Small secret sounds you hear when at the last and

all others seem to be quietly left away

from where the order of daylight once placed them.

Lust and levity left behind abandoned to the

latest of our lancelike thoughts dug

deep within a place you can’t unpick.

To scrape and scratch and ruin the

last things that you see before the

light closes and your eyes grow cold.

Heavy lies the crown that you cast aside

when forced to kneel before it amongst

the new grown grass of the latest summer sun.

Thought. Peace. Alarming moments spent

lurching from where you lie to where you

can’t without the next breath forced down your throat.

There’s little else to do but take your rest where it

comes and take your medicine when it comes and

make yourself the pretty porcelein doll one day

set to shatter.

All rise all rise and take a bow, take a moment, take a thought.

Let us present to you exhibit A!

We see here the inward sinking, silent scrunching and heartfelt wrenching,

We see here the thoughts and feeling of regurgitation.

We see here the insipid cowering, pathetic cringing and low-life flinching:

What an arse.

Let us present to you exhibit B!

We see here the heroic posing, unfettered saving and mindless daring,

We see here the thoughts and feelings of expectation.

We see here the wistful yearning, desperate searching and restless dreaming:

What an idiot.

Let us present to you exhibit C!

We see here the quiet worrying, remorseless fearing and ingrained panicking,

We see here the thoughts and feelings that really matter.

We see here the real imagining, outward projecting and actual pain:

What a waste.

The stagnant air of a late summer night, breeze ruffling curtains,

It’s easy to feel your mind stepping light, your thoughts uncertain.

There’s a moment when you tread, a void calling to you

Where the light has since fled, the dark making day new.

Warm thickness of heat wraps me up too tight, stifling adds new burdens,

There’s nothing to feel through the veil of sight, quiet thoughts more certain.

Alex Michaelides is Greek, you’ll get that because despite the book being set in London everyone is Greek or compared to someone who looks Greek. Also they all seem to know a lot about Greek history and the weather keeps being compared to that in Athens (“at least they have a beach in Athens” being one of my favourite shoe horned lines). Far from a gripe though, this is more of a playful addition that makes you chuckle between the dark pages.

And fuck do they get dark.

It’s going to be tricky not to spoil this one, I do my best in my reviews to avoid giving away too much detail and instead inspire to read but with a book like this where it’s quality revolves around the Twist (with a capital T) that’s going to be hard. Because it’s quite the twist. I’d love to say that I’m one of those people who works out the ‘whodunit’ by the end of the book and can sit smugly as the reveal occurs and then proceed to tell everyone in a 5 mile radius that I got it right, even if in all probability I absolutely did not get it right.

No, instead and probably helped by the fact I didn’t put the book down long enough to give it a think, I let myself be absorbed by the story, not the detective work, and that my friends was a good idea because this story was a ride. As someone with a speckled mental health history I found myself revelling in the intricacies of psycho-analytics when presented with someone (or someones) with real trauma. Our main protagonist Theo is the perfect unreliable narrator, he gives us every reason not to trust him, even highlighting his own traumas as we go through and the reasons why someone with exactly those issues shouldn’t be trusted, yet you can’t help but also feel an intense empathy with him as he strives to cure his patient and struggles with his marriage, throwing everything he has to try and rescue a woman thrown over the edge by the traumas she’s endured.

The author manages to spin this tale where you really don’t trust anyone in the story, the threat is always there, just lurking on the periphery, you know that the penny will drop at some point but where and when is a constant shifting miasma. This book is dark, enthrallingly so and you find yourself analysing each character, every conversation for whether they have any relevance to the various threads that run through the narrative. The sudden clenching together of those threads happens all at once and leaves you breathless, the final few chapters wrenching you into a reality so warped by the events of the book that you can do nothing but reel your way through the last few pages to the finish.

It’s a powerful read, no doubt about it, but if you came looking for a cheery holiday thriller then you’re in entirely the wrong ballpark. This is a book not to enjoy, but more to endure, one to let weigh on you until you finish and indeed after. It’s a story for the story’s sake, to be grappled with, to flex your mind with and to try and test your patience. This is a story to do battle with and the result is all the sweeter for it.

“Ciaaaaooooooo!” came the call as the three of them rounded a hedgerow. A bombastic ball of well-tanned Italian energy bowled into the group before they had the opportunity to collect themselves.

