All of the stages give you time to think but the beginning of this one today gave me more than I bargained for: a monotonous path through endless fields which test your patience and gusts of wind that roam freely and mercilessly wallops you in the face. Today wasn’t the first day I had thought about the start of my career. I’m going through a period of change and going back over these first steps helps me to contemplate my next ones. Weighing up all I’ve achieved over these last ten years on both a personal and professional level, gives me the strength to continue fighting for another ten. We all get our motivation from wherever we can. Thinking about the start of my professional career means remembering my first few years in London and Gavin, my Scottish boss in BBVA. Apart from a few exceptions, I’ve been very lucky with my bosses. But it’s one thing to be lucky and another thing to have a boss like Gavin. He taught me with the patience of a teacher and gave me the self-confidence I needed, he stuck up for me like a good friend and corrected me like a father. And as if that wasn’t enough, working with him was an absolute blast. Who wouldn’t put in the hard work for a boss like that?
I remember that in my first few months working for BBVA, a certain type of commemorative plaque that all the corporate and investment bankers had on their desks really caught my eye. They were pieces of serigraphic glass that the English called ‘tombstones’, which displays the details of the deal being commemorated and shows what banks participated and in what capacity. A bit like the medals on the jacket of a soldier, which the majority of my colleagues and bosses proudly showed off. There weren’t any on Gavin’s desk and so one day I asked him what a tombstone was for and why he didn’t have any on his desk. I couldn’t believe that someone so capable hadn’t been ‘decorated’ in that ‘war’. He looked me in the eye and, as if he was about to reveal the Coca-Cola recipe to me, he asked me: do you really want to know what a tombstone is for?” I told him I did and so he opened the bottom drawer of his desk, took one out of a round box, got up and moved over to the aisle between the desks on our floor, took a run-up and flung the tombstone, as if he was in a bowling alley, aiming in the direction of those big metal filing cabinets that you find in offices. It couldn’t have been long after ten am because the office was still relatively quiet, as it usually was first thing in the morning. And it goes without saying that if anyone wasn’t awake before, the bang of the tombstone hitting the metal filing cabinet would have seen to that. As people were recovering from the shock, Gavin went over to pick up the device and, as he walked back over to where I was stood motionless, he said, smiling: “that’s what a tombstone is for; is there anything else you want to know?”
I don’t know why Gavin came into my head today. It’s likely because he was one of the first people I told about the plan B in my head and that I wanted to do something different, for at least a while, to what I’d done the last ten years. He knows me well and, what's more, he’s one of those guys that always says what he thinks even if it’s not exactly what you want to hear, which is why I wanted to hear his opinion and have him tell me if I had gone stark raving mad. He told me he didn’t think I was any madder than what he’d always thought and encouraged me to follow my instincts if that was what I felt I needed to do. He added that I’m not losing anything by trying and in this life it’s usually the decisions we don’t make that we regret. How great is it that we meet bosses like Gavin along the way and what a pity that in many companies it’s usually the person that best fits in with the “company policy” or the best connected or the brightest -the most docile in a word- that gets the managerial positions, and not necessarily the most deserving or the leader that we’d all do anything for.
I never thought I’d be so glad to get to a town called Calzadilla de la Cueza, but that’s how it was. I looked for the first open café in the town and sat down to have a bite to eat and take my shoes off, as my feet were absolutely wrecked. I didn’t stay long given that I still had another 23 kilometres to go to get to Sahagún. The last bit was hard due to the monotonous path and the fact that there was nowhere to stop along the way, and this next part was hard because many of those kilometres run alongside the dual carriageway. That wasn’t the case on the path between Terradillos de los Templarios and Moratinos, where some big black clouds let loose with sizeable hail stones that gave me a good battering.
Before reaching Moratinos I caught up with the Irish and American girls, Alyson and Hilly. We laughed a lot as we recalled our encounter yesterday with the pharmacist in Carrión and how he seemed like a real exhibitionist as, in an attempt to show them how to apply the lotion for chafings, he stood rubbing his lunchbox area right there in front of them. Alyson and Hilly are very friendly and natural and I had a good time with them. I stopped to have something to eat in Moratinos and they continued on their way as they want to arrive in Sahagún before it gets too late. This concept of “getting late” obviously varies greatly between the Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean mindsets. At the bar of one of the pilgrim hostels in Moratinos I was served by a waiter who looked like he’d been plucked straight from La Hora Chanante (a Spanish comedy television show). I ordered some gazpacho, thinking that he would already have it made and it would be quick, and he had me waiting twenty minutes for him to make it from scratch. Meanwhile all I could hear was him sneezing from the kitchen which was worrying me a little as I didn’t know which was worse; that he was putting his hand over his mouth or that he wasn’t. The gazpacho finally appeared and I have to admit that it was quite good. I don’t know if he added any special ingredient or not and I really don’t want to know. As I left the bar I ran into the German granddad, Santa Claus, again who was glad to see me with my rucksack on my back.
The remaining ten kilometres were endless for various reasons: one because, yet again, the path runs parallel to the dual carriageway, two because it began to hail, three because the rain continued until the end of the route and four I was starting to wane with the tiredness. I caught up with Alyson and Hilly again on the way and we walked to Sahagún together. We went our separate ways as we entered the town as we were going to different hostels. After leaving my things off and having a hot shower, I went out for dinner in the town and to watch Real Zaragoza be defeated by Athletic de Bilbao on home turf, a defeat which could mean relegation. Not the best way to end the day, an understatement if ever, but as the Spanish saying goes, hope is the last thing we’ll ever lose…
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