I awoke with a start to a knocking on the door and a patient voice “Monsieur, c’est six heures.” I scrambled about the floor attempting to pack the last of my belongings and such and hotfooted it out of the riad, forgetting about the key halfway down the street and rushing back to stuff it through the eye-slit of the establishment’s portal. Then it was a miraculous taxi, then a cigarette shivering a little on a train platform early then another, then I was out in perfidious Tangiers and hailing a taxi, thankful that I had run the Moroccan public transport gauntlet and was on to the airport. As the taxi approached the airport, the heavens suddenly opened. The rains had finally come! I was near soaked through in the course of the hundred feet to the entrance, but couldn’t help but laugh. I have always loved the rain as it reminds me of Albion. A guard gave me a strange look as I bustled past him. I smiled and quipped “moi, je suis anglais”.

Finally back in the safety of a Madrid DAI room, I was welcomed by a flyer informing me of some evening lectures the following day, some packages I knew were coming my way, and, most wonderfully, some orange juice and breadsticks. I would be staying a scarce couple of days before making my way westwards. My plan was to head for Lisbon, another Phoenician port of call, stopping to get a gander at Estremadura and the Alentejo along the way. The evening featured a struggle back to the Corte Inglès to grab my dry cleaning. I wanted to look sharp for the talks of the following day.

The Corte also absorbed a good deal of my morning, as I battled to post a large package to my mother as a surprise containing that Moroccan blanket I had wrangled out of Saïd. Walking about the book department, I found myself wishing that I had a reading comprehension of Spanish; Calderón looked jolly good from what I could tell from what I could make out from a book cover.

Evening spelt the talks, a charming business, and Frau Marzoli kindly introduced me to a range of Iberian researchers in the reception which followed. I struck up a conversation with Amilcar Guerra, one of the speakers, warm yet with that endearing Lusitanian reserve, and soon my Portuguese itinerary was very much altered. I would come to Loulé to attend a conference on palaeohispanic languages. It was a done deal. All that remained was to make my way there, and, before that, to make up for my lack of dinner with the myriad bocadillos remaining at the reception’s close, and a snifter of Spanish wine.

The next morning began with a working breakfast with Felix Arnold, the DAI’s resident archaeological researcher; we discussed a fascinating project of his on the foundation of new capitals by rulers throughout history. No real typology has ever been made of newly founded imperial capitals, and the more I turned the idea around in my head, the more it appealed to me. The Assyrians provide a number of interesting examples of this, and, indeed, I have a crafty argument about the early Neo-Assyrian kings and the movements of capitals which I was handily able to mention. I left the meeting buzzing with ideas, albeit reminded of how little I know about civic planning.

After a spell of work thereafter in the library, I hopped onto a bus to go catch Stefan Schröder, who had offered me a stroll around his department of the Prado the previous evening at the reception (alas, no photographs). We began with the Hapsburgs, that chinny clan, before making our way to the Classical stuff. The history of how the collection had been assembled was almost as fascinating as the statuary itself. Naturally, once in a while a modern head had joined an antique body, but this was naturally part of the fun.

Stefan’s doctorate had been on changing depictions of Dionysus. The ‘rejuvenation’ experienced by the Greek gods during Hellenism had always been one of those issues which had interested me. Had this all been Alexander’s doing with his order that the Macedonians shave their beards? “Facial Hair and Empire” would be an interesting topic for an article one day… We carried on through the galleries, and I hurried to write down the copious information Stefan was recounting offhand. A statue of Palemon was a particularly enjoyable talking point, as he noted that it was one of the few statues in their original which we can identify precisely with a description from a Classical author. I realised that I had read that very passage of Pausanias while translating a book on the body of God the previous year, and I was thus overjoyed at seeing dear Palemon in the marble here in the Prado!

I learnt a number of other enjoyable titbits, including that that iconic bust of Homer we all know is actually unattributable, as no textual correlate is known. While in Naples living it up on Herr Lavater’s money, that mountebank Goethe had arbitrarily decided that the bust was of Homer because the man looked grizzled and blind. This had stuck until the present day. On this journey, I’m trying for more of a Byronic vibe, to be honest. Goethe has always struck me as a tad overhyped, and my poor English countryman somewhat overlooked, at least in contrast to his peers. Robert back in Tübingen has urged me repeatedly to read Childe Harold, and I feel rather bad for having not gotten around to it yet. Christmas will hopefully furnish ample opportunity.

