Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Newcastle, Australia & Tubbercurry, Sligo – 1995 BlogPt14

2022, raining, I read a few chapters, no, just a couple of pages, of Jungle of Stone. I had thought of working on my Minecraft world a bit while I listened to the rain. Then I thought I’d just listen to the rain and now I’m listening to the rain writing about listening to the rain.

As I head closer to my 50th birthday I don’t think I really need to leave my mark on the world. I don’t want the most Instagram likes. I haven’t even got a Tik Tok account. I doubt I’ll ever write a book, be a Hemingway, but perhaps I wouldn’t mind going to Pamplona one day. I don’t want to watch the bullfights though.

I didn’t even feel inspired to write another blog post. There was a time in my 20s when I forced myself to write. I even wrote a film script which got the interest of a well-known Australian Director and an option from a UK producer.

Some days I think I have a good idea for a story. I’ve usually forgotten them by the next day.

I don’t really want to leave much of a mark on the world now. I just hope that I contribute to making it a slightly nicer place. And hopefully not a shittier place.

I’ve started doing a Sustainability and Circular Economy course online with the University of Cambridge. I first remember getting interested in sustainability, the environment and what have you back in 1992 or 1993 maybe. It was somewhere between finishing school in 1989 and travelling to Ireland in 1995.

I was down in Newcastle visiting my best friend from high school, Christophe’s brother Luke – who had started calling himself Luka at that stage. Christophe and Tanya were in Scotland at the time and although I wasn’t great friends with Luka he’d said I should come down and check out Newcastle. He was hanging out with a bunch of hippy, druggo freaked out types. Even a couple of punks. I just remember a few of them. There was Johno who had this back goatee and was into spirituality and pentagrams and had weird eyes, smoked weed incessantly and collected two dole checks, one under his real name – which I assume was John or perhaps Johno – and one under a fictitious name. He was studying music at some music institute. There was also Pia who was going out with a guy called Canine. They were all a bit freakish. On occasions the punk dudes would come over and have a bit of smack. Pia warned me off trying it. I never did. Even those who use such dangerously addictive drugs can have the sense to warn others off going down that slippery path. I was fine with heaps of weed and the occasional mushroom and LSD trip.

These dudes, except for the punks, all lived in the same house with Luka. I forgot to mention that.

The drug scene distracted me a bit. I mean the reminiscing about the Newcastle drug scene of the early 90s. It wasn’t really ‘the drug scene’. People did other stuff besides drugs. Listening to Rage Against the Machine, the Butthole Surfers and the Pixies (plus others). Playing music – I may have had a go at like a tambourine or triangle. I wasn’t very musical and considered myself a writer or something. Sitting around talking. Occasionally getting some food. Going down the dole office. Visiting other people’s houses. Probably having sex. Though I never did during my time in Newcastle. Like with Agatha, I would have if I had the opportunity, just the opportunity never came up and wouldn’t come up until t 1994 when I met Corinne and travelled up the east coast (again this is a fictitious version of the events, see earlier posts where I explain I met her at a Hurstbridge train station in Melbourne – though much of the rest is trueish).

But back in Newcastle. It wasn’t a drug scene per se. Just everything we did tended to be done stoned.

After hanging out with Luka a bit I ended up renting a garage in a share house with Matt, Aaron, and the guy who worked at the Thai restaurant, who might have been called Rowan, or Lauren or something. I more remember that he’d bring leftover Thai for us, which was very nice of him. Matt and Aaron were going to the University of Newcastle. Rowan may have been going to uni as well but I was more interested in the Thai food.

One day we were out walking around with the guys on the way to the dole office. A few years earlier Newcastle had been hit by an Earthquake and many of the roads had cracks in them. We went past some place on a stormwater drain on the way to visiting some dudes. Possibly to hang out a bit, possibly to get some weed. Possibly to do both. Who knows? The dudes had planted this amazing guerrilla garden on the edges of the stormwater drain. I’m not sure if the drain is the right term, it was like a mini version of one of those pretty big ones like they had in the movie Grease where they were able to race cars along. A stormwater thingy?

The one in Newcastle you could race a few BMX bikes along.

The dudes in the house, well maybe not a house, it was more a shed or abandoned factory type thing you could access from the stormwater drain, had marigolds growing, and some veggies. I can’t remember but I imagine some beans and maybe a zucchini, and some tomatoes. They may have had a few sunflowers growing as well. I was intrigued by the garden and asked the dudes I was visiting about it. They said it was some organic, permaculture garden thing.

I was straight into it. I think maybe after we’d gone to the dole office I went to the library, got a library card and rented out a VHS video which featured Bill Mollison, one of the creators of Permaculture, this sustainable gardening/ farming system, and watched it. It explained the general principles of Permaculture. I got inspired and went and got some beans seeds and some other veggies seeds and found a patch in the backyard and planted them. They started growing and I was amazed, but then I ran out of money and went up to Queensland for a few weeks and when I got back the grass had grown over the spot as neither Matt, Aaron or Rowan were interested in looking after veggies. They also hadn’t done any dishes since I’d been away so I did all the washing up when I got back as I can’t fucking stand piles of dirty dishes.

I felt like Neil from the TV series the Young Ones. Neil plants the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed. Except when your housemates neglect the seed altogether.

Anyway that was the start of my passion from gardening.

This post was meant to be about my trip to Sligo with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car. It’s turned into one of those ‘3 years earlier’ things TV shows always do now.

1995

Around 3 years earlier. I had hired a video about Permaculture featuring Bill Mollison. I got into sustainable gardening. I wanted to help the planet. I wanted to be green. I started doing gardens at friends’ houses in Melbourne. I sent off to Eden Seeds for heirloom seeds. I focussed on mixing the three main types of plants in Permaculture, and sustainable gardening – legumes (things like beans and peas) which put nitrogen in the soil, heavy feeders like tomatoes and zucchinis, and root crops like carrots and potatoes. In that way you helped keep the soil healthy, without using chemicals. The ancient Mayans and Aztecs used the same method growing beans with corn and pumpkins together, to maintain the health of the soil and get greater yields from smaller spaces.

And now, in 1995, after working for a year on a farm in Nutfield, Victoria, for Bev and Peter Brock, who I met after doing some WWOOFing on a farm in Gippsland, Victoria, and a few months on the biodynamic farm of Inigislas, Wexford, I was now heading to another organic farm in Tubbercurry, Sligo, to do more to save the planet.

