THANKFULLY, THE MUNCHEN-FARTERS have gotten up early and gone. People are wondering if I’ve finally gone insane, as I keep bursting into hysterical fits of laughter about my silent attack. The bathroom door seems to be jammed on a stick or a pebble. So I pull it shut again and give it a good shove, shunting an elderly fool across the bathroom, and three elderly faces glare at me, waiting for an apology they are never going to get. I’d love to conduct a scientific experiment with these idiots to see why they need to block every doorway in the land. I need to brush my teeth, and one of the fools is sitting on one of the two sinks. I need to piss, and the other fool is leaning against the urinals. What the fuck is wrong with some people? I’m so angry that I manage to do all my ablutions in the one and only shower. Then I slam the door on my way out to a chorus of international abuse, as I reel off every Euro swear word I have ever learned.
Back on the trail, up ahead of me is a small woman I have seen a few times before. She has a strange birdlike face and big round glasses like Deirdre Barlow from Coronation Street. She even tweets and flutters nervously as I pass by. Deep down in the deepest depths of madness comes my new repetitive song:
“Bird woman, bird woman, are you fond of dancing?”
“Yes sir, yes sir, I am fond of dancing!”
I look across at her and wonder, but she’s no river dancer, that’s for sure. No sign of the amigos yet. Maybe I’ll see Cocker and Swiss John. Tucker perhaps? Dave and Eva? Who knows?
The heavens open again and I am soaked to the bone.
In the hostel I share my small room with the bird woman and the ZZ Top look-alike I saw back in Pamplona all those weeks earlier.
My medieval buddy, Aymeric, doesn’t reckon much to this section of the Camino either. He says,
Innkeepers and servants along the road to Santiago who take pleasure in illicit gain, are inspired by the Devil himself to get into pilgrims’ beds at night. Harlots who go out to meet pilgrims in wild parts between Portomarín and Palas de Rei for this purpose should not only be excommunicated, but also stripped of everything and exposed to public ridicule, after having their noses cut off.
Wow, steady on Aymeric. Meeting a harlot on route! Chance would be a fine thing, but one climbing into my bed at night, well . . . even better. But I think I would reserve his punishment fantasies for rude, farting Germans.
Eleventh-century Irish pilgrim Emmet Haggard says of this area,
I doth sallied forth, till after a couple of leagues I reached the posada of Los Gatos Negro’s in a deep valley at the foot of lofty hills. Our host now demanded whether we were hungry and upon being answered “Yea” he did produce from yon larder a dozen eggs and some bacon and a gallon of wyne from’t thyne bodega. While our supper did tarry, I was plyde with this finest of wyne by the finest of fair maidens and did venture forth to drink Aguardiente, a fire water most similar to our Irish poteen. Thyne host proclameth that to drink such a brew was to make thyself robust again thy powers of the local Brughas (witches) that were plentiful in these parts, upon taking heed of his words I did empty vas after vas and made merry with the maidens until I could take no more. . . . I did waketh sometime later naked and confuseth with nowt more than my pilgrims hat atop my ached head.