The last ten years

When I remember how old I am or think about what year it is, I get this awful sense of the passing of time, and how little I’ve done with it. Where did it all go? How could so many years go by with so little happening? Last thing I remember I was a football referee in Leeds doing a Master’s at the university and playing squash three or four times a week with my young buddies Harry and Simon – even they’re now in their thirties and not so far off the age I was when everyone thought I was ‘old’ (but amazed ‘cos I only looked like twenty-seven, before grey beard and grey hair kicked in and overwhelmed the brown).

That was 2011. I remember that. I rode my bike and had a freezing little apartment and was fit and toned and got more natural, non gym-going exercise than any man alive – also played football every few days and was reffing up to six or seven times a week, mostly cycling quite a lot of miles in between the games, in amongst all the squash (and also running the uni squash league and intramural refereeing thing and occasionally doing some actual work).

Next thing I remember is it’s just after the end of the MA in autumn 2012 and I ate 9 hits of acid sitting in my tent in my apartment and laughed at the notion of myself living a city life and being on some sort of path to maybe working hard and saving up to buy my own pile of bricks to sit in. Saw truth and infinity and all that and though anything I would say about it would only sound typically trippy and useless, there was the real world actual fruit of it healing my relationship with my mother, and so that was pretty cool, and bound to pay dividends in the long term (we hadn’t spoken for like five years; but next to infinity, any kind of falling out seemed pretty ridiculous, and so I got in touch the next day and all’s been really sweet every since).

I guess that kicked something off: the next month was when I had my vision of Greece and something was lit in me. And, of course, I was always thinking about my mad scheme to break into America, thwarted again that previous summer by I Ching and dreams and a weirdly disappearing passport just as I was about to book a plane ticket to Canada (then almost did another MA and won a scholarship to train as a football coach – but those are long forgotten dead ends by now).

Then it’s Spring 2013 and I go mad over a woman and feel like I’m having a full-blown mid-life crisis (now aged 37). Maybe I was, or maybe it was something else. In any case, lots of introspection and realisations and learning and writing. Probably that’s when I first came up with “everything is karma and projection” (and it still seems to be the case). Somewhere in there I mistakenly moved out of my homely apartment and ended up living with a bunch of 21-year-old Evangelical Christians in bunk beds, and got the bike job delivering DHL packages around the centre of Leeds. Still lots of football and squash. And once the whole freak out had passed – I even tried some (free) counselling – it was a pretty sweet time.

Then it’s August and I finally got to go to Greece, and it turned out to be a very sweet trip indeed, guided by the magic and signs of old. Camped out on big rocky hills and swam and drank in secret underwater Byzantine springs. Climbed a mountain driven by feelings and ended up staying in an old two-monk monastery accessible only by donkey and foot. That was a really wonderful time. Many magical revelations and changes up that mountain. Plus the monk-made food. And somewhere in there I got the notion that I really, really had to move to Exeter, even though I’d never been. So back to Leeds I went – via Athens, Delphi, a quick run up Mount Olympus, and a bizarrely but wonderfully (and I still think about it) thwarted attempt to enter Athos – and everything got packed up and dispensed with once more. I took the train to Exeter armed only with my tent and sleeping bag and hope and intuition, just like days of old.

That’s autumn 2013. I didn’t spend that long in Exeter – maybe a month or so – but I have such fond memories of it, living once more weird and homeless and just spending my days wandering and doing whatever occurred to me. I sat a lot of time in churches – there are a lot of churches in Exeter – and got myself involved with some Methodists there. Used to do the rounds of the bakeries at the end of the day and buy the cut-price breads and buns to dispense to the homeless (a lot of homeless in Exeter too). First off I was sleeping in bushes in the grounds of some big building by the river, but on the second or third night I magically stumbled on an old storage shack on the university grounds and found an unused room in the loft there with a once-upon-a-time student’s mattress, and even a just-needs-air-in-the-tyres bike. Very heaven. Plus bumped into a guy I’d played football with in London; he’d coincidentally arrived in Exeter the same day I had, moved into a house one street over from my first night bush, and we struck up a really nice friendship that’s deepened muchly ever since.

I left Exeter to go see Amma in London. And somewhere in there it occurred to me it was time to fly to Canada, so I did. Landed in Toronto November 2013. Saw some old friends (from when I lived near there in 2004//05) and also a new friend from the Baja yoga school (passing through in 2009) who I’d had a really wonderful and striking dream about the night I got back from Greece.

And maybe Canada was really the start of everything. Greece and Exeter cut my ties with Leeds and the semi-normal life I’d lived the previous ten years; and Canada my ties with England, and pointed me to North America once more. The plan was to go to Victoria, BC to go stay with a friend there and see if I could write some books – had one I’d started at the end of 2011; it hasn’t had much progress since (still sits at 38,000 words, as it has for nearly seven years) – and I thought I’d fly out or maybe train it across the nation. But it all seemed so complicated and annoying when it came to buying a ticket, and really my soul was bent on blowing the dust off the old thumb and seeing if it still worked. Plus: to hitch across Canada IN THE WINTER? Oh my: that was a challenge I could hardly resist. And so –

Yeah, good lovely magic trip up through the snows of Ontario – so big! – and across Manitoba into Saskatchewan. Every night I got picked up just before sunset by some nice fella who offered me a place to stay – spent three days with a family one time doing healings and seeing the lakes; and another memorable night sleeping above the cows in a Mennonite’s barn (seven kids, though the parents much younger than I). There were times it was minus fifteen – either way; I think they’re both about the same by then – but only once did I really worry about the cold, out in the middle of nowhere with wet feet and nobody stopping. But it all worked out. I landed in Saskatoon to visit new friend. I stayed in Saskatoon more or less till May. There’s some very nice people in Saskatoon…

In May I had my ticket back to England. Once spring had come I’d taken a few crazy hitch-hiking trips into BC and Alberta to investigate the border – went tentless, sleeping bagless, even though it was still dropping to below freezing, just to see what would happen (it was fine) – but I guess it didn’t seem like the time for the old hop over the fence. And, in certain places, it really is just a “hop over a fence” (had a fun pee on a Montana tree, one eye on the sky to see if SWAT team helicopters were swooping) (they didn’t). I’m not sure if I needed to go back to England or what – I’d had a very remarkable dream about California just before leaving Saskatoon – but I did, and stayed a little while, and after doing the rounds of friends and family I ended up back in my happy little shack on the University of Exeter campus thinking about the next step. Called up my good buddy in California (hot springs canyon ’99) to tell him all I was thinking and feeling – mainly “all I wanna do is break into America” – and that night I had the most marvellous genuine visions – the real deal – of being in North America some place, and when I wondered exactly where, I rounded a corner and saw before me a circle of ten Canadian flags and had my answer. The next morning I immediately bought a weirdly cheap one-way to Vancouver (this is June 2014 by now) and a few days later I was there. Another good friend from olden days (Baja yoga school 2000) met me at the airport and we headed immediately for a divine lunch of Vancouver all-you-can-eat sushi and, on the way, we rounded a corner and there before us stood ten Canadian flags in a circle, just like in my vision.

Life is weird, I tells ya…

And typing this – 2011 to 2014 – it seems those three years were actually full of stuff. That makes me happy. Turns out I did quite a lot. But what of the following seven? That makes me sad. Seven years of nothing happening! How can that be?

Let’s see…

So of course I’m in Vancouver – nice time (my first time in the BC summer; I’d been seven times before, all in winter) – and ended up first going on quite a few magical adventures with a different old friend from Baja yoga school – some other dream I’d had back in England (not vision) came true during one of those trips – and finally around the beginning of July it’s time to attempt the so many years longed far mad and mental idea of breaking into America. But all the stars are aligned – I Ching says “yes!”; there’s nothing in me or anyone else saying not to; and on the night before, after everything seems to have been fulfilled in BC – I even found a copy of pretty much all my old writings from 1996 to 2002 on one of my Vancouver friend’s ancient CD-Rs (I’d deleted them all twelve years previous, like a fool) – my other friend dreams I’m in the States and everyone’s so pleased and I guess the door is open. ‘Cept I’m frightened, of course – but whatcha gonna do? This is the moment where it’s either: turn back from the only thing I wanted (at the time) and live the rest of my life knowing I bought into fear, despite everything I’ve said about it, or go for it, do the mad deed, and see what happens. I’ve said my prayers. I’ve checked myself. It really does seem like the Universe is blessing me and pushing me in this direction. And so off we go…

Mad hike. 36 miles in one night through the Cascade Mountain wilderness. Just me and a flashflight, no food, no water (save what I drink from streams) – and even maybe a couple of Grizzlies one time (but don’t wait to find out).

Insane to be that far out there all alone in the blackness. It rains pretty much the whole time. It’s July, but still not much above freezing. I’m in shorts but my relentless charge keeps me warm. Chanting all the way, to everyone and everything I can think of, to keep me safe from bears and rangers. And I make it, out into the drizzly grey sunrise of a Washington highway. A thumb ride to a small town where I can mingle and be less conspicuous. Buy a bag of peanuts. Fall asleep on a park bench, awaiting the arrival of my wonderful amazing friend who has helped me so much. She’s leaving WA and driving all the way to Virginia to start her new life. Car full of everything she owns. Little dog. Sick with flu. After 45 minutes of park bench sleep she pulls up and I take the wheel – couldn’t let her drive with that sickness – and that night we make it to Spokane, WA. In a lifetime full of mad 24-hours, is that the maddest of them all? To hike 60k, then sleep three quarters of an hour, then drive 300 miles, and once more be there, in soon-to-be Trump’s illegal immigrant hating America?

Makes me happy right now to think I could do something like that…

Then the plan was for me to take a train to California – to finally fulfil all those dreams and desires – but, what with her sickness and all, and me feeling like I wanted to stay with her, I ended up driving her all the way to Virginia. Every night I’d wonder if tomorrow was the day I’d turn back west – and every morning I’d have no feeling to do so. So across the plains we went, to another meeting with her teacher in Chicago – we’d seen him in Vancouver also, and he hadn’t psychically said, “don’t do it, young fool!” but rather something along the lines of, “your travels are blessed, all will be well” (oh boy) – and then somewhere in there we learn that Amma’s in DC and so zoom the final stretch to see her, and it’s like the whole thing’s completely and utterly planned.

I tells ya: somebody up there’s got their scheduling down. And now I’m back in Charlottesville, where I lived in ‘97/98 – pretty awfully – and then once again in ’99 – much better – and where so much had happened for me in my young and formative days; and so many lessons and changes (many hard); and where good people I knew back then still lived.

See old friends. Make new ones. Get reunited with a pile of old photos from ‘97/98 to add to the recovered writing (still there with the note written in 2002 hilariously saying “sorry for the delay…”) and it no longer feels like a massive weird detour, but rather something very necessary and totally in alignment with the trip.

