My recent trip to York was marked by two images - or scenes, if you will - that I can not forget.

The fist I saw at night looking through a large bay window. I had just arrived on a cross-country train.  I was walking around with my bags and my books and nowhere to stay, looking for a place.  The street was deserted and the only light I could see was spilling from that one window. Inside, an elderly man with long, white hair, thin as cobwebs, sat with his back being waited on by a not-so-elderly woman. The walls were incredibly, impossibly, tall and they had been completely covered in a crazy jigsaw puzzle of paintings and old photographs, with elaborate, gilded frames.

The second I saw walking to the library from the inn where I'd spent the night. The sun was only starting to rise, everything had that fresh, bright light of Winter mornings and there was a long lawn by the roadside. The dew on the grass had frozen overnight. It looked almost blue: much bluer in fact, than the sky, which was still a sort of pastel tangerine. At the far, far end of these gardens was a large brick building. Very English. Very old.

A parking sign near me indicated it was a hospital. I almost couldn't believe it. I can't quite remember what I said to myself.

"If I ever get really sick, I hope they send me just there," I think was it. Or maybe it was "I have to convince someone to put me in there for a while." Something along those lines.

I described the place to James later; a friend, York local and our guide to the city's churches and high-street shops.

"Bootham hospital? It's a mental institution," he said. "An old asylum."

I really ought to have seen that one coming, I suppose.

(-One flew East, one flew West, one flew over the Cuckoo's nest...)

His face, full of folds and fat, like a friendly badger's is on my shoulder. Behind those round spectacles and his short-sighted eyes, he needs to get really close to see what he's doing with that razor-blade. Really close. His metre-long paunch pushes my arm out of its hold and I have nowhere else to put it.

Maybe he used to smoke, or his lungs are going out, or his shirt's too tight, but I can hear his heavy breathing and it isn't the least bit healthy. It wheezes in and grunts out, wheezes in and grunts out. Right in my ear.

Wheeze in.

Grunt out.

Through the mirrors on the walls, I can see his assistant, a dear old lady, and she sits in the corner with her knees touching each other, her hands folded neatly over her lap and under a nice shawl. She's usually very quiet. She's very quiet today. Maybe it's the weather.

He's quiet today, except for his breathing.  Everybody's too quiet, and his breathing is too loud, and it's right in my ear.

Wheeze in.

Grunt out.

"And how are things over here?" I ask when he turns round to wipe the blade on a towel.

"Well, you know how it is," he says, talking at the mirror. "Everything's pretty much the same. We're all fighting to hold on in this wonderful country of ours. Doing what we can. The usual, really."

It had struck me once before that nothing really ever changes over here. The way I see it, it is Portugal's main virtue, and Portugal's main flaw.

----

(-Songs About Shaving)

There are about three reasons why this year is certainly going to be better than the last. You are two of them.

Two weeks ago, I was let into Guangzhou (Canton, for the rest of us) airport for some twelve hours. As there didn't seem to be a bar, we went to the nearest coffee place. That's usually a safe plan B. I squinted at the menu-boards up on the wall.

"How much is the Yuan to the Dollar again?" I asked the lady who came to welcome me.

"Six yuan, one dollar." She said. I tried to do the maths but it didn't make any sense. I couldn't blame the jetlag, either; I'd only been two hours on a plane.

"Wait that makes each coffee-"

"Twelve to fourteen dollars," she kindly offered.

I did that rising whistle thing that people do when they're impressed. "Welcome to China!"

She pointed a finger at me, accusing, disgusted. "What is that?"

I looked down. I still had the little round TIBET WILL BE FREE badge pinned to my jacket.

"You know what that is," I said.

Like the Mayan apocalypse, Christmas has come and gone. All you wanted was someone else and a bunch of things and in the end nobody offered you any socks and I guess you should be happy with that. All I wanted was not to have to listen to Mariah Carey. I got that. Nobody plays her until the next Christmas season starts. That gives us something like 6 months of peace and quiet, and I guess I should be happy with that too.

Well, now that most of us have recovered from the Shopping Zombie plague, this is as good a time as any to remind you that "love is free and life is cheap." As for me, as long as I got me a place to sleep, some clothes on my back and some food to eat, then I won't ask for anything more. Well. I'll be honest, I wouldn't mind a waistcoat like that.

Happy new year, you gals and guys. Hope you're working on either resolutions or revolutions. Over here in Portugal, we're needing at least one of those, but I won't go there, I promise.

"Paris, je t'aime"


Someone once taught my sister that every city is a woman and that most can be grouped into one of four categories; hooker, lover, mother or wife.

Paris, from which I have just come back, is not a whore; a whore takes your money, yes, but gives you what you pay for. There is an honesty, a humility to this that Paris doesn't even pretend to have, much less aspires.

Paris is not a lover; nobody loves Paris in secret and shadows. Nobody could. Like so many before you, you have to scream it to the wind and write it down and publish it a thousand times: je t'aime, Paris.

Paris is not a mother; it does not look out for you, it is not tender or soft and its bony, perfumed arms are not warm. Besides, Paris would never ruin her figure for a child.

Paris is a wife, I think, a "woman of my life" sort of wife, in the tradition of Zelda Fitzgerald. Paris likes to show off and party and dance and drink, drives you insane, kicks you when you're down, insults you, throws away months of your work but it is for her, because of her, that you try so damn hard to write something worth reading. (This isn't it.)

We (this time, we being the two of us, not the many of me) were walking down the road. We passed by a hair-salon. I looked inside, I walked back, I stopped, I said:

"I need a haircut."

Inside, sat down with the sprawling languidity of a subject of a Degas study on pleather sofas, or pouting, propped up on swinging chairs before great mirrors touching their geisha-paints, standing up at corners having gossip sessions, in tiny orange shorts and tops that would have been corsets had they only the laces, a multitude of Saigon's finest-looking girls waited for a customer.

The manager came up to me, a long Modigliani figure, so tall I felt like I was at the same level with her hips, her hair up like the mane on a general's helmet.

"I need a haircut," I said.

She showed me inside, and I'm falling in love left, right and center, my eyes can't even focus on anybody, but the crowd parts before me (to use a much-used, somewhat abused image) like the seas before old Moses. The girl with the impossible green eyes steps back, and the short girl who reminds us of somebody else, and the angel from an Opium dream, they all move back and we are pressed on to where an empty chair awaits us and it starts to feel like the walk to the gallows.

I am pushed down onto the seat. I swing it around from side to side looking for somebody, anybody to step forward.

A huge mammoth of a man, looking like a mutineering cook in a Pirate ship or a great gladiator,  walks out, putting on a belt with scissors and blades that do nothing to make him look less threatening. He walks up to me through the parted crowd.

"I need a haircut," I try to say, but the words get all caught up in the parched bits of my throat.

Let us just say that the consequences of that mistake, probably well-deserved, may require an eletric clipper.