Is the twenty-year-old Volvo up to the two thousand five hundred kilometres from there to here? "I don't see why not," Stuart said. Stuart is Welsh. I should better have questioned the condition of the driver.

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Is the twenty-year-old Volvo up to the two thousand five hundred kilometres from there to here?

“I don’t see why not,” Stuart said. Stuart is Welsh.

I should better have questioned the condition of the driver.

• - •

I have to be up at five next morning for my flight to England. So I need an early night. My two visitors do not arrive until after nine. Perhaps I should mention that after they arrive and settle themselves, they tell me they both have flu. No, there is no especial reason for their visit.

Sunday, Dec 21st. 2008

Next day at the airport I tap away* my terror of flight, and am then sufficiently relaxed during the flight to doze and enjoy the view. Northern Spain is white with snow. I will have to return through that. I am still interested enough to watch the pilot saw his way down through the last few hundred feet to arrive weightily at Stansted.

Then march march march until I can find the way out and the bus to Liverpool Street and Paddington. Then train to Wales, to Bridgend, then bus to Swansea. In front on the bus, an enormous Pretani, an original pre-Celt, arises like the side of a hill and shifts forward to speak to another, who has already spoken to the driver. He goes forward to the driver and returns. Clearly his face shows that the little martinet is going to have his way. The lock-foward settles himself back, massive, patient, enduring.

In Swansea a fine cheerless rain blows from dark to dark across the platforms. After much phoning into the Welsh night from there, still no contact with Stuart, from whom I have bought the car. So on I go.

Carmarthen is a little country town in the wet Welsh night. I carry my bag around in the fine wet until a sign indicates “hotels” and a centre of some sort. A narrow entrance between old shops leads to the hotel car-park and a modest entrance. The curious receptionist I surprise at her crossword charges me 46 GBP for B & B. I try my number again from her mobile and this time reach Stuart’s wife, who will have him call me. The call will come through to my room.

Stuart will bring the car at 10-ish tomorrow. Super. Goodnight.

So next morning I am in wet Carmarthen High Street, awaiting sight of a black borzoi nose held low. I return to the hotel at 10.15, to be told he will arrive at 10.30. I am therefore still waiting at 11.30, but now at the real front of the hotel on a parallel street, when I am hailed by a young chap – Stuart, who has just parked in the public car-park.

It seems pointless to tell him I have not driven for thirty years, particularly as I will be on his insurance until I can effect my own. After all, who am I to burden his Christmas with worries? What the mind doesn’t know . . .

So I tentatively try a gear or two in the car-park, before leaving him on his mobile, and I head into the traffic flow. The first leg is simply of a hundred and fifty miles to my sister’s house for Christmas. On the road the car flows along, reminiscent of the past, but all drivers drive faster now, and are quicker.

Wells is a one-way maze, and it takes half an hour before I can park in front of the garage. She is at home. I am to try her patience, which has strengths beyond her or my knowledge. I occupy a corner of her massive settee and begin to feel unwell. I have not told her before that I have cancer, but she accepts the fact with refreshing absence of exasperation. Our elder brother has had his larynx removed three days ago, but that is in ‘medical hands’. Since last July I am curing my own, and am currently translating a book** on how to deny the grasping ‘cancer industry’ of Big Pharma that controls general medicine. Besides, the curse of Spanish courtesy is about to inflict itself upon us both.

My diet is restricted to bread and apples, and just the veg. of the Christmas festivities. Sorry, that’s cancer. I marvel at her patience. But now this most immediate infliction is not cancer. This is flu.

Flu

My particular reaction to flu is weakness bordering paralysis. I know what it is to be old. I was old in my mid-thirties, again at forty. I am now seventy-three, and two or three times a week walk a five-mile return to shop for six or eight kilos. Now, after three days of flu, I am old again, and when I try the key in the ignition the mechanism coughs once, then sighs, and sighs, and sighs, and sighs. Curses, duff battery!

Finally I stagger unsteadily to buy a new battery at Halfords – 90 GBP, plus spanner to fit it. I suppose it weighs fifteen kilos, so I am staggering slowly back.

“Making heavy weather of it – Can I help you?” – from a pleasant young local lad. How refreshing to see the old natural instinct still there. But I am used to struggling. It is being alive, and it is good for you, so I thank him, wish him a Happy Christmas, and stagger on in the cold.

