Going somewhere, getting nowhere...

There's something about having an end date, and destination, to a tour that puts a slight dampener on it for me. Truthfully though, without an end date, or destination, I would probably slow to a crawl that's so slow I would probably never leave. Is that a bad thing? My destinations are prescribed by others... I hear or read about somewhere that sounds nice, so I go there, but honestly I want just to explore at random like a toddler explores the objects around him. What stops me? Commitments. But virtual commitments - the needs of others whom I depend on for a sense of security. One day I may just let go of those commitments, ackowledging them as virtual, and to anyone whom I've depended on, including my own ego, I may seem to have disappeared completely either in body or spirit or both. Does this need to make any sense in order to be publishable? What if it doesn't? Maybe it's enough if the spell-checker works. What am I trying to say?

In the same way that having no destination would lead me never to arrive, having no point in this blog would lead me never to finish. But in this wilderness of thought I can choose arbitrarily to arrive somewhere. Mainly because at some point my body will crave attendance to one or other of it's basic needs, so finishing up seems like a good idea.

Let me arrive in Trinidad, Cuba. Here I got drunk with an Irishman in a cave, bought a tart a cheese and ham sandwich (no comma after tart), and the next day during a hangover I bought a couple of paintings then drove to Camaguey like a zombie, picking up hitch-hikers and not saying a word.

 

 

I spent a lot of my trip leaving somewhere important in order to arrive at another place of importance. I did enjoy it though - most of the places I visited were important for a good reason. But on the way, I craved just to stop somewhere very unimportant but something held me back.... my schedule. I was a slave to my schedule, that is until I met Julia - women come with that risk, because they can seem like a destination in themselves, but if they do you're doomed.

 

Trinidad was on my schedule, but some of the places I passed to get there were not, and they had a charm which drew me in. They are like flashes of a past life, beautiful and simple but somehow not. Yes, I know that makes no sense. It's bollocks, I'm just throwing letters into the bucket like my 2-year nephew and maybe just maybe some of them will come together with meaning. But it all has meaning, right? Just need to look harder. So look again, and if you find out what meaning it has, then I take my hat off to you.

So these places I passed through, I wanted to stop and take pictures, but there was so much life going on at such proximity I knew that if I stopped I wouldn't be able to take any pictures, not because the picture taking would destroy the scene - which it would - but because I could not get out of the car without becoming part of the scene - and this reality scared me. I could not stop at these places and be a spectator, a tourist, I would have to just be - and then anything could happen.

Cubans haven't been anaesthetised by drugs of modern life. Many of them, when you meet them, they look at you in the eye and hold your gaze. They have nothing to hide, no guilt buried deep and sealed by a constant stream of distraction. It's a precious thing, and a reason in itself to visit - but dare I visit without a destination?

Who knows what's down the rabbit hole?

Silver lining

Outskirts of Havana, 9pm Sunday 10th March 2013

Cruising the last 10km of a 2000km tour, the car in front grinds to a sudden halt in the middle of the fast lane. Luckily so do I. But then there's a ¡CRUNCH! as the old Russian Lada following behind ploughs into me. F&ck is all I can say under the circumstances, but quickly realise that this maybe a blessing. A week earlier I'd dented two doors trying to exit a narrow farm gate on a tight corner at midnight - which I would surely have been charged for, but now this huge dent at the rear of my car offered to eclipse this, because this crash would be fully covered by the insurance - the car in front is never to blame.

No pasa nada claims my poor pursuer as he eyes the huge hole in the back of my car. He lamely tries to call it quits as he knows he's liable, but clearly he's in for a long evening too. A traffic police patrol car, also a Russian Lada, happens to be parked across the road, struggles to start, and splutters over to meet the scene, then parks in the middle of the road without any hazzard lights. I begin to understand why I never received any speeding tickets during my 2 weeks in Cuba.

The night before I'd watched a Cuban film called La muerte de un burocrata which takes the piss out of the extreme bureaucracy of Cuban administration. This was perhaps an omen as I was about to experience a taste of this - with a total of 4 hours paperwork in getting this all sorted. But everyone involved was very helpful and all went smoothly, if slowly, though 4 hours was probably pretty good (I mentioned I had a flight to catch so some steps were queue-jumped). As it turned out my flight wasn't due to leave till 7am so I had pretty much the whole night to kill, and killing that time in a Cuban clinic (to certify health) and police station was probably more interesting than killing it in the airport. I got to read Fidel's posters about the importance of the revolution, and received an official certificate stating that I'm a Mexican citizen living in Havana.