“Ciao Steffi!” Ele was first off the mark, grabbing the frizzy haired girl in an embrace, swift kisses planted and rapid Italian exchanged. Ele’s Italian was much better than Jasper’s of course, as is usually the case with the more outgoing. Jasper was too embarrassed to make mistakes and so never had the opportunity to learn from them. Ele made mistakes left right and centre, and so learnt extremely rapidly. Emily had an unfair advantage, being half Italian herself the language was in her blood, and as any Italian will tell you, this is the only way of truly understanding it and so her greeting to Stefania was as fluent and fluid as if she’d grown up there.

“Ciao” Jasper managed awkwardly “come stai… I mean va?” he managed, stai being the formal version of the phrase more suited to your boss or the pope, not the way you greet a friend of more than a year. Steffi chuckled and gave him a hug anyway.

“Come come! Sit, Massi and Claudio have just gone for food but Ally…” she didn’t need to say where Ally was because they could hear her, or more specifically they could hear her dog Iona. Clearly she had caught the scent of the three newcomers and was doing what all Border Collies do best: completely freaking out. They came out from behind the tree and there they were, the slight Swiss girl grappling with a black and white merry-go-round of insane canine energy, spinning at a velocity that would make most particle accelerators jealous.

“Please don’t wind her….” Ally started, but it was too late, Jasper had rushed forward with a slightly unmanly squeal and had grabbed the dog, who was now bouncing up and down, trying to coat every inch of him in kisses “…up” she finished defeated. It was safe to say that Jasper was a slightly awkward man when meeting people, greetings with humans were never his strong point, he was far too English and never got the nuances of kissing or handshaking or friendly hugging, which often left him (literally as this morning had shown) flat on his arse. Dogs on the other hand… well dogs he knew. Dogs were always down to party, all you needed to do was make it known to them that you were too, and as a result he now had a border collie trying to climb onto his shoulders whilst howling loudly, despite the frowns of her Swiss owner. “Jasper noooooo why do you always do this?” she said with a slight smile through the frown.

“Do what?” Jasper said with a grin and feigned ignorance as he stood; dog across his shoulders panting happily as she surveyed the ground below with a self-satisfied bark. Ally rolled her eyes and gave him the lead, planting a small kiss on his cheek which the dog intercepted with a lick. They settled down on the rug, artfully laid out with books and bottles strewn across it in an instagrammable fashion, though of course this was Italy and social media hadn’t quite reached this far yet. The chat was happy, and slowly others joined them, the two Italians Claudio and Massi arrived in a chorus of ‘Ayoooooo’ and ‘Ciaoooooooo’ and more enthusiasm from the dog, particularly when the mountain of cold cut meats and cheese was unveiled which led to a moment of animal wrangling that Hercules himself would have been proud of. A group of people Jasper hadn’t met joined too, friends of the frizzy haired Stefania and quickly followed by the older couple in the group, Stefano and his wife Chiara and the latest addition, little baby Marrella. The noise grew louder, the wine bottles grew emptier and bellies grew fuller.

Jasper leaned back on his elbows and smiled. The sun was lancing down between the leaves above him, dust and pollen caught in the almost physical presence of the beams of light, the brittle grass providing a satisfying coarseness to the ground under his hands. He reached over to scratch the dog behind her ears and she flopped relaxedly onto his lap, eyes closed as he gently petted her. He closed his own eyes and breathed in, the smell of the dry cracked earth permeated the air, combining and dancing with the meat and cheese aromas that came in waves, wafting on the slow breeze. Sounds of groups like theirs layered on one another from around the park in a constant happy babble, the screams of children and the sonorous booming bass of fathers performed as an orchestra with delighted laughter and the squealing of bicycle brakes. There were very few places in the world he would rather be than right there in that park, with his friends, his new Roman family all shouting and laughing and arguing with one another in that blissfully content way that conversation flows when a group is relaxed, waves crashing and coursing around the group, whipping white before running calm again. The wine helped too, though Jasper had been discreetly laying off it. Despite the extreme happiness and serenity he was feeling, he was strangely on edge, his impending meeting with Giulia a constant niggle in the back of his head, a knot of… was it anxiety or excitement? He couldn’t tell, he didn’t care, and either way wine was not a good idea at that moment, as the minutes ticked away and the cloudless sky beamed blue.

“Jasper!” someone shouted and a slice of prosciutto landed on his leg.