Oh I forgot to finish my story about my adventure with Agatha and the girls in the carrot car.

Well, we had driven from Donegal to Sligo in the carrot car. I was getting more and more annoyed at Agatha’s fresa (Mexican way of saying posh) friend who always wanted to go buy oysters from restaurants and thing like that, and who wouldn’t go skinny dipping in the Atlantic, who wouldn’t let me drive the carrot car because I didn’t have a licence, who was basically super boring.

I mean I was always going to get dropped off in Sligo to go work on the farm, but now I was super ready to be done with the carrot car and go help plant some actual carrots. I was still into Agatha mind you. We didn’t have, and would never have, a sexual relationship – sounds like a statement from former President Clinton when you put it like that –  but I did find her to be a soulmate. Someone I’d like to spend more time with and whom I’d miss having around for years to come. But her fresa friend, I was totally over her.

I can’t even remember where the carrot car dropped me off. I think I’d maybe contacted the German guys who ran the WWOOFing farm I was going to and they said they were going to be in Sligo city that day and that I could get a ride back with them. Whatever happened, I said my goodbyes and ended up on the farm in Tubbercurry which was where my Irish granny, Bridget Marron, who we just called Bee was born before coming to Australia as a 10 year-old girl with her father and uncle after her mother died.

But more on Tubbercurry next time around. I’ve been giving too much backstory in this post so I’ve run out of space.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker – Donegal (the greatest place on earth) in the Carrot Car, swimming in the Atlantic Ocean & Reflection on Gay Abandon – 1995 BlogPt13

donegal postcard 1995

In 2022, I’ve been reading a book called Jungle of Stone by William Carlsen. It’s about John Stephens’ and Frederick Catherwood’s journey into Central America in the 1800s to rediscover the great civilisations of the Maya at places like Copán in Honduras and Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico. I have my own stories about my visit to Palenque, on my first visit to Mexico, which you can read here, also one to Calakmul, another grand Mayan site in the jungles of southern Mexico not far from Guatemala. I thought it was a bit of a trek to both these sites, but nothing like in those days. I mean I was watching Mel Gibson dubbed into Spanish in the movie Get the Gringo on an air-conditioned ADO bus on one leg from Merida to Palenque while occasionally chatting to a few young women British backpackers who had seats by the toilet, and a British couple who were sitting just behind me. Meanwhile Stephens and Catherwood were held up by bandits and constantly attacked by nasty disease ridden insects. There are a few bandits about, but comparatively speaking I would say it’s a much safer trip now.

I haven’t finished the book yet, but it has already struck me that adventurers often have this sense of gay abandon. Decades before heading to Central America, Stephens’  tried to buy a house in Greece after visiting the great ancient sites there. He found they wouldn’t lend him money for it, nor were they that keen to sell a bit of their ancient country to an American. He shrugged it off and then jumped on a boat ‘at a whim’ and headed to Turkey. He wanted to visit Egypt but THE Plague was going around (yes THE Plague) and ports like Alexandria displayed red flags to say it was a no go zone. Stephens had to spend months in quarantine at several other ports in lazarettos, where even letters were treated as though they may be carrying plague and were allowed off of ships only by means of extraction with iron tongs, with the letters then placed in an iron box for their own quarantining period.

Nothing as exciting as that awaited us in our carrot car as we left Northern Ireland on the way to Donegal, Republic of Ireland. I just mention the Stephens experience as more of a reflection of the gay abandon I used to have in my twenties and the difficulties I have now to even contemplate such things, what with work, kids, a wife, bills and the like. Though the spread of diseases like COVID and Monkeypox are still ever present. And some years ago I did pop off to Mexico to visit some Mayan ruins in the jungle, plus a few Aztec, the archaeological site of Guachimontones not far from Guadalajara, oh and the ancient Purépecha site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacan, with my wife to be. I also visited the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, another lost civilisation north of Mexico City. So I haven’t done too bad. I also plan to take my wife to Italy and other places. Perhaps even Turkey and Greece on a whim, sometime during my 50th year – oh yeah the purpose of this blog! Even I get sidetracked sometimes as to why I’m writing this!

I can’t say Donegal left a great impression on me. It was nice and all. We went to the ‘smallest pub in Ireland’. But the one we’d been at in Enniskillen in County Fermanagh the night before was, in my opinion, even smaller. I’ve seen smaller ones down alleyways in Melbourne. And added disappointment was Agatha’s Spanish friend who turned out to be a bit annoying. I felt myself more of a traveller, something more like the Patrick Leigh Fermor ilk (Patrick walked from Holland to Constantinople and into Greece in the 1930s –  for those who haven’t read his stories or my earlier blogs), travelling along on less than  £15 a day (Patrick did it for considerably less, but it was the 1930s). My Spanish friend seemed like some wealthy spoilt tourist, whose parents probably supported Franco (I’ve gone too harsh there, she wasn’t that bad!). I abandoned the crew a bit and left them to do the touristy Donegal things while I just walked around by myself. It seemed a bit hilly from memory. You could see the ocean. I think. I just wasn’t that into it. We did get some postcards and wrote ourselves a note and sent it to la chaparrita in Dublin. That was fun. And cheap. It was the only note I now have from Agatha. A memory of  the last days I ever saw her, though I didn’t know that at the time.

On the postcard it said:

postcard from donegal 1995

It was the sort of thing you write in your 20s. Seems like Agatha’s friend was called Olga. She did predict that I would have kids in 15 years. Indeed I had a daughter and son by then, with my daughter having already turned 8 and my son 6.

I’m not sure where we stayed in Donegal. Some sort of backpacker place. I think we managed to get ourselves a room altogether again. Agatha and I might have even shared a bed again. I don’t know. We stayed one more night. Had some drinks, smoked some weed and the next day we were off to County Sligo.

Not before a quick drive north of the town of Donegal though. Now that I remember, if not vaguely. I’m not sure why we drove north of Donegal, or even whether it was north. It may have been Westish, but there doesn’t seem much West of Donegal. Perhaps it was North-Westish, but I’m sure not south.

We drove along one of Ireland’s coast roads. With no GPS we just went with the flow. We saw a farm that faced the Atlantic. It was a nice day. A sunny day. Mild. We drove along the road for a while until we decided we were lost. Not panicky lost. Just not knowing where we were lost. It didn’t matter. It was a nice road. With sheep, green grass, the wind, incomprehensible farmers who you think are speaking Gaelic but who just have that really thick Irish West coast accent. Majestic views of the ocean which stretched to Iceland, if you could see that far.

