It's a Big Day in the North

First off, a shout out to Cats On A Hot Tin

Debut EP be with us shortly, paws crossed. 

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Q: Which is the only European country to not have Starbucks? 

Q: Which European country ended WWII with more Jews than it started with?

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On Vesuvius I was almost engulfed by the Stone Beast who lives a hardened life within the rock face. His bulbous igneous nose travels just beneath the surface and sniffs out anyone who's feeling really cheeky. I was lucky to escape with my garters. 

It was ganz toll up the volc, feeling the weight of hope and hate and history curdling underneath me and biding its time until bade sing, by the gods, and bade blow and overflow, quash the lives below. There are people who live right up on the sunny side, and the dark side too. But it's active. And all of Napoli is right there. Pompei is still populated - modern Pompei. It's due an eruption. The original one only actually killed a few thousand, displaced 20,000, or thereabouts, I forget my figures. But the point is that this ancient city, cultural aorta of southern Italy, veritable cornerstone, only had as many people as live in two and a half Totneses, or a section of Kingsland Road. Now there are probably one, two, three million people living in its basin, waiting for the giant rain to fall, hoping against time. But time is the all powerful, all singing all dancing. What they gonna do then?

The view changed with the light. There are a bunch of bars / events places dotted up the road to the National Park bit of Vesuvius, and in the late evening, from where I was surreptitiously camped, the sounds of a right hoe-down knees-up jounced over the rocky outcrops and filled me with strange wonder. It started with the YMCA and ended in a trance. There was lots of singing along, lots of Chic, and I'm sure there was lots of moving around unabashedly on the dance floor.

Next day I went to that place they sing about, and saw a hunky dory cache of potted goods. That is, goods of pot. And shelved. They liked them, did the Romans. It's pretty swell, walking around pretending like you own the place. What you up to tonight, Antonio? Dunno Octavio, was thinking about going down to the amph, they got that new play on. Oh yeah? What's it about? Kid who falls in love with his mum or some shit. I dunno. It's got good reviews. Sounds weird. Yeah, but you know, it's the way of the times. It's the Zeitgeist. Safe, all right, get Euripides to come along, and Eumenides. Can't have one without the other. 

Along the Amalfi coast from Napoli and Pompei is Sorrento, and then Salermo. 

I find huge container ship ports to be beguiling and overwhelming places. Like hideous but beautiful, gross in a weird way. I think about civilisation and history, and Age of Empires III, and the Ottomans, and the Silk Road and galleons and slaughter and riches and the naivety of a species hell bent on destroying itself in the name of progress. Then in town and city squares I think about it all all over again and it lifts my spirits, but also sets them off kilter. 

So much in one view! I find it weird.

Watch out or it will get you. Is it a monster? 

When the whitewash white washes over your earwaves for long enough for the sound wobbles to become actual reminiscences and real life auditory hallucinations you know you have hit the right spot and have reached a destination, which is a means.

The Grapes of Wrath is ace.

Stonking hills of southern central Italy struck with the vengeance of a dozen kings and Queens, denizens of the green almighty. Oh!

I forgot. The artichokes. Bustle of streets post-Pompei, suburban, hive of activity. Mechanics' oil mixed with spatters of rain so that you don't know what's hit you, exhaust haze, cars turning and people negotiating, everything happening all at once, and the intoxicating fumes of barbecue and rotisserie chicken, street vendors selling carciofi, or artichokes, fresh off the smoking bbq, wrapped in tin foil and stuffed full of garlic and salt and basil and a delicate spring floating onion, eaten with hands, taste lingering on lips and in chops and burps for miles, very memorable.

Downpours and cows tinkling. 

Essential bike maintenance by a stone igloo in the eastern plains. 1 2 3 4 punctures in a day and a half, thank you roads, new tyre, new inner, brand spanking, back on and even more better than before!

My foot turned into a repair kit, just in the nick of time.

