Hitch-hiking

This feels great, being out on the open road again. Hitch-hiking. Haven’t done this for what, twenty-five years? Wasn’t sure you still could. Feels great though. Like salvation. I’d been feeling that my very soul was screaming for release. Fifty-two years old and still I don’t feel settled – far from it. Every day, attending the office, dealing with people’s problems. I barely like people enough to say hello to them at a bus stop, never mind dealing with their interminable problems.

Fifty-two years old, jobless and hitch-hiking. Heading south. When drivers ask my destination I just say ‘London’. Everything heads toward London it seems. London or thereabouts. Like a great maw, it gathers everyone up, then maybe it spits a few back out. It holds no novelty for me, I’ve lived there on and off over the last near forty years. Moving away and then moving back. Now I seem to be drawn to it again, leaving another past behind.

The open road is where I really want to be though. I don’t want to arrive, the travelling is the buzz. It’s when you arrive that things have to be arranged. Somewhere to live, a job to do, a dole office to visit. The shitty things of life. I wonder if it’s possible to just keep on travelling.

Mind you, I’m no Bear Grylls. First sign of discomfort and I’m distinctly discombobulated. This ‘freedom’ thing is great as long as the weather is clement and there’s food enough to eat. Wouldn’t take very much for me just not to be arsed with it at all. I guess I’m now technically homeless. A liberating thought at the same time as being a terrifying one.

I’m not a very brave person, but a restless one; endlessly restless, like some callow animal that can’t be calmed. Easily startled like an old deer left to fend for itself. I’ve run away this time due to the same old feeling of being trapped. Bit late in the day to be feeling this way I know, but there we have it. It’s done now. Bridges have once again been burned.

Got a lift from a Christian guy earlier on. He told me that Jesus had told him to take me fifty miles further than he was going, so he had. Glibly I told him to ‘thank Jesus very much for me, tell him I’m much obliged’ but he took it in good stead. We had that sort of relationship by then. I could be jokey and kind of smart-arsey with him: he wasn't a bad sort. He did though sort of insist that I listen to him sing some songs he’d written about his relationship with Jesus. We ended up on a sort of lay-by outside Rochdale with him banging out these songs on his guitar. I experienced a sort of pleasant ‘displacement’; as if I was looking down on myself in the middle of this somewhat comical scene. Had I been a less mature individual I may have burst out laughing, but I respected the man’s commitment to his faith. Maybe there was a lesson here for me.

It reminded me that it was quite a common thing in the hitch-hiking game for born-again types to pick you up. Captive audience I guess.

Ex-servicemen too. Want to tell you their war stories. Tell you all about the camaraderie they missed. Ex-servicemen can be very lonely types.

I got a lift once from a truck-driver who was a great lover of ball-room dancing; he had all his glitzy duds hanging in the back of his cab. Wherever he ended up of a night he’d visit the local Palais de Dance and away he’d go. Said it was a great way to ‘pick up the ladies’. Not a bad life eh? Out on the open road all day, then smooching the night away. Good on him.

Stuck at this service station a good two hours now and twilight is setting in. I’ve got my sleeping bag with me and I may have to bed down in this imitation woods affair (feeble attempt to blend in rustically with the surrounding countryside). Service stations can be the loneliest places in the world when you’re hitch-hiking; a bit like train station bars, the population is essentially transient. Strangers who will never meet again. They’re also fantastically expensive. You get the feeling that someone blind-folded sticks a pin in some price-tags of a morning and aims towards the high end. 

‘Fish and Chips – twelve quid. That’ll do!’

It doesn't do to have to face yourself when you’re running away, sort of defeats the purpose. I’m even risking walking along the grass verge beside the hard shoulder to avoid introspection. This is of course not legal but I seem to have gone beyond such considerations in my determination to keep on the move.

I swear I once got a lift from a truck-driver who had me and another bloke sat on the small ledge between his cab and his load. The wind was so strong that it matted my hair into knots. Hard to believe that actually happened.

Once also got a lift from a lorry-driver who took the concept of ‘drink-driving’ somewhat literally as he performed both functions at the same time – half bottle of Bell’s in one hand, steering wheel in the other. In true Glaswegian tradition he ascertained that my favoured football team was not the same one as his and promptly bid me leave the vehicle in a dark Cumbrian wilderness where I attempted to sleep in the eaves of a motorway bridge.