We stopped for a bit. Perhaps we had a sandwich. I’m amazed I can barely recall eating in Ireland in those days given my obsession with food now, but that was way back then in 1995. I wasn’t much of a foodie then.

I remember the first time I tried carnitas in Mexico though. It was on the way to the archaeological site of Tzintzuntzan near Lake Pátzcuaro. My wife was a vegetarian at the time but she insisted I try tacos carnitas – a slowed cooked pork delicacy. The man who gave me my first one ended up being featured on the Netflix show the Taco Chronicles. I thought I would definitely get food poisoning as the pork had been sitting out in the sun on a wooden bench with ZERO refrigeration for hours. I didn’t. And carnitas have become my second favourite taco type just behind tacos pastor, which is pork cooked with chilies, spices, pineapple, and achiote paste. Que rico!

Back in Donegal. I think we may have had some nice bread and a bit of cheese now that I strain my brain. With the Spanish adding some ham. I was vegetarian at the time, so cheese was my kind of go to protein source. We stopped by a little rocky outcrop which had a narrow path to the sea with Irish green grass lining both sides of it, which led down to a small beach with some fairly safe looking waves coming in.

It was warm for Ireland. I felt like a swim. Spanish woman stayed up by the car eating her jamón because she didn’t want to get sand in her shoes. German carrot car owner (I think I tried naming her in earlier blog posts. I liked her, I wish I was more confident of her name), Agatha and I went down to the beach. They sat on the beach smoking cigarettes. I stripped down and waded into the water. I didn’t go further than waist deep. I grew up by the beach and was always respectful of the ocean’s power, especially if I didn’t know the area. I spent about 15 or 20 minutes in the Atlantic Ocean. I put my head under a few times just to get my body temperature adjusted. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t freezing either. It was almost approaching the Goldilocks zone, though more on the side of slightly invigorating. The Atlantic Ocean felt smooth and clean on my naked body. I felt alone. I wanted to be alone. I came out of the water and sat for a few minutes naked with the girls, smoking a cigarette before dressing and heading back up to the carrot car.

I had the feeling this may be the first and only time I would ever swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you swim in the Atlantic Ocean. It could always be the last time you do anything.

Later we drove back along the same road, along the coast, then past Donegal and towards Sligo.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker 1995 Dublin, Temple Bar, the Chaparrita girls, Wicklow Pirates of the Penzance, and more Inisglas community Wexford 1995 BlogPt10

The Spanish girls nicknamed the house, in Blackpitts Dublin, La Chaparrita. I think it was mainly Agatha’s idea, she seemed the most enthusiastic when it came to zany ideas, and less zany ideas. She just liked ideas in general I think. Chaparrita means short woman. Indeed Agatha and Ines were both short statured people. I can’t recall the name of the Basque woman, I didn’t chat to her very much, but she was a bit taller.

The La Chaparrita household wasn’t entirely Spanish. Even out of the 3 Spanish girls (women) living there, Ines was the only one who truly considered herself Spanish. She was from Madrid. Agatha was from Barcelona and vehemently committed to being referred to as Catalan. She could have been a character out of George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which was one of my favourite reads. She wouldn’t teach me any Spanish, preferring I try and pick up the Catalan language. The Basque woman was more ambivalent about her nationality but definitely considered herself Basque first and Spanish second. There was a German, I’ve also forgotten her name. My memory of her was that she was more of an average height and had no obvious link to Spain. And there was Irish Guy, also can’t recall his name but I think he was the one who created the connection with the Inisglas biodynamic community as his mate regularly travelled between Inisglas and Dublin. He was a little taller than me I think, quite a gentle fella, and the only fella of the house.

So while La Chaparrita wasn’t entirely Spanish, 3 out of the 5 inhabitants held Spanish passports and could speak Spanish even though 2 of the 3 strongly preferred their mother tongues and cultural identities.

The household wasn’t that far from Temple Bar, a bar and restaurant district of Dublin. They were near some big church or cathedral. When I used to get into Dublin I’d just walk to their house, which took me maybe 20 minutes or half an hour. I never took much notice of the times or distance back then. But it wasn’t far from the bus or train station. Looking at Google maps around 27 years later, I see it was St Patrick’s Cathedral, a few blocks from the house, that I used to use as a landmark to find their place. You used to have to resort to just techniques before smartphones.

I became a regular visitor to their house, popping up from Wexford every few weeks. Sometimes I’d wait for the Inisglas community van to go up to the markets on Saturdays and get a lift with them, see some bread and then head to their house. Sometimes I’d just hitch a lift. People were pretty up to giving people lifts in those days so I usually didn’t have to wait too long. I think a couple of times I forked out the money to take the train back as it wasn’t as easy to get a lift the other way.

The girls mostly worked at the Elephant & Castle in Temple Bar. They get much for working there. Around £40 a week plus tips, from memory. I think the tips pretty much doubled their wage though most weeks. They were flush with cash and were appreciative of their mothers’ food packages that appeared every now and again from Barcelona, the Basque Country or Madrid. I think the Basque woman had a bit more money and may have had her own room. I think she may have also had a boyfriend. Agatha, Ines and the German shared a room. I’d sleep on the couch when I visited most times.

I usually didn’t make pre-arrangements to come up to Dublin. I tried to call a few times but they’d always say, just come up! So I’d just be bored at Inisglas one day and then get up and go to Dublin for a night or 2. Mostly mid-week when I didn’t have any bakery chores. I never really stopped doing my bread making activities while at Inisglas but I did neglect the vegetable gardening part a bit and became more of a casual labourer supporting Frankie to pick veggies and spread compost as required. I also helped Stuart with the cow milking many evenings. Though there were only 2 cows to milk so sometimes he’d just do that himself, especially when he was grumpy and wanted to be alone. Which was not too uncommon, him being a poet and all.

If I couldn’t find anyone at La Chaparrita house I knew I could go off to the Elephant & Castle where they’d usually be working and just get a drink while waiting for them to finish a shift, or just walking around Temple Bar for a while until they finished. Sometimes Irish Guy would be there by himself and he’d let me in and I could dump the small backpack I usually brought with me, which just contained some underwear, a new shirt and whatever bread, yoghurt and farm produce I had at hand at the time. It would usually be enough to contribute to cooking up something for the household during my visit, which was appreciated due to their poverty. It certainly wasn’t a spiritual poverty and they mostly displayed a bubbly zest for life. It reminded me of another of my favourite books by George Orwell, Down and Out and Paris and London, except maybe a We’re Poor but Don’t Care, We’re Still Up for a Party in Dublin version. One day finances were so bad that Agatha made lettuce soup. I’m pretty sure that’s not even a real thing, but we didn’t care.

