"its my father's voice dreaming of sailors sailing off in the morning" (in the words of jeff tweedy)

i don't make a habit of openly critiquing the behavioural style of others but when the bearded burly gent from the kentish yacht club didn't stop reeling out his string of invective against poor fercho, i had to protest: "be patient with him! okay so he is young he is incompetent but not everyone can be a hero.  he is who he is.  he can't help being who he is.  the same way that a rabbit can't help being a rabbit.  why torment yourself by lampooning a rabbit for being what he can't help being?"

"are you saying he is a rabbit?"

"well maybe he is!" i blurted out unthinkingly.

"Life is short" i said  "why spend it being grouchy when you could be happy instead?"

"ah, i don't want any of your life philosophy" he retorted and i saw that it was true.

i see that the advice i might be tempted to offer others is the same as the advice i want to give myself.

later as i was painting the keel he came over and offered me a reconciliatory cigarette, which touched me.  everything happens for a reason, and there is no string of invective without its causal tripwire.  what i hadn't fully appreciated was that fercho had made everyone at the little village yacht club thoroughly fed up, and all they wanted was to see the back of him.  "first he told us he would just stay the summer  - that was three years ago.  for three years his bloody boat has been standing on the yard.  so many times he has told us he will be ready - and he always postpones.  he is a joker and a liar!"

that afternoon there was an extra specially high tide and if fercho didn't get his deep-keeled yacht into the sea that day then he risked being stranded at the yacht club for yet another summer.  something none of them wanted.  fercho still hadn't finished fixing the engine.  all his tools were scattered around at the back of the yard, all rusty from having stayed out in the rain.  "i can't work under stress" he says, "once we have the boat moored we can row the dinghy back tomorrow on the next high tide and i will finish the engine then"  why had we spent the whole of yesterday sitting around drinking tea, when i first arrived, i asked myself, when he could have been working on the engine then?  i applied the finishing touches of shiny silver protective paint to the keel and we climbed on board as the tide rose and lapped her sides.   standing on deck with fercho i was very aware of our incompetence.  at all costs they wanted us out on the water that afternoon.  there was a little breeze but fercho said he didn't feel confident enough to hoist up his sails and micronavigate between the numerous other moored boats.  without an engine, our only recourse was to ask the headman of the yacht club - who was also a policeman, fercho told me - to tow us out in his little motorised raft.  no-one spoke.  it felt like we were naughty children, being relegated out to the doghouse.   i was at the tiller.  the boat slid through the calm sheet of medway which sparkled in the sun.  i felt the deep appeal of living on the water, bobbing up and down and being always surrounded by the maritime natural scene - the tides, the birds, the untamed stretches of coast.  but i knew this wasn't my trip, with fercho.  he displayed a surprising unawareness of just how put out everyone was with him.  "you know, these men at the yacht club, they are a bit strange.  they are from the village.  they are not very open".  fercho told me fercho was a nickname for fernando.  i wonder why he bought that yacht.  maybe it provided a romantic place for him to live.  he eventually told me he didn't have a sailing licence to cross foreign waters.  " i thought maybe i would forge one," he said with a slow grin, "or do the exam somewhere along the way."  he had published a announcement on crewbay.com saying he intended to cross from kent to france, spain, the canary islands, and eventually back to venezuela, his homeland, and he was looking for deckhands.  i immediately responded: Yes! and came to meet him and then realised it was a hoax.  "gracias man, for your help" he said with real feeling.  "the keel would never have got painted without you.  i think you were meant to come and help me out"

the reason for my meeting him?  yes i suppose he is right.  sailing with him was anyway no longer what i wanted to do.  it sounds so romantic - to find someone and help to sail their yacht across the atlantic ocean - but a big part of it would be the intimate cohabitation with all on board.  les autres pourraient être l'enfer.  my interest in crossing the pond by sail had been rekindled by meeting a super enthusiastic kiwi traveller at the portuguese rainbow who had crossed the seas all the way from his homeland to europe.  "oh men we had the most awesome time . . ." maybe i will just book an aeroplane.  it is what everyone else does . . . i don't know though . . . no, it has got no style.  isbrand says there are cruises that leave spain and take thirteen days to cross to brasil, and that often cheap tickets are made available at the end of summer.