You have to be tough to be itinerant; tough and very resilient. It’s not an easy game. The rat race tends to create the conditions under which the socially disenfranchised are created and then openly despises them for becoming such. ‘Criminalisation’ is a subjective process. Look at the prison system in America (and, pretty soon, here in the UK) where it’s run for private profit. What does such a system depend on to turn a coin?

Prisoners!!

Simple supply and demand. Not enough prisoners? Create more crimes.

They say the saviour of the construction industry in the U.S. has been the building of prisons; big fuck-off super-prisons the size of towns.

Go figure.

Hitch-hiking is, of course, illegal.

Why is it illegal?

Walking up the grass verge gets you nowhere and is a pointless exercise. Firstly; it’s taking you away from a service station where a lift is more likely to be secured (car-drivers won’t stop on the hard shoulder to pick you up, for fear that they themselves may be pulled up by the police) and, secondly; how far are you going to walk? Thirty miles to the next service station? All the way to London?

As I say, I’m doing it to escape myself and my own thoughts. There are voices ready to scream in my head. The principle one is a hard and shrieky ‘What have you done?’ and it’s followed closely by a dismayed and distressed ‘What are you doing?’ These questions need avoiding and are now, anyway, largely redundant. ‘What’s done is done, please give me some peace’ is a voice I’m trying to bring to the fore but it has a tendency to be overpowered, hence the walking.

Walking in the dark night under the glare of motorway lights, cars and lorries zooming by. Maybe some drivers glance over at this lonesome figure trudging through the unkempt grass, probably guessing it’s the driver of a broken-down car trying to reach a phone (do people still have to reach phones these days?). It gets a bit scary out here. I remember watching a really bizarre TV programme about two Scandinavian twins simultaneously running out in front of traffic on the M6 (they’d travelled over from Ireland to add further incongruity to the tale). One managed to get herself badly smashed by a truck and the other sustained an injury but not severe enough that she couldn’t assault and attack the motorway police who were trying to help her. This was all caught on camera and made for quite distressing viewing. One of those things that stays with you. The police-assaulter was taken into custody and released a couple of days later when she went out and murdered some poor fella with a knife.

‘Folie a deux’ – a moment of madness between two twins was one of the psychiatric summations at the trial.

Certainly takes some powerful motive force to compel someone to throw themselves into speeding traffic. A powerful force indeed.

I remember once, to amuse myself, I adopted a broad ‘Ulster’ accent when accepting a lift from a chap who, on first impressions, appeared to be middle-class and English. Turned out he was a native of Belfast. The more I tried to prove my mettle as a countryman of his the more I started speaking like Ian Paisley. I very quickly told him that I had to shorten my proposed destination as I was feeling car sick.

Paddling Man

He was a conspicuously disconsolate beach-walker. Couples from way up on the prom would point him out. One would say to the other ‘look at that man. Doesn’t he look disconsolate?’

He seemed unaware of the impression he was making and apparently oblivious of the fact that he was walking knee-deep in freezing water.

If you’d have been close enough to him – and nobody was – you would have heard him muttering.

Donna Trump (she cursed the fact that her parents were unaware of the names of American tycoons) watched the lonely figure as she sat in the Pavilion seats. She watched and thought of the word ‘shambolic’. She also considered the word ‘nutter’. ‘His trousers and shoes will be wringing wet’ was what she said to her dog, Foley. Foley just looked at her wantonly, wondering if there were any more Cheesy Wotsits coming her way. Dogs only thought in terms of food and affection; and the affection was often just an affectation to procure more food ‘Good doggie!’ was usually followed by a treat or a morsel or two.

Donna was quite cosy in her big furry boots and woollen coat. Her top half looked like it was made of scarves with just her pretty face peeking out. She’d knitted her mittens herself, also her bobbly hat, which was blue and green. She loved the winter because she loved dressing this way. She felt great defeating the elements; being cosy in the cold.

She guessed that the paddling man didn’t share this particular satisfaction.