“Hmm?” he said, coming out of his reverie as the dog lazily tried to get the meat in her mouth without moving her head.

“I said you’ve got a date tonight don’t you?” said Em with a wicked grin. A chorus of ‘Ooooo’ went around the group. Despite them being a group with an average age over 30, it’s hard to let school habits die. The urge to blush was successfully suppressed and instead Jasper was able to just smile and turn away from them.

“Maybe it’s a date, maybe it’s just two friends going for a drink together?” he said, feigning disinterest in the whole topic.

“Maybe it’s the result of creepy stalkerish behaviour and Stockholm syndrome finally paying off”

Jasper looked at her with genuine surprise “Goddamn Em…”

“Well if the shoe and/or straight jacket fits!” she replied, grinning.

“Ma Jasper,” Claudio said, he couldn’t speak English, or more accurately Jasper couldn’t speak Italian, so having Claudio present always made them at least feel like they were learning something when they got together “chi e questa ragazza?” who is this girl?

Jasper smiled “she’s… Giulia”

The group sat in expectant silence. Jasper shook his head “you’ll all have to wait and see, it’s not fair to describe someone when they aren’t there to defend themselves. Besides” he winked at Massimo “I wouldn’t want to make anyone jealous” the big Italian rolled his eyes

“Basta Jasper” stop he said with a chuckle the two had an on-going joke that they were in a relationship, on account of having slept with the same unfortunate lady not long ago, though neither of them knew it at the time. Rather than letting it become a wedge between them, they had turned it into a joke and now they liked to try and make those around (and one another) uncomfortable with overt shows of passionate affection.

He smiled at the group, but seeing that they wouldn’t let it go he leant forward “it’s hard to describe really, you know sometimes you’ll see someone, whether it’s in the street, in a class, in the office and the world just… stops. It’s not that your heart is skipping a beat it’s the whole world shrinking and slowing around you, until everything is quiet around you, until the only thing that exists for you is that person. You all know what I mean, it happens to everyone. Walking past someone on the street, having a conversation with someone on a night out, they become the only thing that matters for that one brief, infinitely beautiful moment. That happens every single time I see Giulia. Every single time I walk past that bar there is that inexplicable connection, like a pair of magnets snapping together through an unseen force. It’s as though some people were built, were designed to be in each other’s company and the universe knows it.” He smiled to himself and looked up; the group was staring at him with a mixed set of curious expressions. He cleared his throat. “So yeah, in my own awkward way I finally got off my arse, or fell onto it and now tonight we’re going to go do something together and see what this is all about!”

There was a pause, then Ele leant over and gave him a quick kiss on the head. “Such a hopeless romantic” she said, full of warmth

“Hopeless being the key word there” said Em, but she was smiling too. “Bravo Jasper, well said”

The others smiled and the conversation moved on, Claudio leaned over to one of the bilinguals and asked for a translation and soon the laughing and the pasta was back in full flow. Sadly though, all joyous experiences must come to a close, luckily for Jasper, the end of one merely meant the beginning of another. He kept his eyes on his watch, watching the hands eek their slow way around the clock face, apparently time also took the same approach to life as Italians did, it moved when it chose and only then. But move it did and eventually, with the harsh sun sinking low enough into the treeline to be lightly dimmed, the white light of midday giving way to the orange light of early evening, it was time for him to go.

Goodbyes with Italians, as you may guess, are not a short affair. There’s a lot of kissing, a lot of begging not to leave, a lot of shouting and laughing and restarting conversations so that if you’re not careful you can quite easily find yourself hanging around for an extra hour or two laughing and chuckling and awkwardly standing half in, half out of the room/park. Jasper wanted to avoid this, being British he was far too polite to cut a conversation short and so had developed several other tricks of exiting an Italian event in a quick and efficient way, without being overly rude. The quickest and simplest way was to stand and loudly proclaim that he was leaving, in Italian, whilst blowing kisses to everyone around. This invited them to stay where they were and ensured a swift exit.

“Ragazzi, sto andando via!” Guys, I’m off. There was a chorus of “Daaaiiiii” and “Oh no” but thankfully most people stayed in their seats, probably weighted down by cheese, bread and wine. Only Ele and the dog bounded to their feet to jump at him, giving him a hug that felt like being swaddled.