And rolling into Bari! You beaut. The south of Italy is wilder and significantly more something than the north. Falafels and an ice cream the size of a small head. Preparing for an overnight ferry, Steinbeck forever the giver.

Here she is! It's 40 euros for the trip, sans cabin. There is a bar on board which I can only describe as Balkan. I don't know what that is exactly, but it's shiny and the music is too loud, the plush bench booths easily comfortable enough to sleep on, and the barista smartly dressed. What's the occasion? 

Albania! Bollocks to Brexit.

After national controversy and architects weighing in from all corners of the world, they have decided not to demolish but to refurbish the pyramid of Tirana. From the top you can see much of Tirana. Tirana is wonderful. Albania is great. 

Italy is the only European country to not have Starbucks. Albania is the only European country to end WWII with more Jews than it started with. 

It is hot and I have already eaten much baklava, much byrek, other sweet things, sugar buzzing in the kitchen, in a hostel with a roof terrace and a sunset, excitable folks from around the place. Peace and love to the family.

It's your big day in the north
It's your big day in the north, love
Sha-sher sha-shy pinapple
When you smile en coeur le Big Apple
Attention, get up charge your face
La ou mais ou mon ami

X

The Cantankerous Mezzler that is Italy

I have a bone to pick with this one (Italy). Son of a gun. Presents me with such beauties and wonders which make my heart well up and spill over into puddles of joy and fancy and riding merriment, really it does, really it is, plump with the redness of ten tomatoes and streams of blood oranges and deep dark choc brown, and really the sun is often gorgeous, and the endless glutenous gluttony is not quite yet too much (though I would love some sourdough) but, Italy, one thing - sort out your damn roads! 

Worst I've seen. They make Elbe (the bike) cry not good tears and my butt hurt, sods. Other than that, you're a peach, dear Italy.

I left Bologna feeling like a cherry, and en route to Rome, stumbled into some quite magnificent architectures! Like this one (below), in Florence, where I was hosted by a go-get-'em, no-nonsense fun-haver, who took me out and plied me with delicious pizzas and birra and recoiled when I chose kiwi flavour ice cream (afraid of fruit), but smiled when I also chose pistachio. An evening with pleasant company! 

Then I stayed with shining stars, G&M, near Montefalco. I was given a verbal tour (a flavour paints a thousand pictures) of Perugia's winescape and woke up with one of those gentle hangovers which you don't regret because you learned a great deal on the way there. Vegetables roasted before being lasagned - terrific. Heck, these two shined so bright I landed myself back here, dog sitting, listening to Italian pop while I write. 

South of here there is a giant Roman aqueduct which sits all serene and elephantine bridging a chasm in the land. What an architecture! Old, too.

And look at this one. So many pillars. How did they make them? Maybe they grew. The Vatican is in fact not synonymous with the Holy See. C for yourselves. It is, however, according to this blog, etymologically derived from the words vatic and anus. 

'VATIC- "Characteristic of a prophet; oracular" From Latin: vts, seer -ANUS "The opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste is eliminated from the body" From Latin: nus, ring, anus'

True stuff. Believe us. 

It was here that I saw the Pope deliver his Sunday address. The square was chockablock with worshippers and the curious. Habits and white collars by the coachload. Sunglasses and DSLRs by the bus. I am no less convinced that he looks like Jonathan Pryce. 

Another architecture. Saw ads for Gladiator, the Musical. Russell Crowe rendered into a slick, shining baritone. Lord help us. 

Trying to think of a word which captures just how big this building is, but nothing springs to mind. Anyway, it's really big, and, yeah.

Look and here is a picture of the inside of an architecture, just to prove that they're not just pretty faces; they also have pretty innards. To be fair to the Catholics, they made some grandiose stuff (though this is baroque, a tour guide indirectly told me). The cathedral in Padova, which I visited last trip, is colossally cool. And this here basilica is right ornate.

Here's a big mother jutting out of the landscape, surrounded by onlookers. If I didn't like it I'd slur it by calling it the pantseon, but actually I do dig it. Old.

