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It was going to be a seven hour journey and i didn't fancy my chances of finding anything i wanted to eat on the way, so i thought i'd better at least buy a loaf of bread. That way i'd have something in my stomach during the day. Trying to buy food near bus stations is more often than not, very difficult, but there was a small food shop not far away and i went in and bought a loaf of bread. They also had jars of cooked things, which still seemed to be a more common way of selling these things than tins, and i bought a jar of lentils and a jar of red pimentos. That was a possibility that hadn't occurred to me before, a cheap source of ready to eat vegan food, that's widely available.
I guess i was kind of lucky to have got on the bus, as there was only one empty seat as far as i could see, and i must have been one of the last to buy my ticket.
Seven hours on a bus isn't really a long trip for me nowadays. And compared to some of the travelling in Indonesia and Mexico, it's just a short hop. But i was glad to get off by the time we reached Barcelona. There's something especially uncomfortable about the design of modern bus seats, which you don't find in old buses. The bulge at the top of the seat back, which forces your head forward, for instance, seems to be a hideous form of torture on a long journey!
Anyway, the bus finally stopped at Barcelona's Sants railway station and i could straighten my back and stretch my legs again. I nearly forgot my second bag, which was in the luggage compartment under the bus, but i was only just across the road when i realised i was missing something. I got a map from the tourist information stand in the station and i phoned up El Lokal to see if Joanma was around. He wasn't, but he was supposed to be turning up there later, so i decided to make my way down there straight away and hang around.
I'd never met Joanma, but we'd swapped email messages via internet quite a bit over the last year or so and he knew i was coming, although he didn't know when. It's a bit strange, going to meet someone you know only through net connections. In a sort of way, you already know each other, but only sort of. You can't help wondering if you'll actually like them when you meet up!
El Lokal is an anarchist centre in the middle of Barcelona. It's got a bookshop on the ground floor with a meeting space out the back and office and storage space upstairs. There's a distribution collective, a publishers, a support group for the Chiapas indigenous struggle and other things based in the building. There were a lot of interesting books in the shop - mostly in spanish, but some in catalan and one or two in english, as well as music cassettes, t-shirts, badges and the rest of the things you expect to find in an anarchist bookshop.
They told me Joanma would be in later and i hung around there for a good couple of hours waiting for him to show up. I didn't want to go away and come back again, in case he came and went in the meantime. Anyway, eventually he appeared and as he was going to be in a meeting for a while, i decided to go out for a walk and a look around.
Not far down the road from El Lokal, is the Ramblas, the famous wide avenue that runs from the Plaza de Cataluña down to the docks. It's a place i knew quite well from previous visits to Barcelona over ten years before. The Ramblas has a wide pavement running down the centre, with one-way roads either side of it and in the middle, opposite where the road i came out of, there was a newsagents stall. I know that place, i thought, as soon as i saw it, there used to be a dragon on the wall somewhere around here. I looked up, at the sides of the buildings above the level of the shop fronts, and quite quickly spotted the dragon i remembered. It's a chinese-style dragon and it sticks out at an angle from the corner of a building, like a shop sign. And it was still there after all that time.
And, an even more amazing sight, there was a falafel shop just across the road from it! Falafels, takeaway vegan food! It hardly seemed possible after all this time! But yeah, it was true. I got falafel in pitta bread, which was a bit expensive for what they gave you, but really no more so than Sydney's lebanese takeaways. Anyway, i didn't care, at that point, i would have paid double. Not only was it a pleasant change from the impossibility of finding any takeaway food in Bilbao, but i was starving and i ended up getting a second one from another falafel shop further down the Ramblas, which wasn't nearly as good.
Later on, when the meeting at El Lokal had finished, we went to an anarchist bar called "Dos Pasos Al Norte", round the corner from the bookshop and had a few beers and more food.
* * *
Joanma lived in a tiny flat of block or two away from the bookshop. It was on what was called the third floor, but you had to climb up two flights of stairs before you get to what was called the 'principal' floor and then two more to the first floor, so it was really on the fourth floor. And it was a good bloody climb to get there!
As time went by in Barcelona that week, i found myself becoming more and more claustrophobic. Not just because of the matchbox-like dimensions of the flat i was staying in, and the fact that it's only real windows looked out onto a vast expanse of concrete wall, about four feet away. But the whole design and layout of the city is so cramped and crowded that it feels like you're in a straight jacket when you go out of the door.