In DC I find a car on Craigslist some guy wants delivered to his brother in Louisville, Kentucky, and so off I go in a white Honda Civic, gas all paid for, and then after that: the thumb. My first American hitch-hiking since 2000. Since before 9/11. Since before the cops started shooting everyone. Since when I was 24 (now 38). I want one more blast at it before I retire aged 40 (didn’t end up doing that though) and though nervous in the beginning, it was marvellous. Good folk out there in the middle of America, still giving sandwiches and going out of their way. Did a healing on a soldier who told me about his precognitive dreams. Dipped into Kansas City and revisited old street corners where I’d barefoot twirled my devil sticks in ’99 (no magic though this time) and eventually made Boulder, Colorado, to visit another old friend (Baja yoga school ’99) and stayed a few weeks in the lovely white prosperous self-improvement healthy attractive privileged capital of the West; one moment a bum sleeping in Kansas fields, the next sitting in health club hot tubs thanks to free guest passes and cos I look and sound right. Some jolly nice people in Boulder too.

From Boulder, it’s next stop Crestone, a few hours to the south. Crestone where I lived a few months in ’99, and did my 28-day vision quest. My old teacher is there – a fella who for sure dramatically changed my life not only that time but in earlier days down in Mexico – and I’ve longed to see him again for many a year. So many times in my old apartment in Leeds where I (internally) rolled on the floor and banged for head for not having clung to him back in the day. But when I see him…there’s nothing there. Something’s changed – him? me? – or most likely just the circumstances and dynamic. I move on. It’s so indicative of the whole trip. Once I got back to England people would ask me what I’d done in America. I guess generally you say the things you saw, the places you went, the people you met. There was that for me – that’s what I’m writing here – but the true answer is: “I was shedding attachments. I was looking at things from my past, and leaving them behind.”

Does that sound harsh? And yet, it’s so much of what my life is (maybe the whole of it).

So Colorado was done, and it was time to finally make it to California. I was just about to set off hitch-hiking when a woman in a restaurant said, “California you say? I’ve got a Toyota Prius I want someone to drive to Santa Cruz. Would you take it?” And so it’s not thumb but wheels, and off we go in style, out finally into the proper west, the deserts and mountains that I loved so much in my youth. First stop, Grand Junction, to investigate a really strange and integral aspect of the whole entire journey – to see if I could find some woman I’d had a wild encounter with in ’99 (Santa Fe, twice), and who’d been haunting my life and dreams the previous few years (though I had no real idea where in the country she was) – but no dice in Junction, not yet. Some nice meetings though. I dig the vibe of that town. And cry real tears at the beauty of the mini-Grand Canyon they have just outside there, right when I’d got to thinking being blown away by driving American highways was a thing of the past for me.

I was gonna stay a day or two there – even booked and paid for a camping spot (ultra rare occurrence in my life) – but as I was driving out to it the second night I saw a guy walking along the highway just wearing shorts, a vest, no backpack, no nothing, and of course stopped to pick him up. He was a big muscled fella with tattoos all down his face and neck. Probably an escaped convict for all I knew. But I gulped and figured it was meant to be – and when it started chucking it down and he had no real idea where he wanted to go or what he was doing – no wallet, even – I figured there was no way I could put him down till it was right. I was dog tired, only planning on a 7-mile drive out to the canyon – but ended up driving him all the way to Salt Lake City, about 300 miles down the road, depositing him at 2am with my spare sleeping bag, my little grey backpack, my lovely grey hoodie, and a bit of cash and food. I drove out into the desert and slept fitfully by the railroad tracks, and then napped again later by the Bonneville Salt Flats, waking up with the awful feeling that I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing, and that I’d left something important behind and maybe gone a little bit wrong. But I often feel that way when I wake from naps. Sometimes I’m not even sure what planet I’m on, what species I am…

Onwards then across the awful expense of Nevada – really, they should totally dispense with that state, just skip straight from California to Utah – and now I pull into Lake Tahoe right in the middle of an August hailstorm that looks for all the world like several inches of snow. Old Lindsay from Baja hot springs canyon ’98 is here – more memories updated, more attachments shed – and also upon arrival I discover my Boulder friend has pulled in at just the same moment I did, on her way to Burning Man, so I get to stay the night in a nice Tahoe cabin and think about trying to sneak in there with her (but really too hedonistic for delicate clean-living me) – plus meet her  nice friend who says I can stay at her place in Oakland.

From Tahoe, a straight shot to San Francisco. Find a couple of people on Craigslist who want a ride and, because of the contribution they make to gas, the whole trip from Crestone has cost me exactly nothing. Same price as DC to Boulder. Same as pretty much everything.

The angels are still working. Providence abounds. Even when you’re old and more grounded and no longer barefoot young gorgeous fella skipping in pigtails with light spilling from pores, it’s there.

I pull up to this house high up on a hill in Oakland and sit in the garden looking out over the lights and the bay. A tremendous electrical energy surges through me and reduces me to tears. There’s nothing conscious about it – no thought of “I made it. I did it” – no looking back to all the months and years I’d spent thousands of miles away dreaming of this trip – nor the wonderful Saskatoon dream – nor all the crazy twists and turns – nothing, really – but something has happened, has shifted, has taken place in my being. And now I’m in CA.

I see old Shawn in San Francisco. We eat fish tacos. It’s a wild thing to be sitting there with him after so many years and emails and dreams. For most people, it’s just a few hundred bucks and a plane ride away, what’s the big deal? But for me…

Drop car off in Santa Cruz. Coincidentally, a friend is there at the same time (Myspace, 2007) and driving back to LA, where I want to see a real good buddy o’ mine (Leeds, 1990) and that’s awesomely marvellous, I dig that guy (and his wife) tremendously. And I like LA too – good people, a surprisingly ‘real’ flavour about the city (the parts of it I saw), and opportunities and creativity and all the evocative names and the possibilities – but it’s soon time for Northern California and the promise of a little Rory house at the bottom of the garden where I can do my thing and catch up with Shawn, up in the redwoods of Guerneville. This is now mid-September; I stayed in Guerneville with Shawn and his lovely fam four months. Joined a soccer team; refereed a bunch of kids’ matches; ate a load of San Pedro cactus (another story); saw Amma again; and then finally decided/realised – more signs and synchronicities –to head back to Grand Junction and try to solve the mystery.

I dug Grand Junction. I stayed about a month. Met a lot of really nice people. Made a very good friend who is here right now in the hot springs village in Baja. And did eventually solve the mystery too. Also a whole other story. But, rest assured, attachments were shed.

At the end of January 2015 I got it in my head that I wanted to be sitting on the beach in LA for my birthday, so I zoomed 500 miles there in about a day and a half – one ride all the way to Vegas (slept by the railroad tracks; saw nothing of it), another the next morning with a woman I later went on adventures with around MacArthur Park looking for fake drivers’ licenses – and made the beach at Santa Monica just before sunset. Then I sat there and promptly lost my mind. Everything had been done. Every little thing I could think of. There’d been so much momentum, so many things on a largely unconscious list – and every box was now ticked.

I think back to this moment every now and then: I’ve never experienced anything like it, not before or since, or even heard of anything like it. I had literally no idea what to do next – and I’m talking down to whether to stand up, sit down, what to look at, whether to stay there looking at the sea, or whether to leave and walk in some direction or other.

But where? And why? What reason was there for anything? What desires? What plans?

Absolutely nothing. I had nothing. Couldn’t think of a single damn thing.

I can liken it to nothing else. Except being totally and utterly bereft and paralysed – and yet something beyond both of those two things too.

So, completely out of ideas, after a few days of that weirdness I finally got around to doing the one thing that seemed reasonable. I walked to the road. I stuck out my thumb. I didn’t give a damn what happened to me or where I went. I didn’t even care if I stood there forever.

There was a real liberation in that. In the midst of the misery I started to get very happy. As ever, I was waving at all the cars that didn’t stop – rule for myself, always adhered to – and as more and more zoomed by I got it in my head that maybe this was me now, for the rest of my life. Finally become the village idiot. Just the guy who stands there goofily grinning and waving at cars, beard down to his ankles, dressed in rags, since 2015.

Nobody knows his story, but he’s harmless enough, and makes people smile (and scares some).

In any case, that didn’t happen. I got picked up by a trucker who drove to some awful place a couple of hours away in the industrial south of LA – and since that didn’t seem like anything appealing, I just stayed with him as he drove back. I guess I carried on like this for several days – via Meher Mount in Ohai, via sleeping in hobo camps and haunting on-ramps – and then eventually I ended up near Sacramento and remembered a guy I’d met at a soccer tournament in Fort Bragg and visited for Thanksgiving. I called him up and he came and picked me up and that night I slept in the little trailer with him and his wife and his three kids. He said he needed some help working on construction projects, house fixing and building, etc. There was some other little trailer I could stay in. Would I be interested?

And so I did that for a while. Still glum, but at least with a reason to stand up.

I discovered Stewart Lee while I was staying in that trailer. It was my one shining light. And the work. And the guy and his family were good. And little by little, I suppose I began to be put back together after the madness of reaching the end of the road on my LA birthday.

Though maybe it was just the ocean: I’ve known a bunch of English men who have gone mad on the west coast as they stare at the Pacific…

At some point I headed back to Guerneville, and stayed again with lovely friends there. My time in America felt like it was coming to a close, and that Mexico was calling my name – where else? – but I was afraid to leave. Exiting the States would be so final – so difficult to get into, but basically impossible to return to – and what if there was still something there for me? So I dilly-dallied for maybe a few months, investigating every last corner I could think of. I drifted down to Oakland, feeling called by something or other, and on random wanderings met (within a few hours of getting there) a nice bunch of writers and we all became buddies. One put me up for a few nights and another hooked me up with a friend of his who had a boat in a marina he was doing nothing with. If I cleaned it up I could stay there, and maybe he’d even give it to me, since all it was doing was eating his money. I gave it a good scrub and dwelled there a few weeks in a particularly trashy part of Oakland, and briefly entertained mad thoughts of just taking the thing and sailing it down to Baja. But I knew I’d end up floundering in ridiculous circles or sinking it, and in the end I headed back once more for LA, to investigate there, to explore every opening, and to wait for a refereeing cheque for some games I did while in Oakland.

Slowly, I was trickling south. I guess I didn’t want to admit it, but everything was pointing that way. And soon enough I was on an Amtrak to San Diego, to the city I’d lived in my first American winter in ‘96/97, and maybe there’d be something there, nice place that it is.

Ironically, by curious coincidence, I ended up with a friend of Guerneville friend in the Mexican part of the city (all due, I believe, to paying some old debt at a Ralph’s supermarket to make up for cheeses I’d stolen back in the day) and it really occurred to me that this was the best part of America: the part where all the Mexicans lived. How funny: the best part of America is the bit that feels most like Mexico – if a man ever needed a sign, there it was. But still I clung. Still I felt paralysed. Still I hoped and waited for something to keep me in the US, save me from making some awful, irreversible, dreadful decision. Some call, some message, some sign, some dream. But nothing, save random strangers forever saying random mystical things that all pointed south.

With a weary heart I trammed it to the border and slowly walked towards the turnstile that separated this side from that. This country from that country. The whole entire free run of the US to being further away from it than ever.

Every second, I waited for that feeling, that message, to turn me around and send me back to Colorado, back to Grand Junction or Boulder. Back to good people and the potential for things.

I gave it plenty of opportunity, but it spoke to me not.

I turned the turnstile and walked on through.

I was in Mexico. Immediate Mexican stores and stalls. Lighters and little boxes of sweets. Tecate and brown-skinned Mexican men. Prices in pesos.

