The Fortune Teller

The second day of my bi-annual personal pilgrimage to visit the oracle continues to follow a set pattern. I reach the complex where the oracle resides and skirt around it clockwise. I walk along the outside of the complex and enter through a doorway towards the rear. I purchase my tokens and engage in several now-familiar conversations with various administrators as to why I must cross her palm with silver, why I am not entitled to an EHIC card, and then I wait patiently for some unfamiliar variant of my name to be called. I spend several hours in a highly alert state trying my best to understand strange instructions. It is exhausting and I haven't eaten a morsel so once the business is over I leave hastily through the front entrance in search of food and a nap.