 

I did feel a bit sorry for the poor chap in the Lada though (the one that crashed into me), he had to stay on longer at the police station and no doubt received some kind of fine, all because I had a modern car with better breaks.

Finally on the way into the airport, in my all dented and holey car, I make a wrong turn and stop to ask a policeman for directions. Upto now I've only had good experiences with Cuban police, who had consistently let me off minor offences without even a whisper of a bribe. One even offered me his female colleague if I was looking for company. Anyway this last one was bent on speaking quietly to me in terrible English, maybe so that his colleagues could not hear or understand that he was trying to blackmail me for 20 dollars for crossing some white line or other. After 4 hours of official paperwork that evening I was done with this shit so just handed him a 1 peso note and made haste - he didn't chase.

Hustling hitchhikers

Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Tuesday 26th February 2013

One of my hitchhikers was a chap called Arturo, he was a nice bloke and I never really worked out if he was what you'd call a Jintero (tourist hustler). He hitched with me while I had two girls from Havana on board, and he proved to be great company, and was never demanding. Later after I'd sent the Havana girls packing he introduced me to a lovely casa particular in his hometown, Pinar del Rio, and also showed me his home. He was clearly very poor, even by Cuban standards - his home was a wooden shack nestled within a gap on a street which was otherwise normal brick housing.

In this space he was raising two young children, and also creating something else extraordinary. Almost completely from recycled materials he was in the process producing a very elegant ice-cream vending trailer, hand carved and welded into the shape of a swan. The detail and workmanship was superb - as an amateur carpenter myself I was impressed. If technology allows, or if I return there, I hope to see it finished and post another picture, as I'm sure completed and painted it will look stunning.

Anyway he invited me for dinner with his family at his humble home, and I was happy to accept, and offered to pay for the ingredients which he accepted. I took a daytrip west while he bought and prepared the food. He'd mentioned also inviting a lady friend of his which I thought nothing of, but when I showed up for the dinner I could see that he had spent a great deal of effort in setting up what was clearly a romantic dinner for me and his lady friend. I was impressed by the effort, for example he had decorated the patio with palm leaves which helped distract from the poverty of the venue, but there my positive impression stopped.

I sit with this girl and we chat a while, her main theme of conversation being how she is not like other girls and she is not a prostitute. I consider the viability of a Brazilian-run training program for Cuban women, whilst wondering when my friend and his family will join the table as well, but they hold back as if to give us space, which I so desperately want to lose for a change.

It gets worse, the food arrives and one bite of the fish and I can taste it's off. As are the tomatoes, which I didn't know could go off. I don't even touch the chicken, and for dessert I wince while trying to swallow the shaving-foam textured plastic cake. There are dishes galore piled all over the table but I barely touch any, though luckily the rice and beans are enough to make my plate look used, and the huge lunch I'd had earlier in the day means I don't go hungry.

I'm being as polite as an Englishman can be, which is very polite indeed, but meanwhile thinking what the f&ck is going on and how do I get the hell out of this. The family join the table briefly to scoff down a bit of food but then leave me again to my nightmare date. To be fair she was quite cute and probably everything she said she was, but I resented being thrown into a date which I'd never agreed to, and paying for it, and with terrible food. I would be having a private chat with my poor friend, though he may well have had the best intentions.

My resentful emotion I found interesting though - it was similar to something I experienced with an ex, and I surmised that the parallel was poverty and manipulation. I realised that if I gain a sense of security in associating with someone I know must depend on me, then I cannot expect them to be assertive - to communicate their needs to me directly - instead I am bound to become an object of manipulation.

Anyway I got things off my chest the next day and the poor chap seemed to take it well. But by now my confusion about his being a jintero (tourist hustler) or not was roused by some new business interests. I guess it's a grey. Well he knew some chap who allegedly worked in quality control at a cigar factory, maybe scooping off the duds to sell to unsuspecting tourists like me, but who knows. They looked, smelt (as far as I could imagine), and felt the biz, and were cheap so I took a chance. GBP30 for Cohiba cigars that retail at GBP800 is probably too good to be true, but hardly a costly mistake if so. They sealed the box in front of me with factory-stolen certificates, and all that now remains is for me to find a cigar-connoisseur tester back home - any takers? If they fail they maybe worth their cost as theatre props, if not as an interesting experience.

