3. Santiago de Compostella in 1987

'...Las calles están mojadas y parece que llovió,
Son lágrimas de una niña, de una mujer que lloró.

Triste y sola, sola se queda Fonseca
triste y llorosa queda la universidad
y los libros… y los libros empeñados
en el monte… en el monte de piedad.

No te acuerdas cuando te decía, a la pálida luz de la luna' ....
Yo no puedo querer más que a una y esa una mi vida eres tú

Aileen and Philip in Santiago de Compostella in 1987

In 1987 I was sent to Santiago de Compostella to teach on an English course. I went with Aileen. An elegant Englishwoman with a small pursed mouth and short hair. She was soft spoken, in control and she knew how to teach children. I did not. We met in the morning in the cafe next to a small green square and the rain fell softly. It was like mist. So gentle. Together we designed a summer course for the Galician children. It worked. I remember some of our students. They would be in their late twenties or early thirties now. After work we were ferried back to town and Aileen would take the lead and we would have a seafood meal and wander. The course was in July, at the height of the pilgrimage. In those days it wasn't as fashionable to walk the Camino as it is now. In the town students made their money dressing in long black gowns and singing the traditional songs of the Tuna.  We drank freshly toasted torrefacto coffee. Each bar had its own assortment of tapas. We drank so much coffee and ate so many oily dishes that, later on, Aileen had to follow a course of treatment for cholesterol poisoning. Looking up at the buildings in Santiago, you used to see grassy purple wildflowers growing from the stony cracks constantly irrigated with Gallician rain like sea spray. I loved the Cathedral. The main gate has pillars at the sides covered in carving. Pilgrims used to feel the delicate sculpting, and stroke the entrance, rounding and smoothing its stone into hollows, the noses rubbed off gargoyles, the heads of carved saints warm featureless nubs. The bishop of Santiago de Compostella took us onto the rooftop of the cathedral so we could look down, from the vantage point of a small window in the dome above the nave. Through the glass we saw the burning botafumeiro moving on its chain, spilling frankincense, until after a while it was travelling at speed over the heads of pilgrims, and, disappearing up into the accumulating smug. Above the alter in the cathedral is a jewel encrusted statue of Santiago and pilgrims cross a little bridge and stroke, pat or hug his silver back. Underneath the alter are his bones. In one of the bars where we had relaxed and chatted, where we had sipped fresh clouded ribeiro from bowls and ate side dishes - pimientos de padron, pink rounds of soft octopus sprinkled with paprika and salt, baby squid cooked in ink, garlic prawns, and one clawed crayfish - Eileen and I parted company. 


When I met my parents later on in Madrid they took me out to a restaurant in the Plaza Mayor and as we ate I told them about the Camino and invited them to come with me on the walk. The second summer in Santiago in 1988, was less successful. Aileen and I were no longer friends. I got up at the end of the course and took the train to Madrid. In Madrid I realised I had left my passport in the drawer of the hotel room. Never mind. I told myself, and I flew back without a passport and they let me back into London anyway. There was a ridiculously low paid job going in Mexico. Chris took me there. "I'm frightened I am going to accept.", I told Chris. I came out an hour later. Happy and worried. I had accepted the job. But now I had to be there in less than ten days and I didn't have a passport. No time to get a new one. I phoned my boss, Steve. "Have you heard from the hotel where I left my passport?" I asked him. He said that he had dropped the document into a mailbox. "Thanks a bunch!" I said. "I'm coming to Madrid anyway, and slammed down the phone." I took the next plane and arrived at the office. 'Try the Ayuntamiento, the town hall.', the school office said,  Steve was hiding from me. I did, No luck."Try the main post office.", the council officials said and I did. No luck. Now you would think I'd give in at this point , but there was some force propelling me. I carried on. 'Try our sorting office in this nearby street.' the post office people said. I walked into the sorting office and went up to a thin uniformed man with a moustache at the counter. 'I am looking for a lost passport.'The Clerk looked at me and gestured. 'Do you mean one of those?' Behind the clerk there were what looked like thousands of passports stacked in messy rows. 'Do you think I am going to look through them all just for you?' Do you think I have nothing else to do?  But I didn't go away. I stood there. My flight left for London that evening. He looked up again. I smiled, confidently. Silence. 'Well,' finally, 'I've just been sent a bundle of passports'. He glanced at the package near his right arm. 'There's probably nothing there.' silence. I kept looking at him. 'But let me check anyway.' he said and opened the bundle and there, at the top, I see my passport. 'That's mine thank you.' I say, calmly, pointing at it. He handed it to me, struck dumb and I left and walk out into the afternoon sun. I drink a cold Horchata, and a take a last coffee at the Cafe de la Opera, and then leave to the airport to catch the evening plane. Back to Clapham, a few days later I fly to Mexico City.

*          *          *          *

In Mexico, at work, three months later I am singing a song of the Tuna quietly to myself...'Triste y sola, sola se queda Fonseca...' and an elegant Mexican woman turns round in her chair and asks me: 'Where on earth did you learn that? It was Tere. She invited me to tea that Sunday. 

And reader, I married her. Tere's birthday is on the 25th of July, the day of Santiago. We did a Masters together, had three children, and didn't have enough money or time, but it was always my plan to walk to Santiago - with Tere and my parents, perhaps even my children. I made plans, but only my father showed any real interest. I do believe he would have walked the Camino with me after my mother died. Perhaps he would have walked it alone. But then he died too, three months later.


Nearly four years on, I  lined up summer job options in different universities, finally deciding on Warwick, but I also applied on spec for a job in Saudi Arabia. I did so because my wife took voluntary redundancy and tuition fees are going up. We need the money. To my surprise they accepted me and so, thanks to the Saudis, I found I had a spare month.


I would do the Camino - 23 years after my last time in Santiago, in June 2011.