by Eddie Rock
THE CAMINO
THE CAMINO
Copyright © 2018 by Peter Rochford
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ISBN:9780825308819
ebook ISBN: 9780825307690
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“HE WHO WOULD VALIANT BE”
He who would Valiant be, ’gainst all disaster
Let him in constancy follow the Master
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.
Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might, though he with giants fight.
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim
Since, Lord, thou dost defend us with thy spirit,
We know we at the end, shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say.
I’ll labour night and day to be a pilgrim.
—JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1684
I remember this hymn from Alkborough junior school, 1984.
—EDDIE ROCK
CONTENTS
Definitions
Introduction
Christmas Day 1996
Apocalypse No
Scunthorpe
Amsterdam
To Be a Pilgrim
Roncesvalles to Larrasoaña
Larrasoaña
Larrasoaña to Pamplona
Pamplona to Puente la Reina
Puente la Reina to Estella
Estella to Torres del Río
Torres del Río to Logroño
Logroño to Nájera
Nájera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada
Santo Domingo de la Calzada to Belorado
Belorado to San Juan de Ortega
San Juan de Ortega to Burgos
Burgos to Hontanas
Hontanas to Castrojeriz
Castrojeriz to Frómista
Frómista to Calzadilla de la Cueza
Calzadilla de la Cueza to El Burgo Ranero
El Burgo Ranero to Mansilla de las Mulas
Mansilla de las Mulas to León
León to Hospital de Órbigo
Hospital de Órbigo to El Ganso
El Ganso to El Acebo
El Acebo to Ponferrada
Ponferrada to Villafranca del Bierzo
Rest, Recuperation, and Steve Irwin
Villafranca del Bierzo to Ruitelán
The Roman Catholic Church Guide to Miraculous Healings
Ruitelán to Triacastela
Triacastela to Portomarín
Portomarín to Palas de Rei
Palas de Rei to Santiago de Compostela
The Field of Stars
What Eddie Did Next
References
Acknowledgments
DEFINITIONS
sin
To sin against the church or family, to do wrong, commit a crime, misbehave, transgress, go astray, to fall from grace.
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS:
Pride
Covetousness
Lust
Envy
Greed
Anger
Sloth
“Let he who is without sin throw the first stone.”
—THE BOOK OF JOHN, CHAPTER EIGHT
Craic
an Irish term for having fun
INTRODUCTION
SUZIE
“HER EYES THEY SHONE LIKE DIAMONDS. I thought her the queen of the land. And her hair hung over her shoulders tied up with a black velvet band.”
Well, that’s Suzie, almost. . . .
The musicians play on with the traditional old classic, and I sink deeper into the frolicking blue eyes of the mysterious blonde hippie girl sitting beside me. Her happy face sparkles as she giggles naughtily at my tales of global misadventure, and now seems like a good time to introduce Suzie to a very good friend of mine—a special friend who had traveled back from Amsterdam with me (in my boot).
“Mr. Jack Herer?”
As we walk out through the smoky bar to meet Jack, I can’t help but notice Suzie’s fine physique. Her figure is perfect as far as I can tell—slim and shapely in all the right places, and when she walks, she takes very long strides, giving her a panther-like step.
“So, where’s this Jack friend of yours?” she asks.
“He’s just arrived,” I say, laughing, then pull a large joint from my pocket. “Ladies before gentlemen,” I add, handing her the reefer.
Our hands touch for the first time, releasing a spark of sexual energy that bounces around my body, arousing the basest of intentions.
In the darkness her pretty face glows as she takes a hit, with smoke billowing from her sexy lips into the warm summer night.
“Wow, holy Jeysus.” She laughs. “My head’s fecking spinning!”
“No—holy Jack Herer, three-time Cannabis Cup winner,” I tell her.
“It’s similar to the grass we smoked in Spain last year,” she says. “You ever heard of the Camino de Santiago?”
“No, I never smoked it!”
“Nooo, you fecking eejit. It’s an old pilgrimage route through Spain. I walked it last year with my three girlfriends, Marie, Siobhan, and Clare. Great craic we had every day and plenty of smoke.”
As Jack Herer begins to take us on his journey, Suzie begins to take me on hers. I sit back and listen intently as her gorgeous Irish accent spirits me up and away on her fun-filled journey through Spain.
Her happy hippie tale starts in the French Pyrenees and ends five hundred miles later on the Atlantic coast. It sounds like a fantastic adventure, and in my Herered haze I see myself on the trail, becoming one with nature, surrounded by a posse of sexy hippie girls while sleeping out under the stars and having little parties around the campfire, leaving the rat race far behind.
The more I smoke the better it all sounds, and I particularly like the parts of the story where the girls got naked, drunk, or stoned and often all three at the same time.
An alternative hippie holiday, just the job for a tortured soul like me.
“Suzie, I’m sold. How do I get there?”
“Hang on,” she says. “When you finish the pilgrimage at the cathedral in Santiago, you put your hand inside a handy hand-shaped hole in a magic pillar worn away by millions of pilgrims’ hands and all your worldly sins are forgiven.”