A couple of corners farther on, thirty yards from home, attempting to put down the battery to change hands, I trip over the descending battery and execute a graceless face-dive into the rough tarmac pavement. As face meets surface, I reflect that so-suddenly do all our prospects change. I have little idea.

Woops!

Various hands pick me up and hold me up. My cheap glasses have mostly saved my face, but the backs of my fingers are a bloody mess. I wrap my handkerchief round the worst of my left paw to staunch the bleeding. Two men support this old cripple to the car in front of the garage where I am sufficiently recovered to thank them and see them on their way after one is kind enough to open the bonnet catch, as I am still weak almost to paralysis.

Fine, I can take off the old connections, but the battery is still held down by a screw – down there, in between, and out of reach. But then a nice young woman returns to insist I go inside for hot sweet tea, for shock, she says. OK, sure. I know I have also broken the tip of my left thumb, but in my experience there are some things better kept to yourself. So she delivers me to my sister, in person, and they tut. Girls do.

There follow two or three days of quiet misery as I heal somewhat. It is noticeable that the TV station my sister watches – perhaps all of them – emits not one word of decent English, everything being in one dialect or another, and in dialect expressions of uniform petty-mindedness, so that my mind, and presumably those of others, echoes them in dialect of uniform petty-mindedness rather than in reasonable language and attitude. 'Our' media. Clever.

My diet is restricted, with the end of a de-tox still in train. From the flu I still have a dry cough that persists and annoys. But the worst of the bruising inside my hands seems to be subsiding, and plasters cover most of the rest of the damage. So, I patiently persuade the battery retaining screw with a wrench until it submits to reason, and swap the batteries. The motor starts instantly, eager to go. So then, finally, fill up with fuel and a last round of shopping – Mainly loose tea and Marmite – How I would love a pork pie and HP sauce, but I can’t. Then a cup of tea, goodbyes, and off for Dover.

Departure: Sunday, Dec 28th, early evening.

I have to go via London to Dover, but then on the ferry, Bob’s your Uncle. My plan is to land in France at dawn, tootle down through France in a day, then slide across Spain in another. Simple.

And it would be simple, but France is not like that. So, after involuntarily exploring the North coast before sheering away, I am somewhere around Alencon, where I park to await daylight to fill up with petrol. 22º F, and all frosty white. I limp stiffly, still weak from flu.

Monday

At dawn a young man in his late twenties in a parked van, blond, bony, intelligent, in some kind of shooting uniform, will be pleased to lead me. And he does, around the pretty village to the local garage, then courteously drops in a strong hand to wish me a pleasant bon voyage.

Many villages here are thus pretty, beyond accident or tradition. These are of design. At ten-ish I am at just such another. But I have to be on my way.

I still do not understand. In other countries we can draw a line on a map and go. But this is France, and in France you cannot just go from A to B. You are in a web of roads, and the roads have been built like this.

Each road you go down will meet another traffic island within a kilometre or two, and so you will go from one island to another, with the names appearing and reappearing until you are going crazy. I sometimes delude myself by thinking I am passably bright. The evidence to the contrary in this situation should have become blindingly obvious. But then I’m occasionally quite remarkably stupid, as I now see.

Therefore all this day I am going towards town after town when they disappear from the signposts and I am going round and round an area centred more or less around Tours. I am parched since yesterday’s cup of tea. All I have eaten all day is a small apple for its juice, and the apple is evident deep in my tripes. My mind is echoing stupid dialect again, on and on in mindless banality.

Therefore at darkness I need a hotel. I imagine I can do with fuel, though the gauge is blank all day. I can find no hotel. But there is a notice – “Equitation School has rooms”. So I follow the signs, out of the village for three kms. up around winding tracks to a muddy car-park.

In the welcome warmth and light my hopes are dashed. A girl tells me in an Irish accent they have no rooms. – Then where . . .? She doesn’t know. I stagger back to the car, and switch on, when – horror – the fuel gauge, blank all day, now lights up clearly to show a single bar, and prospect nil.

I can back out and run down the hill, but I have hardly reached a kilometre down the road when the motor coughs into silence and I have to run off the road. It is dry.