* * *

The previous day while on the daytrip out west I had a very different experience of locals. As usual I was picking up hitchhikers at practically every junction, if there was room in my car. Two ladies I picked up were heading back home to La Bajada on the far west coast. I let them stop on the way to collect one of their husbands. The other lady also had a husband but told me he was away so it didn't matter - would I like some company - I politely declined and we all carried on merrily. I dropped them off at their house and they invited me in, and it was fun to meet the rest of the family, the kids and the obligatory granddad on rocking chair.

 

They kindly offered to cook me lunch, refused payment, and generally made me feel at home. I even put my hammock up. Lunch was delicious lobster, the chap who cooked it usually worked as a chef at the nearby resort - so I counted myself very lucky that day. I wish I'd kept all my luggage in my car and just stayed instead of going back for that disastrous dinner-date in Pinar del Rio, but how was I to know.

  

 

Stuffed and sleepy I passed out a while in the hammock, then lazily took some of the family to a beach down the road before moving onto Maria La Gorda where I hoped to do some snorkling. But I missed the last boat (3:30pm) so that was a bit of a flop, and perhaps a sign of things to come later that evening. But I was happy to have met some lovely people in this little village of La Bajada, and would certainly like to come back some day.

[some names have been changed]

Lock up the hookers in Havana

Friday 22^nd February 2013

One of the girls rattles the bars of the gate which locks her into my rented apartment in Havana. Call the police if you want to leave. Or give me 30 pesos, I insist, lounging on the sofa, eyeing these poor scroungers desperate for a quick buck but with no concept of providing a service in return, or honouring agreements. Another clutches a bag of random cosmetics she’d found amongst my luggage - we could be at a half-price shoe sale for all the intensity of grabbing going on.

 

I’m sort of keen to have the police round, for a laugh really, but also want to sleep soon so drop the bail to 20 pesos and I’m done with them. They’d insisted on upfront payment (or "gift" as it must be called here), which is always a bad sign. Technically I had a threesome for 40 pesos which would have been a good deal were it not both the worst, and second worst sex in my life. Concentrate, one of them insists just seconds into the proceedings. I’m thinking, no, you concentrate on making a f#cking effort you useless whores – first raise the flag the whole f*cking way then jump on board. The half-hearted, half-masted efforts were aborted after minutes as one of them abandoned ship to continue pillaging for cheap cosmetics in the other room.

I think I learnt something from this, in the same way you can learn something from a kick in the balls that says “you’re a dick”. Except it didn’t hurt too much, and I did get plenty of sleep in the end.

This was not to be the only time on this trip that my innocent intentions were demolished by the phenomenal power of the Cubana booty shake. A very average Cuban girl can hypnotise any normal bloke with only a few gyrating beats of her beautiful behind. Thereafter he remains her playful puppet, her nodding dog.

Warning: alcohol + gyrating Cubana derrière = trouble.

 

In Camaguey one evening I was determined to take a rest and just have a sensible night out. All had been going well  and I was simply enjoying conversation with a friendly and intelligent woman. And just to make sure I had explicitly stated I was not here for business. But then she started to gyrate her lower regions in that delectable Cuban manner, and as I saddled up to her she pressed herself onto me, and every now and then, as the music moved her, she pulsated with an intense vibrating rhythm, that, had I been 20 years younger would have put a soggy end to my performance right there on the dance floor. Instead it just turned me into her puppy dog. She was a nice girl though, there was neither pillaging nor talk of money, though of course I did give her a tip “for the taxi home” and she gave me her number and an obligatory “Call me”. If I have one complaint it is that motels in Cuba should have streaming Reggeton as essential accompaniment to proceedings. That music was invented for f#cking.

 

Back in Havana on my last evening before heading out to tour the rest of the country, I was strolling along the Malecon seafront which whilst trumpeted by the Lonely Planet as an essential experience, was in fact a dump and strewn mostly with fairly ugly people. But a couple of reasonable looking girls passed by - a classic good girl/ bad girl combo. The bad one moved in and we got chatting, whilst the good one sat at a safe distance. They seemed nice enough, I had nothing better to do, and half a kilo of fresh prawns in my fridge, as it happened, so I invited them round for dinner. They claimed to be studying gastronomy so I put this to the test while I cracked open a couple of beers. Results were good as in we all ate well and they didn’t try to steal anything from my apartment. So with that test passed I invited them to join me on a short tour heading west of Havana. Really I had no expectations, I was just keen to have some non-pillaging local company to enjoy a few days with, with the off-chance of some nooky but not a requirement as there would no doubt be other opportunities.