Obviously I can't resist grand emotional gestures captured in stone for all the world to see.

And belligerent marble babies, too. Aren't they cute and indignant! Someone's really ruffled their feathers, like, yeah OK mum, I'll carry this stupid thing if I HAVE to, but not before I TRIP UP TIMMY.

So that's outsides and insides. It's easy to get caught up with the ancient bits though, I felt. Rome has so much on so many pedestals, and the pedestals are so tall that they dwarf the 'regular' buildings. Maybe there's something we can all learn there, huh. Take a look around and what do you see? I see the kind of windows I'd like to look out of at eleven o'clock in the morning, coffee in one hand, wine in the other, smell of dolmades drifting off the sideboard, Buena Vista Social Club ringing through the floorboards.

And some windows I wouldn't much like to live behind, but which are thought-provoking anyway.

These are directly opposite the pantheon, where a street seller was having a bloody good time flogging shawls to diners - we exchanged eyes a number of times, I shared in his glory - but everyone was looking the other way, at the overstated. But I liked the understated, the unsung. 

The unsung of Rome danced between trees and collected itself in the morning dew, ready to shake off the heat of the day. It hovered just above the throng's eyeline, just below the stamp of feet, just around the corner out of sight. It was in a backstreet pizzeria, in the garlic oil splashed on a pizza rosso, and in the folds of an old man's newspaper, crinkling in the shade, nestled between cobbles. It was in the blink of an eye.

It was in the smile which played over the faces of the people in the downpour. The people who smile when sodden, those are the ones. It brings out the truth in people, a solid rain. Wet cheeks.

Well done, marathon runners of Rome. Well done to the English couple who accidentally left their bag of fruit, biscuits and Powerade after talking with me. And to the Italian dude who refused my banana after throwing up a deep wet watery post-run puke behind me, sat on the grass in front of the colossus. Sirs, dames, all, well done indeed. 

Whose tomatoes? Al's tomatoes. 

Much love to Margherita, host in Rome after a truly wet day, whose dream trip is just around the corner and whose welcome brought a wide smile. Ready to roll now, ready to flonk, down and out, south to Naples. Hoddle. 

Big Busy & Beautiful Bologna

Where

To

Begin

... !

Here! On the sunny side of the street (On the side of the street that's sunny)

I eloped, as hoped. Thus far a somewhat tribulated travaille but overall thumbs are UP. The sun has come out today instead of tomorrow. 

I set off with Werner Herzog's voice clean in my ears as I rattled toward the Black Mountains. A chilly wind blew. My hairs stood on end. What would befall me around the bend?

Frost, of which I have no pictures. And snow like none would believe, yes, south of France snow, tickling my ears, and my tent. My camera is playing silly buggers and my phone is lying in a ditch somewhere near Aix-en-Provence, unreachable except by the gods. Therefore, pictures of my first 10 days are lacking. 

However, know that they are etched indelibly in my mind's eye, and there they will remain until bouged. Happiness flaps its wings and we sing along. 

So I found myself cycling among snowdrifts. First it was in the distance, the prospect of cold. Then it was on the tops of the hills around me. Then it was beneath me, flanking me, crunching by the side of the road. French. Dench. 

'Stand still and let him go on his way [...] towards certain death.'

The so-called Black Mountains broke away to reveal a shining splendour, a bright green hilly visage. And then Montpellier, the rascal-city: accommodating, pedestrianised, becrêped and cockle-warming oh yes. 

My heart goes to Mima, lovely Mima who hosted me there with only a couple of hours' notice and a lurgy and not knowing really who I was and still served me Moroccan tea and dates and hot soup and all with a smile. 

Montpellier became Lunel became Vauvert became Salon became the dreaded charming Aix, location of The Event, though I really must say it is a dear little city with great falafels, and Pierre, and that bloke in the park who wanted to take me to Marseille (thanks but no thanks). 