It was all right. And it was better than all right. It felt good. It felt like a load off my mind.

Two months I’d delayed in taking that step. This whole piece began wondering where time went and what I’d done with it. But that’s the first time I truly remember a time where almost nothing was happening, where I really was genuinely wasting it.

The signs were clear, I was just frightened. I was like a man sliding slowly down a cliff and trying to grab hold of anything I could – yet at the bottom of the cliff was a soft padded landing and treasure.

Or, I dunno, if I want to make it gentle on myself I can say the baby has to wait before it gets born, the fruit don’t ripen quicker by tuggin’ on it, etc.

So, in any case, I went down to Mexico, and it was good. I forgot all about America. I realised, once away from it, that there was no longer anything for me there, and that Mexico was where it’s at. I got happy again. The beauty. The desert. The sunshine. The people. Everything was groovy, everything was easy and free – just as some guy in the street had hollered at me one March night in Silver Lake, LA, the day I left Oakland.

At some point that spring I’d spent a little time at Joshua Tree, doing this sound bath thing I thought might elevate me somehow – nothing for me there either – and then camping out in the desert that everybody raved about. It was all right – but once I got to hitching down the Baja…that whole road is like driving through a US National Park, only better, ‘cos it has Mexico around it. Just stunning. And my soul was back with me, and my soul was on the road.

I finished the journey with one long straight shot from Mulege to Cabo San Lucas, the highway much improved and faster than the last time I’d done it, back in ’99.

The guy dropped me off outside my friend’s yoga school just south of Pescadero. I hadn’t wanted to go – we’d had a massive facebook barney the previous summer – but I guess that’s where feeling wanted me. And, as usual, feeling turned out to be right. It was fine, and it was good. I ended up staying a few months, did the yoga course – yes! I do actually have a yoga teacher training certificate somewhere! – and then at the end of that summer came, everybody left, I did something wrong and went a bit mad, and next thing I knew I was down in Cancun getting on a plane to Madrid with a passport that didn’t even have a photo in it (it got soaked on my hike across the US-Canada border) but, it was Mexico, they didn’t care.

My last night in Cancun I’d slept on the beach and been woken up in the darkness by a weird sound right next to me. I looked and it was one of those giant turtles they have down there, digging a hole in the sand so it could lay eggs. I guess it’s one of those natural wonders people get excited to see, tell their friends about, etc. But I was so done with everything I barely even registered it, just thought, ho hum, it’s one o’ them giant turtles people talk about, laying its eggs in a hole – and then turned over and went back to sleep. In fact, what I realised – and what I still realise – is that I was much more excited to see the proper real supermarkets of Cancun and buy bread and cheese. And when a man realises that sort of thing, he knows it’s time for home.

August 2015 I landed back in Europe. In Madrid, I was struck by how sophisticated and intelligent everyone seemed. It’s when you land in a place you really get a sense of it, and of the place you’ve just left. Like how when I came back to the UK after being in China three months everyone looked stressed and miserable and had enormous noses – almost eye-pokingly dangerous, they were so 3D and huge.

I wasn’t sure what to do then – maybe head out to the Camino de Santiago-Compostela (or whatever it’s called) and just start walking and see what happens – but in the end I bought a cheap flight to Paris for the same day and stopped in to see an old friend (Amma 2000) and helped her do an iboga trip. Stayed a little while and then headed north to Calais, hitching a ride on to the ferry where a nice German guy dropped me right at my friends’ house in Kent in the middle of an airshow by the beach (I was gonna go to Germany to see Mother Meera, but that morning I’d dreamed of Calais and then upon waking received an email telling me I had like two days to get back to Yorkshire and do my referee’s fitness test if I wanted to be eligible for promotion that season, which I did.)

So all the way from California Pacific madness to the Essex estuary of Herne Bay, Kent; all the Kentians licking their ice creams and gawping at aeroplanes after everything I’d been through. And soon back into normal English life, trading flip flops for Sports Direct running shoes and zooming straight to an athletics track in Wakefield to run round in circles (finished second) before the old bus to Leeds and the old lodging with the world’s shoutiest family and the old bike job too – which is good, since I’m down to my last thirty-five quid: phew.

Okay, so that brings us up to autumn 2015, and I guess I can shrug my shoulders and say it still seems like I was doing quite a lot with my time (there’s obviously tons of stuff that I’ve skipped over and haven’t mentioned). But I bet now is where it gets really like nothing. Or at least less moving about. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I suppose…

So I worked for the bike guy and replenished my bank account. It was kind of a crappy time, what with it being England and winter and cold and grey and wet. I sustained myself by making a couple of bootleg Beatles’ albums based on Ethan Hawke’s idea of The Black Album as featured in the movie ‘Boyhood’ (but much, much better than his) and was also back to the refereeing and trying to get in as many matches and assessments as I could, cos I still had this notion back then – though it seems ridiculous now – that I could make it up to the semi-pro level and, who knows, maybe even get myself refereeing in the big leagues one day. I was a good ref. I think I’d have done a good job. Though what it really was, if I’m being honest with myself, was daft ambition getting the better of what was really never anything more than a freaking awesome way for me to pay my rent while doing my Master’s (and, as it turned out, earn a few dollars while out California way too).

Just more attachments to see through to the end; that’s all.

I do remember also feeling weirdly haunted during that time in Yorkshire. I would be looking at Leeds – at the city, the buildings, the Headrow, the buses – but what I was really seeing were the mountains, the desert, the canyons of Mexico and Colorado. It was like I wasn’t really there – or, rather, I was elsewhere too. Plus, I was having a hard time understanding people – their accents, the things they were saying – and having to get them to repeat a lot. Such a traitor to the land of my birth!

Hasn’t been like that the last few times I’ve been there. But this time, for sure, weird things were going down.

Anyway, by New Year’s I was sick of it all and had fulfilled my obligations with the job, so I left. I had no real sense of where to go or what to do next, but I knew I had to go – so just sorted my stuff and got on a train to London to go visit a friend for the weekend and see what happens from there. And as so often happens when the leap of faith is taken, the reward came pretty much instantly: a phone call on that very train ride from a very good old and current friend (Canterbury 2002) asking if I wanted to do some work and, you know, thinking about it it’s weird I’ve never asked you before since I think you’d be perfect for it, whaddya say?.

This has been my main work ever since. And, as he said back then, I am perfect for it, and he perfect for me. He doesn’t want someone full-time – really just for 2 or 3 weeks 2 or 3 times a year – and I don’t want to work full-time (pretty much as above or less suits me) and the work can be done anywhere in the world. It’s been a mad blessing and a boon to have that. No more having to go back to England. No more worrying about the bank account. No more illegal jobs. And no more always having to find new avenues to generate income that I invariably get sick of anyway. Gratitude and perfection. Amen.

I moved around a lot that spring (2016 now): Devon a few times; London; Kent; Yorkshire; and all points in between. I rented a room in Exeter for about six weeks – first place I’d rented since July 2012 – but I got miserable there and started to wonder what the hell I was doing. Truly, I spent a lot of that time in England kind of miserable and thinking what the hell am I doing? – and thinking worse things than that. I got jealous of people who had terminal illnesses. I wished it was me with an end in sight. Turning 40 was an awful experience – how the fuck could I turn 40? – and I started to figure I’d maybe give it another couple of years and then maybe check out. I’d done everything I could possibly think of and there just didn’t seem to be anything that would make me happy. So what point in continuing, etc? Why have to wait till nature or fate decides my time of departure?

Meanwhile, while all this was going on I was getting emails from a school in Mexico asking me if I’d go and work there as a teacher. I’d been picked up hitch-hiking the previous year by a teacher there and she’d told her bosses about me – I guess I’d told her I’d been a teacher once – and they were keen. They needed a native speaker, for regulations or something, and they were struggling to find one. I did everything I could to put them off, but they were insistent. And I guess on a particularly low day, when it seemed like the only option and way out available to me, I tossed an I Ching and the I Ching said “good things that way come.” So I gave them the nod and readied myself for a return to Mexico – this time with work permit and unlimited visa in hand.

I flew in August 2016. As always happens whenever I enter Mexico, I instantly felt great again. In fact, weirdly I’d found that when in England my eyesight used to get really bad – but when in Mexico, it was fine. It was like my soul was only happy when I was in Mexico, when out of England: and no matter how low and completely and utterly once and for all fucking done with life and existence I got in the UK, the moment I stepped down from the plane and onto Mexican soil all became roses and I wondered what all the fuss had been. If I’d been moulded slightly different I’d have allowed myself to be persuaded that I was depressed and in need of medication – but all I really needed was to put myself in the right place and start doing the right thing to feel instantly right again. It’s like the metaphor of the shoes (or the shirt, if you prefer): the shoes (or shirt) may be perfectly fine, and may fit others perfectly well, but if they’re not your size, you’re just gonna feel discomfort trying to squeeze into them, and eventually get miserable and weird. Especially if not realising it’s just the fit that’s the problem, not the shirt, not the shoes, not you, and not anyone else who’s making them work. There are other shirts (or shoes) out there, and ones that fit perfectly well. Probably just easiest to stop wearing the ones that are too small and go find those that suit you.

So I’m back in Baja. I’m back to being (pretty) happy. The job has it’s really great moments, and the kids are awesome – but, as happened last time I taught, I struggled with many of the other teachers and the bureaucracy and the daft pressures to tick boxes and do things that obviously don’t work just cos someone up on high decided that they probably would (more shirts, more shoes, etc). Also, I was pretty weird and I smelled bad cos of my insistence on living in a tent in an arroyo and not being able to properly shower in the crazy Cabo San Lucas heat. Seriously, I could work up a monster humid sweat just on the 6.30am way into work. Or going to the bathroom, which was the only room in school that didn’t have AC. So all that coupled with my fondness for playing tennis and football and, though I did rent an apartment for a month (soon went back to the tent, cos it made me happier), basically being a stinky boy among sweet smelling Mexicans who are always so clean and well-kempt (nice hair, always laundered clothes, etc) and, well, I got sacked just after New Year’s (probably one weirdness too many) and was back to being free.

It was, of course, all completely perfect though (for me, at least): I’d spent the Christmas holidays at the hot springs and just thought, man, this is the life for me, that teaching lark was fun for four months but, what more is there to say? It’ll just be going over the same thing as before, ad infinitum, and I don’t know if I can do that. Same old same old: when the heart goes out of the job/place/person, the Universe finds a way to relinquish the bond…

Also just before I got canned, my good old Herne Bay buddy had asked if I wanted to do a nice big project for him and I’d instantly said “yes”, figuring I was sure I could fit it around the workload and lifestyle of being a tent-dwelling full-time teacher in Cabo. Little did I know…

So back to the hot springs I went, ostensibly to sit for three days and figure out what to do next – but those three days were so completely wonderful and perfect, with no notion of direction or place arising, it seemed obvious: just stay here, man. It’s got everything you need. And you can even work on the project too.

I did. I camped at an abandoned hippy place and sat under mango trees on old cushions I found in a wrecked building and it was a dream and a delight. I’d done these projects in England and they generally drove me to the edge of despair, made me want to throw myself off the cliff. But doing them here, at the hot springs – there have been other projects here since – they feel effortless, easy, no burden at all.