 
 
 

The girls accepted and we made arrangements - and they turned up at my door as planned the next morning looking all fresh and pretty. Off we went to pick up my hire car – an expedition in itself, but finally successful and we were off on the road to Viñales that afternoon, arriving in time to hire some horses for a quick local tour of the region. I’d only ridden a horse a couple of times before, but this one was by far the scariest – a racer apparently, and with my bare-footed attempts to balance I felt I only just made it back in one piece. Meanwhile the 16-year-old boys who looked after the horses were more than happy to ensure the girls didn’t come to any harm.

That evening we hit the town, one of the girls tries to teach me to dance, and we generally have a good time. There’s a sexual barrier though, which I’d expected from the selection process, so heading back to our shared room was going to be interesting. It’s all pretty light-hearted and playful, but going no-where so I quit to get some sleep - playtime over.. or so I thought. I'm about to drop off when the good one asks if I'm asleep, which I translate as "fancy a shag if you play your cards right?" so I get back into their bed and have another go, but the bad one drops a hint about money if I want the sandwich which I’m suggesting… una tabla which I learn means 100 pesos. This puts me off - they want to have their cake and to eat it, but moreover this raises an insolvable moral dilemma in my mind and I sleep badly.

 
The good... and the bad...

By the morning I’ve let it go, and feel strangely well. Maybe it was a prayer I’d thrown in. Maybe it was just doing the right thing. Either way the day works out well, and we have a lovely time on probably the most beautiful beach I’ve ever been on. But at the end of the day I’m happy to pack them off back to Havana with a “taxi” payment. They were good fun, but highly deluded about their marriage prospects. Perhaps they could do with some Brazilian training on how to look after men.

Hitchhiking in Cuba

6th March 2013

You buy the beer, and we’ll slaughter an animal from the farm for dinner.  But there’s a country-wide ban on alcohol, el luto, since Chavez died yesterday. My hosts are socialists, some are communist revolutionaries even, but even they won’t forgo beer on this occasion. Julia, my girlfriend I guess (since I am her “novio”), knows the attendant at the petrol station so we smuggle a crate of beer out hidden under a towel.

 

It’s been another long day driving, swerving around potholes, bicycles, and horse-drawn carriages, and now I’ve met the family, dozens of them, all lovely people. Cuba is surreal enough as it is, but being drawn into this family community in a small town I feel like I’ve entered a lucid dream. I have some control over my movements but my body doesn’t know what to do with all the new stimuli.

 

Back home it’s do you want pig or lamb? I’m wondering why I didn’t say I’m vegetarian (even though I’m not, yet), I feel bad enough triggering the death of a large animal let alone having to choose which - what next will they hand me a knife to do the honours? And why don’t I feel so bad if the animal is already dead, chopped up and wrapped in supermarket cling film? I mean the latent demand triggers the death anyway.  I wonder if slaughter should be hot-blooded only, and if hunting is a hot-blooded activity.

They help me out by expanding that the lamb will take longer to cook, and since it’s already dark and no doubt the animals are still running about somewhere in the farm this could be a long evening. So I opt for pig. A horse and cart pulls up, ridden by an uncle and two kids. A medium sized pig sleeps lazily on the back like a contented dog. Ignorance truly is bliss. I’m thinking, you have got to be joking, why is it still alive I mean it’s not like you can just pop it in a microwave and it’ll be done in 10 minutes. It’s late and I’m ready to crash out. They ask me to empty my car boot for the pig; it's been an unusual day and even on a good day I'm gullible, so for a moment they had me. No the pig goes on with the horse, and I pile in several family members into the car and off we head to the finca, a small farm where one of her uncles lives.

 

I would like to use names here, but everyone is called Gonzalo or Arturo so it would be confusing, and I never understood who was who anyway. Only Alberto, Julia’s grandfather who was 78 and I really liked I could distinguish easily.

At the farm things don’t seem to be proceeding very quickly - a small fire is lit, the pig snores away, and the women peel some yuka. Uncle Gonzalo makes a suggestion which I’m very happy to accept – that we eat turkey instead and the pig lives. Next time give us more notice and we’ll roast a pig.