Frejus, too, can come again, is brill, is top. Fields, beaches, meditative positivity, sunshine. Then suddenly I was in Cannes, Antibes, Nice/Nizza, Monaco, Ventimiglia and Sanremo all within a day. A beautiful day by the sea.

In Ventimiglia I came across a man on a motorbike when looking for a campsite. We were both directed to Sanremo to find spots there and there I discovered him to be one of life's good people. A helicopter engineer and motorcycling adventurist, generous and kind-hearted, a lung of pleasant air. All the very best to you, Dom! Alles Gute, drive safe.

We talked about how the weather had been great, pretty great, pretty and pretty consistently kind to us, and that Italy was sure to present the same face as France, one of blue-eyed congeniality, serene and maybe almost a bit bashful. Can weather be bashful? Is that more or less weird than describing someone as a lung of pleasant air?

Anyway, it got cloudy, windy and rainy. And hilly, and windy and chilly and shwifty. Less groovy. I took a short train away from the coast and was 

WELCOMED 

WITH

LOVING 

ARMS, balmy arms, by womblike motherly folds of Bologna's embrace (via Modena, also terrific). 

They say a picture paints a thousand words but only if it's a good picture and my snapper doesn't do it any snapping justice so instead I resort to rhetoric and say that Bologna is, so far in my experience of it, just simply wonderful. The centre stretches traffic-free with broad arms, broad span; the burnt orange spell of it all, grand squares and portici, majestic and understated somehow and just humming, brimming, simmering; there is pizza and gelato and there are pastry shops on the corners, cold beer in fridges and sweet little bars; the towers loom like friendly guards in their red brick places and cobbled courtyards are dotted so as to always be right where you want them to be; kids play safely, romance sizzles in the air like the smell of hot funghi, there is fruit everywhere, plenty if bicycles, people to look at, the sun is shining AND

I'm being put up by Claudia alongside her fabulous unit of a family who walk, talk and thrive with their heads held high and eat deliciously and laugh well. Best ice cream possibly ever, pistachio, chocolate & rum, bocia. Gelatoh my. Next I traipse southward, toward Firenze, Montefalco, Roma, Napoli, Vesuvio, many good places!

P and L to the family, all about, where you are, twist and shout, raise the bar. Love. Ciao.

(On a Jet Plane)

Cory Zabiggie flies again! Literally third time writing silly rambunctious blog post because of stupid blogger app and ignominious thumbs. Is it worth remembering? What is recreation? Dishonesty, lies. Lies, lies from tiny eyes.

J is right when she says I am nomadic. Heck, I'd rather be a nomad than a monad (though I have just read a little about various meanings of the word 'monad' and they're nothing if not multifarious). Go mad, nomad, ad-free and unsaddled with sadnesses! No mad is an island.

Recommendation shout-outs for the free-willy walk go to Contact by Sagan, for humane and blastingly lovely sci-fi with HEART and FEELING and sociological tremors; Pancakes by Pontiac (by way of s.v.); and The Meters. Rejuvenate, don't denigrate. 

Pressing matters! (Especially regarding trousers) YES DAN I'M READY FOR THE SADDLE. Ready to be asked the question. What do you, there, wanna do? Pale blue dot, looking toward the eastern horizon. Is that a red beacon I see? A marker? Red blob at night, Turkish delight. 

First leg logged, planned. Preliminary preparations perfunctorily accomPlished. Staring down the 0zone. Just one more mug of China rose petal leaf tea and a timely reengagement with various contacts IN China. Enough to make you feel squishy. The World does blossom! And the people with it.

Neat little rows, a pocket full of posies. I leave tomorrow. They give it three three three clear days so if that isn't a clarion call then what is? I'm in the Totnes Times, so get yours now or next week at the chippy and read me through oil and mushy peas (Silver Grill please).

Reachable by phone until I am in Serbia, Kosovo or Turkey and beyond. Data available till then, occasional Wi-Fi thereafter. Sending love via usual channels. Be good to each other. See you on the continent, or off it. 

