vagabond

leaving oxford; venice part iii; walking

I was so happy to move back to land. At the time, I wrote about it with an intensely-charged confusion and resentment. I’d planned a particular life in Oxford and it had, very quickly and with little explanation, fallen apart. It took time to process. But the joy of suddenly having a fridge cannot be underestimated.

A man called Jona helped me move my stuff off the boat. He had a van and offered; I’d planned to it alone by bike trailer, an impossible feat. He lived a little further up the river, towards the Isis Farmhouse, where the moorings were still free but the boaters a bit more above-board. His boat is kitted out with Wi-Fi and bunkbeds and everything. He’s a Catholic, too; when we met we compared rosaries and tattoos, and we saw each other at the 11am Latin mass at the Oratory and got coffee after and nudged each other to talk to the priests, who intimidated both of us. He's had cancer a bunch of times and has chunks missing from him. I was so grateful for his help. It felt—it was—as if God had put him in my path. Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise and all that.