I mainly hung out with Ines and Agatha. We’d hang out in St Stephen’s Green park when it was sunny, which was increasing in frequency once summer set in, just smoking and chatting, and maybe reading for hours on end. Or we’d just walk around exploring the place. I loved my time with Agatha, we felt like real soulmates. She told me she’d come to Dublin because the conditions in Barcelona were so bad and that her family just expected her to get married and have babies. It seemed like she lived in a high rise building complex there and that you were never far from a neighbours argument.

One day I took a walk around with Irish guy who showed me some Dublin street markets and gave me a bit of a potted history of the Irish rebellion which included showing me bullet marks at the main Post Office, which I’d still on occasions visit to see if my bloody Irish passport had shown up from the Irish embassy in London, after being sent from Canberra, Australia. It’d been missing for around 3 months at that stage.

When everyone was at work I’d sometimes wander around by myself, trying to find a decent coffee. Back in 1995 that was not that easy. And, having lived in Melbourne with access to some of the great cafes like Pelligrinis on Bourke Street and Tiamo’s on Lygon Street, I had high standards, even as a poor backpacker type. I tried Bewley’s coffee house on Grafton Street. It was the worst coffee I’d had at a place that claimed to make good coffee that I’d ever had in the world. They had a suggestion box and I suggested they learn to make coffee. I’m sure they’ve improved by now. Well, they still exist at least.

I found a second hand bookstore, that was in an old building that was on the River Liffey, which did better coffee, plus I could browse books. I don’t know if I ever bought a book, I feel like I was probably too stingy. Perhaps I bought Homage to Catalonia there. I’d like to think so. Perhaps I even bought Agatha one, if I didn’t I wish I had.

In the evenings, and days when the girls weren’t working, we’d party at the house. There was a fair amount of alcohol to be had and almost always some weed. I liked the weed the most and didn’t partake much of the alcohol. We did go out to a pub or two here and there, but I don’t think we stayed long. On one occasion we were in a pub and I saw on the TV that Prince Charles was visiting, which was the end of May. It was a pretty big deal as Lord Mountbatten, Charles’ great uncle, was assassinated by the I.R.A in the late 70s. I think that could have been a Friday – the day I saw that Charlie was visiting, it must have been before I took on the baking duties at Inisglas, which took up all my Fridays. I remember there being an awful lot of vomit on the streets of Dublin on the way back to La Chaparrita that evening.

At other times, when Charles wasn’t visiting, we’d just go have something to eat at the Elephant & Castle as the girls got some free food or discounts. Once we went to an illegal bar up on the top floor of some two-storey building. Because it was illegal they couldn’t open the windows so it was probably the smokiest, most disgusting place I’d ever been on earth. Yes, they smoked indoors back then, and I was probably exposed to the equivalent of 300 cigarettes in the space of 2 hours. But because it was illegal we could at least pass a joint around. I think I got sick from the smoke and asked if we could bail.

My visits became a cycle of smoking, drinking, chatting, and eating and then eventually crashing on the couch for me, and the girls in their bedrooms. Sometimes we’d go hire some videos. I always wanted to see Pulp Fiction, but the girls had all seen it several times so it wasn’t until upon my return to Australia sometime the following year, or even perhaps the year after that, that I got to see it. Apart from videos we’d also listen to hours of music, singing, dancing and shooting the shit. They were a ball.

I think I usually only stayed a couple of nights and then headed back to Inisglas in the morning so I could be back before dark.

On one occasion it took longer than usual to hitchhike from Wexford to Dublin and I arrived around 6 PM. I went to La Chaparrita and found Ines, hurriedly packing her mochilla (backpack).

‘Juanito!’ she said and kissed me on both cheeks in the Spanish way. ‘I’m going to Wicklow to see a musical. Do you want to go? We have to leave now.’

‘Sure!’, I said. And we literally left that moment. Somehow made our way to a country house in the nearby county Wicklow where Ines knew a few people. Turns out the people Ines knew were putting on the Pirates of the Penzance, the Gilbert and Sullivan show, out on a farm in County Wicklow.

They had a stage set up in front of a pond. It’s possible Ines and I got stoned before the show behind some bushes, who knows. Sounds like something we used to do. We managed to get there just before the show started, as the sun set. It was the craic as the Irish say, though I felt a bit like a dirty hippy surrounded by slightly more refined musical going Irish gentry type people.

It turns out Ines was keen on one of the Irish blokes whose family owned the farm where the Pirates of the Penzance was performed. He was one of the pirates I think. Or perhaps even a very model of a modern Major-General with information vegetable, animal, and mineral (he wasn’t as that fella was old and this guy was young).  It became apparent I was Ines’ wingman and I stepped back and let them have their dalliance. I’d grown fond of Ines so I was a bit disappointed she’d got together with Wicklow Pirate man, but at least I got to see a musical, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t pay for, and they put me up at the country house overnight before Ines and I headed back to Dublin the next day. We’ll at least I think we headed back together, she may have stayed on and ditched me like Tom Cruise did with Goose in Top Gun. Tragic. It wasn’t just a weekend hookup though, Ines and the Wicklow Pirate kept together at least for the time I was in Ireland. The bridesmaid role was set to continue the rest of my trip, but I didn’t know that then.

I was growing fonder of Agatha, and she seemed to be growing fonder of me. We’d often just hang out by ourselves, especially after Ines started spending more time with the Wicklow Pirate. We had similar philosophies on life, Agatha and I, and would often stay up to the early hours chatting. Sometimes we’d go to someone else’s house and hang out a bit, I don’t remember much of that, but I think we’d go to another Spanish person’s house near some canals. Her name may have been Bee, or something similar. We used to call my Irish granny from County Sligo Bee as well, it was short for Bridget.

Agatha and I went to see a Lesbian violent travel film called Butterfly Kiss at some point. It was some sort of arthouse film, which premiered at some film festival in Dublin. I think we may have seen at least one other film together, maybe even at the same festival. We were all into the independent alternative scene. I’m not sure if she even ended up visiting Inisglas again one time. I’d like to think so, perhaps for our Inisglas festival we hosted towards the end of summer, but thinking it doesn’t mean it actually happened.

