comfortable, and all of them are quite happy to shuffle as and when a couple or family comes aboard. That’s one major difference to European trains. I was traveling in Germany once and still remember an officious German lady who made the entire coach get up and scramble because there was somebody in her seat and she absolutely had to sit in the seat she had been assigned. The human soul: the price of efficiency.
I ended my stay in New Orleans with a jazz fest, seeing a local band in Preservation Hall and then taking the Natchez steamboat cruise down the Mississippi with its attendant Dixieland band providing a jaunty backdrop. If it’s done one good thing for me, New Orleans has reminded me that there is hope for those of us who still believe in music bringing the world together. The Preservation Hall jazz band ticked more diversity-and-inclusion boxes than a school website: the trombonist was black, the saxophonist Latino, the pianist Scandinavian, the double bassist Japanese and the lead trumpeter Creole. I hate to admit it, but I’m still bleeding a little over the way my Gospel Choir was torn apart years ago. Maybe I always will be. That’s partly why I’m here in the States, in this limbo between jobs, between worlds: to try to put a seal on that episode of my life, and to remind myself that there are plenty of people out there who don’t see things that way. And where better than America, the great Melting Pot itself?
I’d better stop writing – it looks like we’ll be arriving soon. In the end, we’re only 50 minutes behind schedule. It’s funny how little that seems to matter! In the UK, there’d be apologies over the tannoy and prompts to get a refund via the website…
Alright America. I’ll admit it. Just this once, you have us beat on heart. BB x
Four days ago I was standing in the ruins of a Roman theatre in the Andalusian port of Cádiz, a contender for the oldest continually occupied city in Europe at over three thousand years old. Four days, one Leavers’ Ball and a ten hour flight later and I’m sitting in Terminal B for Bravo in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, built in the year 1974. The fact that Cádiz’s Roman theatre itself is relatively young – built around 70 B.C. – only adds to the stark comparison. The culture shock is real.
First impressions:
The Mississippi is huge. Enormous. It looked like a colossal brown snake winding across the plains into the distance
Cowboy hats seem to be worn unironically here – and with a frequency that would surprise you!
The selection of in-flight movies on offer is considerably superior to all the streaming services at the moment (heck, they even had both Dune movies)
Airport taxes – what the hell is that about?
Security was thorough but not nearly as austere as I expected
In case you haven’t noticed, this is my first time in the United States. I honestly have no idea what to expect, since until recently I wasn’t particularly interested in crossing the Atlantic for an adventure – well, not this far north of the Caribbean, at any rate.
But I did promise myself that I’d reward myself with a proper adventure if I landed a new job this year, and a promise is a promise. I just didn’t expect it to take me to the land of Sitting Bull and Civil Rights, that’s all!
I don’t have too much to report on just yet, beyond a general wide-eyed wonder at all of it. After all, I haven’t legally set foot in the States yet – that will happen when I touch down in New Orleans in a few hours’ time.
Sounds like they’re boarding in five minutes’ time. Not sure what a Deadheader is outside of a gardening context, but I’d better get my stuff together all the same. Starting to feel the jet-lag kicking in, but I hope I can shake it with an early night this evening! BB x
Another year, another Christmas come and gone. I’m back at the flat after a week up north with the parents. Billy Ocean is playing on the Bluetooth speaker as I write – Stay the Night – and the torrential rain that followed me south stopped about an hour or two ago. Everything is more or less as I left it, with the exception of fresh sheets on the bed.
It’s been nearly six years since I took up my post here, moving back to England from Spain. I sometimes wonder what direction my life might have taken had I stayed on and taken up the teaching post I had on the cards in Galicia, but I know I made the right decision for my career. Over the course of those six years, I’ve earned my stripes (and, more importantly, qualifications) as a fully-fledged teacher within the British educational system, enrolled in a number of courses and taken on more responsibilities than I expected, up to and including being an Oxford-style debating judge. There hasn’t been a day in those six years when I’ve woken up dreading the day ahead or resenting my job – not even in my PGCE year, which was shot right through the heart by the COVID pandemic. I love teaching, I love my subject, and the knowledge that I am keeping up a family tradition that goes back generations gives me an eternal flame that cannot be extinguished.
But that’s not to say living and working in a boarding school has been without its doubts. I’ve definitely had some bad days – who hasn’t? – and I’m very aware that my choice of career (coupled with my lingering anxiety about responding to messages) has had a good hand in shrinking my social circle with every passing year. A senior member of staff at the school once described living and working in a boarding school as “submarining”; that is, disappearing from the rest of the world at the start of term and resurfacing only once the last child has left the building, some three months later. It’s an apposite analogy, and one that’s hard to sell to anybody outside the system.
I suspect that after six years in the same school – nearly long enough to see a generation of students through their whole educational journey – it’s natural to start to feel the need for a change. As for where that change will take me, I’m not yet sure. I only know that change is coming, and it would do me a world of good to seek my destiny somewhere beyond the horizon. Perhaps the idea came to me on the Camino and has been incubating ever since, or perhaps it crystallized after a conversation with a colleague about how it’s very easy to count the things you do for others in this line of work, but on reflection, it can be a lot harder to say what you’ve done for yourself. I’ve been lucky enough to have a partner to guide and support me through the greater part of those five-and-a-half years, but December finds me on my own once again, and as the months start to fall away before the big three-zero, I’m conscious that the career path I desire is out of reach until Lady Luck sees fit to give me another chance. And since the online dating scene has been about as generous as a paddling pool is to a fisherman of late, it’s probably time I upped sticks.
With that thought in mind, I’m starting to look at the world around me with fresh eyes. The flat that’s been my home for two years now seems more detailed than before. The cat-print mug on my desk that probably belongs to my housemaster, containing a shamrock-green bauble, a gift from a Colombian parent. The collage of photos in an IKEA frame of friends from my university days, all but two of whom I haven’t seen in years. Curios on my dresser: a boomerang, a vinyl cover of Fidder on the Roof and three chips from a Las Vegas casino. Photos on my bookshelf: my class of 4° ESO from Villafranca (my first real job), my cousins, the windmills of La Mancha and my mother’s first car, an orange Volkswagen beetle. The mirror that never made it onto the wall, and the blocky but practical Skorva bed that has put in a good year’s shift after the last one finally collapsed after a marathon service (it was a veteran when it came into my possession over a decade ago). Some of these things haven’t moved an inch in two years.
I’m not usually one for resolutions, but I am going to take more of a handle on my own future in 2024. I’ve already thrown the first stone by committing to weekly driving lessons, and while it may be some time yet before I have wheels of my own, that crucial piece is finally on the board. Fortune has given me a later return to work than usual, so I have seized the chance to ring in the New Year with my cousins in Spain, something I have wanted to do ever since we first reconnected back in 2018. It may be that my next post doesn’t have an international airport within walking distance, so I might as well make the most of it while I still can.
I’ll also try to write some more. I’ve been channeling my creative endeavours into the creation of a Spanish culture podcast, but it wouldn’t hurt to flex my writing arm some more on here every once in a while. Even if I’m the only one who comes back and re-reads these posts, it makes for an interesting insight into my mindset at various points of my career.
I’ll check in again tomorrow. Until then – tschuss! BB x
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 