The old parts of the city, like the area where the bookshop and the flat were, are made up of a maze of narrow streets, just wide enough for one car, but so narrow that the garbage trucks have to drive with one wheel on the pavement. The buildings that line these streets without a break, except for where other streets turn off, are all at least half a dozen stories high. I don't handle the claustrophobia of cities well at the best of times, even the relatively spacious cities in Australia, and the effect of this boxed-in feeling in Barcelona didn't do my head any good at all!
I just wanted to get back to Australia and get out in the bush at Wyndham and escape from all this concrete, all these people and all the horrible polluted air i was having to breathe and the poisoned tap water i had to drink. Or at least, back to Maldon, to the relatively open spaces and cleaner air. But it was going to be a while before i could go back to Britain. I'd intended to leave Barcelona on Thursday the 21st, but that was only a couple of days really, and it didn't seem like enough. Besides, there was a fiesta at the weekend, being put on by the Ateneo Chino, the anarchist social centre in the Barrio Chino, to celebrate their first anniversary. I thought it would be worth hanging around to go to that, so i decided i'd leave on Monday, instead. I half wanted to leave on Sunday, but it just didn't feel like the right day to move, despite the fact that it was the new moon that day. Apart from anything else, i really don't like travelling at the weekend if i can avoid it.
We spent a few hours at the BBS. I checked it out a bit and Joanma copied some files off it onto floppy disks for me to copy onto my computer. By the time we left, i was feeling mildly spun out from the combined effects of the coffee and staring at a computer screen for a few hours. We went home and had some food, which helped, but as the day went on i felt weirder and weirder.
Later on, around dark, feeling increasingly deranged, i went out for a walk, not really knowing where i wanted to go. In fact, there was nowhere i *did* want to go, but i just couldn't stay in doors any longer. I was in one of those states of mind that i only ever get into in cities, and mainly only in Sydney or London - although i have had it occasionally in Melbourne. I start walking one way up the road, stop, think "no, i don't want to go that way", stop, turn round, start walking the other way, stop, think "no, i don't want to go that way either..." turn round, turn round again, stop, stand still looking around me and then just resign myself to the fact that i'm stuck where i am and find somewhere to stand, where i can lean against a wall or something, and just wait. Waiting for what, i don't know, but there's nothing else to do, but wait, sometimes. Eventually, i just wander off to nowhere in particular and gradually it passes. I think it's a combination of claustrophobia and agoraphobia that the city produces in me at times.
Anyway, that was more or less how i was feeling that night, wandering around lost (mentally, not physically) in the nightmare concrete maze of Barcelona. Then i thought, it's the equinox, i want to be in the bush, surrounded by trees, not in the city surrounded by hideous concrete, electricity, motor cars and hundreds of thousands of crazy people, trapped in their city madness. I was stuck there though, there wasn't really any easy way to escape at that time of night. I thought of going to a park, but it didn't seem very inviting, city parks are a bit depressing in their own artificial and imprisoned way. I decided that more than anything i needed to get drunk. That wouldn't change much, but it seemed like an appropriate thing to do under the circumstances. If i couldn't celebrate the equinox in a more appropriate place, then at least i could celebrate it as far away from this place as it was possible to get without actually leaving it. I'd buy a small bottle of spirits and go to the beach. That seemed like a reasonable idea.
But it wasn't an easy thing to accomplish. It was getting late and most of the normal daytime shops were closed. I wandered around looking for a small bottle of spirits, but they just didn't seem to exist. It's possible they don't make anything but full bottles there, i don't know, it was so long since i've spent much time in that part of the world. Anyway, it had started to rain in the meantime and it wasn't looking like the best idea in the world to go to the beach, but i wasn't too worried, somehow working out what was wrong and deciding what to do about it had begun to clear the craziness out of my head anyway. I still wanted to get pissed, but it wasn't out of desperation any more, more out of the desire to celebrate the equinox. I walked down one of the narrow streets on the other side of the Ramblas from the Barrio Chino, looking for a shop i'd seen before that sold alcohol and was open at that time. I didn't like it over there, it had been seriously gentrified in a sort of way, and was very brightly-lit, full of tourists and expensive restaurants and nightclubs.