Everything’s easier here, it seems.

(Yes, the hot springs is where I’m at right now, in March 2021.)

So I stayed, and camped out there/here for four months, and it was good. There had been a bit of sadness between me and the hot springs till that point – every time I came it was like I would see the ghosts of people from when I was first there in ‘98/99, and it made me miss them, and miss that time. Sitting by the waterfall I’d see my buddy jumping off. Sitting in the hot pool I’d imagine Lindsay there waxing lyrical about Buddhism and blowing my young mind. Or being on my old camping beach, and it made me want to weep for the 45 days I’d stayed there having my life so profoundly changed and meeting so many wonderful people. But something happened in those four months, and it was like the old tapes got recorded over and fresh memories were born, the ghosts exorcised by the spirits of new people, new encounters, new moments – and moments that no longer haunt me, cos the present is so sweet.

More updating, I suppose, just like my whole mad jaunt across America. And more dreams fulfilled, when I did the hike over the top – maybe the only person ever to walk the entire length of the canyon, all the way to the Pacific (a total of 36 miles) –one more thing off my list of things I wanted to do, stretching right back to the turn of the millennium and all the hours I spent gazing up river at those majestic mountains (the view that’s right there on my profile banner).

So I guess not quite so devoid of desire when in LA in 2015; I just didn’t know it at the time.

From the hot springs, I took a flight to the mainland, and went to San Miguel de Allende. Something about that place had stirred me ever since I first read the name, reading about old Neale Cassady and how he’d died there only a year or so older than I was then.

I found those railroad tracks he’d walked down and demised on, and walked down them too. Nothing there for me though. And I’d already grown out of my Beat idolising days and come to see he was a bit of a lunatic really.

San Miguel was awesome though – I really dug it, and thought about living there. But, instead – after a trip up to the peyote fields of San Luis Potosi, where I ate about a pound and a half of them one queasy night (nothing happened) – I went to visit a friend in Mexico City, started to think about travelling to Asia, and next thing I knew I’d bought a plane ticket to Manchester which I instantly regretted and rolled around on the floor hating myself for, the thought of England once more, and the thought of leaving Mexico, and why and why and why? That dreaded island, that dreaded continent – and this lovely place with its brown-skinned beauties and easy way of life where no one ever shouts or looks stressed. And of course I flew once more from Cancun, from the airport full of red-skinned tourists moaning in provincial accents and looking sour-faced and hateful, despite the hotels and holidays they’ve just had, and that’s what I’m flying back to? Oh boy…

I literally just shook my head right now and wondered why the fuck I keep flying back to England. But I also know there was a certain sense of needing to go there on that trip. Things flowed pretty nicely – visits, invitations, house-sitting gigs, bits of work, catchings up, loose ends attended to – and then…and then, as usual, I started to get crazy, and wondered what the fuck, and in an idle internet moment I noticed an unusually cheap round-trip ticket from Heathrow to San Jose del Cabo, tossed a coin, and bought it.

That was on a Thursday. The plane left two days later. September 2017 we’re in now.

And so with eyesight failing, I do the London tube thing, and the next day I’m back in roasting hot Baja and everything is clear and beautiful once more. I see my friends. All of life is good. But it’s far too hot and so I get the plane to an airport an hour and a half from San Miguel de Allende and start living there, a couple of months renting a little room – third rental now, since July 2012, for a total of 4.5 months – and the plan was to be alone and write (as it usually is). And, as usually turns out to be the case, I wrote NOT VERY MUCH (a little) but mostly just yanked on my hair and beat my head and distracted with other things while rolling around in a frustrated tizz.

San Miguel was beautiful, by the way. I really, really liked it, and spent many a happy hour wandering its plazas and sitting in churches. I liked my little room, and I liked the life I had there. If I’d been able to write more productively – rent place with no internet next time – it may well have been perfect. But, also, I think I stayed about a month too long, and probably would have come back to Baja at the beginning of November if I hadn’t been so afraid of the heat.

Note to self: make decisions based on what your soul wants, not what the weatherman says.

Oh yeah, the other thing I have to mention – believe it or not, quite an important thing, as far as ‘aspects of my life around this time’ is concerned – is to do with what I was distracting myself with during those San Miguel days. Namely: debunking. You see what had happened was, just before I rented that room in Exeter I was in a charity shop in London and though I never really buy books from charity shops I bought this Jon Ronson book about his adventures with people on the fringe (I forget what it’s called, but it’s the one with Alex Jones and some Muslim extremist and other weird people in it (maybe Robbie Williams)) and after reading the chapter on David Icke I got curious to see his original Wogan interview since something about Ronson’s account of it didn’t strike me quite right. Sure enough, it wasn’t – naughty Ronson had quite significantly embellished (I raised it with him once on Twitter) – and I guess from there maybe I clicked on another Wogan-Icke interview, cos that’s what you do, right? And, unbeknownst to me, I’d awoken the beast that we all now know is the dreaded YouTube algorithm and there, right in the side bar, was Eric fookin’ Dubay’s “200 Proofs That the Earth is Flat” video.

I’m like: wtf? And: sure, we gotta click on that. And next thing I know my mind is being blown as this smooth-voiced American narrates over his video of ‘facts’ and figures that, if true, well and truly blow the lid off EVERYTHING.

Anyways, after a few minutes I did the sane thing and googled some of his proofs and realised he was just completely mistaken/lying – and so began my journey into the world of debunking and debating flat earthers.

I’m tempted to say this was the real waste of time in all this, but I don’t think that’s true. I learned a ton about human psychology and in particular the power our beliefs can have over us. I navigated the weird waters of how best to interact with people who have lost the plot (not easy). And I learned so much cool and fascinating stuff about our planet, the stars, the moon, mathematics, spreadsheets, trigonometry, and critical thinking. I came into contact with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met – mostly through my interactions with the forum folk at metabunk.org, and in particular Mick West – and I guess I grew a little along the way. Probably I’m more logical and clear thinking than I used to be, and maybe that whole trip played a role in that. And when you’re a soul-guided New Age dude who’s always doing mad things and choosing the weird option, I guess developing one’s logic and critical thinking a little isn’t a bad thing.

So, no, “flat earthin’” (as I call it) wasn’t a complete waste of time, even if I did put more time into it than I probably should have/was healthy. And it certainly wasn’t as bad as the hours and days I’ve spent playing online risk or internet chess, which really is just a colossal waste of time and life, as far as I can tell (for me it is, anyway), since it pretty much never leads to anything and, really, one might as well be absent, a machine could click the mouse and move the pieces just as well – and, for all intents and purposes, absent is what one is (though a half hour, an hour here and there probably isn’t a bad thing – and Tetris, of course, is very, very different, as we shall see).

So that was my hobby for a few years, from maybe May 2016 to around January 2019. I got well into it, and even ended up making a ton of YouTube videos talking about it, devising and demonstrating experiments, and explaining my whole take on the thing. They did pretty well – some had over 30,000 views – but then my channel got deleted by Google cos I accidentally had another channel that had some copyrighted material on it (it was just a kid playing Tetris) and I guess that was one more attachment I didn’t have to worry about anymore. Though a bit of a shame, cos some of those experiments were CLASSIC – and even groundbreaking, in the whole movement of pointless YouTube flat earth homegrown science experimentation, anyway. Oh well.

So, yeah, San Miguel kind of petered out – the writing, my room got cold, I stayed too long – and at the beginning of December 2017 I flew back to Baja and decided the hot springs was the place for me. But, weirdly, I kept feeling this pull to the Pacific side – the signs, my intuition – ‘cept I ignored it cos: a) I wanted to go to the hot springs; and b) I couldn’t think of any reason to go to the Pacific side (hadn’t been to the yoga school since August 2015, when I’d left under a cloud, and not had much contact with those folk since). So back to the hot springs I went. Except, of course, it didn’t go well – I got into bother with the locals cos I had my tent in the arroyo (though probably it was actually about something else; we’re not sure what; there are a couple of theories) and after a fun few days hiding from certain villagers and the cops I got scuttled out of there and finally headed over in January to see if I could see what was what.

I stayed in Todos Santos for a few days, camping at the ruins of the place I’d lived at in ’99 and 2001, but didn’t feel like there was anything there for me. I checked all the possibilities I could think of, and then gave in to my resistance and reluctantly went to say hi to the yoga folk. As ever, the welcome was warm, and there was an invitation to stay for a day or two – and, as often happens, the invitation evolved and I ended up staying about four months.

Turns out, as I discovered on the first night, that they were dealing with a pretty significant problem at the time, and it seemed a problem purpose-made for a Rory to solve. Part of it, really, was just entering in and giving that fresh eye perspective, or some ears for someone to be listened to. But another part was taking action – and I gotta say, dirty though the job was in places, I really enjoyed it. The issue was dispensed with – one that had been dragging on for months – and, in the meantime, it seemed that yoga school, once more, was where I was supposed to be.

Of course I kicked myself – and half-jokingly apologised – for not having arrived sooner; for staying in San Miguel that month too long; and for ignoring the signs when I first got back in Baja – but, I dunno, I got there when I did, and maybe it was all perfect as it turned out. Or just a little more imperfect than it could have been.

So I stayed there, did little jobs, interacted with the students in what felt like a useful way, and it seemed that whatever needed to be healed between me and them was done. I guess a lot went on during that time. But what mainly springs to mind is: the ping pong table got built; and I met this girl who would come to dictate the next few years of my life.

I should have known, of course – I’d already told myself to avoid them yoga women long before that, and Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me Babe” was constantly ringing in my head but – the flesh is weak, and weaker/stronger still the impulses and cavities within that sub- and unconsciously direct these lives of ours, driving us to people and places that aren’t necessarily there to bring the ultimate good feeling that they first appear to promise, but rather to take us into the dirt of our own beings and through pain and suffering – and probably not actually liking one another in the end – help us a little further on our journey towards the light.

You know what I’m saying? The whole idea of pain bodies and attracting others who touch our tender places and wounds, to bring them to the surface. That sort of thing.

So I got into it with her, and though I quickly realised I didn’t actually want to, I couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop myself. Proceeded like a moth drawn to the flame. Driven by some inner-compulsion that was more powerful than my logic and my thinking.

A samskara? Is that the word? Those latent inner-tendencies that draw us like magnets to whatever situation or person we require to suck them out, like the pus from an infection?

Better out than it, huh?

And we all think we’re drawn to others because of words like “love” and “attraction” and “goodness”. Ha!

Wink wink.

