Vindication!

Ha!
Had my pal Lee around last night. Lee's not a Disappearer, he's just cool. It was also fun to realise, as I relax into this 'being-40' lark, and he looks it squarely in the eye in April, how scarily similar we still are in some ways.

Lee I've known since school, and we always have fun conversations. I mentioned my wandering walk up to Cwm Cadlan and back, and he told me this story...

"I was walking the dog one night not long ago, and I went down the Taff Trail. From Pentrebach (one stop on the Valley Lines train from Merthyr towards Cardiff), I went down to Aberfan. Pouring with rain mind, me and the dog just out for a walk...Went on to Merthyr Vale, thought 'Oh, I'll carry on...'. Went past Quaker's Yard. Now, I've been down to Quaker's Yard before, but never really past it. It's about eight miles. Still absolutely sheeting it down with rain, and my shoes are bubbling by this time. My feet are starting to rub raw, so I thought...'Tell you what, I'll just on a little bit further...then I can get to Ponty (Pontypridd - about the mid-point between Merthyr and Cardiff), then I can get a train back...So me and the dog, trudging on, looking like drowned rats..."

He broke off at this point as a thought occurred to him.
"Rats can swim, can't they?"
"Yyyyyeah," I agreed, seeing immediately where he was going.
"Well, why do people say they're like 'drowned rats' when they're soaking then?"
"Good question," I acknowledged. "People are weird," I explained.
"True," he agreed, seeming to ruminate on the idea. He was in danger of getting lost in thought.
"So - you and the dog..." I prompted. He snapped back to life.
"Soooo yeah, me and the dog, trudging on down to Ponty, the dog's looking at me by this point, like 'Are you 'avin' a laugh or what?'. My feet are really rubbing themselves raw with every step, can't see for rain..."
"Typical Welsh Summer then was it?" I asked.
"Zactly," he nodded.
"Got down to Ponty," he said.
"...?" I asked.
"...annnnnd that was when I remembered I hadn't brought my wallet," he finished. "Had to beg a friend to come and pick us up..."

What I especially loved about this story, what makes me hugely glad to be back in the Valleys among my very personal kind of stupidity, is that it was only when he got down to Quaker's Yard that the idea of getting the train back occurred to him. Every stop he mentioned, with the exception of Aberfan, was a stop on the Valley Lines, so salvation could have been his at almost any point along what was ultimately a twelve-mile walk in the pissing-down Welsh Summer. But noooo...he kept on going, seeing whether he could make it to the next stop. This is EXACTLY the same logic which led me up to Cwm Bloody Cadlan this week, constantly hoping to find civilisation around the next corner, while all the while getting further and further away from the civilisation I already knew was back behind me in Cefn.

So there you go - it's not just me.

It may, very conceivably, be just us, but still, idiocy loves company just as much as misery does.
Speaking of which, my cynical little black heart has been warmed, since the Cwm Cadlan story, by the number of people who have volunteered to go walking with me. Pulley of course has plans to take me hither and yon cross some of our country routes. My pal Rebecca (who's an international jet-setter and celebrity), has also said she'd be up for a good long stroll now and then. And this afternoon, my pal John also volunteered his walking companionship, more as an aide-de-get-the-fuck-out-of-the-house than an aide-de-Disappearing (John's a Beanpole Man, frankly, not a scarp of Disappearable meat on the bugger!). Lee, notsomuch on the walking-volunteerism - other stories of the evening involved him getting staggeringly lost WHILE FOLLOWING Google Maps on his phone, so the chances are, putting the two of us together on an Adventure might cause a kind of critical mass of geographical fuckwittery, and the universe might implode. As it is, it's entirely possible that most of my volunteers are really just trying to avoid reading headlines of "DISAPPEARING MAN...DISAPPEARS...WHILE OUT WALKING". But still - this is very kind of them, considering everything, and I'm grateful.

Oh - note for the vampires - blood was 4.3 this morning. Now then, away, to the joys of Cardiff Bay, in my not-a-little-like-Captain-Jack-Harkness coat, for two days of celebrating the d'ness, almost in spite of her continuing lurgi.

Catch you on the flipside, Groovers!