In another hall, we had a long discussion on the headband worn by Alexander and when the diadochs assumed it on account of a colossal bronze head of Demetrius. I was becoming cautiously elated at what I seemed to know. A misspent youth of Arrian and Rufius Curtius was oddly paying off. By the end, I was holding my own, casually noting that the dating of a kouros seemed somewhat too late, which Stefan in turn conceded.

We had only looked at the sculptures, but it had been more than enough. So venerable an institution as the Prado is not to be rushed through. The paintings could wait; we sallied forth to a nearby restaurant where I keenly scoffed down migas and slurped at red wine spritz with Stefan. I reflected on the life of a curator. It must be strange to anchor oneself to one collection of objects so, and to get to know them better than anyone else alive. Stefan had spent eleven years compiling a catalogue of the Prado’s statuary. Four years of doctorate had near killed me; would I ever undertake so immense a project? On the other hand, I was travelling, an archaeological free agent. Yet, deep in myself I began to ask as to whether endlessly scratching the surface of all of this archaeology for a year would really satisfy me. In my mind, a good scholar should endlessly ask him or herself as to whether their work is superficial. Naturally, not every academic contribution can truly delve into the human psyche, but the premise is still a good one. Where would I settle down? What would I finally become an expert in?

We parted very much affably, and I realised that I had given Madrid far too short a shrift while planning my journey. Contemplative in that way that half a bottle of wine at lunchtime usually makes me, I returned to the DAI to take leave of its staff, particularly Dirce Marzoli and Thomas Schuhmacher who had been so kind and helpful the past weeks. This had been my first halt, and I regretted leaving it so soon. Another day of Prado or night of beer and tapas would certainly have been welcome.

For a second time, I made a belated stab at visiting the national archaeological museum. This time, I was quite fascinated at not only the strange indigenous culture of the Balearic Islands prior to the arrival of the Phoenicians, but also the remnants of the Celts in Spain, including life-sized stone animals probably used to mark pasturage. Not only does the huge variety of means of altering the landscape employed by different cultures perennially preoccupy me, but also how swiftly these methods might change. For example, only some cultures and time periods in Mesopotamia produced rock reliefs, even though the means was always there for such a mode of expression, and the idea is swiftly “discovered” anew upon encountering one in the mountains. What might be evidence of taboo and what of sheer disinterest? Must a culture always mark territory in some manner, or might it be possible for an entire people to leave no intentional trace in the landscape? As always, a host of questions I would have to review at some point. I concluded my visit by gazing wistfully at the Lady of Elche.

The next morning was a scurry to a carshare, hampered as ever by my lack of Spanish, and then off westwards to Mérida, antique Augustus Emerita, to have a look-see at the Roman ruins for which the city is famous. I must make a confession of sorts at this juncture: I have never been much of a fan of Roman archaeology. The standardisation of every facet of life has always turned me off: A cardo and decumanus in every city, a nymphaeum, a theatre, a forum, and so on, it always reminds me of franchises, and, in turn, of Americans and the doofy way that they will discuss chain restaurants and stores recreationally: “There’s a great Arby’s there!” “We’ve got a Chick-Fil-A and a JC Penny!” As a tour guide in Heidelberg, I have often had to take Americans to the local Subway Sandwich parlour in lieu of a German lunch “Because I gotta know if it’s the same as back home!” The incorporation of … well … corporations into American culture is quite endearing in a way, I guess. America is so vast in size and varied in demographics that chain stores are presumably one of the best cultural touchstones at hand when two Yanks from opposite ends of their glorious nation meet for the first time. I can’t help but picture Romans (America’s political prototype, after all) as having had similar conversations: “Ecce Marce, they’ve got a hippodrome too!” “And a theatre! Y’think they get Plautus here, or just Greek stuff?” “C’mon, Quinte, it’s not the limes, of course you do!” “I wanna see Puniculus again!” “Alright, but let’s get something to eat first.” “Gee, the garum’s the same here…”

Having seen Italica during my first week, I was feeling rather cavalier about the whole thing; the moment that I stepped into the vast local Museum, I changed my mind. Not only was the scale of the material awe-inspiring, but also its intricacies. There were characters and symbols in mythological narratives on mosaics which I had never noticed, terminology I had always overlooked, and arresting naturalism in portraits which I had seemingly always ignored. My subsequent perusal of the amphitheatre and famous semi-intact theatre went by in a blur. Soon I was gawping at a temple to the cult of the emperor and walking about the Museum of Visigothic Art utterly entranced. There was so much more to this whole Roman archaeology business than I had thought! It was all in the subtle variations on common forms, the play between centre and periphery, local and imperial! Lifetimes could be spent on this without making a dent.

