Camino bore: The stork also rises

'A year ago' must stop - move on, Viv! Oh, just a bit more... we were on a train whizzing back to our starting point on the Spanish/French border. It showed us just how far we'd come, the fact that it took us 3 train journeys and a bus trip to get back to Roncesvalles, from 10 pm until 6 pm the following day. The night train involved one of my worst moments. Propelled into a pitch-black women-only carriage by D who then went off to his men-only place, I stood in there for about 10 minutes wondering what to do while an invisible woman in bed fired off rapid irate-sounding Spanish at me, and I had no idea how to turn on a light without accidentally activating some emergency-stop kind of thing; I didn't know which bed-shelf I was supposed to go on, and no idea how I was going to know when we had reached the place we had to get off, and so I felt stymied. I stood there going 'Er - um', and in the end had to go and find D and ask what to do. It transpired that an attendant would come and wake you about half an hour before you reached your get-off point; all very clever, but you need to know about it before you can drop off. In fact, we both had a few hours of good quality sleep on that train until 4 am, after I managed to slide into an unoccupied slot by the light of the brief opening of the door.

I'm not sure if I've turned into a stork that is able to fly out of the camino nest yet; I had a conversation with myself about the ease with which I think in metaphor. Like this:

"I must fly the camino nest now I've passed the year mark, like a young stork leaving one of those precarious nests in N Spain"

"But Viv, what if you are not a stork, and you plummet"

"Don't be silly, you should abandon the metaphor"

"I know; I can't help it; I think far too much in metaphors, I wish I didn't; it's so corny"

"But the Bible uses them all the time"

"I know, but it can't be right to begin every sentence with, 'That's just like a fried egg when...' or whatever, and sometimes I even mix metaphors in the middle of a sentence"

"But Viv, you are a visual person; you can't help it".

"This is drivel, isn't it David?"

David: "Well, it's you being YOU. Mmm, I see what you mean!"

And so I will present a little show of  Pilgrim Paraphernalia. Ric-rac came from Santo Domingo; it is yet to go on a 'Spanishviv skirt'. The hat was what I grabbed when I packed hastily. It stood me in good stead to help keep me warm in the coldest spring for 137 years. The fuzzy brooch was made the day we set off; it was used for pricking blisters most nights. Pink scarf (1) from Najera, my day of shopping on the market. Shell from Scheveningen almost at the end of our journey home. (Many pilgrims sported the scallop on the journey towards Santiago; medieaeval pilgrims only wore it on the way home.) Scarf (2) made during this year-ago month by my friend Sheila who was the recipient of my 'press releases' along the way and understood what we were going through; it's in my Pink Pilgrim colours of course, as is Bagpuss, who sneaked into the pic, being camouflaged. (Perhaps he ought to come on the next pilgrimage if my grandson will let him.)