Nightmare

I get out and stand in the dark silence. Above there are clouds and some stars. I am three kms. from a village where I have found neither hotel nor garage. And now my tripes and the end of de-tox are demanding my attention, surging.

There is nothing for it. I grab a handful of tissues and head for the wood on the other side of the road. It is deep grass and brambles. As it happens, my surging bowels are unable to desecrate France, and most fortunately so, as I immediately then fall full length on to the intended site. Then, tangled in grass and brambles I fall forwards into it. I am seventy three years old and should be engaged in more constructive things. My laughter is of a bony nature as I pick my way out and return to the car. And what’s the betting that I have lost the – No, the keys are still in my pocket. – But my wallet has gone from the other pocket, with credit-cards, passport, money . . .

I head numbly back in the darkness towards where I was, and at that moment a car comes up the hill and passes. I can see nothing in the darkness. The car has stopped. A man calls. I cannot speak French, even if I could recall au secours. He comes back, a big man in his mid-thirties.

Miracles

I need light, a torch. He has it in his pocket. He shines it. There is my wallet, open. Face down in the deep grass. I collect it.

I need a hotel. I need petrol, petroleum, gasoline, fuel. He checks my car. Out of fuel. He switches on the flashers and indicates me into his car, turns, and we whirl back into the village. He goes to a garage. Sorry, she is closed. We visit four other garages, all closed. Finally he visits a garage and car-rescue place. He enters and returns smiling. Yes, he is a big chap, farmer perhaps, and he introduces me to the rescue man, who will now help me.

I thank him profusely, and he is on his way. Thank God for such Christians.

The rescue man is a small, powerful dynamo. Erect and dramatic as any Berlioz, he bounces from here to there. He brings out his truck. We roar out to where my car is blinking in the dark. He tilts and winds down the tail of the van platform, bounces hither and thither to attach his chains, winches up my helpless vehicle, and we roar back to his sheds. He sends his cheery young helper for fuel. I pay him – 120 €. 20€ is for the fuel. He phones for a hotel. That is arranged. I am so very grateful.

Mentally I am very relieved, but my urgency is still upon me. Is there a toilet I can use? As I perch there the thought comes to me that sometimes there is no greater act of kindness that one person can do another in need than to lend the use of his toilet.

A couple of explosions, and the drama is over. If only, perhaps by such catharsis of ill-will, greed and ambition could be eliminated and wars could so easily be defused. Then, sanity restored, I can thank mine host and regulator of worlds in madness, and I can follow – slowly – his cheery assistant’s van to where a slim girl waits in a lighted hotel doorway.

As I prepare to crash out, my legs muscles are jerking uncontrollably. I suppose it is fatigue. Ferry apart, I have been at the wheel for thirty hours.

Tuesday

Breakfast is of bread, croissant, butter, marmalade, cherry jam and tea, and I am reborn to the innocence of its delight and purged of yesterday’s darkness. The slim girl is now also energetically greeting visitors to the bar and supplying their needs. Clearly the bar is a centre of the community. Clients come and go for breakfast or simply to meet and talk. There is a great monastery across the public square. France is impressive.

But this is where I was yesterday at 10 a.m., and I am still here. I have to pass through Limoges. I fetch my map from the car. I list my destinations. I see that to reach Limoges I must first pass through Montmorillon.

At noon I am looking for a way out of the village, and finally espy the sign for Montmorillon, and am on my way. Ten minutes later Montmorillon has also disappeared and the signs are suggesting Le Blanc. I park and scrutinise the map. I want to go south and ignore the signs, so I go to Le Blanc to fill up with petrol.

The garage proprietor is a massive man, a grandfather I imagine, vast but not fat. He probably could not fit in my car, and he kindly and thoughtfully fills my tank – 46€. A smaller man greets him and they exchange kisses, two each side, then repeated – cousins perhaps. They have wine. I imagine their cold roast wild boar pork with cold white wine; it builds enormous men of kindness and civility, and probably the logic and philosophy of legend: “Mais oui, mon cher Armond, but if such progress is so beneficial for all, then why not? Ça va, non?”

As I write, that was the day before yesterday. I am enormously impressed by the French.

Then I head towards the sun. I want Limoges, with Toulouse beyond. The sign says 197kms. to Limoges. Very well.