“Good luck J” she said, her voice warm and encouraging “you’ll do just fine”

“Thank you love” he managed to say, as every slightly thrown with just how kind a single person could be

“Are you still here?” Em said with a grin, “just can’t get rid of you can we? If only Giulia knew…” he laughed, always there to bring him back down to earth, Ele’s warmth blissfully balanced with sarcastic cynicism.

“Love you too Em” he said, blew one last kiss to the group and turned away, a chorus of goodbyes following him around the corner and out of sight.

Rome in the late afternoon was a glorious sight, and although sunset was a couple of hours off still the light was already starting to deepen. The rooftops were starting to glow gold, the pale walls of the buildings glistening as the sunlight slanted down at them, catching windows and hanging baskets of flowers, casting shadows against the whitewash. He made his way through the streets, buoyed on nerves and excitement, distracting himself with marvelling at the glowing sights, though it was hard for him to ignore the knot in his stomach, one which was clenching more and more as he got to the Spanish Steps. The ancient icon of renaissance power was now a gathering point for local students and boozy tourists, as well as those who would like to take advantage of them, and on days like today it was humming with people. He delicately picked his way through the throng, avoiding the more persistent sellers and trying his best not to step on the more splayed out student caught up in amorous positions. At the last flight of the ancient staircase though he was accosted.

“Signor signor, per l’amore” For the love the little man said, thrusting a red carnation under his nose. He knew this con, the man would ‘give’ the carnation to your significant other for free, but then come pester you for a donation instead, usually trying to get 5 Euros or so out of you. Though it was odd that he was trying it with Jasper, who was clearly alone. Usually they were from the Indian subcontinent; however this chap was clearly Italian, his small size and bushy moustache almost comical as he grinned toothily at him.

“No, no grazie” Jasper said, trying to push the carnation away

“Per l’amore!” the man said, more forcefully.

“No signor, grazie ma no!” Jasper tried to sidestep the man, but he was skilled in his craft and hopped a step down to stay in front of him.

“L'amore è la cosa più importante, per te signor, gratis” Love is the most important thing, for you sir, free. Usually good at handling the hawkers, Jasper caved, he took the carnation from the man. Maybe it was the nerves, maybe it was the gap toothed grin or maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to keep on this dance. Jasper looked down at his pocket as he fished out a two euro coin, but when he looked up again the little man had gone, vanished into the crowd of drunken tourists below. Jasper stood blinking, holding the blood red carnation in one hand and the two euro coin in the other in bewilderment. Then he let out a laugh, a short bark and he felt the knot in his stomach loosen, if ever there could be a surer sign that tonight was going to go well, then that was it, the moustachioed Italian cupid had shot his arrow and he held the red rose to prove it.

Jasper laughed again and flipped the coin, caught it to see it landed on heads and pocketed it before skipping down the final few stairs. Yes, tonight was going to be utterly fantastic he thought.

Recently I went to an excellent exhibition at the Tate Britain; Van Gogh in Britain, where the above quote is from. I learnt a great deal about a man I had always admired, a man struggling with demons most of us couldn’t even comprehend and yet one of the finest creatives the world has ever seen. For example, Van Gogh wasn’t a painter for the vast majority of his life; in fact he only began painting in the last 10 years of his life, the bulk of his 2,100 works being made in just the final 2 years.

The thing that most impressed on me though was the development of his mental illness. He was always a stoic, lonely man however that loneliness compounded itself upon his move to London and eventually resulted in his dropping out of work and his resulting fall-back to religion. City life chewed him up and spat him out and left him worse off than when he first arrived. Now of course the exhibition was quick to extoll the virtues of his time in London, to celebrate the influence it had on his art, yet if you look at the charcoal sketches he made, on the paintings he bought and sold in his time as an art dealer in London, not a one of them is cheerful, not one has the tell-tale colour and brightness that Van Gogh is now so famous for, seeing the colour in the everyday, the colours of nature.

Last weekend I escaped London, albeit only briefly, and indeed the 20th century as a whole. It’s interesting to see how few places in the country are truly disconnected, however I am fortunate enough to have access to just such a spot, a small fishing hut on the banks of the river Tees, no electricity, no phones, no running water (apart from the fuck off massive torrent of it by our front door). It truly was an act of escape. It’s fascinating what happens to us when we truly disconnect, it may seem like a no brainer and people may scoff that actually they disconnect regularly it’s a strange thing to fetishize it. But really we don’t, in 21st century cities you always have some form of input, some screen or voice is telling you to buy this, go there, do this job, pay this bill. Mindless scrolling and aimless consumption has become the neutral state for any city dweller.