The comedown from this Rome rush was harsh. It began to rain and I was somewhere on the outskirts of town looking for a hippodrome. Worse, the Roman kitsch began to get to me. Particularly gratuitous were the street names such as “Calle Augustus Octaviano”. I’m sure that Rome’s first emperor would have been honoured to have a suburban street named after him. I thought back to a cheeky remark from Stefan: “Der Ort ist eigentlich ein Kaff. Badajoz sollte die Provinzhaupstadt sein. Alles wegen der Ruinen…”

Forlorn, I inspected the remnants of a Xenodochion, a sort of Visigothic guesthouse before visiting Santa Eulalia and its early Christian tombs, and trudging off to an academic lecture on a Visigothic niche, my energy long gone, but compelled to absorb as much archaeology as possible. As I staggered back to my hostel bed, an empanada and some manner of layered tuna sandwich my desultory evening meal, I reflected Mérida had put me in my place. I must drop my snootiness about the Latins and their empire.

I travelled on early the following day by train, heading for the border town Elvas in Portugal via Badajoz, its Spanish opposite number. I was still wearied, and no amount of coffee could keep me focused. A group of Spanish ladies chattered incessantly, so loudly that even the other Spaniards and a swarthy gitano left the carriage. I was too tired to move and was compelled to endure this truculent boomerdom. What is it in Europe with the elderly on trains and early morning drinking? We have a genuine senile delinquency problem here on the Continent.

Youth, by contrast, was my connection to Badajoz. A childhood obsession with Wellington and the Napoleonic wars had etched it into my malleable imagination, it having been the site of one of the bloodiest sieges of the war, and an infamous three-day bout of looting and rapine by the British troops thereafter. I made my way laden with my pack across a bridge, and began to inspect the redoubts which Old Nosey must have faced. A galling business.

Negotiating the various extant defences, I trudged my way up to the citadel, and the provincial archaeology museum inside. This had a charming archaeological collection chock with Visigothic stuff, inscriptions of all kinds, and naturally a great deal of important Iron Age material, including a series of “warrior stelae”. This strange schematised rock art, with its depictions of a martial elite with their weapons and even chariots seemed a remarkable counterpoint to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean world only a little further south on the Spanish coast. The style of the carvings had a little of an “Ancient Aliens” vibe about it, the chariots especially being more than rocket-worthy in appearance. It would seem that a warrior aristocracy had slowly replaced some semi-theocratic system which had previously been in place. What causes such shifts within societies? Mesopotamia is an interesting example in this regard, as it never truly produced a social group akin to this, spare a few debateable exceptions. Was this due to the early urbanisation it had undergone, and the primacy of the city within its cultures? Was this tied to Mesopotamia’s lack of tumuli and necropoles, the usual places in which such warrior elites are archaeologically detected? I was still preoccupied by this as I paced Badajoz’s cathedral, a huge and imposing building with no less than three pipe organs and various fascinating archaeological remains, warlike as well in its solid design.

Jacinto picked me up at the bus station of Elvas. Grandfather to my goddaughter Maria, I hadn’t seen him since I had been best man at Eduardo’s wedding here some four-odd years before. Jacinto, extended family of sorts and a prominent local historian, was the ideal guide, even if my Portuguese was suffering in the wake of so much Spanish, and his English was somewhat hesitant. After a quick, if hearty Lusitanian lunch, we sped off around Elvas, visiting a succession of sights. Elvas is a UNESCO world heritage site, a city nestled within various star-shaped forts further sporting a citadel and a huge aqueduct to boot.

Despite having been designed for war, and a strange martial pall hanging over the town much like Badajoz, Elvas had weathered the ages without any calamitous destruction. The defences had evidently worked. Driving up a huge mound, we began at the largest fortification, Jacinto’s favourite, the Forte de Gracia ou Lippe.