 

Someone appears with a flapping turkey, some feathers fly and it’s all over, within minutes it’s de-feathered.  Dogs loiter with intent. Only time now left to kill, so the hammock goes up and I lie back trying to work out if this is in fact a lucid dream or not.

Only days earlier I had picked up Julia as a hitchhiker during an unusual period of heavy rain. I thought nothing of it at first since I’d been picking up around 15 hitchhikers a day (there’s a shortage of public transport and always people waiting for rides) She was petit and quiet, with a pretty floral dress and no baggage, at least none physical (though familial I’m sure). We spoke only a little – she was as quiet as me - but enough to judge safety of character, and somewhere along the ride I invited her to come with me to Bayamo, my next destination. I wasn’t really sure if she had accepted but that she didn’t ask me to stop the car suggested she was in.

We found a lovely casa particular and moved in as naturally as if we’d been together for, well, more than an hour anyway. She had no luggage but I had plenty so it didn’t look too odd, and anyway the family of the house were lovely. I let Julia shower while I rested a moment, though I considered jumping straight in with her; that shapely dress was definitely alluring. Then I showered too and suddenly we were both resting in our cama matrimonial. But not resting for long. She was truly a delight, tender and sweet in her touch, and we fitted perfectly like two pieces of a jigsaw. A long time since I felt that good in bed with a girl.  She was open to me in a way I found so sexy, open without pulling, just being there and giving herself to me without trying to dominate, but responding with passion. Purely alluring.

After such an afternoon it didn’t matter that the evening was a flop - an overpriced dinner followed by a tacky disco. After the heavy rain that day I never found out if the famed street party of Bayamo ever happened. The following day my plans started to collapse further as there were no cash machines in town and it was a Sunday, so attempting to reach Comandancia de La Plata just 60km away suddenly became an impossibility as the entry fees exceeded my funds, and Julia had no clothes except the pretty dress she wore when I picked her up.

I’ve no proof that she didn’t do this hitchhike thing for a “living”, but my intuition told me not. A number of clues seemed to back this too, like her membership of the youth communist organisation, a desire to do military service, and her lack of demand for anything. Maybe just a very smart cover, but if so I live in ignorant bliss.

Shopping in Cuba was worth every penny in the experience. Clothes are actually quite cheap e.g, leggings 2 pounds (not for me I should add), jeans  10 pounds, and credit cards were accepted. It felt good buying her stuff, it cost me very little and yet it was worth so much to her.  I guess it’s easy to please a girl who has no money. Nevertheless she seemed forever neutral, neither demanding of anything nor appreciative of receiving. It was just as it was. But every now and then she lit up like a star and those were precious moments worth waiting for.

  

Later we drove onto Santiago de Cuba just a couple of hours away, took some photos so I can say I’ve been there, withdrew cash, and headed back west along the coastal road.. if you can call it a road. In many places it had disappeared completely, bridges had collapsed, and huge pot-holes blocked the way. Sure it probably was “one of Cuba’s most beautiful routes” as Lonely Planet says, but if you turn your head a moment to appreciate this you will surely end up in a ditch, or the sea.

 
 
 
 

The new plan was to approach Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highest mountain, from the south, apparently a shorter climb, but even so it’s no walk in the park and we were ill-equipped and tired. As it happened anyway we conveniently missed the morning slot to reach the summit, since it had been getting dark and the road was terrible at best, and non-existent at worst, we had stopped a couple of hours short of La Cueva, the base of the climb. But we did manage a shorter but nonetheless treacherous climb of a full 30 meters to reach the summit of a small cliff – home to a cactus which Julia was adamant to add to her collection (she was a keen collector of plants, especially cacti). A nippy little girl she was not afraid to scramble up the loose rock that threatened to throw us both helplessly over the cliff. And with only the occasional bicycle passing I had imagined our skeletal bodies adding doom to the picture of collapsed bridges and abandoned tunnels. Vultures circled as I struggled to find firm ground to descend upon. Loose rocks bounced down the slope causing mini avalanches. I waited for Julia to reach the bottom so as not to knock her out with my clumsy footings onto loose rocks, and anyway she was much faster and nimbler than me.


  

We drive onto the far south-western tip of Cuba, where back in 1956 Fidel and his crew arrived from Mexico and disembarked the famous Granma boat en route to taking over the whole country. I don’t have any political slant, but I have to hand it to these guys - they have balls.