Anyway, that happened, and when she flew to Europe in May to go work at a retreat centre in Sweden it seemed reasonable that I would also be using the return portion of my ticket to London, booked ten months previously, at the end of the same month. Right until the last minute I wasn’t sure I’d be getting on – always open to abandoning the trip while possible – but I went, and landed back in England; played a bunch of football pretty much on the first night back; and then did the whole visiting everyone thing and sorting out the paperwork thing. Seems like every time I go back it takes less and less time, and it was starting to dawn on me that I only went back these days out of habit, there was no real reason for me to be there. Sure, it’s always good to see good friends, and there is something about those English conversations that I don’t find elsewhere – but there’s only so long that can sustain a man, and only so long you can be somewhere before it changes from being a visit to something different (eg, actually living there), and so pretty quickly I was on my own flight to Sweden – very unsure about it, not really wanting to go – and, before long, I was also living and working at this retreat centre in the Swedish woods with nice people and hippy-type people and singing Hare Krishna type people and it was pretty cool. Beautiful little lake and floating sauna and bed in a tent and magical trees and rocks to fall asleep on and, more than that, the journey into oneself, wonderfully orchestrated by the Unseen Hand above and all made possible by the siren song of Woman…

So yeah, it was cool and groovy – and also a complete emotional and mental mess. Pretty soon, what we had fell to pieces – but because of whatever nonsense we had residing deep within our beings, we couldn’t keep away from one another. For sure, we knew we were wrong – but it was no good just knowing it, the magnets/samskaras were too strong, and the pus needed to come out. And I think it did, this one culminating night when we (as a group) did this insane practice/technique called ‘Family Constellation’ – basically, where…

Wait, there is no “basically” where this is concerned. But let’s see if I can explain it.

So there’s me, the subject, sitting there looking to work through some issues, and there’s the facilitator, who’s had some training, and who’s probably in some sort of meditative state or, ya know, ‘tuned in’. You get in touch with your own being. You try and feel what the spirit wants to do and say, and let it guide you.

It’s not a bad place to be ALL THE TIME. Certainly, life seems easier in that place.

So, as the subject, my first job (once calmness and flow and all that good stuff has been established) is to look around the room and choose people who are going to represent/play the roles of members of my family. One of the interesting aspects of this part of it is how straightforward and obvious it is: it’s just totally clear who is going to be who.

I choose a young guy to be me; a chunky long-haired beardy guy to be my dad; a Spanish guy who’s just turned up that day to be my biodad; and, of course, the woman I’m involved with to be my mum (had to be).

And that’s where the weirdness begins. I’m not going to describe it in detail, but I’ll tell you my conclusion: that somehow, some way, these people who, for the most part don’t really know me – and who certainly don’t know my family – they become, literally and genuinely, POSSESSED by the spirits of some still-living others. They act exactly like them. They do exactly what they would do, even when I would expect with everything in my being that it would make much more sense for them to do something different. One guy bursts into uncontrollable tears. Another is laughing his socks off. None of it makes any rational sense, and yet in the context of the bigger picture – and, of course, from what I know of everybody they’re representing – it’s all completely 100% perfect. And, in the process, something shifts.

Something did shift that night. Something shifted in me. I feel my relationship with women and the world has changed since then. I feel that whatever I had in me – there pretty much since birth, perhaps – that was drawing to me to certain things has gone.

I feel healthier, and I feel much more likely to be drawn to healthy things.

It’s weird, and it made no rational sense, but it worked.

It worked for me, anyway. And I can explain how in much more detail, but I guess I don’t really feel much need to. After all, it’s not like anyone can possibly be reading this. Ten thousand words already! And still 2.5 years to go…

Ay ay ay!

So that would have been August 2018, and she left a little while after that. She said she was hoping for more in the future, but I was well and truly done. Not long after that I got together with a nice girl, and that’s still going on. Funny thing is, I’d got it in my head around that time (while I was trying to figure everything out) that I needed to be less of a “nice guy” and be a bit stronger and have better boundaries. Perhaps once upon a time that was true – but what it feels like now is that it’s okay to be nice, it just needs to be with the right person. In fact, perhaps “right person” is one of the biggest things that came out of that time for me – a bit like “right place” and the whole shirt/socks/shoes thing with regard to England vs Mexico.

It’s okay to feel needs, and even to have requirements – but they have to be directed at the right person.

Too many times we look to the wrong person to fulfil our needs and wants, and then we get frustrated and sad.

But it’s not the other person’s fault, the fault is with us.

A mango is a wonderful and delicious thing – but it’s not much use in fixing a car when the fan belt’s gone.

Cats are great – but they won’t guard our homes in the same way an Alsatian can.

You can’t get blood from a stone, etc etc.

All these things are logically obvious, of course – but when there’s something within that’s compelled to the mango, to the cat, to the stone…

It takes more than intellectual understanding, it takes a change in being, a catharsis. And I think I had a lot of it that summer/autumn in Sweden, difficult though much of it was.

I left there in October, intensely grateful for the place and the time. There was a real magic in those woods and in those waters – I could be feeling absolutely dreadful, at the limit of my capacities, and a dip or a spot of ‘forest bathing’ (can’t believe I’ve used that term) would sort me out. I guess I went through the ringer somewhat – but came out the other side.

I had no real plans of what to do after Sweden, just felt like something would come. Then one day I got a facebook message out the blue from someone I’d had pretty miniscule contact with asking me if I’d be interested in a house-sitting gig in Ibiza. I said I’d think about it. I walked out the library and one of the guys from the retreat centre was standing there pointing at a bird.

“Heading south for the winter,” he said to me. And I figured that was my answer.

And so off I went direct to Ibiza – no need for a stop in England this time – and now I’m living in a big villa with a swimming pool up in the hills above San Antonio with a yoga teacher from Liverpool. We had long talks and long fires – the villa was freezing, but the hills were well-stocked with dead trees – and I really enjoyed our times together. I felt even then that here was somebody who was providing me with something I’d been craving for years, but had found hardly anywhere else: someone who could frequently and continuously say something interesting; something I hadn’t heard before; something that piqued my curiosity or challenged my beliefs or led me down avenues new.

It’s two years later and I still feel the same way. It’s amazing how difficult that is to find. (No offence to all the lovely and, of course, interesting people I’ve conversed with this whole past decade.)

So that was good times, and Christmas and New Year came and went. No celebrations at all. Though I did watch Trading Places – traditional Christmas movie of my childhood.

New Year’s was also about when I started making my YouTube flat earth videos. I felt there was a gap in the market for someone to do some quality debunking without all the piss-taking and nasty superiority that was starting to get popular at the time. Just lay out the facts, present some experiments and measurements anyone could do, and try to demonstrate some understanding and compassion of where the flat earthers were coming from, since they’re human beings with complex emotional lives and challenges too. Plus, it’s not something worth getting bent out of shape over, is it?

I entered into it hesitatingly, never having enjoyed being on camera, but I found I got a liking for talking and presenting my little vids. Somehow, it quickly caught on and I was soon at like 2,000 subscribers, with some videos getting hits in the tens of thousands. I guess I learned a lot in the process of all that too, and maybe helped others who were finding themselves tearing their hair out at the very notion of people thinking the earth was flat in 2019. But, most importantly, it was the logical conclusion of my whole journey into the world of debunking and of flat earthing in particular. I exhausted every possibility I could think of with the videos – I was like a man possessed, waking every day with 4 or 5 ideas in mind; sometimes writing scripts; sometimes driving up mountains with homemade equipment to take measurements and do demonstrations. To some, I guess I was a bit of a hero, showing how it could be done without the anger and negativity – though I imagine that’s all forgotten now, given our tendency to the juiciness of drama and conflict. And then one day, it all just ended. I had one or two videos left to make, but the energy, I joyfully and thankfully realised, had gone. All interest had departed. The end of the road has been reached. And thank God, too, cos there were moments there I feared I would never be free…

Also what happened in Ibiza is that a new obsession arose to take its place, from the selfsame source: YouTube’s recommended videos algorithm. One day a recommendation for a video from the Classic Tetris World Championship popped up. Wtf, I thought, once again – who the hell wants to watch competitive Tetris? Yet, twenty minutes later, I was still watching, and was hooked. I started playing the game. I started trying to improve my score. I was only getting like 200k when the best guys were scoring 900,000 or more. And mainly at this stage I was more interested in watching, and still doing the mad flat earth experiments – one of my ‘models’ was filling the living room, about fifteen feet long – but, slowly, as I’ve done so often in my life, I was trading one addiction for another.

From booze and drugs to Tetris via chocolate, internet Risk, chess, and flat earthin’, a little less unhealthy each time…

It’s cool how I lose interest in things. I get the sense that a lot of people want to sustain their interests. But, for me, I’m always looking forward to the day they end and I get myself free.

Freedom is the thing for me. Freedom from everything. That’s where my passion lies.

I suspect there’s something of a recurring theme of that in this writing. Shedding attachments. Ticking off boxes. Wanting to get to the end of things.

People say you should enjoy the journey, forget the destination, and I guess there’s something in that.

Then again, who are these people who they say that? Are they people I want to emulate? Cos I don’t think the ones I do want to emulate say that sort of thing…

Anyway, we’re almost at the end of this, and I know what comes next. Like when leaving Sweden, I had no real plans of what to do after Ibiza (April 2019). I figured something would come, something would sweep me up, but nothing did. If I’m honest with myself – and much to my surprise – I felt that the wind was blowing in the direction of the UK. But much like my resistance to going to the Pacific, I couldn’t think of a reason why I should go there, and so I didn’t.

In the end, I ‘fished’ a little with the Sweden folks, and through a little misunderstanding and miscommunication I ended up being asked to go back there and work as the ‘handyman’ for the season, May till September.

I’ll start at the end with that, cos it didn’t go so well, and if I’d been paying attention I probably wouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have fished, and I should have listened to myself more – cos the moment I said “yes” to them, I started having the most awful dreams, and I knew they meant something. Yet they weren’t specifically related to the place or the people, and so I didn’t read anything into them. They continued when I got there. I don’t know whether it was a warning or a lesson for the future or what. But it was never right. It was never a fit. It was last year’s shirt, last year’s fashion, and though there was something of goodness in it, it wasn’t really the place for me.

But, oh well, I guess it was a tie that was cut and an attachment and fond memory that never got a chance to take root and grow. So every cloud and all that – and at least I got to see how hard working I can be, and how awesome I am at laying floors

And I guess there’s no real reason to go into that more. Just to remember: if I start having bad dreams every night, even though everything’s fine, maybe just maybe it’s related to a decision or promise I’ve just made, or something coming up in the near future…

The other interesting thing about that time is: I tried to book a direct flight to Sweden but couldn’t for the life of me. Even one that I paid for and thought had been processed didn’t go through and then disappeared. But in the end I got an unusually great deal to fly direct to Leeds from Ibiza and so ended up back in Yorkshire and, whaddya know, having a lovely time.

Probably I shouldn’t have thought/planned ahead. Probably I just needed to get in touch with something within myself. Probably the answer for where to go was right there all along, but I just wouldn’t accept it because it didn’t make sense – even though there are plenty of other times where I’ve accepted the answer even when it didn’t make sense (usually easier if it’s Mexico/Baja, cos at least that’s sunny and warm).

So…more lessons/remembrances for the future there.

After the retreat centre I went a little bit mad. I didn’t really know what to do with myself and was navigating some relationship difficulties, all while being cast adrift in Scandinavia with no direction home. My thoughts were pointing me towards Mexico, and after a confusing week in Gothenburg and a plane ride to Hamburg to see Mother Meera, I found myself at Brussels airport in possession of a cheap one-way to Cancun (€140) pretty much naked in the world once more after most of my clothes got stuck in my friend’s dryer back in Gothenburg. But something about the flight didn’t feel right, and after everyone had boarded I had the giddy experience of telling the lady there, “actually, I’m not getting on, it just doesn’t feel right” and walking in the opposite direction.

