Tractor Man and The Lioness

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So, with the €20 I had in my pocket I spent €15 on the hour or so bus ride to my first destination.

Static caravans/trailer homes chopped up and stuck together to form a makeshift building. Quite funny really! My accommodation was an old converted truck that Tractor Man and the Lioness had spent 25 years living in and travelling around Europe. I nice introduction to the traveller's life.

Tractor Man, a giant, as wide as he was tall. With an enormous raging beard and hair to match. His real name I will not publish to protect his identity. Save to say that I name him as such because.... One day, years back, he had been driving his old open top tractor along tiny mountain roads (probably pilfering bales of hay!) and fell 30 meters down into a rocky abyss.... With the ungodly sized rear wheel of the tractor landing on his chest. Crushing pretty much all those rather soft, highly important vital organs. I've seen the scar, it's a tire print. No joke. He told me of his near death adventure and the mind movements he experienced.

He now has the front axle plus the wheels of said tractor set aside.... Not as a momento...
but as weights... For bench pressing. Fucking bench pressing! The man is indestructable.

The lioness is a warm, very firey woman. Very much a matriarch. Very much a lioness. She is small and dainty but I certainly would want to cross her!!!! I suppose grenades are small and cool .... But still very dangerous!

For me at the time, this was all a bit of a headfuck. I was greener than an eco-warrior's cun.... Uhh... View on climate change....

Still quite shy around some things and not yet learned in the art of being fully onesself.

These people and this situation took the first giant rip out of my shell and I thank them for it.

Their relationship broke down during my stay there and dominated alot of the sphere of existence. But that's the business.

So I tell you about a couple of other things that sunk themselves deep into my memory there.

The 'vendage' or grape picking. Ten people, in two rows, frantically harvesting grapes whilst trying to keep up with an over paid city boy on a tractor dragging the grape trailer. Always with suspiciously clean and white welligton boots. Hmm... A farmer.... Hmmm... Sure. .

We did experience a few hours of xenophobia because myself and 2 others were English. Either way, anything's better than being French 😉

I nearly chopped my finger tip off whilst picking grapes which lead to an interesting couple of busking sessions! Terrifying old ladies with the blood raging out on the neck of my guitar and inspiring a nice sense of hardcore badassery in the younger generations!

The second thing I will tell you about.... Ahh.... So much fun!

Tractor man had a decently sized collection of (legal) firearms. He also hosted a party, and we all consumed our fair share of alcohol! Then he set up a shooting range (all within the boundaries of sanity, good setting, a proper backdrop and nothing behind it). Ahh firearms and beer.... A testosterone overload! My personal favorite was the 12 bore pump action shotgun. Nothing quite like it!! Hahaha.

Well, I think you've read enough to today.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next part of my adventure - "What a birthday!"

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