The fort was truly ingeniously constructed; indeed, it was practically invisible until the last moment, so that Jacinto and I rushing up its sides in his car might as well have been visiting a prehistoric hillfort until its gate swam suddenly into view. Jacinto was very much at home in this fortress, and, indeed, it seemed at times as if I was almost walking about his personality rather than architecture. I could not help but feel the same giddy elation as him at standing at the pinnacle of the fortress looking down on an entire region, or be drawn into the same peculiar thoughtfulness as him he briskly led me about its labyrinthine casements without pause.

Then Jacinto overwhelmed me with a bevy of glorious churches in town. After the relatively austere nave of San Domingus, Jacinto’s favourite, we were charting various ecclesiastical oddities such as the Igreja das Dominicas, Portugal’s only octagonal church, sumptuously bedecked with azuleijos, or its hyper-ornate Baroque cathedral. Then we were pottering about the castle, somewhat meek in contrast to the nearby Enlightenment-era fortresses, and then outside town again at another fortress, and then in the bowels of the earth inspecting a thankfully gunpowderless mole designed to prevent tunnelling. This wonderous tour was accompanied by Jacinto’s commentary on various types of defensive installations, in which I learnt the Portuguese for “murderhole”, and countless encounters with townsfolk in which he would play the reluctant tour guide, barely concealing a grim from his face.

Jacinto and I were exhausted, but he had a final card up his sleeve, the Igreja do Senhor Jesus da Piedad. Passing through an otherwise normal, if beautiful church, he led me into the sacristy, where I was confronted by thousands of ex votos of every kind, ranging from miniature Napoleonic-era paintings to votive plaques, to even wax models of limbs à la Fátima. The final room of this incredible trove of devotion was plastered with photographs of soldiers, mostly conscripts sent to Africa during the colonial wars. I knew he had served, and asked him if his picture was to be found here. A little, enigmatic smile and a shake of the head was his response.

Back at the house, I caught up with Jacinto’s partner Lucinda, and Sandra, an old family friend who was now boarding in an upstairs flat. It had been four years since the wedding and we had a great deal to cover. Among all this conviviality, I realised how much I missed the sense of being in a domicile. I live the usual Northern European late twenties atomised lifestyle, and it has begun to rankle ever more with age. The prospect of travelling for a year had only exacerbated this, and I had been moody during the summer prior to the journey, the joys of bachelordom ringing ever hollower for me. I would have to confront this tedious weltschmerz sooner or later, for now it was charming to be in a home once more.

After much catching up, and only a short nap on my part, Lucinda, Jacinto and I were hurtling through the Portuguese countryside towards a taverna which was something of a secret tip in the region, a family-run affair. Select indeed, it transpired. Upon being seated, the proprietrix Maria Josette informed us that the Portuguese prime minister had supped at this very table two weeks ago, having naturally booked under a false name. This was not my first strange brush with the Portuguese PM, the first having been a year and a half ago when his state visit to São Tomé had left me inadvertently stranded on the island for a few days in a tepid version of a Graham Greene novel. How small a world it is.

I opted for the pezinhos, or “little feet”, trotters to the Anglophone world. They were truly sublime, as was a chicken dish and some splendid migas, and the wine matched them perfectly. Upon discovering that I was an archaeologist, the Maria Josette promptly asked me to pass on my regards to Antonio Carvalho, director of Lisbon’s Museu Nacional do Archéologia and also a keen patron of this far-flung tavern. There is a joke that everyone is cousins in Portugal, and it does seem apt.

The following day was rainy and I was exhausted from my journeying and compound sleep deprivation. As I attempted to pack up my kit while crouching, my back caught a beautiful, if extremely heavy window shutter and pushed it out of its hinges. The entire ornate construction fell upon me, and I was crushed between it and my rucksack for a good minute before I could dislodge it. Perhaps it had also struck my head because I was a little shaken, and elected to sit in a comfortable chair watching raindrops run. Jacinto was busy at work on facebook, where he fights a one-man war against various local quack historians. Today the topic seemed to be a falsely attributed painting.

Finally, it was time to head to the bus. Waving farewell at the station, I roared off into the gloriousness of a damp Alentejan sunset. I should have stayed longer, but I wanted to see enough of Lisbon before the conference in Loulé, and I had been advised to stop by Évora on the way. After a contemplative evening walk around the tiny town centre, which oddly reminded me of a Lusitanian Bern with its strange stone porticoes, I drank some beers and fruitlessly scribbled away at notes to my novel until bed.