You can probably already see the link here. And now of course I am not suggesting that Van Gogh’s troubles stemmed from London, or being in a city at all but you can imagine that the pressure, the unending compression of life being thrust upon life, of absent space and constant noise piling on top of one another compounded these issues and brought them to the fore. Is it any wonder that as global populations become more nucleated then incidents of mental health problems are increasing at an unfathomable rate? Yes reporting is getting better, yes people are becoming more comfortable with coming forward but the inevitable, inexorable spike upwards cannot be justified with those alone. What it felt to me, sitting on that bank by the river, a book in hand and no noise but the movement of water was that we often need to just leave.

Leaving things behind, letting everything drop away until life is stripped back to its bare bones is such exhilaration; it’s a way to expose the things that are making you uncomfortable in life whilst really not giving two shits about them because so much of it you realise doesn’t matter. What matters is how to cook, how to get to bed, and how to ensure you don’t get sick.

Now of course this a grossly privileged thing to say, the ability to get away is impossible for many and for a vast proportion of the global population this is in fact how they live anyway. I’m always happy to admit my faults and I feel that this is one of them, but honestly I don’t really care, this is my life, the life of my friends and probably the life of my readership. The addiction of phones, blogs, input, consumption is one that I imagine most here can connect to and so the appeal of leaving, of abandoning those things is probably likely to strike home with most this reaches.

Van Gogh saw the networks of patterns in the sky, in nature. He saw the true colour of the world away from the noise, he showed us his interpretation of the colours that dance in the wind, of how light permeates the dark, how flowers glow with a vibrancy that can shake canvas. This tormented pained man saw beauty where others would pass it by, he took his demons and defied them to the end, used the hurt in his mind to create on a level arguably unobtainable to anyone else, and to do it over and over, constructing his view of the world without noise, where the only permeating input was the beauty of colour. He did this until the fight became too hard. There’s only so much that an escape can do in the end.

I’m not saying however that we must all abandon technology, flee the cities, and go become hermits. That’s mad, cities are great! Life with connectivity is a phenomenal thing and we are all blessed to be a part of it. What I’m saying though is that the appeal of disconnecting for a while, of letting yourself go, not thinking about anything but your next action, no big picture is something that often gets drowned out. Weeks and months are spent in the hubbub, the howling sounds and flashing lights, scrolling and snapping and everything else and it winds a coil inside us. Maybe the way to release that coil is to get away, go somewhere quiet, somewhere green. To cook a cup of tea on a small fire and swear at some fish that won’t get on your line. Maybe it’s to pour yourself a glass of wine by a river and look at the wind making ripples in the grass because that’s the only thing there is to look at, and realise that it’s all you need to look at. Then you can go back, spring uncoiled, a deep breath in your lungs, reality real once more and not a collection of brief moments piled onto one another at a pace too fast to grasp. Ultimately, it’s important that we leave so that we can come back again, come back able to see the colour in the quiet.

It’s always interesting reading books that are a little more experimental in nature, less ‘page-turner’ more ‘page thinker’, each now page making you consider the writing style, consider the way this weaves into the narrative, adding more or less suspense depending. Beautiful Bureaucrat is not quite fully experimental but is certainly an interesting take on usual narrative structure. World-building gives way to claustrophobic character description, detailed emotional analysis is replaced with first hand indication of personal feelings. All this creates a feeling, an unease as you read, as though you’re missing key aspects, where instead of being an omniscient observer we have just as much information as the exhausted protagonist, clutching at any bites of truth we can within the narrative.

The real feeling and the focus from the start in this book is claustrophobia, it’s the feeling of being trapped over and over, of being unable to avoid situations due to circumstances well beyond your control. It’s layers upon layers of entrapment and the feeling over powerlessness. From the off it’s explained how they were forced out of their apartment, forced into a sublet, forced to have their things in storage, no option but to take the terrible job and on and on and on throughout the story. At the end we feel as though there is a sense that maybe she is pulling things together, perhaps she is starting to escape the impossible loop. Well I won’t say what happens but I’m sure you can guess. There’s a futility to the story, which is reflected by the writing style, a shortness somehow showing a lack of hope with each sentence. The abrupt nature of her realisations and collapses making us feel… well hopeless.

