Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Come Over All Huckleberry Finn

September 25, 2007 by Mike

Barqueiro

There's a pale old yellow moon tonight. I'm sitting on somebody's balcony looking out over the port, the harbour, the estuary of the Rio Barqueiro and the ugly town of O Vicedo on the other bank. At night, its blanket of twinkling electric light looks pretty as a picture. I have cold beers and white grapes and a chair that wobbles. I've been reading 'On The Road' again and hoping I don't start trying to write like Kerouac.. chance'd be a fine thing!

It's been a slow day, and all the better for it.

Something Keith said yesterday prompted me to have lunch, which I always skip. A proper Spanish lunch of (vegetarians look away now) heavenly rich chorizo and blocks of fatty lamb served in a stew with three or four varieties of bean, and more potato than I eat in a month. And that was just the *starter*. The roast chicken and chips finished me off. The room was full -- all men, road gangs debating and builders laughing and men in suits sitting alone and concentrating on their plates. Everybody else had a dessert as well. And they all drank house red before going back to work. Most everyone was driving. (Ma, you gotta believe me, I stuck to soft drinks -- I was on the bike.)

And this afternoon, a penance for all that food, I hired a kayak and paddled out into the great Barqueiro estuary.

I surprise myself: I haven't been on the sea under my own steam since Kragero, way back in Norway. I made up for it today. I felt like Steve Redgrave as I powered away.. though I probably looked like Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards. With classic timing I was working against the tide, which is my excuse for not getting too far, and taking my time doing it. But there was no reason to hurry -- no deadlines, no stress, no pressure.. no people. I crossed the river back and forth, I pulled in to its banks, brushing under overhanging branches, drifting past brokendown fishermen's huts and old boats rotting slowly half in and half out of the water. I was Huckleberry Finn. Floating silent over sandbanks and schools of fish, the water clear and salty, a crane breaks cover to my left and hangs just above the water until it rounds the bend and is gone, always the splishsplash of the paddles. Bare feet in the sunshine, splattered with sea water, tidemarks of salt on my legs.

I spot a green wine bottle, bobbing in the water. There is no message inside from a beautiful woman desperate to be found by a gallant young(ish) Englishman(ish) but I rescue it anyway.

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