“What, all of them?”
“Yeah, all of them,” she says.
“What, by putting your hand in a handy hole-shaped handhole?”
“Yeah.” She laughs. “And when you get to the sea you burn all of your clothes on the beach, get naked, and party like it’s 1999!”
“Wow, I wish I’d been at that one,” I tell her.
“Jesus, you should go. It would do you a world of good,” she says, smoking the last of the joint.
The moon appears from behind the clouds, and a million tiny sparkles illuminate the darkness.
“
We’re all made of stars, you know,” she says, staring into the night sky longingly.
“Fancy another pint then?” I ask her.
“Jesus. Why not? Sure, we’re all sinners after all.” She laughs, leading me back inside the swaying pub to the tune of “The Wild Rover.”
* * * *
I wake at the next lunchtime seeing stars, with an epic hangover raging through my shrunken brain. Flashbacks of the previous night keep coming in waves and bounds like some kind of Irish Quentin Tarantino movie with plenty of Pulp Fiction and Jack Herer thrown in for good measure. I reach for my Guinness-soaked cigarettes and spy some drunken scribble on the packet. I vaguely remember Suzie writing it—something about some hippie book or something that I should read by some Brazilian guru, but I can hardly make out the words. . . .
Pablo Coolio . . . ? Surely not?
Sounds more like a gangster than a guru.
CHRISTMAS DAY 1996
THE ZOO
QUESTION: WHY ARE PIRATES CALLED PIRATES?
IT’S MINUS FFFECKING FORTY-FFFECKING-SEVEN! The flashing sign outside the hotel says so and the carrion crow on the nearby lamppost squawks a dark reminder of fate, should your luck run out in this arctic wilderness. Two weeks I’ve been here waiting to get a job on the oilfield, and every day I’ve trudged to the office, freezing my pips off, and they tell me the same thing: “Come back tomorrow.” I mustn’t grumble, but it’s no wonder they nickname this place “the Zoo.” I’ve met some real animals so far, such as the cocaine-injecting ice truckers, the First Nations Elvis impersonators, and last but not least a bunch of landlocked pirates from Newfoundland. The Newfies, as they are fondly known, all talk like salty sea dogs and introduce themselves in medieval voices, saying, “I be Ron Flynn” and “I be from Newfoundland.” They all say “Arrr” a lot, drink a lot, and smoke a lot of weed. But they are a good craic and sound fellas, even the one with no teeth who wears his Wellingtons in the disco.
Apart from all that, being here is no joke, as most days I’ve been confined to my room. Hibernating like a grizzly bear and achieving a monumental thirty-two-hour snooze marathon, missing a whole day of my life. In my hours of infinite boredom I’ve been learning to play an antique harmonica, kindly given to me by a drunken Father Christmas impersonator in a biker bar. But after a week I’ve totally given up due to the mesmerizing effects of BC bud, British Columbia’s finest marijuana. . . . As I head down to the bar, the unmistakable green smog of BC comes from under every door in almost every room, with it the familiar clink of beer bottles, pirates’ laughter, and Beavis and Butt-Head on MTV. One of the drunken pirates walks out of his room wearing only women’s underwear and a trucker’s cap perched on top of his head.
He sees me and leaps back into the room, screaming like a girl, and pirate laughter echoes down the corridor.
“Haargh haargh haargh, me hearties.” They all laugh.
“She won’t want them for Christmas now, boy,” cackles Long John.
“Aaargh, Jim lad,” says Redbeard.
“They be soiled goods now,” laughs Blackbeard.
As I walk past their door, they all wail and shout at me to join them in their little world of pirate lunacy, but I make my excuses and hit the bar.
One hundred dollars left and I lose forty-five of it on the poker machine while praying for a gambling miracle to get me out of this arctic nightmare.
So homesick and depressed, I retire back to my dingy room with a big bag of BC and a crate of beer from the bar.
The Christmas television is a total joke. Bruce Springsteen got that right. “Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.” Nothing at all to give you the slightest inkling that it’s Christmas day on this frozen planet.
After a few puffs of the legendary BC, I’m welded to the mattress, unable to move anything except for my eyes and the remote control. I can’t believe American television is such fucking garbage. It’s no wonder some of them get so fat and fucked up and go around shooting each other. Maybe if they had better television they would stay indoors and behave. Who knows?
“Next on Discovery, Ancient Prophecies. A two-hour Apocalypse Christmas special with your host, David McCallum.”
“No fucking way!” I press the remote like a madman.
Anything remotely festive will do—a nice old movie perhaps, or Christmas Top of the Pops. Christmas carols, Santa, reindeer—anything! But after another fifty-seven flicks on the remote and eleven pulls on the joint, I’m back with McCallum, Nostradamus, and Old Mother Shipton.
“Jesus Christ! Doom, doom, fucking doom, for fuck’s sake.”
I chance yet another quick flick through fifty-seven channels of adverts and bullshit and back to where I started.
“Nice one. Apocalypse it is then.”
So I smoke my way to oblivion as the BC kicks in a gear and David takes us back through time, with his monotone haunting voice creating the perfect chilling atmosphere for total world destruction.