A major thing to talk about though is the character. It’s one of the few things I really disliked about the story. It must have been deliberate I feel because there’s no way that you could accidentally make a main character so pathetic. Looking at it closely it seems that we’re supposed to feel it, we’re supposed to see that this isn’t your usual heroine, she’s a normal everyday person trapped in her situation, having to take what is given to you because in real life magic potions don’t exist, surprise fairy godmothers don’t turn up and you definitely rarely get a full happy ending and closure. Even at the end when she feels she has found this one magic way out of her current doldrums, it is instead ripped from her, torn away because of something as simple as human error. There are no elements to this story where she is put up on a pedestal, there’s no supernatural or improbable circumstance where we feel that she’s able to run away or lead the story herself, instead she’s like so many of us, she’s slave to the whims of powers beyond her control.

As you can probably tell, this was not a cheerful read for me, or in fact for any of my friends who’ve also read the book, not of course that it’s supposed to be. It touches a nerve, it hits home a little hard and it feels… more than a little uncomfortable to read. The darkness, the lack of control, the unknown factors that constantly play as you make your way through the pages wrap the story up and drag you in as you go through. It’s lucky the book is short (180 pages) or else you’d likely drown in the suffocating sucking down of the grey bureaucratic building. Perhaps I’m reading into it a little too much, but as a child of the recession, the generation that’s been forced into taking whatever job we can, not the ones we want, of having our habits dictated and our lifestyles funnelled into very specific streams - and told that we should be grateful for it - the messages of claustrophobia and restriction that ring out from the pages of the Beautiful Bureaucrat speak closely to me. Even the rising hope of a happy ending being brought closer and closer make you feel like perhaps, somewhere somehow there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Spoiler alert: There isn’t.

So to sum up, although I didn’t ‘like’ this book, it was absolutely a good read. Its shortness meant its bleak outlook was manageable, the style it was written with was interesting and something new, holding a fog over the story provided a restricting closeness that we’re not used to in most prose. It was not enjoyable though. It hurt to read for a plethora of reasons, from personal hurt to empathetic struggle the reality of this book is that if you want something nice to distract you from the day to day doldrums, this is absolutely not for you, because it turns the triviality of existing in those doldrums around and displays them naked for you to see.

Well how best to round off two weeks of outdoors adventure? Why, with a mini city break of course! The perfect way to ease ourselves back into the hectic London lifestyle after our fresh air overload. Portugal offers several exciting cities, however given that we had already been to Lisbon this year; Porto was clearly the obvious choice.

The fact that the city revolves purely around strong alcohol was by-the-by…

The Portuguese Territories part 3: Porto

It would be impossible to talk about Porto and not mention Lisbon. As our significantly smoother flight from Madeira glided (glid? glidded?) calmly into the airport that was mercifully not carved out of rock as the last two were, expectations were similar to those of our New Year’s escapade. Nice sites, blends of Mediterranean and Northern European sights and large amounts of pastry.

Porto, however, is not Lisbon. Porto is its very own beast, with quirks and intricacies all of its own. For a start the hills of Porto make the hills of Lisbon look like sandcastles, the relentless up and down ensures that all the locals have calves of steel and bums you could bounce a coin off. Second you notice that there are a lot of people piled on top of one another. I know we were there in more peak tourist time, but even so, the concentrations of people one on top of the other was truly impressive. Every inch of space not at a 90 degree angle is utilised, rickety buildings piled on rickety buildings lean precariously over the streets several stories taller than you’d expect to be healthy. This isn’t to say that the city feels cramped, if anything it makes it feel more alive, a true port town should be a veritable beehive of activity and by does Porto live up to that.

Speaking of beehives, it’s impossible to talk about Porto and not talk about their very own ‘honey’. I am of course, talking about Port wine. The entire city is steeped in the heady thickness of the port, brought down by barge and lorry from the nearby Douro valley vineyards, the entire south side of the river is devoted to the industry of processing, aging and selling barrel after barrel after barrel. Mind-blowing amounts of the stuff go through the city on a daily basis, and even more mind-blowing amounts of it are drunk by the heady tourists. Tour after tour after tasting experience after crippling hangover rolls through each of the wineries, enthusiastic locals grappling with wasted tourists on their sixth tour of the day, making full use of the selections of wine offered. Frankly I was in heaven.

