Further on up the Road: Volume 1 : A Journey through Corona: A Winter in Spain

The initial idea for this book was simply that it be a journal of the author’s travels through Spain and Italy in the anticipation that it would be a time of just letting the dust settle from all the ups and downs of the previous seven years – a time of healing and peace and a time of moving on from the past.

Graham J Macy writes: That was the idea, but such was the very pleasant allure of the Spanish sun that the first time I actually put pen to paper was back in England three months later safely cocooned in ‘Lockdown’.
What was intended to be a light-hearted account of sun sea sand and music, now took on a deeper and more pressing timbre, for there was barely enough time to set the scene of the preceding six months before these pages became, not a just a pleasant way to pass the time, but a very necessary lifeline to help me to cope with, and try to make sense of, all the sudden abrupt changes that Corona had brought to our lives.

As for countless others all over the world, the journey described here, the journey which in many ways has only just begun, is a story of stark opposites – of victories and failures – hopes and fears – strengths and weaknesses – moments of wisdom and clarity and moments of doubt and confusion… a journey of freedoms lost and of freedoms found.

Whatever the future holds in store for us – the opportunity that it surely presents to each and every one of us, the opportunity for which there is no sane alternative, is for it to be a time of walking together, a time to recognise and cherish our shared humanity and a time for each one of us to think about how we may find our place in that sharing – yes, even those who would consider themselves to be above it all.

For me, as for many, it is first and foremost a journey of Faith, a time to bring everything back to the bedrock that is the Love of God – the Love whose reality is becoming, day by day, ever more apparent in our lives, both through its presence and sadly, through its absence.