Just imagine if the plane had crashed and everyone on it had perished, what interviews I would have fielded!

But it didn’t; they all got there safely and had their holidays, and I took an awful bus ride from Brussels to Kent (actually got off at Calais and thumbed it over the Channel, the bus was so bad) to crawl once more to my lovely friends’ place and see if I could put myself back together.

Luckily, they were away for a few days, and I was able to lounge in the safety of the bed undisturbed with just my Tetris for company, defeated once more, and unsure of everything.

When they did return, there was work to be done – and what was the work? It was heading north to Newcastle and staying in hotels and asking people questions and writing down what they said.

Newcastle is further north than Yorkshire. And so back to Yorkshire I went, and to sorting things out. And that all turned out pretty nice, in the end – and totally right too.

That was October 2019. I almost bought a car one time but tossed a coin right there with the owner sitting next to me. The coin said “no” and I think he loved it that I did that, was wide-mouthed with amazement, despite no sale for him.

The coin, as ever, was right. And probably if I’d tossed a coin on whether to buy a one-way from London to Baja at the end of November – all new direct flight! no more Cancun/Mexico City stopovers! – it would have said “go”. But I didn’t – laziness, complacency, attachments, imagined obligations – and, once more, I “stayed a month too long”, went a little bonkers, and got down and despondent.

Though I did get really into playing online competitive Tetris, and that was fun.

End of December, we went. Flew out of Gatwick on Boxing Day after a laidback Christmas and a lovely few nights at a cheap hotel right there at the airport. And when I say “cheap”, I mean it: it was like £35 (between us) for the two-night stay.

Great way to spend Christmas. Wish it’d been another night or two. And great thing to find out about Gatwick, for future arrivals and departures (there’s a big Tesco just down the road from the hotel too).

So, yeah, a direct flight back to Baja, and within days we’re at the hot springs. All is instantly roses. The beauty is all around. The old friends are here. Everything is simple.

Cook on the fire. Walk up the canyon. Sit in the hot tubs. Look at the stars.

Tortillas and eggs and good people if you want them and solitude if you don’t.

I’m always being drawn back to this place. I’m sitting here now.

It’s March 2021 – but what I’m writing about above is January 2020.

I guess I’ve forgotten that the previous year happened. I guess that’s because I spent almost all of it sitting in a trailer looking at a computer.

Ay caramba! That’s where the feeling of wasted time comes from! This is where my heart gets sad! Good as the people are there…what the holy eff was I doing?!

I’ll tell you what I was doing:

Mid-Feb 2020 the girlfriend wants to head over and do a yoga course and I figure I’ll go too and catch up with my friends and play some ping pong. That’s all well and good but, within a couple of weeks, I’m thinking it’s time for me to get back and I try to. But it doesn’t seem so easy and then coronavirus hits. Things go into lockdown. The word from the village here is that the locals have gone loco; the hot springs are closed; they’re threatening to arrest gringos who even so much as venture out of their gates.

Probably they were getting weird information from somewhere. An understandable reaction, perhaps. Especially considering how flip the Americans were being in still flying down here and trying to kill Mexican grannies with their virus.

So I get kind of ‘stuck’ – and, all things considered, it’s a pretty great place to get stuck during a pandemic. The kitchen’s still open and it’s all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet (and sometimes fish) three times a day. There’s not much expected of me, other than to play a couple of hours of ping pong with my buddy several days a week, do some computer projects, and water a few plants. The ping pong is pretty awesome and, man, we start to get good and pull off some wild shots, have incredible (by our standards) rallies. Spinning it like crazy and even getting into the more powerful full-on smashes and then nutty defence.

But I suppose a man needs a little more than 6-8 hours a week of ping pong in his life, and I didn’t really feel that I was getting it. Normally, of course, there’s the outside world, like there is here – the beautiful nature, going for wonderful walks, looking at the night, enjoying the tranquillity – but it’s not like that on the other side, it’s the awful ceaseless raw of the Pacific and the whining drone of the highway. Once upon a time, I could live with something like that – but not, it seems, anymore, and I found myself housebound, unable to put up with it for more than a few minutes.

Maybe the highway’s a lot busier than it used to be. Maybe the sound travels different than it used to. Maybe I’ve changed.

Or maybe it was all just signs about shirts and shoes, about what doesn’t fit, or about what’s in fashion right now…

I could have written, I suppose, since I have now three or four quarter-finished books, and couple more in the birth canal, and I did do a bit (continued a book I’d last worked on in San Miguel) that was pretty happy-making, but – not with the internet right there, unlimited and always on: it’s the great enemy of me as a writer, and I am powerless when confronted by its might. So instead, I YouTubed. I watched/listened to every interview with every person ever. I watched every single video some Irish guy has posted about real life murder cases (a coupla hundred). Old football and cricket highlights, of course. And God knows what else I did – but, save to say, I was deep into the hole of abject distraction and there was no way out.

Also, I had my Tetris. I played a lot, and I was still doing the online competition thing. Maybe I didn’t want to lose that, and maybe I couldn’t. Maybe, also, it was the right thing to be in for that time – like I say, not a bad place/way to spend a pandemic when the rest of the world is desperate to go outside and sick of their masks or just plain sick and worrying over financial woes. But video gamers were having the best time. Stay indoors and avoid people, you say? I think we can handle that.

So I played Tetris and I streamed Tetris. I chatted Tetris on Discord – boy, that can fill some hours – and then around mid-April I one day posted a harmless message suggesting a way to make the terrible, completely inaccurate Elo rating system work. But nobody took me up on it and I began to dabble myself. And next thing I knew I was neck deep in spreadsheets and equations and there was no stopping me.

I confess: I really enjoyed it. I learned some wild and wonderful things that can be done with spreadsheets. I took something rudimentary and not every good and made it an almost fully-automated match reporting and recording system and database that basically updates results and rankings almost in real-time, using only Google Sheets. And it’s groovy and cool and, despite massive opposition and criticism at first, is now pretty much totally accepted and was even mentioned lots during the 2020 World Championships in December. So there.

Yeah, I had fun with that – so I don’t know what I’m complaining about, other than I guess there was a sense that it was going too far and, as I’ve already said, I wanted to see an end to it and to extricate myself. I love setting the system up. I love solving the problem. I love taking the thing and making it better. But once it’s solely about maintenance, about keeping it going – there’s no pleasure in that for me, that’s just monkey work and repetitive and dull. So like flat earthin’, I longed for an end, and maybe the end came a couple of months ago when the World Championship passed and I enlisted someone else – some enthusiastic other – to take over the running and machinations, and add his own stuff as well.

One day it’ll all be a proper website and run smoothly an no one will have to watch over it. But until then, it needs us humans to oil the gears of Google Sheets and keep it running by hand. And I just don’t have the inclination for that sort of thing. I want to be free.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That started in April and kept me busy day-after-day for many a month. In mid-July the heat gets too much and everyone leaves – so then it was mainly just me and the girlfriend and this one other British guy tending to the yoga school and making sure nothing disastrous happened. Pretty lovely to have the whole place to ourselves, and without the people there I was able to venture out a bit more, use the swimming pool – only cool place – and shake off my pretend agoraphobia and houseboundness.

It was interesting to see myself in comparison to how I’d been when I was there in 2018. Then, I really wanted to be involved, and was. Talking with students, sharing things, helping them with their crises, making sure there were enough accessories for classes, etc. I even felt that I wanted to teach something – meditation, probably, or philosophy, and do some healing – but none of that happened and perhaps I got over it. Also, I think the two summers in the Sweden community did something to me: fulfilled the urge that I had to play that sort of role and showed me something about ‘modern Western spirituality’ – and about myself – that I was wanting to move away from. The feeling that, somewhere out there, there’s something deeper and more real and more serious to explore…

Anyway, I found it interesting to observe in myself the complete absence of wanting to get involved with the students or the yoga people in general. In fact, any little accidental interaction – on my sojourns over to get food, for example – would leave me feeling icky and desperate to get away. I just can’t do it anymore. But I know it’s real and good for them, I truly do, and I bless them in it too. I was there once, and it was real and good for me also – and it’s a beautiful place to be, when you’re new/young. But, when you’ve lived it once…well, it’s very difficult to live again – at least for me. Which is really just another way of expressing the same old theme of moving on once more.

So summer was kind of nice – always the feeling that it’s too hot over at the hot springs anyway (but there I go again, listening once more to the weatherman, and allowing him to guide me) – but when the people came back I got housebound once more and started getting weirder and weirder. I started to think I was a terrible human being. I started to think I was a failure. I started to wonder what the point of even being alive was – and then when Jonas died at the beginning of January, one of my first reactions was, “why him, when he’s so good and needed, when it could have been me, a useless presence on this planet and wanted and needed by pretty much no one?”

At the end of January – on the day of my 45^th birthday, to be precise – we came back to the hot springs, and everything got instantly better, and I’ve been happy ever since.

Right time, right place – that pretty much is what it’s all about.

And “wrong time, wrong place”?

Well, that has its own rewards/consequences. Usually for me, it means getting sad and strange and thinking I’ve gone wrong.

And I suppose, having “gone wrong” is exactly what I’d done – but not necessarily me, just where I’ve put myself.

I definitely underestimated the power of the noise of the ocean. That fucking thing is a monster. It never stops. It roars right through one’s earplugged sleep. It shakes the goddamn bed.

We might as well be living next to an airport as living next to the Pacific.

Goddamn gringos: there’s a reason the Mexicans lived a mile or two inland, even when they earned their living from it. But, no, the Americans got to have their ocean views, got to be able to send their postcards home and tell all what a great life they’re having.

But if postcards had sound, the folks back home would be sat there thinking, goddamn, it’s fuckin’ noisy where you are, how do you put up with it?

And now to be here, at the hot springs, in this blesséd peace and tranquillity – what a difference it’s made to my mind and soul, right from day one. No more 1am nights like in the trailer, but bed at 7.30 and sleeping happy and well.

No more internet, no more bright lights at midnight. And no more fuckin’ highway, whining more even than I whine about it myself. The occasional car in the village is frankly too much for me. Why I put myself next to a highway I have no clue.

The internet, that’s why. I sold myself for a fast stable connection, unlimited down/uploads, the ability to lie there playing Tetris and doing spreadsheets all day. And I liked it, and got a perverse sense of pleasure from how terrible it all was. I laughed at myself, at the way I was living. The way the muscles in my legs atrophied, the way I got a bedsore in the crack of my arse from sitting in the same position for too long – and still sitting in it, despite constant pain.

I guess I was on a course of mild self-destruction, and it amused me. The nihilist in me. The nihilism I’ve been experimenting with on and off these past ten years.

But the question is: have I had enough of that? Or will I find myself stuck once more – wearing the wrong shirt – trying to squeeze into ill-fitting shoes – staying a month or two too long?

I shrug my shoulders: it wouldn’t surprise me. But for now, I’m back at the hot springs canyon village, and I couldn’t ask for more than what I have. Sometimes the village is a bit much – the people still bring their complications, their issues, and the dogs bark, the trucks roar – but the canyon is right there and the canyon is perfection. The hot pools are wonderful. I am myself when I’m up there, and people see it written all over me.