P

&

L

!

www.justgiving.com/fundraising/cycleaid18

On the road again!

Greetings to all the family!

{scroll down if you can't be bothered with a poem}

[Excerpt from the diary of well-worn traveller, elk masseuse and all-round tarot-man, Cory Zabiggie // Titled Don't make me work at the weekend, Tony (Don't make me work in the week), not to be taken salty]

February is the cruellest month--
But this the winter of our content
Shall not unlike a hyacinth
Unfurl and marry to th'intent
Of purchase on a marlèd ground.
So butter swept and money spent
Are better than that honeyed sound.
Was mead the spark to which they leant?

If Turkey is as turkey does
And March still marches, west to east,
To feed on soil and grain and gust,
Or west to east, as like a feast,
(In nighttime, while the sky is best)
Then flowers on the wind do make
An angel, and, like beads on string
Do talismans of angels sing.

For now, at least, like spoons in cream,
Two roads are laid in print. But know:
When eye turns back and sees the night--
When Didi met with harlequin
And found resolve, if met with like,
To curlicue, and so with you--
It glisters upward, scripts a wave:
Awaits a secondary weave.

-

I am due to set sail again on my bicycle in mid-March. I'm raising money again (for more info, follow this link: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/cycleaid18), this time for Refugee Action. Read all about them here: www.refugee-action.org.uk/about.

My current plan is to cycle from Toulouse, that is, mi casa, through Italy, Slovenia (aka paradise), a bunch of other places, Turkey and Georgia and eventually reach Baku, in Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea. That's 8,500km and LEG ONE. I've actually broken down the route into smaller legs, but for the sake of illustration this can serve as Leg One.

LEG TWO:
From Baku I will probably double back, cycle west back through Georgia to the Black Sea coast, to a town called Batumi, from which I will travel on a very ferryish ferry to Chornomorsk, Ukraine. I will weave through Moldova and Ukraine to Poland, and end up either in Berlin or Helsinki. The latter means travelling through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Big ups to the Baltics.

The alternative or "Plan B" is to say bunkum to all of Europe, take a big ship across the Caspian Sea and sea what's going down in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, maybe Xinjiang Province (China), or what, I don't know. There are complications that way, so I might just go to Poland. It's easier.

As before, I'll update with pictures and the like on this site. To get into the spirit of things, here are some pictures of my bike in some places which prove to myself that I can do this because I have done something like this before, only smaller.

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1. The first one is in where? You guessed it - Vienna.

2. 5 points for--yes, correct, Austria.

3. Any takers on this baby? Hungry for clues? Oh haha, it's Hungary!

4. My bike isn't in this next one so you can't be sure that I even took it, but on my life I swear I did! This is coming down from the Reschen Pass from Italy into Austria, right next to Switzerland, aka one of the best places to be coming down from and ho mama look at all that alpine.

5. This is my favourite place in Namur, up on the citadel.

6. Hello Germany and your beautiful pines.

7.
i point to the field of yellow outside
sunflowers worship the sun i tell him
only when it arrives to they rise
when the sun leaves
they bow their heads in mourning
(etc.)
- Rupi Kaur, who is NOT Czech but THESE are:

8. Surprise! I'm back. Only I'm not, because I haven't really started yet.

More to come.

P&L

NOVEL EXCERPT: Richard's first MAM:A meeting

The group leader was an officious turd whose name, Ronald, was actually his first middle name. Ronald was two minutes into a tiresome speech about Man and Man’s habits, Man’s desires in conflict with Man’s religion, Man’s Manness in conflict with Man’s Misunderstood Masculinity, and so on. After eight indulgently meandering sentences and 43 iterations of the word ‘Man’, even Richard, whose own gender-specific vernacular was exclusionary and unacceptable, was thinking something along the lines of shut up you arse, we’ve better things to talk about.

