ben's interweb

I know I wasn't alone in wondering how I would be able to face up to the anniversary of the actual event of Ben's death...and that of Claudio and Freddy.  I don't know if I have got the timing absolutely right, but my compass has the shooting being at around 8 to 8.30 pm Mexican time on 24th May 2022, which would have been 2 to 2.30 am on 25th May in the UK. 

I was in a tent near Inverness at 2.30 am on 25th May 2022 - as it happens, I was also awake at that time in the morning, as I found it difficult to sleep for some reason. 

It was the last night under canvas on my trip to Cape Wrath, a trip that I had originally thought of as something I would do with Tom and Ben.  Ben had even implied that he might have been back from Mexico by the end of May in order to come with us, but when it became clear that neither he nor Tom would be available I went ahead on my own (actually a week earlier than the originally planned half-term dates).

As we approached 24th May this year, I felt that, in some way, I would feel better re-enacting in some way that night in a tent with Scamp in Inverness, and that is sort of what I did (although up on Carn Galver not far from home rather than traveling for 15 hours to get to Inverness!). 

It was a strange anniversary: up on the top of Carn Galver, I tried to take myself through what Ben might have been doing in the hours leading up to the shooting - something I have not wanted to do before.  I thought about him and Claudio and Freddy coming back on a bus from Guadalajara.  I wondered why they had decided to go there, and why they had decided to come back early.  And I thought a bit about why someone decided to shoot them all.

I thought about the details of the shooting - something, again, I have not let myself do much before - about Ben sitting in the back of Sonia's car, with Claudio and Freddy in the front, outside a supermarket, and how much they and he would have known about it all...how quick it all might have been...why he was taken to hospital, but was dead when he got there...

...and, of course, I cried and cried and cried.

Then I went back to the tent and waited for 2 am to arrive.  I read a bit (see below) but then I went to sleep.  And I slept through that anniversary...maybe a bit like Peter in Gethsemane, I couldn't stay awake.  And in the morning, all my questions about the details of what happened, and why, seemed as pointless as they have since last year: Ben is dead.  Trawling through a very brief incident, that happened in a far away place under conditions that I can't hope to understand, will not bring him back.  I am sorry if that upsets anyone else...but that is just how I feel.   I miss him so terribly, but I really do not care who killed him or why.  All that matters to me is that he is dead.  

However...
...the night before, I went somewhere else: I went to the place where Tom and Ben went camping at New Year in 2021 - Fernworthy Forest on Dartmoor, up above Postbridge and Warren House (the isolated pub on Dartmoor that the fire is supposed to never be allowed to go out).   I went there because I wanted to be where Tom and Ben had been in their tents (oh, actually, Ben had been in MY tent!) in the snow - I don't remember why I hadn't gone with them: probably because it was too cold!!


It was easier for me: the weather was beautiful, both going up and coming down in the morning.  I was able to make tea with a little fire in my Kelly Kettle, and sit (until the midges drove me into the tent) in the evening sunshine where Tom and Ben had sat.

On my way up, the first bird I saw up on the moor was a skylark...


In the morning, on the way back down, I stopped at the stone circle: as I approached, the stones had the feeling of a ring of people, and I looked at one, wide-topped stone, thinking, maybe that is Ben...but the skylark landed on the next stone - no, that was the Ben stone.  As I got closer, a Dartmoor pony came over to us (Scamp was barking, but the pony kept coming) and stood with us for several minutes.  I left a Marlboro Red butt under the stone...

...this feels more like something I would like to do again in memory of Ben, channeling him wild camping with standing stones, rather than focusing again and again on that awful moment in Mexico a year ago.  And, by the way, it was also a trespass - Fernworthy Forest is not in the designated wild camping zone on Dartmoor.





[Ed: I mentioned the book I was reading in my St Peter/Gethsemane moment: it was Naked Feminism - as always, a book that Ben would find interesting...]

¡Que haya luz! Kerenza ha yeghes da! Dad/Grandpa/Andrew x


[Ed: I had a wonderful tube through the post from Jamie (Mad Jamie to Tom and Ben when they were little) with an A2 print of this photo of Ben, as a miniature warrior:]



and this note: