BURGOS MAY BE A GREAT PLACE to spend the weekend with your lesbian lover, but I need to get out of here, quick-style! The walk out of the city is, thankfully, much nicer than the one coming in, and I’m pleased to report that there are yellow arrows all over the fecking place.
I meet a speedy English pensioner called Mike. He’s originally from Yorkshire. We have a lot in common. He tells me that this is the second time he has walked the Camino, his first attempt sadly ending in total hospitalization.
“Tendonitis,” says Mike. “This time I’m taking it steady.”
“Could have fooled me,” I attempt to say, while inhaling part of my sandwich. For a moment everything stops; my eyes bulge as my lungs gasp for air, and on the third cough I propel the foreign object into the atmosphere and make another mental note never to eat and drink while running! I look up but Mike has gone. I watch as he tears off into the distance in a cloud of dust like the mighty Road Runner.
“Meep, meep!”
Farther down the road I take a leisurely lunch break in Rabé de las Calzadas.
The little café owner looks a lot like Kevin Moynihan, the hardworking, hard-drinking, tough Irish foreman I had in Holland during the nineties. Except that this guy is a third of his size but has the same head, piercing eyes and Thomas Magnum–style mustache.
“Un jamón queso bocadillo, por favor,” I say.
Little Kevin babbles away . . . something about a rock or a stone. He comes back from the kitchen with a stick of bread, then proceeds to beat the life out of it on the oak bar. Like a fool I tell him it will be fine, so he stands it on top of the coffee machine to breathe a bit of life back into it and offers me a Ducados while I wait. After five minutes or so he gives the bread another good doink on the corner of the coffee machine and shrugs once again.
Suddenly a crazed English lady makes a dramatic entrance by crashing through the doors in a fluster and panting at little Kevin.
“I need foooood!” she says in English, putting her finger in her mouth and acting like some kind of cavewoman.
“No,” says little Kevin, “there’s no bread left until I go shopping.”
She understands the “No” bit but sees my resurrecting bread on the coffee machine and cries, “I haven’t eaten for two days!”
Kevin says truthfully that there is no bread and that’s that, but she thinks he’s being awkward and starts to cause a scene. So little Kevin offers her a Ducados in an attempt to restore the peace. But she shrieks and sighs and then turns on her heel, throwing back her head, and says, “I suppose I’ll just have to starve then!”
She wails again and flees in the same dramatic fashion. We both laugh as Kevin gives my bread a final crack on the counter, then takes it through to the kitchen, returning minutes later with what looks like a delicious sandwich full of chorizo, cheese, and tomato.
I open my mouth as wide as it will go and bite down hard, almost breaking off my two front teeth in the process. To prevent teeth damage, I put the sandwich on the bar and give it a good hard punch. Then, however painfully, I eat the lot, while being heavily scrutinized by little Kevin.
When I finish, he shakes my hand, gives me a free coffee, and awards me another Ducados—and, finally, a “¡Buen camino!”
* * * *
Back out on the strange road ahead in the distance, I see the remarkable sight of an enormous black lady making very awkward progress.
“¡Hola, buen camino!” she shouts in a jolly French accent as I give her a wide berth. As I pass through Hornillos del Camino, a strange man runs out of his house and starts shouting in my face, giving me quite a startle. The words “Fuck off, caveman!” roll off my tongue without thinking, and I walk off very proud of that one.
In Hontanas I’m joined by the Japanese pilgrim I saw yesterday, and it turns out that he’s actually Korean. He can’t speak English and I can’t speak Korean, but between us, we manage to have a bit of Eurocraic. He mimics the actions of a Wild West gunfighter, throwing back an imaginary poncho and firing at an unseen attacker. He blows the smoke from the end of his imaginary pistol and spins it on one finger before he reholsters and sits down, whistling a bit of Sergio Leone.
“Crint Eastrood,” he says. “You like?”
“Clint Eastwood! Yeah, man!”
I’m beginning to get his vibe. I suppose these streets do look a little like those in the spaghetti westerns.
“Eddie.” I introduce myself.
“Wee,” he says.
“Nice to meet you, Wee.” I shake his hand.
“No! Ree!” he says.
“Ah, OK, sorry, Ree.”
“No, Ree!” he says excitedly, thrusting his pilgrim’s credentials in my face. Lee Chatchapingyas is his name.
“Ah, Lee,” I say, and a big smile plays out on his face. Meanwhile, the unmistakable figures of Butch and Spongepants appear on the horizon.
“Oh!” says Lee, as only Asians can, putting his hand close to the floor as if to measure a small person as we watch them approaching.
Lee’s eyes almost pop out of his head as Spongepants’s unmanageable puppies jostle in and out of her vest top. She struggles to take off her oversize pack as Butch tells her where to sit and what to do. Little Spongepants squeaks back like a church mouse, doing everything she says, and I wonder if it’s about time that the tables were turned and Spongepants got to wear the strap-on for a change.
In Hontanas there are only so many imaginary gunfight and lesbian fantasies one can have, and clean, crisp, and clinical boredom has set in for the day. Luckily, Cocker’s book provides the afternoon’s entertainment as I tear small strips from the cardboard cover and fire them from the elastic band.