At one point towards the end of summer I picked up a fair amount of weed in Wexford that someone had been growing. I walked into the kitchen at Inisglas one day and there were a couple of very giggly residents there. They offered me some of the cause of their gigglyness, giving me a decent sized takeaway bag. It was good shit and the next time I visited La Chaparrita we had a really big party time, courtesy of that biodynamic magic. I’m sure Steiner wouldn’t approve unless the shit was first buried in cow horns under the full moon and left for a few months so it would pick up all the cosmic vibes.

I felt free and alive during those months. I had good friends, good times. I never really needed to spend much money either. It was the way life should be.

Meanwhile my life at Inisglas continued. I started doing a bit of writing, with the help of Master Poet Stuart, and I think I actually improved a little, though I don’t think I’ve saved any of that work. I think I may have sent the occasional letter to Agatha, or at least some notes about her in a diary I’ve long forgotten, and back to the family in Australia. I’d call my mum every month or so courtesy of the special phone card my dad had given me before leaving, just to say I was alive and kicking. I also sent a roll of film back to them to be processed. It was like posting pics on Instagram before it existed, only much less instantaneous and with more chemicals involved.

As the summer went on I started to get itchy feet and thoughts increased of moving on from Inisglas. I mean, I was still enjoying the place and we had some craic to be sure – which wasn’t, as I originally thought, the crack cocaine – but the Irish term for fun. I’m sure that’s a common confusion.

On a few occasions, when it was warm, we took the kids down to the beach and spent a few hours there. I remember chatting with Nora on the Wexford beach for a while, drinking homemade cordial and then going for a bit of a swim in the cold Irish Sea.

On one occasion most of the guys from Inisglas took the community row boat down the River Slaney to the pub where I’d stopped on my first full day in Wexford on the way to Inisglas.  We had a few joints on the way, perhaps courtesy of Ross, who’d somewhat warmed to me and who had some secret weed grow plot about that I never came across despite my frequent walks into the forest. It could have been beyond the nettle forest, or close to the border of the rubbish dump that was adjacent to the property and which was the cause of a massive fly outbreak that meant we resorted to putting sticky fly traps in the kitchen for a few months that would be covered in a few hours.

But back to Ross, he had warmed to me to the point where he offered me some great advice that I’ll always remember.

‘John’, he said, ‘never drive a truck with drugs in it between Amsterdam and Britain. When we were importing from Amsterdam we’d occasionally set up a young dopey hippy like you to get busted by the cops.’

He went on to explain that they’d put a small amount in the dopey hippy’s truck and contact the customs people. ‘While they were busy busting the poor cunt for the small amount of drugs another truck would drive through with heaps in it, unchecked.’

It seemed Ross may have had some remorses around setting up naive hippies, and took me for the type who might fall for such a thing. But after my Bangkok Gem scam incident I was much less trusting of people anyway. And, even without being ripped off, that sounded like a seriously dodgy proposition anyway so I would certainly have avoided it. I’m quite confident in that. But I still appreciated Ross looking out for me. You didn’t want to get on the bad side of Ross. One day one of Michael’s Danish friends from the nearby disabled support community tried to get Inisglas to put money in to support their activities and Ross, smelling a rat, fairly violently reacted to the guy. He didn’t do anything physical, but the guy I’m sure shat himself, after getting a verbal serve from Ross, figuratively speaking, if not actually.

Anyway on the way to the pub in the row boat we saw a seal. On the way back up the Slaney River (which sounds like the title of an Irish folk drinking song) we were more stoned and more drunk and it was dark, and we were singing and then I looked out to the bank and I said: ‘Hey it seems like we’re not moving’.

Frankie, Stuart, Michael, Jay, and perhaps even Ross, looked over and there was some discussion on whether we were moving or not. I mean we were rowing so we should be going forward, but yes indeed it did seem like our efforts weren’t getting us anywhere. So Jay put the oar down and he said, ‘I think we’re on some sand bank’. And then he put his foot over and said, ‘yes, we are on some sand bank’. So we got all out and pushed ourselves off and continued rowing and singing all the way back to Inisglas.

On another occasion we’d all gone to a pub in Wexford and Stuart and I walked the few kilometres home in the dark ourselves, maybe leaving the others there for a bit longer. We had some deep and meaningful discussion that night I feel, by the light of the moon as we traversed the lanes between Wexford town and The Deeps.

Michael and I hitched down to Rosslare Harbour one night just because we were bored after doing a day’s baking, which Michale was now helping out with. We ended up inviting ourselves to some party at someone’s house and then trying to see if anyone would let us crash at their place. When it became apparent no such offerings were afoot I took my sleeping bag and headed to the beach leaving Michael behind to party some more. He joined me an hour or so later having had no success to convince neither man nor woman to give him a bed for the night. We had one of those cold and uncomfortable beach sleeps for a few hours and then got up and hitched back to Inisglas the next morning. I think Michael had wanted to get away as he’d recently been back to Denmark with his girlfriend, who worked at the same nearby disabled support community that the other Danish guy who had managed to piss off Ross worked at. He was meant to be staying at his girlfriend’s house but they somehow managed to break up on the flight over, so he just ended up sleeping on the street for 3 nights and then heading back to Ireland.

He wasn’t the only one getting rejected. But, perhaps more of that after. For there were a few other changes afoot at Inisglas.

Juanito’s Travels 50-Yr-Backpacker Inisglas Biodynamic Community 1995 BlogPt9

The day after arriving Ian drove the community van into Wexford to deliver some veggies and yoghurt to the health food shop. I went into the social services office and started the paperwork to get some unemployment benefits.

They gave me a number and issued me a plastic social services card which I still have today. I’m not sure if I actually got it on the day or whether they sent it to me later. Luckily I had enough documentation even without my Irish passport to prove I was Irish. They explained the unemployment system, similar to Australia in that you had to apply for a certain amount of jobs, but different in that they’d send a cheque to the address, which I could cash at the post office, rather than having money deposited in my bank account which they did in Australia. When I said I was staying at Inisglas they immediately recognised the place as it turned out just about everyone there was on the dole. Wexford wasn’t a huge place so people generally had a notion there was a bunch of hippy going-ons at the place, but that they were mostly harmless.

There were a few at Inisglas who weren’t on the dole. Anthony and Eve, and Ross – who probably didn’t want any official record of himself due to being a British fugitive – and the homoeopathic vet who brought in a basic income with the homoeopathic treatment of cows and the like. I think Wobbie also got most of his income from selling trees from the nursery. The others weren’t on the Irish dole, their respective countries had some sort of arrangement with Ireland so they could collect unemployment benefits from Denmark and the other places they were from. I think they got a bit more than us Irish.