The road shines ahead, down and down until it crosses a brow, then rises shining beyond between woods until it reaches the skyline. When you reach that, the landscape repeats it. Then there is a slight change of angle and you do it again, and again. France is vast, and it is elegant. Single lines of trees of perfect symmetry stretch from here across there to there, and there to there, perfect, with, hardly visible, here and there a tasteful chateau. I am enormously impressed by the French and also by France. Where there are fence-posts they are made, uniform, perfect. Perhaps they are even monogrammed, a discreet ‘R’, with a crest, for the amusement of friends. You see, I recognise Nature and I recognise design. Nature has its own random design, and it is nowhere visible here.

The vast cathedral on the hill passing on my right is really a store. For what? – For agricultural produce. But it is immense, designed, in stone. Yes, it would be.

Immense fields without sign of humanity produce . . . what? As I drive I become aware of the levers and rods and gears of my machine that impel and change its course and control its and my position. We never think of these things, but they are there, all the time. And I recognise the signs. Whether maize, wheat, soya, sunflower seed – does not matter. You see, I know about the levers and gears and the controlling rods, and I know that here it is a discreet nod or whisper, nothing more. The landscape itself here has obeyed the influence of a human whim. You see, over a couple of centuries forty to sixty quadrillion carries a lot of influence. That’s right.

I know the name of the person for whom all these people work, even though they themselves probably have never heard of it.

For the reason of my knowledge I can tell you that the present ‘crisis as bad as ’29 ’, has hardly started yet. I have warned for years what is to happen, and nobody believed me then. They do now.

Well, there is now to come the US credit card debt impact of 58 trillion. Just as designed. Then there is the Paulson Goldman Sachs manufactured quadrillion of derivatives trash, with Standard and Poors’ acceptance of the 300 m. bribe to regrade the trashy sub-prime instruments to ‘AAA instruments insured by AIG’ which all ‘our’ banks have then accordingly bought. There is only 400 trillion in circulation, so they will have to print the balance to save ‘our’ banks. And who will pay? We will, the sheep, in inflation and future debt, for the banks to have our money to lend to us at interest or dispossess us if we cannot repay them what is really ‘our’ money anyway – Sure. Just as has been designed and fabricated. Result, servitude. That’s finance. As intended. But then, you see, that is the true swindle of the very existence of finance, of which people know nothing and are carefully kept in ignorance.

But none of this happened by accident. Paulson would never dare, off his own bat. Oh, no, he was under orders. From whom? From the owners of Goldman Sachs and the Fed and all our ‘Central Banks’, and the influence of their 40 – 60 quadrillion, the same evidence of which I see before me here. With their control of ‘law’ that permits them and their servants to do it to the rest of us. Because, you see, they create and pay 'our leaders' to permit them . . . "Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes its laws."

No, we really have to review and replace the schemes of 'our leadership' and the scheming of those who manipulate it so much to their interest and so much against that of the rest of us. 

So anyway, onward. Two hours to Limoges, and Toulouse 300 kms. beyond until, turning west, the sky hangs curtains of crimson in the dusk. And then even San Sebastian showing on the motorway menu if you can only stay in lane! That is almost home! But, venture or stray, and you are lost again.

And then, in passing through San Sebastian, with Bilbao and even Burgos in the offing – disaster! – the fuel gauge suddenly shines, showing only two bars, so that I have to pull off and look for a filling station.

City Life

At the far end of town I find one, but already closed half an hour ago. But the Christian man puts in 20€ - I hope. The hotel he indicates is closed. Another, at the end of a kilometre walk with bag, will reopen on Jan 2nd. On the way back I pass a car with its doors open, a hop-head at the door. A shadow follows mine. I turn to see hop-head at my shoulder with the face of a predatory beast. I look at him seriously, a hand out to ward him off, and he mutters that he is trying to find his daughter, and I go on. I return to the car, thinking that perhaps I can sleep in it, but a car circles up, youths looking for the loot they need for ‘their lifestyle’, and I think I can better drive.

Wednesday

Again, in leaving a place, the problem is to find a way out. In the city there are no stars to show me my direction. No, the ‘stars’ of the city are only to mislead others. So I go. Then I am at a monastery at the top of a mountain, and the only way is down again. I go to the next most distant name I can find, and at its extremity find the sign for Burgos. So I go for it. Well, so what, after I pay, the girl at the toll booth tells me the motorway to Vitoria and Burgos is closed? I can try for it. So I try. Again, if you miss a single lane you are lost. So at one stage, having missed a lane, I am on top of a coiling spiral of wrong lanes and the only way down is deliberately out into the country.