in the meantime it didn't take long for my thoughts to turn to france.  i elegantly painted a piece of cardboard with the word france and stood next to the roundabout by the dover ferry terminal.   a ticket would have cost forty pounds but i wanted to see what my thumb might bring.  a minute later anoushka's delivery van pulled in.  "you're from scotland? me too" she said with an australian accent.  she lived in glasgow till she was ten.  she told me with a smile that her name drew inspiration from a russian porn star that her mother watched in order to make her birth easier.  "this is your lucky ride" said anouska, "deliver drivers get a free meal - and i got two tickets" right from the off it was effortless to slide into anoushka's company.  communication passed through social critiques from her part, then a comment from me got us on to contemplating the mystery of the universe.  she was an actor.  she was a personality explorer.  she recited, and later copied down in my little book a poem she wrote when she was eleven entitled the game of life, which later won a poetry competition in australia and USA:

the world's an illusion
nothing is real
life fills out minds with confusion
no-one can accept how they feel

to play the game
we fit into what seems right
not to be looked upon with shame
and cast out into the night

don't go with the crowd
or you'll live in remorse
stand up and shout aloud
"i am who i am, God made me of course!"

so live life as best as you can
be to thyself honest and true
stand up to your fellow man
and just be you


i later saw that communication between her and her husband victor at times took the form of sarcastic remarks and mock insults but with me she soon jumped into my game of wanting to analyse everything.  what actually is the flavour of banana?   how would you describe it to someone? she asks as she hands me a nicely brown speckled specimen from her dashboard.  "it is impossible to describe" i say after some humming "it is unique.  the only way to know it is to experience it.  i think also, the banana taste is inseparable from the whole banana experience.  its yellow, its curvy, its soft, it goes gooey in the mouth.  it is possible to isolate the banana taste and put it into, do you know those little banana sweets? they try to replicate the form, but the taste . . . its not the same, is it? you need the gooey texture.  you can make quite an authentic banana milkshake, by making it a milky liquid thing, yes.   yes yes.   then i spent a week looking after anoushka and victor's house, looking after i could say, while they were at work delivering things to different destinations in france and the uk.  it worked out so well for me because at that time it did not stop raining for day upon day the rain the rain it fell it fell i read books and took long runs in the burgandy countryside with baloo the black and white dog who loved to run beside me with lolling tongue panting giving me his his faithful doggy devotion smile we loved to run together.  baloo gave me inspiration.  i said: if baloo can make his lithe little body move so fast maybe i can do the same with panting me.

anoushka showed me the iceman documentary.  after watching it i said: i will recommend this to all my friends, something i still haven't done. . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaMjhwFE1Zw

the ice man takes an extreme position.  therein lies his capacity to inspire.  i would say it is the minority of people who find themselves drawn to push the limits of their body, but nevertheless, through the iceman's extreme example, his message rings out loud and clear: where there is a will there is a way.  believe in yourself.  dare to dream to unleash your power within.  you are stronger than you may think.
those are the sort of things that the iceman says to me.


other things anoushka got me into were alfred hitchcock films and possibly her favourite all time film harry and maude and jeanette winterson's wonderful autobiographical novel oranges are not the only fruit, written in 1984.  this novel is important for anoushka because she can identify with certain aspects of jeanette's upbringing - a psychotic mother who beats religious austerity into her and offers no real love or opportunity for self-exploration.  jeanette's voice is wise is lively is humorous and miraculously contains no trace of rancour while she retells the unhappiness that was her childhood.  i wanted to hear her northern english accent and came across this BBC radio 4 bookclub interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rqlc4

i especially liked it when she said:

you know i have never understood this thing:  the fight now between faith and secularism.  the problem is about fundamentalism, not faith