I wasn’t that keen to be collecting the dole, but I really didn’t have much of a choice if I wanted to stay in Ireland more than 2 weeks. I soon also found there weren’t many jobs going in the local area so working on a biodynamic farm on the dole was going to be it while I was in Wexford.

I put my qualms about social welfare aside and quickly settled into a routine in the Inisglas community.

My granny from County Sligo had to move to Australia when she was 10, after her mother died. She worked on a farm in central Queensland close to Mt Morgan, near Rockhampton. I was sort of doing the same in reverse, but I think much more comfortable than my poor granny probably had to endure.

Before heading back to Inisglas I stopped off at one of the pubs in town with Jay and Frankie. Jay had a pint,  I think I just had an orange juice again. Stuart popped in a bit later for a quick drink.

The day at Inisglas always started with a light breakfast, or at least a cup of tea and a snack, at the wooden table in the kitchen. There was a wood fired AGA oven in there that was always on low. There was always a kettle there and a pot of tea on the go.

Ross was obsessed with having the kettle going 24/7 and used to get pissed when anyone left it empty, or drank the last of the tea without making a fresh batch. As he often had that look in his eye like, ‘I’ll stab the next person who leaves the teapot empty’, it seemed wise to make sure the brew never ran dry. I was suitably scared of Ross, but I was also friendly so I tried chatting to him. He’d often just grunt, but he would also sit occasionally and drink tea at the table with me and smoke rolly cigarettes at the kitchen table. If there were too many people about he’d usually just grab his tea and run off to another part of the manor house.

You could tell this used to be a stately home because the kitchen had places for a bunch of bells which were attached to various rooms to alert the kitchen staff to the desires of the stately home owners. It was a big place with maybe 10 bedrooms, a sizeable living area and space for a fancy table. The fancy table was long gone and we always ate around the solid wooden kitchen table that easily fitted 15-20.

Breakfast would normally be a bit of soda bread baked in the AGA, which Jay or Anthony would make during the week.  The community also had a sizeable bakery with professional bread ovens subsidised by the European community. But we only used that when we were doing the baking for the Dublin markets on the weekends as the ovens were only worth firing up if you were making dozens and dozens or loaves. I’d have the bread with jam for breakfast most days. Occasionally I’d go for a porridge or just fry a few eggs, depending on my mood. We have eggs and fruit in regular supply in the pantry as well as some dried and fresh fruit, and as much milk, freshly squeezed from the farm’s cows that you could ever possibly want to drink.

After breaky I’d head out with Frankie for a couple of hours to tend to the vegetables. It wasn’t overly strenuous. Sometimes we’d tend to the huge compost heaps which we’d use to feed the veggies. Sometimes we’d slash nettles and comfort and soak them in water to make fertiliser teas for the plants. Sometimes we’d plant out seedlings of kale – before kale was even popular – or spinach. It was still early in the season when I arrived and there wasn’t a huge variety to harvest, but we dug up a few Jerusalem artichokes which grew in abundance. Jerusalem artichokes are gassy, not super delicious, but highly nutritious and easy to grow root vegetables. Most evening meals made in my first weeks there at Inisglas included at least a few artichokes in them, while we waited for the nicer Mediterranean vegetables – although most of them originated in central America – like the tomatoes, zucchinis, eggplants. The other things ready to harvest in those first weeks of me being on the farm were carrots, some peas and a few beets and brassicas – kale and the like. I think we were getting the odd leek as well, so enough variety. Being Ireland we had a lot of potatoes growing, but in spring we could only forage a few little spuds, still plenty to add to meals though.

After a few hours in the garden we’d go back and have some more tea, some home made cordial and some bread and cheese, perhaps with some gherkins from bottles. After lunch we’d go do a bit more gardening, perhaps going to 5 PM, depending on the weather, or whenever it started getting dark, before stopping and heading in for dinner. I was amazed we never had to water much, just the stuff in the poly-tunnels and seedlings in the first few weeks after planting until their roots got down into the wet sublayer. We did regularly add the nettle and comfrey fertiliser teas though which gave the plants a bit of a drink I’m sure. Otherwise the rain was sufficient to keep them all going.

We took turns making dinner using some sort of roster. As mentioned, Tron was the worst cook. The rest of us usually did up a vegetable stew or curry with some sort of pulse like chickpeas, kidney beans, white beans or dried peas in it, as well as a few spuds, carrots, peas, parsnips and whatever veggies we were picking at the time, including the dreaded Jerusalem artichokes. Tron’s focussed on cooking nettles until Nora banned the use of nettles. I was thinking of writing: to be fair on Tron, nettles are nutritious, but I don’t think we should be fair on Tron and he should be rightly condemned for his cooking abominations, especially given the other delicious things we had at hand.

Often we’d add a few tins of tomatoes and tomato paste as well as herbs and spices to add flavour, and serve with rice, or pasta, or some carbs. There was always some bread to go with it if you wanted.

As there were around 20 people all up including kids you had to do up a big pot. As the veggies were fresh and full of biodynamic flavour the meals were pretty good, nothing super fancy but hearty and filling and never too boring apart from Tron’s nettles.

I’m not sure exactly what time of year it was when I started out at Inisglas, but one night soon after arriving I saw Eurovision was on the tele, which is usually in May. According to the Internet, the final was 13 May in 1995 to be precise, and Ireland hosted it that year after winning in 1994. I didn’t have the internet back then so I’ll stick with sometime in May just to be retro.

After initially focussing on helping out Frankie with the vegetables, I branched out a bit and started tagging along with Stuart, who milked the cows in the morning and afternoon. I got to be a regular cow milker and Stuart showed me how to make his Irish championship yoghurt. I had beginner’s luck and my first batch was as good as any Stuart had made. He also showed me how to make quark, a type of soft cheese, which, at least in Stuart’s version, involved putting yoghurt in cheesecloth and hanging it under the big rhododendron tree. It was another good thing to have for lunch with the bread from the AGA oven. I think we also made a type of cheddar cheese, or at least a cottage cheese, as well, which meant separating the milk curds from the whey, just as they did in nursery rhymes. Whey, for those who don’t know, is a watery yellowy buttery milky type of stuff, pretty clear and not white like milk. I’d take most of the whey to Ross who gave it to his pigs to fatten them up to make bacon out of them. Ross explained there were basically 2 types of pigs, porkers, which you used to make pork out of, and bacon’s, which you used for bacon. And thus endeth the pig lesson from Ross.