So then there I am, out in the country with a motorway shimmering past in the distance at perhaps two in the a.m. So I turn about and try again.

Dead motorway

Venturing down an unmarked lane I come to a curious situation. In front of me is a dead motorway. I enter it, but there is no life and no light. Clearly I am on a motorway under construction, and I even back out of it for fear of illegality. But then I wonder where it leads, and venture in again and, with my lights on, immediately its signs spring into life.

And so I go – ahead are Palencia and Valladolid and Madrid. Well, enough for now Palencia and hope. There is fog, dense enough with cars now streaming up and past at 60 – my clock is in m.p.h., and I am doing fiftyish, but mostly they stream past, except for the tiddlers who sit close on my tail and won’t shift. There is always someone, sitting there, on through the murk, hour after hour. I am talking to myself again. It is a matter of driving between two sets of lines, hoping that nothing lies in the middle. That’s what the others must be doing, but faster. So far so good.

Then the mist thins. I stop once to fill up – only seventeen litres, so the gauge last night pulling me off the motorway was a shameless lie. Finally, I realise I am going to sleep, and am looking for somewhere I can stop before I go off the road or hit something.

I park in front of a closed restaurant, the woman just arriving to open up. When I wake the sky is lightening. And I am fresh enough to continue. I am thirsty, but dare not risk another apple. Not after – yesterday was it?

Beyond Palencia the snowy mountains of Leon are spectacular. But I do not think the name of Leon is right, and do not dare try to remember. But Ourense shows on its future menu as N-120, with La Coruña as N-6. So I join it, and even go for ten kms. before I realise that N-120 is no longer showing. Cursing, I stop, leave the motorway and return to Leon. I park and stagger up to ask two men. The ground is thrumming under my feet. Oh, they say, you were on the right motorway, but it divides a little further on.

And so it does, about 3 kms. beyond my returning point.

So then onward for Ourense. Through Astorga and Ponferrada, always looking for the next objective. Then I swear that I enter some of the valleys of the Sil half a dozen times, first going up, then down, first in one direction, then in reverse – It is a madness, an exhausting madness. But then only ‘90 to Ourense’. Nearly there. No, the Sil is long yet. That was only Quiroga. And that was Monforte de Lemos. Perhaps I can come off at Ourense . . . But then only another 100, it assures me.

So I stay on, and on, and on and on, with the reduction in distance creeping awful awful slow.

Until, at long last, numbly, off the motorway and beginning the long winding descent, with the final miracle still to come: there is virtually no traffic in town at four in the afternoon to hamper my planned approach, down the hill, wait at the light, slide across the main road, down the incline, inside and park without the attendant even noticing my arrival. Switch off.

Arrival: 4.15p.m. Weds. Dec 31st 2008

When I return for the last bag, the car is already parked, sleek and discreet and undemonstrative, and the owner of the garage is suitably impressed.

Is the car up to what in reality has become 3,000 kms? It sits there modestly. It is a Volvo.

Its owner is of less durable stuff. But we survive. For now.

I will mention, too, that - apart from one cruising cop-car in San Sebastian - I saw not one other policeman in the whole three thousand kilometres, and saw no evidence of need of any.  I hope they were all enjoying their peaceful festivities.

P.S. By the way, Stuart, should you read this, I forgot to ask you whether there is a spare wheel and jack and stuff, and how to apply same.

*EFT Look it up in the search machine of your choice. Despite its terminology, it works. It should be called ‘locked energy release therapy’, but it is free, takes two minutes, and it solves your problems – if you remember to use it.

**'Cancer-Free' by Bill Henderson - How to cure cancer gently without cut-burn-and-poison.

Authors Bio:

Aged beyond belief, with a fund of experience that few could challenge and fewer envy, and with the wealth of information and expertise that goes with it, the author is a lifelong specialist in differentiating reality from unreality.

A writer and publisher, his own books are usually reality in the guise of fiction, his articles are almost always about things of real importance, and if he tells you something, then it comes from a well-informed source with connections to Justice International. So you might well consider it seriously.