12 mar

Walked another 37 kilometres, from Montreal to Nogaro, making a total of 482 kilometres.
Met my friends Saint and Jacques again. They were putting up signs in the other direction now. Even took a photograph of them. Asked for their names too, but they didn’t want to give them. I shouldn’t thank them personally, but the Conseil General de Gers, the region we’re travelling through. I tend to extrapolate this kind of particular behaviour into habits of the French. They’re not very individual people, more community people, very nice.
I read an article about some weird Labour politician who attacked capitalism as a barbaric and exploitive system to organize economic behaviour. On what planet does that guy live? I wondered. Of course capitalism is barbaric and exploitive. Everybody except for Rush Limbaugh, and people who listen to him, knows that. That’s why we have taken the rough edges off. With legislation preventing monopolistic behaviour, with minimum wages, with rules for labour conditions. One can disagree about the level one wants to intrude, but discussions about capitalism ‘sec’ are pointless.
This is how I grumble on. While doing that ,I was walking way too fast, as I realized it only when I was passing some people who were strolling in the lovely sun dappled morning. First they were walking hundreds of yards in front of me and then suddenly I almost bumped into them. While arguing against this Labour knucklehead I had lost any sense of time and place.
But my fast pace came to haunt me in the afternoon. My shin was starting to act up again, I felt a second blister developing (same spot, other foot – no real harm) and I was getting thirsty. All the public watering holes – eau potable – are still turned off for winter. Even at a cemetery – where the water is always non potable, but who cares when you’re thirsty – the water was still turned off. This made the afternoon trip from Eauze to Nogaro into a different kind of hell. I was really dragging along and was glad when I finally saw Merlin parked at a nice quiet spot at a municipal park, where we’re having the first BBQ of the year now.
Julie picked Jean Pierre up when she was leaving Montreal. Another pelerin who’s cheating. It was not a problem, he explained to Julie, as long as you do not do it in Spain. Which sounds marvellous to me. In Spain there will be enough cheaters to look down upon, I learned from the Gideon Lewis-Kraus book ‘A Sense of Direction’ (which is about pilgrimages. He gets irritated by people who take busses, start only 100 kilometres from Santiago (the shortest distance in order to obtain still official credentials – basically waiving your time in purgatory) and walk the Camino in different stages. I don’t mind it too much, what other people do, but do feel guilty about my own cheating, which becomes a little less when other people behave the same way, somehow.
Anyway, 966 kilometres to go, although I saw a sign 20 kilometres ago where it said 962 kilometres to Santiago. No millennium sign though. I thought of a nice trip, by the way. A sort of alternative Camino. Starting 2014 (the current year) kilometres away and then walking back to the year 0. At each stop the task would be to describe a significant event in the year the remaining distance to Santiago would make. So what happened in 966? To be honest, I haven’t the faintest idea, but with a little research it would create the oddest book.