Time with Belloc

Well, all of a sudden ten days has passed since my last post. It's funny (peculiar) how that happens. I wish it didn't. I don't just mean that in an airy-fairy way, either. As per my last post, I am still reading Hilaire Belloc's The Path to Rome. Today, in 1901, he wakes up in Faido, Switzerland with just eight francs and forty centimes in his pocket. It needs to last until he can get to Milan where his wife has posted him some more. Spoiler: he won't make it. In fact, after stopping outside Lugano tonight, he will get the train from Como tomorrow. 

Belloc, it turns out, spent money just as easily as me. I'm kind of glad I'm not the only one in that regard. I daren't think what his wife thought of it, though.

Milan represents the end of the 'happy' or 'carefree' part of The Path to Rome for me. Not that Belloc has had it easy up until now, he certainly hasn't, but there is a lightness to the French and Swiss sections that feels absent in the Italian. Belloc's difficulties got harder on him in Italy. His spirits really dropped and it shows in his telling of the story. I'll try and be mindful of this during the week and report back any key moments that I find.

At this point, and connected to the idea of time passing fast, I'd like to come back to a thought that occurred to me while reading the book the other day. It was that even though I am only reading one day's entry of the The Path to Rome per day (so, what happened to Belloc on 6th June on the 6th June, the 7th on the 7th etc), it has still felt like everything is passing too fast. I blinked and all of a sudden I had gone from Toul to the foot of the Grimsel Pass. 

This made me think that maybe next year I will read the book earlier in the year so as to keep up my tradition of reading the whole book yearly but between 4th-29th June I'll read just selected parts and dwell on them a little in my thoughts. Maybe, now that I think about it, I could write a brief timeline of events so that I am able to easily put those selected parts into context. This is just a thought but there must be someway of diving more deeply into the book so that I don't feel like I am racing through it even if I am actually not.