Before he could muster the words, Jenny stood up with enough force to knock her blue plastic chair over its hind legs and exclaimed:

‘Listen, Ronald, we’re here because we’re tired of wanking and punishing ourselves for it.’ Richard had never heard this said out loud. ‘At least I am.’ She glanced about the room.

‘Enjoying it and hating it at the same time, myself and it, hating and enjoying and spiralling into depression.’ It was true, all true. ‘I can’t remember what came before, because... Well, Because. But I know that it was in tatters long before I came here and I assume some of my colleagues feel the same way.’

I do! I do!

‘We would like to fix ourselves, women included. Your pontifications about Man and Man’s infernal Manness estrange half your assembly.’

She paused and cleared her throat. Richard danced a little, inside.

‘I am sat between two humans whose status is equal to mine.’ Richard and Jenny’s other neighbour, a weedy gentleman, turned and looked at her. ‘We would like to get started.’

Bravo! Should he applaud? Sitting down, Jenny looked round and winked surreptitiously at Richard, who just sweated.

Ronald grumbled something into his hand before gesturing to Jenny.

‘Well, Jennifer, please start us off.’ Specks of perspiration shone on his temples. He drew a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabbed at his forehead.

Richard watched him and shrunk satisfactorily into his seat, then focused on Jenny. She seemed wise beyond her years (mid-thirties at most, but she had a wizened elegance Richard found enchanting). Her hair hung gingerly over slim shoulders. A few wisps clung beneath her large Roman nose and pointed towards a triumvirate of moles on her left cheek, the largest of which boasted a modest fuzz. Hanging about her cat’s frame was a purple cardigan, thick-knit, tied like a dressing gown round her waist. Sandals protruded from beneath a maroon skirt and revealed crudely painted toenails, the smallest of which was barely a dot. Richard suspected the nail to be missing, the paint a diversion to the fact.

Folding his arms, his eyes met hers. He imagined their souls meeting in an ethereal playground, surrounded by swirling winds and eddying astral forces, shaking hands and sealing their mutual fates. He knew her little secret, her little toe secret, and nodded his recognition, with it forgiveness, understanding, admiration, all wrapped in ribbons of something like infatuation.

By now Jenny was midway into an anecdote and Richard had missed the whole first half.

‘Without, I think, this element of structure, thoughts of it permeate my everyday. I can’t think straight, I can’t work.’

Gosh, he knew how that felt.

‘Like I sit at my desk and, you know the classic, there’s a vibration somewhere nearby – a truck reversing outside, someone’s using the photocopier…’

Was she reading his mind?

‘So, without structure, thoughts of masturbation escape my control. The act itself becomes frantic. I rush it in order to somehow reduce the damage done to my conscience. It’s indulgent but in all the wrong ways.

‘And so this week I’m advocating Structure.’ She enunciated this word with a finality which brought Richard to a standing ovation. On his other side, Lara giggled. Ronald rolled his eyes at the newcomer. Tim, name yet unknown to Richard, weedy Tim, chin resting via hand, lower arm and elbow on bony knee, rent from his own oblivion by an uncontrollable guffaw, lost control of his limbs and slid polygonically into a prostrate mess of angles, jeans and Crocs.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Why Richard is called Richard

Richard's affliction first presented itself on his sixth birthday.

After a wonderful day at the playground with both of his friends, his parents took him home for apple pie. Apple pie was his favourite. Then, it was time for his bath.

Splashing about in the tub with his ducks and battleships, he was completely carefree. He liked to smother his lower face in bubbles and pretend he was Father Christmas, then wipe his chin clean and pretend he was Nietzsche. He had very mature reading habits.

During this bath, as it was his sixth birthday, his mother made it extra special.

“Would you like one last present?” She touched his nose with her finger.

“Oh, yes!” Richard was overjoyed. He loved surprises.

Karen left, leaving the door open behind her. She returned a minute later, and when she did a strange aroma filled the room. She held a round object, covered by a tea towel. Richard marvelled at the strange object.

“Can you guess what it is?”

“Umm…” He couldn't.