We begin in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the apple and then move on to Noah’s Ark, the Great Flood, and how this could all happen again quite soon.
“Great!”
Next we travel to ancient Egypt for a lesson in pyramid alignment, then a short trip to ancient Israel to read the Dead Sea Scrolls as I smoke more and watch with fear and fascination. Then David reads passages from the book of Revelations, writing down the number of the beast, 666, on a blackboard in the studio, and as we come to the end of the show, he adds up all the dates and numbers and then multiplies them with some Egyptian hieroglyphics and calmly announces that the world’s gonna end on New Year’s Day 2002!
“Fan-fucking-tastic!” Apocalypse just around the corner and here I am in Grimshaw, Alberta, freezing me tits off.
I should be in Ibiza or somewhere, surrounded by scantily clad party girls instead of scantily clad pirates high on cocaine. . . . There’s a knock at the door. It’s Fat Luke, one of the young pirates.
“Did you know the world is going to end in 2002?” I ask him as he comes in and slumps down on the bed next to me, a little too close for comfort. He shrugs his opinion and flicks the remote to the music video channel. As Kiss take to the stage at Donington Rock Festival 1994, Luke starts talking about his girlfriend back in Newfoundland and the numerous unsavory and probably illegal sex acts he performs with her. I cringe in disgust as he laughs with a mouth like a burned-out fuse box, and I wonder how the fuck someone like him can possibly have a girlfriend. But then again I’ve seen a bearded abominable snowwoman on a bus in Winnipeg , so it’s quite possible. He then starts asking me about my own sexual history, so I quickly change the subject back to heavy metal and pass him the joint as he plays air guitar from the edge of my bed. He’s headbanging and frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, spewing question after question after question. Do I like Slayer, do I like Metallica, Anthrax, and AC/DC?
“Yes, yes, yes,” I keep saying.
Now Beavis and Butt-Head are on the screen and he’s doing really bad impressions of them while theatrically smoking my joint, then handing it back all bum sucked from his dribbling mouth!
Why me, Lord? I think to myself. Why me?
I wish he would fuck off and die or leave me alone at least, but it is Christmas after all, so maybe I should try to get into the spirit of things—goodwill to all men and all that bollocks!
“So who’s your favorite band than, Luke?” I smile, passing him a beer.
“Anything Satanic.” He grins, flicking his tongue between his fingers like Gene Simmons on the telly.
“OK then.”
We clink bottles and pull a Christmas cracker.
Luke gets the yellow paper hat, which he puts on his head, making him look even more foolish, and I get the plastic whistle and read out the crap Xmas joke.
So why are pirates called pirates?
Because they arrrrrrr!
APOCALYPSE NO
WHAT BETTER PLACE TO be on the eve of destruction than back
in the Dutch debauchery capital, Amsterdam. I’ve been partying hard for three weeks now and am still going strong as we build up to the grand finale.
Where’s David McCallum? I laugh to myself. He’s probably in a reinforced concrete bunker with a big bag of super skunk, stuffing his fat face with popcorn, watching Sky News and waiting.
Last week I had a dream that the Day of Judgment was upon us and the streets of Amsterdam were ablaze, with its famous buildings crumbling into the Damrak. So I took this as a sure sign of impending doom. So with this in mind I sold my car, my bike, and all my joinery tools. Thus giving me plenty of spending money for my final days on planet earth. To ease my transition to the afterlife I have heavily increased my usual intake of powder, pill, and potion in readiness for the final curtain and my descent into hell.
As midnight approaches, I imagine the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on the piss around Amsterdam’s red light district with their satanic steeds, high on ketamine and laying waste to this modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.
Stupidly enough, the last memory I have of any sort of destruction is that of a heavily tattooed biker chick shoving a sour-tasting tablet into my mouth, washed down with two large shots of absinthe.
* * * *
I always imagined hell to be a hot place for some reason, but I mysteriously find myself frozen to a wooden bench next to the duck pond in Vondelpark, clutching a snorkel tube and wearing a pair of 3-D glasses. What the fuck happened? I check my phone: thirty-two missed calls, fifteen messages, Jan. 02, 2003. McCallum got it wrong.
* * * *
A tram bell rings loudly as a barge passes slowly down the old canal, and I make my way home with an epic hangover but very much alive as another winter’s day in Holland enfolds. I stop by the old café for a few well-needed hair of the drowned dog lagers and spot McCallum on the large plasma screen wearing a robe and sandals in some kind of Bible film. “Godverdommer,” I swear in Dutch. Even with the bad German dubbing, I still get the gist of the story. He’s Judas. The betrayer. Paid thirty pieces of silver for betraying poor-old Jesus and betraying me for that matter with his apocalyptic fucking bullshit.
I can’t help but watch as he throws the coins into the fire and dives in after them. Big Ronald the barman, shakes his head, cursing, and switches quickly over to the Embassy World Darts at Frimley Green. As Raymond van Barneveld scores a 180, the crowd goes wild and I smile to myself, looking forward to a whole new lease on life.