When I say staggering amounts of it get produced, I mean it: In 2013, there were 8.7 million cases of port sold, at a value of $499 million. In a year. Which perhaps doesn’t sound so monumental but if you consider that this much is sold out of a city that only has a population of 290,000 people that is a phenomenal amount (enough for every one in the city to have 30 cases a year, or 360 bottles, just under a bottle a day). It’s an interesting one as well, port wine is an internationally recognised variety of drink and commonly drunk the world over, however the entire lot comes from this one little town in the north of Portugal, churning out strong wines that are almost unanimously agreed to be the source of the worlds worst hangovers. I think we should all raise a glass and a paracetomol to Porto to salute its efforts to ruin sunday mornings.

What was wonderful about Porto though was the variety. I suppose this had been a holiday of variety however the difference here was the variety of experience rather than landscape. Walking the streets of Porto you are never bored. In a single afternoon I went to an exhibition of Picasso’s print work, had a port wine tasting in a disused gallery, came across a small street party with a lady singing Fado music (look it up, it is hauntingly beautiful), toured a cathedral, ate in a converted railway station, got lost in the backstreets looking for a piece of street art, bought a t-shirt in a modern shopping mall, watched the sunset from the dominating viewpoint of the bridge and much much more. Honestly there are few places I’ve visited on my travels that truly encapsulate that great feeling of anticipation, the feeling of experience and intrigue in another culture, that allows you to immerse yourself so completely without feeling like you’re being an imposition or an outsider.

Never once did I feel compelled to sit on the sofa and just take a day off, never once did I decide that maybe I’ll just do the one thing today rather than fill it. There was an infectious energy to the city that invited and enticed you onto the next thing, even if the next thing was just another wine tasting (seriously the wine is so good there it’s worth it even if that’s all you do).

Don’t be fooled though, this isn’t a huge city. It isn’t Rome or Paris or some other vast capital that you can be lost in for weeks, this is a reasonably small port town and its limitations are such, the things to do aren’t endless. But that’s OK for me, it means that you can go for a long weekend as we did and really experience the city, rather than coming away feeling as though you only scratched the surface. It’s a place that you can throw yourself into wholeheartedly and come out of the cultural whirlwind four days later breathless, but enriched entirely by the experience, nothing left lacking. It is one of my favourite places I have ever been and I very much look forward to going back there in the future.

And so ended our adventure, as all adventures do, with an anticlimactic scramble for a late night flight home, a weary trudge back to my London bed, and a day spent distracting myself from the fact that sadly reality was back, we were no longer intrepid explorers climbing insurmountable heights, drowning in hot waters or nursing fortified hangovers. Now we were desk jockeys once more, the yoke of mundanity re-lashed to our backs. The glory of an experience like this though is that the yoke feels a little looser now, the lashing less tight, the shoulders feeling strong enough to shrug it to the floor should we ever get the urge to stand tall once more. Few places have strengthened or moved me as much as these three little pockets of heaven, few places have seared themselves into my retinas so hard that they still sit there glowing when I close my eyes. Blazing sunsets and volcanoes and bridges and rivers and waterfalls and jungles and deep, powerful, unyielding feelings of inextricable emotion and memory burning into the deepest part of our soul, deep wells of passionate joy there to tap into all thanks to these incomparable spots that we had the good fortune and privilege to experience, if only for a fleeting moment, like dust motes blown softly through sunbeams.

Obrigado Portugal.

The fantastic thing about a three part trip is that it feels like three separate holidays; after two and a bit weeks away I’ve felt like I’ve managed to squeeze in a whole years worth of travel. Three places, three very different experiences have become stand-alone events in my mind that I remember as distinctly as though they were years apart.

Speaking of remembering things distictly, I also remember a time gone by where my legs weren’t two long sticks of wobbly jelly that can barely climb a flight of stairs. Sadly when I went on this trip I still thought they were those pillars of steel that I must have had as a teenager, not the rubbery pins my desk-jockey self tried to drag up up a mountain on a Saturday afternoon…

The Portuguese Territories part 2: Madeira

As the rickedy second hand turbo-prop plane bounced its way down beneath the cloud level, Madeira came into view. Where Sao Miguel and the Azores are the new, young still bubbling and broiling volcanic islands, Madeira is the mature older brother, out of its tumultous teens and into the early twenties of island life. The mountains were higher, the tree cover more dense, the cities larger and better developed with even a dual carriageway or two snaking along the coastline as we looked out of the window and prayed the plane could make the last couple of miles to the airport.