The following day, I rose early to chase about some of Évora’s heritage before my bus journey. After an unsuccessful attempt at mass at the cathedral hindered by the absence of clergy (visiting Fátima, naturally), I had a gander at the largely intact Temple of Diana and turned into the Museum of Évora. This museum was quite charming, albeit the archaeological portion a tad scanty. Indeed, much of the exhibition was actually a complaint of sorts, as the region’s best antiquities had all been poached by Lisbon at some time or other during the 20th century, and museum’s former grandeur had never been recovered. Nonetheless, it contained some charming pieces, and one absolute treasure, at least for me: a somewhat overlooked Roman funeral inscription belonging to a girl named Nice (i.e. Niké) with a strangely evocative epitaph:

“Whoever you are, wanderer, who passes me by, buried in this place, if you pity me – after you have read that I died on my twentieth year of life – and if my rest moves you, I shall pray that you, when weary, may have a sweeter rest, a longer life, and a low aging in this life which I was not permitted to enjoy…”

I must confess that I near shed a tear before this stone. Upstairs, walking through the museum’s art gallery, I was stopped in my tracks by various depictions of Jerome, somewhat my patron saint, as I’ve previously mentioned. Why he was so in vogue in the 15th century or so somewhat eludes me, but the image of the academic in his study wrestling with death stuck a chord with me long before I became a Catholic. Saint Jerome penitent, agonised in hermitage striking the stone against his chest, however, was an archetype only the Mother Church could ever have brought me to comprehend. Emblazoned on one painting was cogita mori, and once again I was thrown into maudlin pensiveness. Is archaeology all one large morbid meditation, or, in the recreation of life, its negation? Why at all had I decided to devote my life to things that had already happened?

To top this off, my ad hoc itinerary had one final grim stop, Évora’s Franciscan monastery with its famed ossuary chapel. There had been a fad for Franciscans and Clarites in this region, and where muscular Catholicism goes, morbid imagery soon follows. As I entered the grim skull-scape, having first given the museum a gander, I resolved to give the message a genuine chance.

I stood in the midst of an unending flow of selfie-takers (does taking a selfie in front of a momento mori double the vanitas or negate it?) for perhaps twenty minutes contemplating my own mortality. I can never shake the sense of luxury in such an act; in my own brushes with the business end of it, I have felt nothing more than a primordial fear and revulsion, a clenching of the gut and turning of the stomach. I have never been able to consider death in its presence, nor reach any profound thought on the topic while thankfully removed from it. Perhaps I am deficient in this sector; on occasion, I enjoy a good Baroque requiem or, indeed, a touch of gallows humour, but neither of these come to me naturally, although the premise of these exercises, namely that life and its conclusion must be treated as simultaneously serious and humorous, is evident enough. While Nice’s inscription and Jerome’s words had both left me contemplative, death felt hollow here among crania and vertebrae, these mortal building blocks. Perhaps it is life’s passage which stings for me, and not the parting itself.

These contortions of thought were quickly dispelled by mass next door in the Church of St Francis, which was a splendid event, the priest young, dynamic, and frankly luminous in the autumn sun cast through stained glass. After receiving a quick blessing for my journey after mass, it was off to Lisbon on another bus. Évora compounded my reluctance to leave the Alentejo. One could spend a good couple of weeks here eating well, drinking even better, and investigating everything from the Neolithic to Napoleon.

Nonetheless, Lisbon filled me with some excitement. I am attracted to places which punch above their weight, and few can duke it out as splendidly as fair Lisboa. My hostel was rather rough around the edges, but cheap and I had received par hazard what I like to term the “backpacker’s jackpot”, sole occupancy of a dormitory room. I resolved to find a way of later plugging a bathtub which had been converted into a shower, so as to take a bath. First, however, I needed to do something edifying, the museums being closed on Monday and it only being late afternoon.

