It’s been a quiet year in South Bridlington. Quieter than usual.
It opened solemnly. We remembered that The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong, that they come to fourscore years : yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone. Threescore years and eighteen weren’t too easy, either.
After all the funeral bake meats had been consumed, the immediate task in hand was to write up the Story of Her Life. Bits and pieces of information had trickled out over the years, but she had never tried to frame a coherent story. This did not matter so much, as she was an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile, and they all fell easily into place. I had always known, and now it was blindingly obvious, that I had admired her. Writing up the story was a joy and delight, and it ended up with an enormous sense of thankfulness.
When the tale had been told, Phil reminded me that “Now you can do all the things that you wanted to do but haven’t been able”
Not as easy as you might think, sunshine. Maybe go cycling longer distances a bit more, but I certainly wouldn’t want to revisit on my own any of the things we’d enjoyed doing together. Still, my old allotment was unoccupied and derelict, so I had a terrific challenge getting it back into shape. The most excellent BUSS team put a roof of sorts onto the derelict shed. Things can only get better.
Niece Susan had offered me a bed at their farm in N Devon. Just the job. I took my bike on the train and thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful 10 days in May in the warm sunshine getting lost cycling down to Totnes. There is a well-enough sign posted Sustrans route along the N Devon coast, and then down from Mid-Devon to Plymouth along a Brunel railway route. Over viaducts, through tunnels and all down hill. It could not be better. Well, not so well sign posted that it is impossible to get lost. Day after day.
And then I remembered. It is a long story, but way back in about the year 2000 I finally finished Thucydides’ account of The Athenian Disaster In Sicily which led to the slaughter of the Athenians and after a few years the end of Democracy in Athens – a system of government not tried again for another 2000 years or so. It is an exciting story, well told, with an immediate sense of the sadness of it all.
Judy did not enjoy going on holiday. She found the journeying uncomfortable, doors difficult to open, bedding unsuitable, and from childhood had kept getting ill on holiday. “When we retire, I’ll book an apartment in Sicily in the winter for 2 or 3 months. We will get away from the cold of winter, buy a bed and bedding to suit, change all the doors if we have to, and I’ll follow the route the Athenians took in 413 BC when they retreated to their destruction”. “And what will I do?” Ah, I hadn’t thought about that. But now it could be done. Best friend Andy helped me book an apartment from 8th October to 8th December. We searched for apartments in Syracuse, and I snapped one up. Then, slowly and painfully I re-read Thucydides’ closing episode of “The Peloponnesian War”.
All that was required was to go to Syracuse, inspect the harbour where the Athenian ships were trapped, march North when they marched North trying to escape, South and West when they abandoned going North, and collapse in a heap where they collapsed, slaughtered at a ford.
It might have been better if the apartment was actually in Syracuse. It was in Modica – a splendid town built on a mountain about 100 miles away. Still, it was at least in Sicily, very suitable and there was a train service to Syracuse. Modica, like many other towns in SE Sicily was destroyed by The Earthquake in 1693, and then rebuilt. It is architecturally remarkable. Apparently.
It should have been a warning that no-one in the Tourist Information in Syracuse had any maps of the journey. Nor are there any tourist companies who offer to give you a guided tour. That’s OK. I can go North as well as anyone, then South and West, and collapse unaccompanied.
Things are different now. Marshes have been drained, forests have been cut down and replaced by private estates, roads have been built, and rivers have become streams. Still, North is still North. Once you get there, though, you realise that the story as told is implausible. If you are organising an army of 40,000 men, you don’t go through the gaps in the mountains, but over the plains between them. What about South and West? It’s much the same story. Why go through the mountains when you can go through the plains?
However, I fought my passage through, and reached the raging river Asinaro. This is now a stream. It was the man in the Information Bureau at Noto near where the Athenians were supposed to have been defeated who gave the game away. “No one knows. It’s all a myth”.
Still, it was a terrific 2 months not finding what I was looking for in the sun. Phil came out for a week at the end of October. We talked. He did me a lot of good.
One of the really good surprises when I got back to Bridlington was that my allotment had carried on in my absence growing Brussels sprouts, cabbages, carrots, radishes, turnips, and all sorts else unattended. When the last man has been shriveled to death, the world will go on. It will include a lot of slugs, though.
December 12th 2019. Election day. I do not have many high expectations
jbrip 