While i was walking through that area, a man walked up to me acting weirdly, repeating something incomprehensible to me, more or less under his breath and making strange movements. He lifted one knee up, in a kind of mock attack and i glanced down at it to see what he was doing. As i looked up again, i noticed out of the corner of my eye that he quickly withdrew his hand from the top pocket of of my shirt. At that point i just carried on walking, giving up trying to work out what he was up to, as i knew now. You'd have to be mental to carry anything of value in that pocket, and fortunately i'm not that kind of mental! I suppose he must strike it lucky enough to make it worth trying though. The funny thing was that normally i don't look like the sort of person it would be worth trying to rob, but Veronica gave me a quite bright and newish-looking Guatemalan shirt last time i saw her, as i was down to my last shirt and she wanted to get rid of some of her stuff before she left the country, so i was looking a bit less of a derro than i normally do!
Anyway, when that happened, i realised it was one of those nights. A night that would be much more safely and happily passed indoors. It was looking like the rain was going to get heavier anyway, so i turned around again, not for the first time that evening and headed in the direction of home. On the way, i walked up and down one street quite a few times, trying to find somewhere that sold smaller bottles of alcohol than whole litres, but i didn't succeed. In the end, i settled for a bottle of white rum and headed back to the flat.
I wasn't really intending to stay indoors, as the place was getting too claustrophobic to stand, but i didn't want to carry a whole bottle of rum around with me. Instead, i decided to transfer some of it into a small plastic mineral water bottle i'd picked up on Paris Chamartin railway station and filled up from the toilet tap there and had been carrying with me ever since. This was a lighter and less obtrusive container to carry around the streets with me.
Anyway, not long after i got in, the rain got stronger. And the effects of the rum, combined with the air-cleaning effects of the rain and took the edge of the desperation that would have made me go out into that wet weather and wander around the streets with just a bottle of rum for company. After a while, i heard a sort of clattering noise coming from the hallway, which i assumed was Joanma coming in the front door. But after a little while, when he didn't appear and the weird noises were getting louder if anything, i went to investigate.
It was hail flying through the kitchen window and beginning to cover the floor. I closed the window and just as i did so, i rush of water came down the flue above the water heater. Holy shit! i thought, this is turning into a bit of a storm. I quickly closed the hall window, which, although it was at a completely different angle to the one in the kitchen, was letting in a shower of hail too. Back in the living room, it wasn't quite so bad, although a small ammount of rain was coming in the double glass doors, which looked as if they should have led out onto a balcony, but had a railing on the other side of them, a few feet in front of the vast concrete wall, which provided the whole of the view from the flat.
Well, i thought, i might just go down and stand inside the street door and watch the rain. I poured some rum into my plastic bottle, put my jacket and bush hat on and went down stairs. When i got to the bottom, i was surprised by the sight of a large puddle of water flowing under the street door. I stopped and looked at it for a while, a bit bemused by this development, and then walked through it and opened the door.
The sight that met my eyes when i opened that door was incredible and i really wish Joanma's flat had been at the front of the block so i could have watched that scene all night. The road was like a river, with fast-flowing brown water filling it over the top of the gutter, which wasn't shallow, and stretching between the walls of the houses and shops on either side of the street. As i watched, a couple of silver metal chairs, obviously recently standing outside a cafe up the road somewhere, washed past on their sides. It was this river that had been making the puddle grow rapidly as it flowed under the door. Of course, with the door open, it rushed into the building at a much faster rate. As much as i would have loved to watch this river flow down the road all night, i didn't feel like wading around in it for very long and nor did if feel i should keep that door open any longer than i needed to. It wouldn't be me that had to do the clearing up afterwards, and i didn't really want to contribute to the work of whoever it would be.
I'd never seen anything like it before though. It was a cheering sight for me. Here was nature, making a very definite impact on this hideously artificial environment that pathetic humans have constructed to keep it away. This storm and the flood it had brought on had changed my mood entirely. Well, the rum might have helped, but whatever it was, the deranged, lost confusion i'd been feeling before the rain started was completely gone now.