Walking about the Museu do Oriente’s displays on the Portuguese colonisation of East Asia, my thoughts invariably turned to the Phoenicians. Within my own doctorate, I had argued for the Phoenician city states having been prosperous well before Johnny Assyrian had ever troubled their coffers. My investigations in Spain and Morocco had confirmed this, but the point which troubled me now was the social organisation required for the Phoenicians to even have begun their nautical enterprise. This must have begun well before they reached Spain. Indeed, as I had begun to think after my conversations with Thomas Schuhmacher in Valencina on Late Bronze Age Mediterranean trade, the Phoenicians must have built upon knowledge from earlier seafarers. Nonetheless, they did it on a huge organisational scale which couldn’t help but remind of Europe’s own “Age of Discovery”. This was against my best instincts, as I had previously argued fervently against the fallacy of simplifying the expansion of different empires into simple transferrable paradigms, and yet the case of Portugal seemed compelling. How many generations had it taken for Portugal build up the impetus to explore, interact with, and conquer the parts of the world that she did? More importantly, why? A quotation of Camões on the wall of the exhibit seemed to present one possible explanation: “E entre gente remota edificaram / novo reino que tanto sublimaram” (“Among far distant peoples to follow / a new age and win undying fame”).

Returning from my musings, it dawned on me that I should have been turfed out of the museum by now. It was nigh seven and still mysteriously open. I trotted down to the foyer to discover a multitude of Portuguese culture vultures milling about for some manner of showcase of classical Indian dance. Having nothing to do with the evening, I got a ticket. Beyond my sporadic internet correspondence with Vennu Mallesh, I am entirely ignorant as to Indian culture. Nothing against it, I just have no idea where I would begin. Armed with a glass of vinho verde, I sallied forth.

These ladies really could dance. I began to grasp how complicated that footwork must actually be, the astounding precision. My mind wandered, as ever, to Mesopotamia, and it struck me that practically nothing can be reconstructed of the culture I study’s dance, although one gets a sense of its importance from Gilgamesh and the like. Beyond some nightclub-like scenes on cylinder seals, I also couldn’t think of much in the way of depictions at all. The Assyrian reliefs preserve some images of victory dances with mummers in lionskins, but martial jubilation is a world away from the feminine classical Indian dances I was viewing. Nonetheless, Salomé must have gotten her steps from somewhere. How many other facets of this ancient culture were omnipresent for them, and absent for us?

Certain of my geographical knowledge of Lisbon, I strode out of the event at its close and immediately lost my way. After half an hour of traipsing, I was certain that I had found my bus stop, but it was false. Nearby were taxis but I wasn’t going to stoop to such an indignity. Moreover, a group of Portuguese were yelling at each other at the rank, it looked like some familial feud, and I hurried on. Suddenly, I was accosted by a man in 70’s attire: “My car has broken down! Three euros for gasolina, please please please!” Without thinking, I gave him the money. “Five euros!” Sighing, I held out a note, waiting for my three euros back. “Thank you so much!” he said. “What about my three euros?” “Your three euros?” “I just gave you three euros” “Thank you so much for the five euros” he said, and walked into the night. In the distance I could still hear a woman yelling at the taxi rank and so I walked on. Soon, it was clear that my direction was entirely false and I walked about, looking for the bus stop. A rumble as a tram disappeared. The last, it had been mine. I was sunk. Unexpectedly, I bumped into the man who had swindled me out of my own taxi fare, walking, I suspected, to a bar. I asked him about other busses was and he shrugged: “You should take a taxi.” I wanted to shout “Shouldn’t you!” but held my tongue.

A taxi did, indeed, end my vehicular dark night of the soul, despite me giving the grizzled cabbie the wrong street name. He knew better than I. Returning to the room to discover that I was still alone, I decided to live the moment. Cogita mori. Sitting in a bathtub for which I had improvised a plug from a plastic bag, eating Asian takeaway and drinking Super Bock while listening to Fabrizio de André, I could only reflect that this was probably a peculiar way of negotiating my own mortality and the day’s events, but it was working.

Archaeology drives individuals to often bizarre pursuits of creature comfort. I once spent half a day laboriously scraping out an old tub in Iraqi Kurdistan and boiling pots of water just so that I could have a bath on my day off. I have paid extortionate sums abroad to drink Guinness and never regretted it once. The illogical, extraneous, flippant, this is perhaps the stuff of life, of human nature, our revetments against death’s clean calculus, its spluttering of printouts, whistling of notifications, and final passport stamp. Without the unnecessary, a journey is a transit. Perhaps I should revel in the unwarranted when possible while achieving my goals, see each pointlessness as an unnoticed triumph. These were strange thoughts, but it had been a peculiar, if glorious week, full of wax limbs, ancient femurs, and delicious pig’s trotters, and much walking on my own part. Falling into bed, I was asleep in moments.