The roads drastically improve and I’m speeding down the empty highway when I spot in my rear-view mirror someone frantically waving a stop sign at me. It appears I missed the check-point into a national park, so I do a u-ey round to greet the friendly receptionist. A small huddle of locals sorts us out with some accommodation; it’s as basic as it gets but has its charms. I try to get a price for the room but instead receive a hand waving response as if this isn’t a part of their vocabulary. So I guess I’ll leave some kind of tip, mainly for hospitality rather than facilities – there’s no running water (it’s on only every other day due to low pressure in the area), and some of the light switches are non-existent – it took some time to work out how to switch off one of the lights at night, but eventually I spotted a couple of stray wires hanging out of a wall, one with a cunning hook bent onto the end. I was impressed by this improvisation. 

 

But the warmth of the reception and the lovely local children more than made up for the lack of modern comforts. So many times I wanted to take pictures, but felt I couldn’t without destroying the moment, so just gave up and enjoyed it as it was.

In the morning Julia greets me to explain she’s accidentally dropped the toothpaste into the toilet bowl. It’s cloudy down there so I just throw a bucket of water in hoping it’ll go away. It does, but then what I dropped down after it certainly didn’t. Never mind, I offset my toilet-guilt with a larger tip and we make a swift getaway.

Julia is a little grumpy this morning, she’s missing home,  now away for 3 days - the longest time in her life, which at 23 might seem surprising but then people don’t really travel here. So I do the tourist thing of visiting the Granma disembarkation beach on my own while she waits in the car with a couple of hitchhikers we picked up in the morning – one of them is a chef at the restaurant we are heading to for lunch, some fantastic seafood and silly cheap prices.

 
 

We stop at a beach for a rest, I go for a swim, and we play in the hammock and watch some locals pass by walking their pigs and dogs.  Later we arrive at Manzanillo where we learn of the news from Venezuela that Chavez has just died. It seems he was genuinely loved by many people in Cuba. A street vendor I get chatting to has a tear in his eye.  A very friendly chap he invites me to stay at his house next time - no need to pay for a casa particular he says as he likes to host the English, and is a keen member of the local John Lennon appreciation society where a band regularly plays Beatle concerts. I take his address and accept his kind offer for next time. I buy some beautiful hand-made maracas from him for a paltry 15p, and he takes special care in giving me back the correct change in local pesos.

The casa particular we stay at is probably amongst the best I’ve been in in Cuba; inside it wouldn’t have been out of place anywhere in northern Europe.  It was a pleasure to rest there, and with such wonderful company. But I was punished for my bad behaviour in bed. I’d gone Catholic and when I desperately demanded a ceasefire mid-charge, I got it… and for good. Voy a castigarte. Ready and cocked there was to be no firing my gun that night.  Maybe I should just have let it all go, so what if I have some little Cuban babies? Nature will have its way one way or another.

 

Next morning, a good breakfast and then more shopping in search for a dress (again, not for me). Good clothes are hard to come by in Cuban shops so the preferred method of purchase is private sale from contraband imports. We ask around and are hushed through a large wooden door, a darkened corridor and into a small apartment. The door is locked behind us and suddenly we’re in a den of colourful clothes and busy women. I enjoy watching Julia strip in the bathroom while she tries on some frilly frocks. It’s all worth it.

Talking of stripping, I’m denied access to two banks for showing too much skin – apparently many public buildings have a no shorts policy. But the Cadeca exchange centre is more relaxed. We pick up some more music for the car, and stop to change and then head back towards her home. She’s excited to be going home, and all dressed up like new. I’m also excited – I’m curious to know what it’ll be like to meet her family and from what I’ve seen of Cubans so far I expect them to be very hospitable. But their insistence on slaughtering a pig or lamb did come as a surprise. Anywhere else I’d have expected them to slaughter me for kidnapping one of their women-folk without warning.

 

But the highs don’t come for free, and whilst I had a great time with Julia, and with her family, when it came to moving on I suffered and continue to do so, but as a kind of pool of emotional debt piled up from all the women I have left since the one I left when I was born.  As long as I behave as a boy, the women I meet represent my mother and so I must leave them at some point, painful as that is, for me and for them.  But I hold fold memories and the tear that wells is equally of happiness shared as it is of loss.

I’m back on the road alone, and for the first time in months I feel depressed, but it will pass, I’m determined not to be a victim…

* * *

[some names have been changed to protect privacy]