“When you came back,” my friend says, “you looked rough, haggard, like you’d lost your spark. But within a few days, it was back.”

In these sandy pools of water I am a boy again, with no sense of time or age. I splash and dig, move rocks, try to improve things, and everything feels right.

In the canyon, everything makes sense.

In the village, some things make sense – and it makes a lot more sense than the city – but it’s very, very different to the canyon.

Perhaps at some point I’ll go up there for real, do some sort of vision quest or retreat or walkabout. After all, where else am I going to find the thing my soul craves? But right now, the place to be is closer to other humans, and where typing is possible, camping on a friend’s land and making good use of the chair that I sit in, the table that I write at, and the electrical outlet enables these words.

Will I get back to writing books? I still think about them fairly often – but nowhere near as often as I do when I’m miserable.

And even here, of course, I’m still lazy and prone to distraction and more interested in short-term fulfilment.

You can take the boy out of Yorkshire – you can take him out of everywhere – but I guess those things will follow him wherever he goes.

Anyways, I suppose the last ten years haven’t been that bad – probably just the last year that was particularly ‘empty’, and maybe that’s where the feeling of awful dread was coming from. Certainly, a lot of computer time is a massive sinkhole that renders a human inhuman, in the sense that they may as well not be there – and, for all intents and purposes, perhaps aren’t.

Not this though. This writing is good. Not good writing, but good for me. And having written it out, it all seems rather fine and dandy – even the bedsore YouTube woes of 2020 (which I’m sure has been much worse for others; so we did it together; I was there with you, in my own strange way).

All I know is that today, if nothing else, I feel like I’m in the right place doing the right thing, and it feels good. And I tell you what: after remembering here times when I haven’t felt that I was in the right place doing the right thing, it leaves me feeling doubly good and ever so grateful too

Seven straight hours of typing. Sixteen thousand words. All caught up, and no more to say.

Any questions? Any holes need filling? Otherwise…

Cheers! And thanks for reading. ;-)

TL;DR – I had this awful sense that I’d done pretty much nothing with my time these past ten years, so I went over them to see exactly what I’d done and it turns out it was quite a lot – though mostly, in all the comings and goings, all it really was was shedding attachments, updating information, and learning lessons. Also quite often I got stuck in a place that didn’t really suit me and that tended to lead to feeling weird, miserable, and losing myself in pointless distractions. Though I could have been writing books, of course, if I wasn’t so lazy.

Anyway, as it turns out, it was only really last year I didn’t do very much, other than play with spreadsheets and complain about the noise of the ocean. Probably I should have gone somewhere quieter, or knuckled down to some typing, but I got sucked into the internet and I guess that’s where the initial feeling was coming from. But still, other people had it worse in 2020, and I suppose now I’m back in my good place and happy once more what I ought to do is shrug my shoulders, smile, feel grateful for this typing, and fuhgedabboudit (which is what I seem to have done).

That’s all. :)

Starbucks

I’ve been seeing a bunch of this Canadian girl lately – not romantically, of course: she’s got a boyfriend (though away), and, as everyone knows, I’m not interested in that sort of thing (so much easier without all the weirdness that comes once two people have rubbed their naked bodies together) – but we hang out and go for walks round San Miguel and on a Saturday morning she insists I accompany her to Starbucks so she can read the papers and drink her one latté of the week and I get to sit there thinking about how the other half live while hitting up baristas for free hot water so I can drink my very own green jasmine loose leaf tea that I brought all the way from England and – hey! it’s Mexico: nobody cares – and probably one day I’ll drop someone a tip for their trouble; they can always say no.

She’s cool, this Canadian girl – in fact, you’d never know she was Canadian at all, what with all her opinions and forthrightness and not caring about saying the controversial thing.

I know, right? You thought everyone in Canada was bland – but this is like the fifth or sixth Canadian I’ve met who had something of a personality, so it’s probably about time you knocked that old urban myth on the head, you generalising, narrow-thinking xenophobe, you.

Anyway, we were out Friday night walking the streets and digging the crowds and the trumpets and everyone milling and, not that anything was really happening, but the milling was good, and it gives the night a focal point if you call it ‘The Festival of Something or Other’ ‘cos there’s always the sense then that something might happen, other than milling, and even though it never does, by the time everyone’s realised that, the milling’s done, and been thoroughly enjoyed, and it’s time to go home and: who cares anyway? Milling’s kind of the way of the world, one way or another, and jolly pleasant it is too.

But you don’t have a clue what I’m on about, do you? All you really want is some sort of sex scene – which would imply you weren’t paying attention during that first paragraph – or, worse, doubting my veracity – in which case: tut tut; shame on you; drop and give me fifty; and go beg Mary for forgiveness.

You really think I make this stuff up? You really think I’d hook up with a girl who had a boyfriend? Imagine his heart! Imagine his pain! I tells you what: some of you reading this think of nothing but your own peckers and fannies; that’s the God’s honest truth. And I shake my head and weep for it.

Yes, she stayed over at mine. Yes, we watched a bit of porn together. Yes, we might have turned out the lights and, in our separate beds, made one another aware of various things, but – there ain’t no crime in that. It’s the nineties, baby: get with it!

And then, like I say, we went this morning over to Starbucks and grabbed the comfiest chairs and sat there with our hot beverages and a stack of papers telling all the latest bad things that have happened in the world, which was of no interest to me, but sure gave my friend lots to huff and puff about.

By the way, I paid for her drink, if that’s what you’re wondering, ‘cos I can’t help it – daddy taught me well – and ‘cos it makes me feel better about asking for that pot of hot water so I can drink my own delicious tea.

Plus, the girl who served me was so brown and sweet and smiley I swear I came this close – THIS CLOSE [indicates a very short distance between thumb and forefinger] – to dropping a tip in her cup – and I would’ve done, if I’d had something suitable in my pocket.

But back to the chair and to her there tutting and scowling, and me wishing I’d brought something to write with so I could do a sudoku or plan out my life on a napkin or just doodle some swirls, having exhausted the sports pages in about thirteen seconds, forgetting of course that there wouldn’t be any real sports, just American sports.

I needn’t have worried: of course my chum would soon find something to vent her spleen about – she always does, and usually before my thirteen seconds are up – and it only took ever-so-slightly longer this beautiful lovely sunny Saturday morning in Mexico where all is well and everybody is chill and all the world’s troubles are at least 500 miles to the north.

“Will you look at that?” she said, keeping her hands and stare on the paper and giving me absolutely nothing to look at at all.

“Tut,” she said. “Fuckin’ hell,” she said.

“What?” I said, kind of wishing I didn’t have to, but knowing that was part of the game.

“This Rose McGowan story,” she said. “I mean, God knows, it’s fuckin’ horrible, and I’m glad that pig’s getting what he deserves – I hope they all do; I hope every single story that ever was comes out and they all do their time in jail, and get their own asses jerked off into – but…don’t you see? There’s an elephant in the room here.”

She raised her eyes from the paper and looked up at me. I looked around the room, feeling it only right to make the obligatory joke.

“What?” I said. “You mean her?”

I nodded my eyes at a fabulously wobbly American woman in a truly preposterous pair of tourist sunglasses: you could tell she was American by the loudness and content of the words which staggered and lurched out of her mouth.

“Bit mean,” I said, “to call her an elephant.”

“Elephants are like two hundred pounds at birth,” she said. “She’s at least three hundred. That’d be mean to elephants, if anything.”

“Shame on you,” I said. “She’s probably got a thyroid problem.”

“You mean she can’t stop eating them?”

“Nice one,” I said, giggling, glancing, shaking my head, hoping no one was hearing, wishing she’d talk just a little quieter.

Then the American woman turned and dragged herself past us, attempted to say “grassy-arse” but gave up half way through, and squeezed herself out the door.

“Imagine that ass riding on your face,” my friend said. “Thighs round your neck. Big hairy muff rubbing roast beef flaps all on your chops –”

She stopped. She stopped ‘cos I puked. I’d eaten a whole 900 gram pot of yoghurt for breakfast, and three bananas, and a bag of raisins, and a packet of Ritz crackers – no fridge, you see – which only accounts for the yoghurt, I know, but everything else kind of logically follows on from that – and it was just too much.

If there’s one thing I can’t stomach in this world it’s –

“Blurk,” I said again, and a shot-glass full of creamy white gunk and – I swear – a couple of whole entire raisins came dribbling down my chin.

My friend laughed till she cried. I scooped it up with the napkin I might otherwise have planned my life on and then, eyes watering, joined in the laughter too.

I took a sip of my tea. I looked down and in the cup there was a small swirl of something white that had once been on the inside of a cow, and – would you believe it? – a small bobbing half-digested raisin.

I lifted the cup and showed it to my friend. She laughed so hard a raisin shot out of her own nose and hit me on the side of my face.

It was uproarious. It was ridiculous. Raisins shooting everywhere. Yoghurty breakfasts coming back to haunt us. Bits of sick in our drinks.

She rubbed her nose and giggled and tittered. Shook her head and then threatened to break out once more.

I looked round the room. People were looking, sure enough, but with big wide smiles, enjoying the show. Some had got the giggles themselves. Others were whispering and making jokes, and setting their partners off.

Probably enough, I thought, before the whole place goes up in hysterical flames – and, more importantly, before –

Oh. Too late. Here comes some American tourist fellow thinking he can start a conversation with us just because we’ve been laughing and we’re white and he thinks we’re probably from where he’s from and that gives him the right. First he’ll ask us where we’re from – and then he’ll either: a) immediately tell us where he’s from and go on some long, boring monologue that begins with what he’s doing here and ends God knows where, but certainly nowhere related to where it started; or b) tell us some equally tedious anecdote related to either Canada or England – some relation he has over there, some workmate he once had maybe twenty or thirty years ago – and then from there via non-sequiturs and tangents find himself at the same place Route A would’ve taken us, and will it ever end? Probably not – or at least not before about forty-five minutes of our lives have shrivelled up and died and –

“You from the States?” she says, before he even has a chance to speak, all gleefully bounding up but now taken aback by the weird, twisted, sadistic expression on her face.

“Yup,” he says, “Ga–”

He doesn’t even get the word out. She’s on him. She’s up from her seat and ushering him out the door. Whispering hurriedly in his ear. Almost shoving him. And the poor guy’s so bamboozled and perplexed he just becomes completely compliant and is in the street before he even knows what’s happened to him.

“What did you say to him?” I asked, shocked.

“I just told him you were a massive racist. That you hate white Americans. That he’d better get out of here before things turned nasty. That it was for his own good ‘cos you’re a complete psycho and you’ve got a knife in your bag.”

“What bag?”

“He didn’t know that.”

I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. I hated the thought of that guy thinking I was bonkers. What if he saw me in the street later? It’s a small town: there’s only so many streets to walk down.

What if he got a bunch of his friends to jump me? Figured he needed to be some sort of hero? Was a psycho himself – despite coming across as a picture of your typical fearful, insecure, airheaded, chubby, foolishly-attired American abroad?

But he passed us at the window, looking dazed and afraid, and I thought the best thing would be to make some fierce face at him and raise myself from my seat, as though I wanted to go flying through the window to get at him.

