camino | davedawsonhaswaytoomuchtimeonhishands

Cognoscenti of 70s Rock music may recognise that title as it’s a Jethro Tull song and, although Head Honcho of the band Ian Anderson is now 78 he’s evidently still going. They’re a folk influenced Rock Band I did see once before they were too old to Rock and Roll but Loveliwife and I are going to see them on Saturday to see how the years have treated them.

Some bits of their music are more Folk than Rock but they once supported Led Zeppelin who were just straightforward Heavy Rock and, whilst Jethro Tull had some good guitar to maintain Rock credibility they also did ‘Songs from the Wood’ and Andersen played flute in a folky kind of way, while standing on one leg. These had very little cred with Zeppelin who thought they were a bit crap and just got in the way of their pursuit of high image and rock ideals.

Got in the way of the queues of swooning 70s ladyfans back then too I imagine.

As I may have mentioned, I had a Fender Stratocaster guitar which is the Go To instrument for many teenage bedroom guitarists who want to be in band one day. I have MS now that has knackereed up my hand movements so I gave it away to my trans niece. All this has the double advantage of making me seem a super benevolent uncle and also that I can claim I was once a brilliant guitarist without ever being asked to prove it.

Another age point, despite being 59, retired and having MS for 35 years, I have just completed the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago from TUI in Portugal to Santiago de Compostela in Spain

Took lots of pictures held on the Polar Steps app but a few here too, inc start/finish point with friend Bob, who walked with me in what must have felt a ridiculously slow pace to him, Still did 120km to get this official certificate which you should all applaud.

The Davidem name on here sounds like just a bit of fake Latin but seems it’s a real tense (the accusative) of the name David. I’ve taken to using Davem as my preferred name in general in fact.- gives me formal Latin credibility with just a casual hint of fading rock guitarist

Nice touch there I thought

I tripped and fell over dozens of times on the route, but I’m quite used to all that and it all just adds to the heroic nature of it. You meet some great and fascinating people on the Camino, many of whom rushed to catch me as I was falling or to help me up if I already had.

Just to re-iterate, MS for 35 years, so, if you comment do be sure to include phrases like heroic achievement, astonishing feat and so.

Do steer clear of very good considering, surprising for his age etc

I expect Ian Anderson to be surprising for his age – I, conversely am superhuman for my age.

There, I think we’re all clear on that now

Thanks

Davem

As ever with updates to this, me bothering to write anything coincides with getting the annual fee for the davedawsonhaswaytoomuchtimeonhishands.com domain name registration which, although cheap and useless to anyone else, I can’t bring myself to risk losing.

More significantly though, I retired late last year, partly as I’m nearly 60 and partly as my MS was making working all a bit of a bother really. Whether anyone reads it or not, I find writing this stuff strangely entertaining though and, although the original reason for the ..toomuchtimeonhishands thing is lost in the mists of time, I do now genuinely have time on my hands so may resurrect the whole thing.

In that vein, latest news is that my co-stroller Bob and I will be ambling along a chunk of the Camino de Santiago starting next week. The Camino was a religious pilgrimage of sorts as one of the apostles was supposedly buried near the Cathedral there. The body of Richard III was found in a car park somewhere in the UK, so there is precedent for St James to be in the NCP by Santiago Cathedral I suppose.

What seems unlikely is that someone moved a body all the way from Jerusalem to Northern Spain a few thousand years ago. I’m of the live and let live school of atheism personally and deliriously happy for people to believe in whichever God/Gods they fancy though.

Having said that, Pete Hegseth of late seems to be quoting lines from Pulp Fiction as a homage to his own religious f’wittery. He can just stop all that as far as I’m concerned. Of course, he’s far too busy slaughtering people right now and his boss, the orange halfwit in chief doesn’t spend a fat lot of time reading at the best of times.

The whole history of relocating an apostle’s body tradition sounds made up to me. It does make for a nice tradition now of people walking from start points in various bits of Europe to have their aching muscles and blisters generally bettered by the will of God. We’re doing a subset of the Camino Portugues from Porto to Santiago de Compostela. Will probably only do a bit over a 100km of that, as somewhere in the 10-20km range per day, I start falling over and/or seem to mimic the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks sketch. Looks all a bit disrespectful to people doing as a real pilgrimage I imagine.

in any case, I’m expecting enlightenment of some kind to happen during the walk. I’ll report back on enlightenment stages during the walk, although not really sure what the units of that are – it can’t just be a binary switch from gloom to seeing the light I would have thought. Other religious folk on here know more about all that though.

There is a temporary state called purgatory in the Catholic Church I believe that’s just a kind of waiting room for people who’ve behaved pretty shabbily but still good enough to just evade Hell in the long term. My start point must surely be well above purgatory.

I’m maybe more at good natured non-contributor stage – in the kind of half light before any proper enlightening.

Too Old to Rock&Roll But Too Young to Die

Retirement & Camino de Santiago News