“I thought, because you like apples so much, you might like to try a new fruit.”

“OK!” That did nothing to explain the peculiar whiff which drifted up Richard's nose.

“This is called a durian. It's from south-east Asia. Would you like to try it?”

“Mm-hm,” said Richard. He was cautious because of the smell, but nothing could ruin his sixth birthday.

Karen unveiled the fruit. It was a greenish yellow, and covered in spikes. It had a split down the centre, and emitted an odour incomparable to anything Richard had ever smelled. The smell intensified as the cover was lifted, and grew stronger and stronger. It wafted about the room and tingled in his nostrils. When Karen wrenched the fruit open, the smell became unbearable.

At once he felt his innards contract—he thought he needed to sneeze, then to be sick, then… His bowels reacted in the most formidable way. A rush of gas built up in his colon and burst through his anal canal, carrying with it all the diluted, unprocessed brown fluid which was being held in his intestine.

In an instant, the bathwater turned a murky ochre. Richard squealed as soft pulps of shit floated up to the surface. 

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Karen ushered him out of the bath. Then, when he started to drip the soiled water on the tiled floor, she panicked and pushed him back in.

“Oh, Richard!”

“Sorry, mummy,” Richard said. He didn't know what else he could say. It was all his fault!

“Oh darling it’s not your fault.” He felt sure that it was. “Stand up and let me hose you down,” Karen stifled a giggle. “That's it. Now, one foot up.” Masterfully, Karen ensured that no more poo drops made it onto the floor. She wrapped him in a towel and gave him a big hug. He began to cry. Karen drained the tub and rinsed it down while Richard went to the kitchen and stared at the fridge, shaking occasionally with a sob.

A cup of hot chocolate cheered him up, and his sniffles subsided. Karen sat with him and watched him drink it, wondering what had occurred within him to prompt such a violent outburst of faecal matter. Could it have been an allergic reaction? She’d never known that to happen, and so suddenly too. Something to do with bad smells? It was a mystery. She resolved to ask her friend Elisa the next day; he knew lots about these kinds of things! Then, Richard surprised her with a question.

“Mum, why am I called Richard?” 

“What? Oh, your name? That's a good question. How long have you been thinking about that?”

“Um, a few days. Everyone at school’s been talking about it. Frank was named after a boxer, and Isabelle was named after an explorer.”

“And what do you think you were named after?”

“Well, everyone says I was named after one of the instruments used when I was made,” Richard looked up, and Karen saw that he was puzzled. “But I told them you and dad don't play any musical instruments.”

“Mmmm.”

“And then they laughed so I went away.”

“Oh, darling!” Karen’s parental urge kicked in, and she squeezed her son’s little cheek.

“But can you tell me who I'm named after, so I can tell them?”

“I’d be glad to. You were named after a man called Richard Sterling. He's a travel writer! He writes about all kinds of things. He’s how your dad and I found out about durian fruits.” Richard’s stomach lurched at the thought. Seeing his skin turn a shade paler, Karen decided to veer away from the subject.

“His writings will shake the earth, they really will. He leant us some of his notes and they are, well, extraordinary.” Richard swilled the end of the hot chocolate in his mug. Tea, chocolate, Mum and Dad’s coffee. Some of humanity’s favourite beverages are brown, he thought. Why did it have to be so?

“What do you think?”

“Um, so I was named after a writer?”

“Yes. So now you can turn around to your friends and say I wasn't named after a boxer, or an explorer, I was named after—well, I suppose he is something of an explorer. So, you can say, I was named after an explorer too. That's much more interesting than someone who fights for a living. Don't you think? Richard?”

But he was lost, once more, in the dregs of his mug. He put it back on the table and saw the image printed on the side: Winnie the Pooh sitting merrily in a field of orange flowers. Richard didn't feel so merry, but he did like knowing why he was called Richard.

“Much cooler,” he said. And then he went to bed. Thankfully, he didn't dream of the durian. It never even crossed his mind, until one October morning, six years later.