Madeira is often referred to as Portugal’s retirement home for the rich, which is an unkind reflection. It’s also a place where they make really strong alcohol and long walks across mountain tops that cripple you for life. It’s also, of course, some of the most remarkable scenary I’ve ever seen. Where the Azores were indescribable beauty in variaty, Madeira is indomitable beauty in dramatic uniformity. The steepness of its mountains, the sheer unyielding black cliff faces that tower defiantly over the ocean, the dense woodland that covers every acre of land not made of rock or beaten back by human encroachment, it all leads to an adventure altogether more imposing.

The south side of the island, from what we could see, was the more developed. The capital city of Funchal sprawls out along the coast almost unbroken from town to town, east to west. The centre of the island is dominated by its sheer mountains, barely a house or hut able to cling to the sides of the brutal slopes. This range is broken only by a single valley carving up through the island, followed by newly cut road which runs like a vein through it’s channel, small villages lining either side as it snakes it’s way between the dormant peaks. The Northern side of the island is far more sparsely inhabited, and it was here that we made our base. We shacked up in a little villa which had possibly the most indescribably gorgeous view out to sea that I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching, let alone staying at.

Every night we would sit on our little terrace and stare out at the Atlantic Ocean watching the sun slowly, steadily make its way down out of the sky, grazing the mountains as it plunged into the ocean. We would sit quietly, sipping beer, talking about our plans for the next day, eyes fixed on the colourful horizon as it slowly sank to inky darkness. Subconciously we took this as a cue to slow things down a little; where the Azores had been a manic bounce from adventure to excapade, the delicious variety of the islands dragging us onto the next and the next, Madeira’s stoicism luls you down and invites you to take things a little slower.

That is of course, unless you’re four moronic British tourists still riding the adventure high from the Azores and decide it’s a good idea to climb from the third highest peak on the island to the highest peak on the island. I know, it doesn’t sound too hard right? I mean you’re already at Pico do Arieiro 1,818 m up, how hard can it be to get to Pico Ruivo 1,862m up, a mere 44m walk up?

The answer is REAL FUCKING HARD.

The problem of course is that you have to go down a deep valley and then back up again between the two mountains, all the while navigating treacherously narrow cliffside paths, falling rocks, overgrown brambles and of course the fact that whilst you should be watching where you put your feet, in actual fact all you can do is gawp at the sceneray all around you. Not only is the walk difficult and long you see, it is also disturbingly beautiful. Valleys carved by volcanic flows are now covered in flowers and intricate rock formations, trees ravaged by fires stand as blasted, ghostly statues as the new vegetation glows around their roots. Even as our legs began to fail us on the return journey (as there’s no way to get back to your car other than walk back the way you came) we couldn’t help but stop and look around, to gasp at the ever changing view as clouds unfurled or fled from the ripping winds, revealing then hiding new aspects of the view in a slideshow of majesty. In all it was only a 20 km walk, but it involved more than 400 stories of up and down (thank you my fitbit for proving I wasn’t just being pathetic)

It was entirely worth it, though perhaps not one to do again. Following that, three days languishing in the intermittent sunshine with beer and books in hand felt very well deserved, so languish we did. Madeira encouraged this too, the casual drama of its coastline was easy to watch for hours on end, waves crashing through broken cliff faces, natural pools carved out centuries ago inviting sunbathers to come and enjoy in comfort, it was all rather pleasant - and a good way to settle some sore bones. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty to do as well, quaint coastal villages provide endless enjoyment for the casual rambler, intricate volcanic cave systems are more than worth a visit and even the main city of Funchal is great for an explore and a drink if you fancy that sort of thing (I didn’t but my colleagues did and their collective headache the next day could have brought down an elephant - a fair testament to nightlife quality I would say).

In all my opinion of Madeira was a dichotomy, one of thrilling sights and views and also the need to sit in them quietly and absorb. It’s an island of hair raising beauty and discreet calm, soft afternoons and hard angular mornings. Most enduring for me though it was a little terrace overlooking a sunset, the quiet waves slowly slipping between the rocks, the sun painting the sky in rich vermillion and the warming ache of a days adventure well spent.

You can see the few pictures I took here, when I wasn’t busy falling off a cliff face.

Part 3