We would often save some cream from the milk, after we pasteurised it. You could have that on some of the cakes that people like Yvonne and Nora occasionally made. We’d also sometimes use a bit of the whey that Ross’ pigs didn’t eat to add to the vegetable stews. It gave a nice bite to the broth.

One thing we didn’t make was butter. Back then Ireland and Europe had a butter mountain and when you got your dole check they’d also send a voucher to get a pound of butter each fortnight which Eve would collect together so the community always had good Irish butter in abundance. I hope in some way I contributed to dealing with the butter mountain while I was there.

On Fridays I started helping Jay out in the bakery. After breakfast and tea we started making bread the whole day. We’d work up a sough dough or stoned ground biodynamic yeast bread batch, put it in the tins to rise, work on the next batch, and then chuck batches in the oven every hour or thereabouts. In between bakings, while the dough was rising and the risen ones were cooking in the oven, we’d sit and chat and have tea and cigarettes (me less than Jay who was a self confessed chain smoker), as well as freshly baked bread with some jam, cheese, and quark. We’d usually go from 10 am to 6 pm, then load the van around 7-8 PM ready to take the markets in Dublin the next day. We mostly had sourdoughs and yeast wholemeal breads just with some sesame seeds on top, but we also made a few fancy loaves. We made packets of flat pita style breads, some ones with olives and tomatoes, a sunflower seed loaf and a batch of raisin and nut loaf.

On Saturday mornings I’d hitch a lift up to the Dublin markets and help sell the bread, yoghurt, cheeses, bags of flour and whatever veggies we’d brought up with us. We’d usually sell out of everything by around 11 or 12, except maybe an olive loaf or raisin and nut bread. We alway kept a few loaves back at Inisglas for the community.

The drive to Dublin was nice. It only took an hour and a half to 2 hours. I was still getting used to these little countries after the expanse of Australia. We passed through County Wicklow, and got a nice view of the Wicklow Mountains. I remember a stand of Australian gum trees somewhere on the way and a few picturesque forest edged roads on the way.

Initially I didn’t stay much in Dublin, I just hung out at the markets for a few hours and maybe walked around whatever area that was in. I also took the chance to go check out the Dublin GPO to see if me Irish passport had arrived, which it never did. Later on though I’d come up fairly often to Dublin and stay with friends.

The friends from Dublin were ones I first met at Inisglas. One of the guys who seemed to regularly show up at Inisglas invited a few girls from Dublin to Inisglas one weekend. They were Spanish, well Ines was Spanish, Agatha, she was Catalan, as she would often point out. Stuart encouraged me to hang out with them and they invited me back to Dublin where they shared a house with an Irish guy, a Basque Spanish woman and a German woman, all in their twenties. After a weekend of fun on the farm and showing Ines and Agatha around I was keen to see more of them, so next time I took the bread up to the markets instead of going back to Inisglas, I took a loaf of bread, some cheese and yoghurt and headed off to their house. I started doing that every couple of weeks.

The first time I went to the girls’ house was a few weeks after arriving at Inisglas. By that stage my dole cheques were coming through. After contributing my £40 (yes it was still before Euros) I’d have £20 leftover. I used about £4 buying some duty free tobacco from Nora, who got it duty free on the ferry when she went over to London to study her Steiner education and brought enough back for all the smokers, which was pretty much everyone, except Stuart, who pretended not to smoke, but who ended up having a regular smoke. He was diabetic so he did need to try and at least to pretend to avoid it.

So I had about £16 pounds leftover each week which was enough to hang out in Dublin with. Especially if I could bring some bread, cheese and some veggies with me to cook at the girls house.

This allowed me to explore Dublin a bit over summer and party with the girls who had dubbed their house the Chaparrita. The girls were very short and this does seem to mean ‘shorty’, though sometimes I think it may have had a double meeting by the way they spoke and giggled about it.

More on Dublin next time though, I think it deserves some focus. Especially my relationship with Agatha Julia and Ines.

 

50-Year-Old Jovencito con mochilla, la Historia de Juanito’s Travels. Gotta get outta London BlogPt5

Have you ever had lettuce soup? I had it in Dublin. My friend Agatha Julia, from Barcelona, made it. I might get back to that at another time.

1995

I was still in London. April may have started by then. It was certainly getting close to Easter.

I hadn’t slept in a bed for more than 3 hours since Bangkok, three or four nights ago now by my sleep deprived calculations. Last night I’d roughed it like a homeless person on the front lawn of my, well I was about to write friends but in the end they were just some people I knew in Australia who I thought might be home in London and whom I thought might have put me up for the night under a roof. In a bed. Not on the lawn in front of their flat on a freezing cold spring night in London.

Well, screw them. I now at least had $250 and my sister was going to put a further $500 AUD into my account some time today. You could pretty much halve that and get the value in British pounds. So maybe £375 give or take. That wasn’t going to get me far if I was going to stay in the UK.

It certainly wasn’t going to get me as far as Switzerland, where I imagine a hamburger cost $25 or something. It could possibly get me as far as Ireland though. I could find a job there. I had one contact I could try there whole lived on a farm in County Wexford.

I had just been back to the Irish embassy in London and was sitting again in Hyde Park, not far from Buckingham Palace. I’m pretty sure the Queen and Prince Phillip didn’t have to try and work out how to make £375 stretch 12 months, which was the original time I intended to spend in Ireland, or elsewhere in Europe. The whole being ripped off in Bangkok through a sapphire scam had kind of thrown a spanner in the works. Long term planning was off the cards at the moment. It was like I only had 32 cards anyway. Which might be enough for certain versions of euchre I think. Metaphors aside, and the reality of only having £375 meant I could only think of the immediate days ahead.

Before I finished this day though, I wanted a proper fucking bed, and a shower. I made my way to the backpacking area of Earls Court and used some of my £375 to get a room. A little room. But a room all to myself. Not in a dorm, I wasn’t sharing with other smelly hippies tonight.

It cost a bit extra. I was extremely low on cash. But fuck it, I’d spent the last night sleeping on a lawn in from of Newcastle Chick and British Guy’s flat – the same British Guy who’d fucking slept on my cozy floor, with my cozy extra bedding, eating my cozy rolled outs and vegetarian food in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

I’d spent the night before that sleeping on the floor of Heathrow Airport – for all of 3 hours after almost getting deported, and the night before that I managed just 3 hours sleep at a hotel in Bangkok after getting off a plane which engines had blown up, not once, but twice, up in the sky, where I could literally die.