I went back up to the flat and thought i'd like to listen to some music. But i was just on the point of putting a Pogues cd on when the power went off. Yahay! this was getting better and better. Fortunately, i always carry a lighter, even though i don't smoke, as i'm used to being in places where there's no electricity and you need to light candles all the time, and i'd noticed some candles around somewhere earlier on that day. I lit a candle and sat there in the low light, feeling happier than i'd done for days. This was better, the pissing rain and a power cut. The city *can* be bearable at times!
My computer had its own battery, which it would run off for a couple of hours, and to amuse myself and satisfy my warped sense of humour, i got it out and wrote a bit of email. The idea of sitting there in candle light, in the middle of a power cut, and writing messages on a computer while the city flooded around me had a certain strange appeal.
A bit later, Joanma came home, soaked and breathless, having just run four blocks through the deluge. A drop of rum was just what he needed too, after that, and we ended up pretty well finishing the bottle between the two of us and sitting up talking for quite a few hours. I've got no idea what we were talking about!
* * *
The next morning, i was still drunk when i woke up, which wasn't really much before afternoon, i don't think. I'd decided i wanted to go to Parc Güell that day, although i didn't particularly feel like doing anything. But then i didn't particularly feel like *not* doing anything, either, so it didn't really make any difference! I eventually got round to getting out of the house and i caught the metro to Lesseps, which is the nearest station and walked the kilometre or so from there to the park. On the way, i passed an anarchist community centre, i don't know it's name, but it looked like a squat, although it might not have been. It was quite a big building and there was a poster outside it which stuck in my mind. It said (in spanish):
"If work was a good thing, the rich would keep it for themselves."
which kept me laughing for quite a while!
I used to spend a lot of time in parc Güell, the other two or three (i can't remember now) times i've spent in Barcelona. It was designed by Antonio Gaudí one of the most famous architects in the history of architecture, and one whose ideas are still inspiring people all around the world. He also designed the ridiculously massive Templo de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which has been being built now for over a century and is nowhere near halfway finished. It'll probably never get finished, but it's one of Barcelona's biggest tourist attractions nevertheless.
His work stands out from the dreary rest by virtue of the fact that it's not all straight lines and right angles. In fact, it's hard to find any straight lines or right angles in most of his stuff. His main inspiration for some of the structures in Parc Güell was rock formations found in the hills around Barcelona. And almost everything is curved in some way or other. He also used a technique of tiling things with broken bits of ceramic tiles, which has inspired community art in cities around the world. In Hackney, certainly, i know of a few things that are definitely inspired by the work of Gaudí.
Somehow, though, Parc Güell didn't have the magic for me that it had had in the past. It was probably partly the mood i was in. But i think it was mainly the change in my way of seeing that's happened since i escaped from Europe. In a european context, the forms and structures that you can find in Guadí's work in that park are incredible, magical and inspiring. But taken in the context of the wonders that nature can provide when it hasn't been completely wrecked by human beings, Gaudí's stuff is a little lacking in impact. I still like it, but i've seen better sights since my earlier visits to Parc Güell, the sort of sights that the very existence of cities like Barcelona have irretrievably wiped from the face of the planet.
* * *
After i left Parc Güell, i was going to go back to the flat and do some writing, but i just couldn't face being inside any more, so i ended up walking along the Gran Vía, which is one of the main streets in central Barcelona. It's really wide, with a large roadway down the middle and two smaller roads on either side, separated by wide strips of ground with trees along them and occasionally benches.
It was a disaster area that afternoon. All along the Gran Vía, shops and businesses were closed due to flooding and there were big trucks pumping water out of flooded basements. A large section of it still had no power either. It was an inspiring sight! The further i walked, and the more disaster i saw, the happier i felt. People fuck nature up seriously every day and it's good to see nature fucking people up for a change. It's just a shame it doesn't happen more often!
There was a multi-level underground car park nearly next door to El Lokal and that was seriously flooded out too. I don't know how many cars there were down there, but there were definitely some. They were still pumping the water out of there well after midnight the night after the rain, so there must have been millions of gallons down there!
Unfortunately, though, El Lokal got flooded out too and books and tapes were damaged. And the concert which was supposed to take place that evening, at the beginning fiesta to celebrate the first anniversary of the Ateneo Chino, didn't happen because of power cuts. Well... every silver lining has it's cloud!