(someone from audience then asks whether she has lost her intensity of love along with her faith in god)  she says

life is intense and you have to live it at full pelt and wring every drop out of it and not mind making a fool of yourself.  you know, its not cool to be cynical - it is cynical to be cynical;  what i've refound is that energy of life.  i don't know whether god exists and to me that's not the question.  what interests me is that human beings have always needed god to exist;  its our psyche which to me is the exciting part, not whether we can prove it


anoushka's lorry-driving irish-now-living-in-holland friend took me south with him one day.  he was making a delivery in a small village in south burgandy.  it was still pouring with rain, but the forecast promised sun soon.  coincidence! his route went right past taizé monestary.  i hadn't been there for a couple of years.  for a while my travels in france always included a visit to taizé.  it is an important place for me.  my body is humming with excited peace as the church bells send their resonant gongs across the wet fields i feel shivers as we are singing.  shivers of excitement and awesome wonder and immense well-being.  my heart throbs fully in tune with the simplicity of the faith filled words:  let all who are thirsty come, let all who wish receive, the water of life freely . . . and . . . meine hoffnung, meine freude, meine stärke, mein licht. christus meine zuversicht, auf dich vertrau ich und fürcht mich nicht, auf dich vertrau ich und fürcht mich nicht . . . is it just me or is the energy in this church highly stimulating, highly holy?  as soon as the monks leave there is a troop of young people making for the doors and the sunshine outside.  i stay sitting, my eyes wet with emotion.  maybe it is just psychosomatic me.

in the evening some of the monks stand in different parts of the church, ready to talk with anyone.  i hadn't yet had anything to say or ask but i was really curious and, in a low voice, "do you know why there are soldiers with guns standing outside the church and people searching our bags as we enter?"  it is a precautionary measure. it is the french government who oblige it in places where lots of people are gathered, like train stations . .  "ah, i am relieved to know that.  i was sitting thinking maybe a threat had been made specifically to taizé.  i was sitting there thinking, what happens if somebody does pull out a gun and start shooting people?  i don't want to die! but the song lyrics are precisely all about strengthening faith in the face of uncertainty.  what a wonderful feeling to be full of faith and let come what may"

the thought that i could die in the very next few minutes suddenly had filled me with unreasonable Joy.  in a symbolic sense i will die within the next few minutes. it doesn't change the incredible fact that i am alive now - we are all alive now - and that is all that counts.  cue pink floyd:

i am not frightened of dying.  any time will do. i don't mind.  why should i be frightened of dying? there's no reason for it.  you've got to go sometime . . .

oh ho ah hoo heyey ahoo hooo oh-ho oh-ho oh-ho . . .


i followed the breathtakingly beautiful roads through the alps into italy, where there was a small healing rainbow gathering camped on a little meadow on the steep forested slopes overlooking the susa valley.  it was a small gentle gathering, with only fifteen or so people.  there was angela from leipzig who with her young daughter led us around the beautiful flower filled meadow identifying all the edible plants which we then collected and used in our salads.  there was a charming young italian couple, with their young son, who gave a workshop on voice massaging - cupping the hand against the other's back and allowing deep calm voice vibrations to resonate through their inner cavities.  massaging one's inner organs with one's voice!   a marvellous sensation.  i got up early one morning with the urge to explore and walked up and up and up through the woods and found rocciamelone, a 3,500m peak easily accessible by a path winding through the dazzling beauty of the deep blue purple yellow rose flowered meadows, then nothing but rocks and delicate-hardy lichens, and at the very top the refuge was barely visible under a huge block of hard snow, melting all the time, sending shoots of ice water onto the rocks steep below.  on the other side stretched high eternal snow fields and vast views encompassing far off switzerland and france and their pristine peaks of rock and ice. there were even butterflies fluttering and being buffeted by the wind around the summit.   from the very summit presided a queenly berobed statue of la madonna della neve, erected in 1899.   the mountain has long been a place of pilgrimage.  in the thirteenth century, one of the piemontese feudal lords, in the midst of ongoing invasions from the turks, made a pleaful prayer deal with the virgin mary while in captivity, that if she helped his release then he would have a chapel built and dedicated to her at the top of rocciamelone, which she did, and which he did.  for a long time it was considered the highest peak in the alps, standing as it does alone, 3000m above its valley val di susa, and very conspicuous to the pilgrims to rome following the via francigena.  the clouds rolled in and i did not want to descend.  i was in heaven i was in the sky i was above the clouds and could watch them slowly forming, growing, metamorphosing, mesmerising, rising falling ghost fluffy insubstantial mystical ships floating on their own fluffy sea.

