Time to squeeze lemons

Monastery at Oseira

This week saw the announcement that my home city of Glasgow still tops the list for having the highest death rate in the UK. As if that wasn't enough to cheer me up I looked out of the window at the rain clouds hovering over Santiago. I was also conscious that it was my birthday. Another birthday. Shhhhhh.  I knew it was coming and in reflective mood I've been re-reading some of Graham Greene's novels. The novels of my youth. Greene was very much in my mind when I visited the Monastery at Oseira during the later stages of my last camino. I found the place full of peace and exquisite beauty. So too did Graham Greene and he visited there regularly for many years. As I walked around the cloisters I remembered the effect his work had on me when I was younger. His great insights into the human condition. In his novel the Power and Glory he explores the frailty of an alcoholic priest and in doing so exposes the weaknesses of humanity and the institutions we build. Recently I've enjoyed again Greene's 'Stanboul Train'. This is the opus which established him as a great author. It concerns the struggle within us all, our ambivalence, between being realistic and being romantic. I remembered that Graham Greene lived until he was 87. The probability is he would have died 16 years earlier had he lived in Glasgow.

With these morbid thoughts in my mind I decided it was best to forget my birthday. Who wants to celebrate getting older? My friends however had other ideas and I couldn't refuse their invitation to dine at one of my favourite restaurants. It is called O Dezaseis (which means 16. The street number where it is located) and you won't find better Galician cooking anywhere, all served up in the loveliest of rustic surroundings - and the Menu of the Day is still only 12 euros. During the meal I had to put up with a battery of questions like, "What did you do during the Second World War? and "What was the Camino Frances like in 1958? I was more than compensated for the teasing by the excellent bottles of Godello, the type of regional white wine I prefer, followed by a rich deep red Mencia for the second course. By the end I had inevitably warmed to the whole birthday thing and although I was contemplating bed I was easily persuaded by the gang's late night plan.

Vaova Cocktail Bar, Santiago

Santiago it seems is changing and now boasts two cocktail bars which specialise in gin based cocktails. The bars wouldn't look out of place in London or Manhattan. Off we went into a land of ice cold glasses, cocktail shakers, 100 flavours of gin and the glamorous people of Santiago. Of course there wasn't a pilgrim in sight. This is another Santiago. Was it good? Well I enjoyed myself and it was a great laugh but frankly an oversized and overpriced glass with gin, tonic, a slice of cucumber, a vanilla pod and a rose petal isn't quite what the boy from Glasgow feels most comfortable with.

The next day naturally became a day of rest and recuperation. I was secretly pleased when I got messages from the younger people in the gang who appeared to be suffering more than me. Put it down to experience...or just getting older. Because you know it has its compensations. I find some of the changes a challenge. I am moving at a different pace now from the striving of my previous life. The keep-all-of-the-plates-spinning-at-the-same-time life. But I feel I am getting there. And of course a night on the tiles with the gang shows me that I can still do it. But I need that less and less. Other things are becoming important. Poets can express this much better them me. Take "A Poetic State" by Czeslaw Milosz:

"Things once difficult are easy but I feel no strong need to communicate them in writing. Now I am in good health, where before I was sick because time galloped and I was tortured by fear of what would happen next. Every minute the spectacle of the world astonishes me: it is so comic that I cannot understand how literature could expect to cope with it. Sensing every minute, in my flesh, by my touch, I tame misfortune and do not ask God to avert it, for why should he avert it from me if does not avert it from others?...I was impatient and easily irritated by the time lost on trifles among which I ranked cleaning and cooking. Now, attentively, I cut onions, squeeze lemons and prepare various kinds of sauces."