* * *
Saturday, the 23rd of September, the fiesta did begin. The power had been fixed up and a bar was set up in Salvador Seguí Plaza, at the heart of the Barrio Chino, or Chinese Area, one of the poorest parts of Barcelona, which was just down the road from El Lokal and not far from that frantic tourist mecca, the Ramblas.
The Plaza was named after Salvador Seguí, who was a well known anarchist in Barcelona before the civil war. He was murdered by agents of the capitalist industrialists who saw him as a threat to their power and their ability to exploit the workers. The Ateneo Chino is an anarchist community centre, in Carrer d'un Robador (robber street) an extremely narrow street near the Plaza where the fiesta took place.
There weren't masses of people, although, considering the previous night's concert had been cancelled, that's not entirely surprising. But there were a couple of bands playing and a few different things going on.
* * *
I had intended to get a sleeper direct from Barcelona to Torino, which was where i was going to go next. But the fare was too much for me really and i decided against it. I made up my mind to just get a train to the border and then see what i could find when i got there. I decided to leave on Monday morning, by the half past ten train from Sants station.
I would be glad to get out of Barcelona really, it had been a good stay there, but i couldn't stand the claustrophobia any longer. I'd really had enough of being in cities, but i wanted to go to Italy anyway. Maybe i wouldn't spend very long in Torino, a few days would probably be enough. I wanted to meet up with someone i'd got to know through the internet, and also i was supposed to meet a couple of friends from Melbourne. They'd been in Ghana for a couple of months, and they were supposed to be in Italy round about that time, but as i hadn't heard anything from them via the internet, i had to assume they were still in Africa.
The possibility of not going to Italy at all begin to slowly creep into my mind on that Sunday evening. I really didn't feel like doing any more travelling than i had to and it seemed like a very long way to go for just a few days. I didn't make any decision then, i thought i'd just catch the train in the morning and see where i ended up. Either way, i had to go through Cerbère, the town on the border between France and Cataluña, at the Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees.
Yeah, bugger it! i thought. I'd head straight for Britain. I really didn't want to spend any more time in a city and i really couldn't face any extra travelling. When i'd started out on this journey, nearly three weeks ago, i hadn't felt too bad about travelling, but now i'd completely had enough again. I began to wonder how i'd manage to go to India, if i felt like this now. But i realised that it would be different. I'd make sure i got it right this time, and i'd fly to where i was going and stay there. I wasn't going to do much travelling in India. Also, i'd make certain i didn't have so much weight to carry with me. In the tropics it's easier to travel light. And i'd make certain i was travelling as light as i possibly could - taking into account the fact that i'd have my computer with me! But that would be just about all i would have.
At Cerbère i checked out the fastest way to get to Paris. In the end i got a ticket that took me on the normal train to Avignon and then by TGV to Paris, where i would arrive at about nine o'clock that evening. If i didn't have to wait too long for a train from Paris to Calais, i could be back in England early the next morning. I checked my ferry timetable and saw the ferries run all night, near enough every hour, so i wouldn't have long to wait at Calais. What i'd do when i got to Dover, i didn't know. It could be really early in the morning, like about four o'clock or something, so all i'd be able to do would be hang around and wait for the first train or bus.
It took quite a few hours to get to Avignon, but it was a reasonably pleasant journey, despite the fact that i hadn't eaten anything at all that day. We arrived at Avignon at about five in the evening and i was absolutely starving. Of course, there wasn't anything vegan to eat on the station, except a large bag of crisps. Oh well, i thought, i'll be able to get something on the ferry.
The TGV, which stands for Train de Grande Vitesse, or 'very fast train', was quite comfortable. Once it got past Lyon the track was a special TGV line and it got up to its maximum speed. I don't know how fast they go, and it's difficult to tell from the inside, but it certainly seemed to be flying along. And the trip from Avignon to Paris, which is quite a long way, only took about four hours.
I looked on the rail map that i had with me and i realised that, going this way, i was passing so close to Turin that going there on the way wouldn't have involved very much more travelling at all really. Never mind, i was on my way somewhere else now, there was no point in thinking about what i could have done. It was such a relief to get out of the city that i wasn't really bothered by the fact that i was missing out on another one.
