Vomit and a Vision

I write this whilst recuperating from food poisoning from a plate of 'albondigas', meatballs. It is no joke to get food poisoning at anytime but even worse whilst staying in an Alburgue- there are 2 toilets between 30 people and at 6am there is a queue so you cannot just have the squits or puke at will, but as many of you will know if you get food poisoning badly enough you cannot completely control your bodies desperate attempts to get rid of the toxins! Hence the 2 toilets in front of me are occupied and this most enormous wave of nausea overcomes me and I throw all over the corridor. YUCK! I see this Frenchman's face and he is appalled.... and so am I as I now have to clear it up and I feel like death. Then I get to the loo finally and do not know which end of my body to attend to-they both need the loo.
Neither can you stay in the same Alburgue for 2 nights apart from in exceptional circumstances and even then you have to check out, wait around for 6 hrs and check back in. Now I am quite a determined person so I say to myself 'mind over matter' here, I can walk just a little 12km today to the next village. Ha HA HA! Is anyone out there as stupid as me? I did do it but it was awful, puking every 10mins (bile by now) and my muscles were in agony. Many pelegrinos stopped to ask if they could help this wretch who was wretching, but no one can carry someone elses pack, so I stumbled on and managed 10km to find that an old restored mill, which was not in my guide book was just down the road and offered rooms with their own toilet.
So I came to drop inside the home of Mercedes and Max, who took me to a room 'with a view' of the Camino and who left me with bottles of water, so I could grope my way to the bathroom to finish being ill. Now as bad as blisters are they are not the sort of injurys that stop you finishing The Camino- leg, knee and ligament injuries do that.....and food poisoning. So I began a conversation with God, asking him to please stop this constant puking because I could not even keep plain water down. We did a deal- I promised to stay put here for 2 whole days and not walk if He would stop the sickness. I fell into a deep deep sleep and woke up 1 hr later and hey presto the sickness had completely gone- just like that. I felt as weak as a kitten but thankfully I had stopped being sick because that was going to be the real killer of my Camino walk. By the way Chris Samways must pray awesome prayers because my feet are also transformed!
On the way out of Manzilla, at the beginning of this 12km marathon, a door beside me opened and there before me was a strange being, a grotesque being, with a look of complete indifference as to what he was doing. 'Oh no not now I thought, I am too weak for this battle' I have been here before and I am no longer fearful of these things, but it normally means something is amiss, out of sight where I am. At the risk of coming across as completely insane I have had both wonderful and grotesque manifestations of things normally unseen and I have only ever heard a vicar preach on such stuff once-and that was to do with the 'Communion of Saints' that have gone before us but stand alongside us in times of need. I know about that too but as to a deep understanding of either (grotesque and good), I do not yet have.
Love from a recovering Katex