back at the camp i had already begun feeling it was time to move on when an elderly warrior woman who said she came from the ural mountains but had spent many years in hawaii and was now travelling in europe.  suddenly the hitherto gentle energy of the camp became sparky hairs on end.  in the morning i offered her some maté heated over the fire.  "how much did you heat the water?  you let it boil!  anything that boils is dead.  boiled water is dead water.  you have never heard that?  well, you'll know for next time," she said with a strained wide smile.
all my things were packed when her voice rang out from the main fire: "who wants to hear about raw food?  i propose a talking circle to share our experiences of the benefits of eating raw food.  you are going already?" she looked to me, "what's the hurry, you can stay for a little bit longer to hear about raw food.  maybe, like not boiling water, there are things you should know . . ." after a certain amount of attempted persuading and polite refusing, i was down on my knees, having hugged her (for such is the rainbow way,) i had given goodbye hugs to everyone else.  she was still valliantly, stubbornly insisting when suddenly her eyes widened and she hissed at me almost with desperation "this is important for you, you need to know this!"
i could have told her (as i later reflected): no! rainbow is the place for accepting and celebrating each other's freedom - always in respect - not for looking for converts to your militarily held beliefs.  instead of saying this, i slumped to the ground in a show of theatrical suffering, burying my face in my arm, shedding crocodile tears of self-pity, before shouldering my rucksack and skipping valley downwards to susa.

i took the train up the aosta valley towards switzerland and fell into conversation with the middle-aged young gent seated next to me.  he wanted to know the purpose of my travel.  meeting people, exploration?  he also hitchhiked all over europe in his youth.  his eyes went far away as he slowly explored a land of memories he hadn't entered for some time.  "are you a believer?" he put to me when we had become sufficiently acquainted.

"do i adhere to the beliefs of institutionalised religion?" i elaborated his question, "no"

"me neither" he said

"i believe in life" i said, "i heard that the ancient egyptians made a god of the sun.  lately i have been siding with the old egyptians, beaming my praise and gratitude up to the beautiful benign fiery orb.  thank you sun, o i love you sun, o what would i do without you? you are my sunshine, you are my All, you are everything to me, i adore you, you are the source of life.  with you i am well pleased."

not only the sun - said francesco -  but also water and minerals form the foundations of life.  even the meteorites are necessary.  just think: if it wasn't for the meteorite that exterminated the dinosaurs, they would probably still be the top of the food chain.  how long have humans been around?  forty thousand years? i don't know.  the dinosaurs were the dominant species of the planet for over a hundred million years.

"very successful survivors"

- yes, until the meteorite came.  and what are we humans?  insignificant.

completely insignificant, he emphasised with a negligent shrug of his shoulders.

insignificant, i mused,
this is the paradox of our lives - we may be aware of our ultimate insignificance, and yet for the time we are alive it is of such fundamental importance for us to us ensure our physical, mental and emotional well-being.  it is quite understandable that humans have invented the idea of a god in whose eyes every one of us is eternally precious.

"buona esplorazione" insignificant francesco said shaking my hand warmly before getting off at the next stop.

written with the kind permission of the use of mathias' laptop, ulm