*-*-*
When i arrived at the Gare Du Nord in Paris, i discovered that there weren't any more trains to Calais that night. It was only about half past nine and it seemed quite ridiculous that they should have finished so early. There weren't even any more direct trains to London until about half past seven the next morning. And i'd thought the trains in Britain were bad! It was strange that such an international link would finish so early. But i suppose that sums up the French view of other countries in general, and Britain in particular!
What a disaster, i really didn't want to get stuck in Paris for the night. There must be some way to get out, surely. But it didn't look very hopeful. I checked my map and the few trains left on the departures board that night and decided that my only hope was to catch the eleven o'clock TGV to Lille. That was fairly close to Calais, although far enough away to make it unreachable without public transport, and i thought there might be a chance there'd be a later train from there.
When i'd got my reservation, i walked out the front of the station to look for some food. There are bars and restaurants and hotels all along the road opposite the station. I got some chips and a fruit salad from one of the fast-food places and went back to the station to eat it. I bought a can of beer and sat down on a bench to have my first meal of the day.
After that i felt better, but i didn't feel like i'd had enough - either of the food, or the beer - so i went back out and had another look around. This time i came back with a salad sandwich and some more chips. I bought another can of beer and had my last meal of the day.
On the train i summoned up as much French as i could manage and asked the ticket inspector if there would be a train from Lille to Calais that night. He laughed and said no, it was finished. So that was that. Stuck in Lille for the night. It's always the same, with journeys like this. You can find a way to keep going up to a certain point, and then you reach the end of the line. You have to stop. It was like that in Sumatra, when we were trying to get from Jakarta to Pakanbaru. We reached the end of the line at Bandar Lampung that time. I thought back to that journey, almost exactly six months ago now. How much had happened in that six months. How many thousands of miles i'd travelled. It was incredible really. We'd come to the end of the line that night in Bandar Lampung, just before the southern hemisphere autumn equinox and now, i'd come to the end of the line in Lille, just after the northern hemisphere autumn equinox. Half a year away and half a world away. The thought was quite mindboggling really!
I looked around the hotels near the railway station for a little while before eventually settling on one just over the road. It was the cheapest and, although i wouldn't normally consider paying that sort of money for a bed for the night, i cheerfully handed over, i think, about seventy francs, or ten pounds. The first train in the morning was about half past six and i couldn't decide whether i wanted to drag myself out of bed for it after only five hours' sleep, or whether i wanted to relax and take the rest of the journey easy - after all, there was no great rush. In the end, i decided not to set my alarm clock, but to just see what time it was when i woke up.
At Calais, i got straight onto the free bus which takes you to the ferry terminal from the railway station. It was quite a cold morning, so i was lucky i didn't have to wait very long for the bus - which was the first one of the day. There was only one other person waiting at the bus stop and the ferry was almost completely empty.
It was very windy and the crossing was pleasantly rough. I like a bit of weather when i'm on the water in a large boat. I like to feel the movement of the deck under my feet and i enjoy the entertainment value of walking around when the thing's pitching and tossing all over the place. Unfortunately all the doors to the outside decks were locked because of the weather, as i felt like being outside that morning. But i doubt i would have stayed out long in that weather though!
At Dover, i was stopped by some dickhead immigration official as i walked through passport control. He made me wait outside his office while he took my passport in to check up on me. He was a real rude bastard too, and when he stopped me he barked at me in a very unfriendly manner: "How long you been over there?" in a way that implied he thought "over there" was filthy and filled with fucking foreigners. I gave him a dirty look, but i wasn't prepared for this and it was a bit early in the morning for me to start hassling the brain-dead maggot.
He came out of the office after what seemed like ages and started asking me some stupid question about whether i had a scar on my right hand or not. I'm pleased to say i didn't and i'd hate to think what would have happened if i had! In the end he gave me back my passport and asked where i had to go. "Chelmsford" i replied.
"You'd better go outside the docks and start hitching then." he replied.
I gave him a look of puzzled disbelief and answered "I think i'll catch a train!"
Where do they find these fuckwits? Maybe they have to have an operation to remove the few brain cells they had when they applied to be immigration cops. I don't know.
At Liverpool Street Station in London, where the train for Chelmsford leaves from, i phoned my sister's place to see if there was any chance of getting a lift from Chelmsford when the train got in and she told me my brother-in-law was also catching the next train. I found him on the train and he filled me in on what had been happening while i'd been away. It's funny how things like that happen sometimes.
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