So tonight I was going to have a room to my fucking self. I checked in, chucked my backpack on the ground, got out some fresh clothes, went and had a quick shower, pulling bits of grass and twigs from my hair due to my previous night of homelessness. I hadn’t had the opportunity for a shower for the last 3 days. What a simple indulgent pleasure to feel warm water running down your naked body. I hung my towel to dry outside the Earls Court window. I got out one of my Thai cigarettes and puffed out the window while I contemplated my next move. And reviewing what had gone wrong so far.

It’s all started to go pear shaped when I bought those fucking sapphires in Bangkok, so number 1 things was to get rid of them. They were bad luck. If I couldn’t sell them I’d just give them away. I was starting afresh so the sapphires had to go. Number 2, I had to get to Ireland, Ireland was the only place I couldn’t possibly survive for more than a few days at the moment. But my Irish passport was still in transit from Australia to the London Embassy so I needed to wait a few more days to collect it.

I couldn’t stay in this backpackers in Earls Court, especially in my fancy single room, that I thoroughly deserved after my ordeal, waiting for my passport though, especially in a private room, so I had to find somewhere that wasn’t going to cost me anything. I ruled out further attempts to contact Newcastle Chick and British Guy. I ran through my other options. Then it popped into my head. A Vipassana Meditation centre! Vipassana centres were run on donations. While I really liked to pay I could always do that later when I had more money.

I could try and go to the Vipassana Meditation centre and wait in the UK until my Irish passport arrived. After that I had Irish woman’s address. Her name was Nora. I’d never met her but she did used to live down the road from Christophe’s mum’s place in Tugun and that was a close enough link at this stage. I’m not sure why I had the meditation centre’s address, I think I’d planned to do a course somewhere along the way, perhaps in India. But, they also had a centre in the UK, in Herefordshire.

So I finished my fag, grabbed my sapphires and went out the door to find a pay phone. On the way I saw a church. I’m catholic – well more a catholic buddhist are thinking hippy – and I suspect this one was one of those protestant types where Anglicans go. It didn’t matter anyway, a protestant in hand is worth two Catholic Buddhists in the bush. I found whatever protestants called priests and I handed him a bunch of sapphires and I said: ‘Look these sapphires are real, they are just not worth that much, maybe you could sell them and give it to poor people or something.’ Or words to that effect. The protestant priest guy looked at the gems, looked at me with the stunned look of someone who’s just been handed 5 sapphires, and before he could say much more than a muttered ‘thanks’ I’d made my way out of the church and into a pay phone booth.

I called the UK Vipassana Centre’s number.

‘Hello’, I said, ‘I would like to do a course, I really need to do a course as soon as possible’. It was a meditation emergency!

‘Well, we have a 3-day course starting the day after tomorrow, but we usually only use that as an introductory course. Old students like yourself, who have done a course before would be better off doing a full 10 day course. We have a 10-day course starting in a week’.

‘Can I do the 3-day course and then the next 10-day course and volunteer in between time?’ The more meditation I did the better I thought, plus I’d never volunteered at a centre and that was kind of like paying them while I couldn’t afford to donate anything else.

They agreed to that and gave me some basic details on how to get there from London and said they’d see me there the day after tomorrow. So at least I had the next few weeks sorted out. I went back to the backpackers. As I entered the building one of the backpackers staff asked me whether I was the one who’d hung his towel out the window. I said yes. They said I couldn’t do that anymore. I said fine, whatever. I went up to my room, took my towel in and just sat on the bed and read a book for a while before going out and finding some cheap vegetarian food to eat, which I can’t recall at all and then going to sleep. It was one of the top ten sleeps I’d ever had in my life. A new level of deepness.

The next day I rose and had breakfast. There was an abundance of toast, tea, coffee, and bits of fruit. It was like paradise. My journey had kind of begun, a born again journey to replace the one I’d started a week or so ago which I now wanted to relegate to history. I guess Nietzsche said whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I preferred Buddha to Nietzsche nowadays, he’d said the source of all our misery is attachment. It was time to detach. It reminds me of a quote from cartoonist Michael Leunig : Let it go. Let it out. Let it all unravel. Let it free and it can be a path on which to travel. Leunig had been there at my first Vipassana meditation course about a year earlier.

I felt stronger after my fill of toast, Jam, margarine, more toast, tea, a few cups of tea, fruit and the such. I went into London again and did some touristy things, walking a bit along the Thames, looking at a few pigeons on statues and things, then it was back to my very own room again and more delightful sleep, in a bed and not in the garden outside of some supposed ‘friends’ flat who were now ghosting me.

The very own room bit really invigorated me. I should have been budgeting more and going for a dorm room but the spiritual lift it gave me was worth every extra penny or pounds. And I was still hardly spending much on anything else as you could find a bit of vegetarian pizza pretty cheap.

The next day I made my way to Herefordshire to begin meditating again. I took the train, it felt like going off to Hogwarts before I knew what Hogwarts was. We passed Oxford and I got to chatting a little with a professor who asked whether I was a student. No, just an Aussie on the way to a Buddhist retreat in Herefordshire.

The little pockets of forest along the way looked like the type Robin Hood might frequent. I went to school with someone who claimed to be related to Robin Hood. They might have been told the story by some Thai gem dealer as it turns out that even if Robin Hood existed (which he didn’t) he wasn’t exactly the sort of person one could relate their lineage to. I’m related to the Surtees family, they have some claim to the Tees river up in Durham. Here I was, just a few days in the United Kingdom and I was already being sucked in by their class wars, trying to prove I had some connection to a river I’d never been to to make myself think I’m all posh and fancy. I say the French Revolution didn’t go far enough and should have jumped the channel. But not to be. We do have the Queen’s bodiless head on our Australian coins though. And to be honest, if someone offered me a free castle on the Tees River at this stage it would be hard to refuse it.

I got off somewhere and got off and took a bus to a place which seemed to have a lot of constants in its name, which was surrounded by juicy pink pigs in muddy paddocks, where I was picked up in the vipassana minibus by one of the meditation centre’s volunteers.

The meditation phase of my journey had begun. The rest could wait. I needed to be in the moment now. To realise the impermanence of things. Both good things and bad things.