B read my cue – let’s stop calling her ‘my friend’; let’s give her at least an initial – and got up too, as if to restrain me, and the fella went shuffling down the calle and that was that.

What a bunch of excitement! And the day hadn’t even begun.

I needed a cup of tea after all that. I took a sip. I accidentally hoovered up yet another raisin and then spat it out. Then I picked it up and looked it over. It was once eaten, part-digested, vomited up in a goop of yoghurt, bobbing in tea – but a raisin is a raisin.

I popped it in my mouth and gave it a chew. It was succulent and delicious. It reminded me of this other amazing raisin I’d eaten several years previous.

“Did I ever tell you,” I said, “the time I –”

“I don’t think so,” she said, smacking me with the paper. “And I haven’t even got to telling you what I wanted to say.”

“You weren’t saying anything,” I said.

She whacked me again.

“Enough whacking,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The elephant,” she said. “The elephant in the room.”

I glanced around. One more whack.

“Not that again,” she said.

“But she’s gone,” I said.

“For fuck’s sake,” she said. “I wasn’t even talking about her to begin with.”

“Who?” I said.

“The elephant!” she said. And then she whacked me like three times in quick succession, but only playfully, and we rolled back in our chairs and giggled.

“I need some more tea,” I said. I got up and walked to the counter with my pot and asked the delightful barista if it’s possible I can have a little more agua caliente, por favor. She smiled and didn’t bat an eye. She turned and filled my pot. She handed it to me with her lovely brown hands and I really wished I had something to give her in return.

“Okay,” said B, “here’s the eleph – don’t you dare – here’s the elephant in the room. Rose McGowan, right? In the papers again ‘cos she’ talking about how for twenty years she’s ‘been silenced’ and I’m just, like – hello? Whaddya mean ‘you’ve been silenced’? You sold your silence. You got a big ass chunk of money for it. You chose that, made the decision, nobody had a gun to your head while you signed some non-disclosure contract – and now you’re here adding this whole other layer of victimhood to the whole thing. Take some responsibility! Be like: maybe it was wrong. Maybe I regret it. But I thought it was for the best at the time, and that’s what I decided. And: not just that but – no one’s talking about it. All these stories – and nothing. That’s the elephant in the room. And it’s driving me nuts!”

“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s horrible, you know, it’s…terrible, right? I think that’s the real issue here. It just…”

“What? It breaks your heart?”

“It does. Of course it does. It’s fuckin’ –”

“I know,” she said. “I get that. I feel it. I totally agree. But I’m talking about a whole other thing here – and I don’t think it’s doing anyone any favours to maintain this – this pretence. It’s not honest. It’s not…strong or empowered. And…right, tell me this: do you see yourself as a feminist?”

“Er,” I said, “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t even know what that means.”

“‘Course you do: don’t play dumb. Someone who supports women’s rights. Someone who believes in gender equality.”

“That’s just describing a normal person,” I said. “That would be like having a word for a non-Nazi in Hitlerized Germany. Like having a word for someone who didn’t think we should exterminate gypsies or Jews.”

She thought about this for a moment. I thought about it too. I’d never thought about any of this before, it’d just come out – but it seemed kind of right.

“You’re an idiot,” she said. “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about – as usual.”

But she said it with a half-smile, and I let my initial flash of indignation dissolve and relaxed into it. I figured this was just her enjoying giving me a hard time and what the hell. It was time for the show, I guessed, and settled in, switched my gaze on, and attention set to ‘max’.

“The thing is,” she said, “this Rose McGowan – yes, she’s suffered, and I can totally understand why she didn’t speak out – ‘cos what could have come from it, right? She thought she was all on her own. No evidence. A thousand other things to consider, and all the bullshit of Hollywood, and that career carrot dangling, which must feel like the most precious and sacred thing in the world, when you’re in the midst of it, and right at the beginning of it, and it must be terrifying to think that might be taken away – so it’s totally understandable she took the money and ran – that’s what most of us do anyway, without having to think about careers and whole lives and having a big fat bag of cash to compensate us – but then it happened again. He offered her a mil. And she said, ‘gimme six and you’ve got a deal’. Six mil! Where’s the integrity and outrage there? Where’s the desire for truth and openness and not putting up with this bullshit any more? I mean, it was only when he said no to the six mil that she talked – but nobody’s talking about that, and how moneygrubbing she was being, right?”

I looked round again, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention. I had no clue what to say so I just sat there. I’m a man talking to a woman and it doesn’t seem my place to have any sort of opinion on this, other than that these guys are shits and they deserve everything they’ve got coming to them, and more, and the whole thing’s a crying shame, this fuckin’ world and all the assholes in it. But I’m not even sure I’m allowed to say that, ‘cos who knows what’s right or wrong when you’re the one in the position of privilege? So I say nothing.

“The point is,” she says, “not that she took the cash, or not that she asked for more, but that she’s not taking responsibility for it, and still seeing herself as this ‘victim’ who ‘was silenced’, and it just perpetuates the idea of this passive figure having things done to it. But if she took some responsibility for it…well, that’s empowering. It was her choice, and maybe it was a choice that was made under duress, but it was still a freely made decision. Okay, probably there’s some shame around it, that makes it difficult to acknowledge. Maybe she’s not there yet, and maybe in some sort of denial, and that’s okay too – but I find it weird that nobody else is mentioning it, even though the words are right there, clear as day, and nobody else is wondering what would have happened if he’d agreed to pay her the six million bucks.”

“It’s just respect,” I said. “Right? And it’s not the point of the story and the issue. It’s not the time to be talking about these things.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “I get it. But – so what do I do, then? Is it just me thinking these things? I doubt I’m unique: there must be others out there having these thoughts. Maybe journalists. Maybe newspaper editors. Maybe –”

“Fuckin’ hell,” I said. “You have to give these things time.”

She squinted her eyes at me. She looked at me hard for like eight or nine seconds.

“Thing about you is,” she said, “I know you’re a nice guy. And I know you don’t know what to say, and you’re caught in this inbetween position of thinking you’re supposed to say something, and knowing you can’t say what you’re really thinking, but mostly just wishing you didn’t have to say or think anything at all. You’re like a guy at a funeral racking his brains for words plucked from movies ‘cos that’s all he really knows when put in these uncomfortable, unfamiliar situations – when all he really wants is to be left alone, for the whole thing to be over, and mainly to make sure he gets his fair share of potato chips and tunafish sandwiches and sausage rolls.”

I laughed. I thought about protesting but what was the point? It was hilarious – and I knew her well enough by now to know there was no stopping this river once it was in flow.

“You know me so well,” I smiled, pouring out some more tea.

“Better than you know yourself,” she said. “I wonder…I wonder if you’re one of those guys who is feeling just that extra little bit heartbroken ‘cos this Weinstein asshole was such a hideous, odious cunt. ‘Cos he was fugly and flabby and clearly a complete prick, and the women were all gorgeous. You there all semi-good looking and lovely and respectful, and knowing you’ll never even for a second get to speak to a woman like –”

“Sh,” I said. “Can we just talk a little quieter? I feel like…we’re in Mexico, you know? It’s a nice sunny day. People are –”

“Oh? You want to quiet me? To bully me into submission? To mansplain to me how I’m supposed to behave?”

“For fuck’s sake,” I said – and then I noticed she was laughing at me.

“I got you, didn’t I?”

“You got me,” I said. “I shoulda known better but – yes, you got me. Fuck. I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. Just keep quiet and sit in my room farting and watch the footy. Is it any reason we just want a quiet, simple life? World’s got too complex and crazy and – yes, you’re right – even going to a funeral or a wedding or – hell, even this – going out for a cup of tea on a Saturday morning is fraught with –”

“Ooh,” she said, “check this out: there’s a new season of that Flowers TV show coming out soon.”

She looked at me over the top of her phone and gave me the most mischievous grin imaginable. She does this to me every week, of course. Goes off on one. Gets all riled up. Carries on and on while I sit trying to remain detached and objective – but never objectifying: oh no no no – and then, just when I finally crack and start to say something myself, she breaks it off, switches tack, loses all inclination to seriousness, and makes it very clear that we’re totally done and it’s back to levity and brevity once more, and makes like nothing ever happened.

I fall for it every week. I sit there now thinking over all these things, and feeling like I’ve got this giant build up of thoughts and emotions, and there’s just no way to get it out because, I know for a fact, she won’t go there.

This is her game and she always wins. But I’ll keep coming back until I can make it through without being drawn: just breathing and smiling and letting the whole thing slide by me.

I’d thought today would be the day but I guess not. Though not too late to at least try to improve on last week’s showing.

“You know,” I said – and then I stopped myself, ‘cos this is all part of the game too. Cutting me off. Getting me riled. Baiting me with the possibility of expression and then shutting me down – then teasing me into saying something she’ll get to be offended by, that I’ll immediately regret, that she’ll needle me with later, that I’ll feel bad for for days.

“What?” she said. “I’m listening. What is it?”

Big brown eyes. Looking right into me. Slight curl on the edges of those lips. Anticipatory and eager.

What was that thing I was saying earlier? About how the headaches only come once bodies have been frotted?

“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking…”

I gulped. I decided not to say it. But the words were repeating and I didn’t know any other way to stop them. And she was just staring at me.

“Just that, you know – and I’m sure you agree with this – that women can be assholes too. But in different w–”

“Oh my God,” she said, “are you really going there, after what we’ve just been talking about?”

And there we go again. Got me once more. Or, rather, I got myself, ‘cos I knew what was coming and I still had to say it.

There’s no winning that argument. The mountain of evidence is too high. There’s nothing I can say to make any of this right.

I just couldn’t keep my big mouth shut, huh? Even when it should be the easiest thing in the world. And word unsaid, that feel so big in the moment, are soon forgotten, even impossible to recall - but words spoken, let out loud, placed into the ears of others and responsible for birthing whole other conversations and feelings...those things stay with us - stay with me - and stir again in the dead of night and fill us with pangs of guilt and regret and wishings for the clock to be turned back.

Is that why Lao Tzu said ‘don’t do anything’? Is that why Oscar Wilde said ‘keep schtum, and just be a dick on the inside, rather than letting everyone else know’?

But how to learn that you’re a dick and therefore move beyond it, if you just keep all your dickiness rattling around and around in your own head, and never let it see the light of day?

Sometimes you learn what not to say by saying it. Sometimes those thoughts can rattle for years, having convinced you that they’re true - but it’s only once they’re given voice that you realise what a swindle they’ve performed, and let them go.

Who knows with this girl? Maybe she’s there to get these thoughts out, and in her own way is helping me to improve, whether she knows it or not. There’s something that pulls me to her, that keeps me coming back these Saturday mornings, frustrating though it is.

Or maybe it’s just the game I need to try and win: complete this level and learn how not to be sucked in, by feminine wiles and charm and nuttiness, and progress to the next.

Been on this level a while, now. It might be even harder than completing Manic Miner.

Well, there’s always next week. What is it the footballers always say these days? “We go again”?

Yes, we go again. One step forward, nought point nine nine steps back.

‘C’est la vie,’ I thought, as I shrunk down in my chair and resigned myself to not feeling great for the next few days, and all because of a mouth that just couldn’t stay shut.