If you’re not German you won’t ever have heard of Ilja Richter. And if you are German and under 50 you also probably won’t ever have heard of Ilja and his legendary introduction to the acts he presented on his weekly Disco show on German TV in the 70s and early 80s. “Schönen guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren. Hallo Freunde!” followed by “Licht aus – Spot an”, lights off – spot light on!

You couldn’t make it up. Neither Ilja, nor his show. They were both, quite unbelievable. Watching them now, they were pretty brilliant, in a kinda funny way.

Someone mentioned the intro today saying that it really encapsulates many important aspects of what one should do at certain times: filtering everything out, getting rid of all the noise surrounding us, and putting the spot light on what is the important act of the evening – in short, not getting lost in a sea of details, not being distracted left right and centre by side-stories, but to focus on the one thing that makes or will make the difference.

What is the one, the most important thing today for you? What is it for me? What is it for us collectively?

Today, the therapy centre had invited me to attend a one-day training session on eye problems following a trauma or other neurological problem or illness. It has been some time since I’d been in such a learning environment and found it excellent.

It made me think that there are physios, OTs, SLTs, and MTs – but no-one who would explore the different senses: taste, touch, or smells. And while there are eye-tests, there doesn’t seem to be much of an emphasis on doing anything with the results. There is something called ‘eye training”, but there don’t seem to be any trainers or therapists available for it.

Looking out the back of the train, seeing the tracks disappear behind us. Swinging to the left with a short view of doors you can open whenever you want, as well as a hand washbasin that is an ingenious work of solid engineering.

As moments faint into the past, there are values that stay with us.

When we left the train in Karlsruhe today, our friends who were going up further North were waving and shouting ‘Auf Wiedersehen bis zum nächsten Jahr!’. Pádraig surprised everybody by lifting up his left arm, his left hand, his fingers and waived at the people and the train as it was pulling out of the station.

Below are a few pictures from shops in Lourdes. Like a lot on this journey, the items sold in the shops are very different from what you would encounter in you day-to-day life. Mints made with ‘Lourdes water’ (that way you can keep Lourdes water in your hand luggage in case you were flying), balls filled with water and snow and glow-in-the-dark statues, bottle openers and cork screws with pictures of Mary, little bottles that look like mini-Guinness bottles ready to be filled with Lourdes-water.

And then the journey back, the return to what life outside of Lourdes is like on a train that must have made this journey regularly for the past 60 years.

Traveling with people who could not have been nicer. His personal assistants and helpers over the past week, one who had been with Pádraig for the third year running, the other one looking after Pádraig for the first time. He started to teach Pádraig morse code on the way back. Imagine Pádraig communicating with us with his bleeper using morse code…

About to go to bed and get ready for another really early start tomorrow morning. And then the weekend to recover from what has been a very intense, tiring and moving week.

I’ve been thinking about what this journey means to me. What it might mean for Pádraig. What it means to the many disabled, sick and injured people for whom this week might have been the only week in the year they’re leaving the ‘home’ they’re living in.

There are candle-lit processions. There are hundreds of candles burning around the clock lit for the intentions of loved ones. There is the option to get a candle set up online if you can’t be there in person. There is something magic around candles, their warm light, the smell, the flicker.

Pádraig lit a couple of candles today he had been given as a present by a really nice lady who had lost her son in a traffic accident some years ago. He lit one for her intentions and in memory of her son. The second one was for the Dreamboat, its crew and passengers – all the people who believe that you need to go for what you believe in, and that you can achieve whatever you believe in if you make the necessary effort.

As this train speeds through the marvellous South of France in this warm summer’s night, with the windows wide open and the fresh air loaded with the incredible smells from the mediterranean mixed with the scent of wild flowers and gras clearing the wasted air inside from the inside of this very special midnight train, it’s probably a bit too early to take stock of the past few days.

One thought so that struck a note with me came up in the sermon at our last mass together this morning: if we were to bring one thing back with us from Lourdes, could it be the realisation that we are here for a reason – otherwise we would not be around. Could this reason be that we all had a mission in life, no matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’, how ‘complex’ or ‘simple’? The request was to take that mission and work on its realisation.

My ‘mission’ in life has never been as clear to me as today. – What’s yours?

It’s very late again, with an extremely early start tomorrow to catch the train back to Germany.

The father of one of Pádraig’s friends visited Pádraig and us today. He is working as a volunteer in the hospitalité. It was really nice of him to make the effort and to come to see Pádraig.

Can’t believe our time in Lourdes will be over tomorrow!

Off to Saint Savin! It’s a tiny village in the mountains with an ancient 900 year-old Romanesque Church and spectacular view into the valley and the surrounding mountains.We left early, had mass and then had a long, really pleasant break in a small green behind the church. Pádraig took the opportunity to have Forty Winks in the Sun! Yes, the sun came out today after days and days of rain and cold.

When we arrived back in Lourdes, we had an other group picture taken on the roof top of the Accueil by an incredibly stressed out photographer who really struggled to organise all those wheelchair users and their helpers into a space that was very tight – even considering that he was standing dangerously high up on a ladder.

This afternoon, and for the first time as far as I know, there were security checks at the entrance to the sanctuary with people having to open their bags so they could be checked for weapons and explosives. There are also very large blocks of concrete placed in front of the entrance to stop suicide drivers.

The world’s gone crazy.

But none of that really bothered us today. We’ll remember those Forty Winks in the Sun, pure pleasure!

Pentacost in Lourdes is a huge mass with thousands of people in the underground basilica. Then Kaffeetrinken with the group hosted by the organisation that organised the pilgrimage, followed by a quiet afternoon.

We went with Pádraig to the hotel we’re staying in to show it to him again, to relax a little and to write those all-important postcards.

There’re postcards you can buy here I had completely forgotten about. Like the 3-dimensional ones, or the even more advanced ones where the 3-D picture changes when you move them slightly from the let to the right.

There are many unusual aspects of Lourdes. There are things, people, and events you wouldn’t find anywhere else. There is an atmosphere here that sets off emotions that can move you into any direction and over which you have very little control.

One aspect of Lourdes that made me think a lot is that the “sick” are very much ‘centre stage’. It’s impossible to find the right words to describe what is going on. Like what happened when we were waiting for the huge mass to start this morning. We were ridiculously early, as Germans are, to avoid any panic and to get into a good location, close to the altar and with a good view, especially for the people in wheelchairs. While we were waiting, several people came up and took pictures and videos of us. Some came up to hold Pádraig’s hand. There was a sense of ‘look at the terrible fate these people have to suffer’, and of taking pictures and videos to show this ‘terrible suffering’ to friends and family at home. Where in the world would you find so many really sick people in the one place?

I know they mean well.

But I very much feel uncomfortable as the one for whom people have to feel pity. I also feel the same in relation to Pádraig. Yes, Pádraig’s ‘story’ could make anybody cry just like that. I could (and deep down do) cry all the time if I looked back and pitted him and his ‘lost’ life.

But I don’t, I don’t want to, and I won’t. Because this would most definitely be the end.

I am not the one, and Pádraig is not the one, people look at and feel great themselves because they themselves are healthy and they themselves have a family that is healthy, and because they can feel pity for someone who is trying to live a life, trying hard like no other.

This is not the end. This is the beginning. This is not about pity and lost opportunities and a lost life. This is about hope, about getting up again after a fall, about being proud, about not giving up and not giving in, about help and support and shared energy and love when it is needed most.

It’s about live and living. It’s about inclusion. It’s about ability. It’s about dignity and respect. It’s about defying boundaries and established ‘wisdoms’. It’s about: look at Pádraig and the brilliant things he can do!

It’s about Dreamboaters. It’s about making the world a better place.

(You have to start somewhere:)

It was the day to go to the baths. Last year, we had arranged a ‘special visit’ for Pádraig because we weren’t sure whether he was ready to be dipped into what is, apart from holy, ice-cold water. This year we went with the group in the afternoon – after a visit to the grotto and the group picture in the morning.

We met the same Italian ‘neurólogo’ who had persuaded me last year that all was good and that in case anything did happen that he would be there to assist (with the Irish helper in the bath whispering to me that you always had to watch the Italians:). He remembered Pádraig and shared Pádraig’s story with his fellow-Italian assistants in the bath.

They dipped Pádraig into the ice-cold water on a stretcher and as they did he lifted his head and half of his upper body out of the water! – I wouldn’t call it a miracle, more like a natural reaction of trying to get out of the cold, but he had not done this last year and I had never seen him doing anything like this before. But then, he’s not being dipped into ice-cold water that often…

When we left the bath, the neurólogo clapped me on the shoulder, shook my hand and said: l’anno prossimo! Yes, I said. L’anno prossimo! How much better Pádraig will be next year!

Too late to think, too late to write anything. Too tired. More tomorrow.

On the train to Lourdes, for the third time in as many years, with Pádraig and an incredible group of people, many of whom are friends by now!

We’ve interrupted Pádraig’s rehab programme for a week for this journey. The first one Pádraig undertook just two years ago. He was tube-fed then and we were worried about how he would travel. How things have changed since then!

Good night from northeast France, on the night train.