‘Someone should have a word with that man’ she proclaimed to Foley, who’s long pink tongue and hungry panting gave the impression that she hadn’t eaten in weeks and was now on the point of collapse from starvation. Her huge canine eyes pleaded for sustenance. She cared not a jot about any man walking about the sea in his trousers. Donna wished that someone would indeed intervene, she just didn’t want it to be her. This was a peaceful, respectable seaside town but who knew where nutters lurked? Still, there was hardly anyone else around. She decided to give Foley another run. Dogs also run: they chase about after sticks and balls, but only on the understanding that there is food laid down sometime soon. Have you ever seen a dog sulk? They’re the greatest sulkers in the world. They sulk and they huff and they lay their heads lower than snakes and their big brown eyes look like they may have tears in them. Do dogs cry? You bet they do. They cry because there’s food available and you, for some inexplicable reason, are not giving it to them.

So, Foley ran and Donna Trump followed. She kept one eye on her dog and one eye on the crazy man. She wondered what could make a man so crazy as to walk fully-clothed in the freezing sea. ‘Probably a woman’ was her first thought, then wondered guiltily if she was betraying her feminist sensibilities. Part of her, she had to admit, liked to see men suffer. God knows they’d made women suffer enough over the years. ‘Smash the patriarchy!’ was still banner-sized in her heart. Why then did she presume that this man’s evident unhappiness could/ would be due to the contribution of one of her own gender? Maybe he was gay. Maybe it was another man he was grieving over. Maybe he’d fallen out with a brother or a sister. Or a father, or a friend. Hell! Maybe he’d just fallen out with himself?

She was intrigued now.

She remembered her mother and father when they weren't talking. Sometimes they wouldn't talk for days and weeks. They lived in a nice, big detached house in Freshfield, a leafy suburb of Liverpool. She watched her father digging the garden, planting his roses (he said his roses were full of salt due to the nearby Irish Sea). He’d spend hours out there, long past dusk. He’d become absorbed in his work, she believed that, but she also knew that his prime motive was to be anywhere that her mother wasn’t. It was a tacit agreement between them in these periods of Cold War that he’d be outside while she fussed and footered around the house. If the weather was bad, then he’d go to his shed to sharpen tools or make wine which always tasted like Madeira. He could turn his hand to anything except how to get along with his wife. It was no great surprise, but still no less shock, when it finally came out that he was seeing a woman in Barrow-in-Furness.

Donna thought no less of him for that. In fact, it made her smile. At least there was a bit of manly fun in his life. And the woman in Barrow-in-Furness (Sue? Sheila?) must have got the benefit of all the pent-up lust, all the sensual deprivation. She must have been lit up like a Christmas candle walking around the High Street shops.

Her mother wasn't really much fazed, not after the initial shock to her sense of respectability any road, it just gave her more power over him and he spent even more time in the garden.

Donna grew up on the coast, she couldn't imagine living inland, but now she lived on the east coast. She’d moved to Edinburgh for her studies and had settled here in Portobello. ‘Edinburgh’s Seaside’ it said on the sign on the way in, and she’d grown proud of the little town. It had a good mixture of authentic Edinburgh working class and the twee middle class folk necessary to staff the craft fairs and farmer’s markets. The proliferation of ‘southern’ English voices made Donna consciously more Scouse in an attempt to differentiate herself. She knew the Scots deep down hated the posh English accent. This posed problems if she ever bumped into any proper Scousers who would see through her pose in an instance. Happily this didn't happen too often in the Halls of Academe where she plied her trade as a Philosophy lecturer at Napier University.

She watched Foley bound toward a woman with a young child and shouted him back from her lunging attack. Some of the locals wanted dogs banned from the beach altogether. They said that owners didn't always pick up their shit. They said that some folk were uncomfortable with dog’s breenging around enthusiastically. Some wanted the beach segregated ‘Apartheid’ style with dogs only allowed on certain sections. Some people, she thought, had too little to worry about. Two miles up the road in Niddrie folk were getting sanctioned to buggery by the dole and no-one down here turned a hair. Find a dog-turd on the beach and some were screaming blue murder.

Even though not a proper Scouser she found herself bristling at the rank snobbery of some folk. The type of folk that demanded the local Scotmid stock Brasciatta.

The paddling man had flounced off far into the distance, though she could still see his arms gesticulating some sort of personal hell or fury. She thought of the word ‘chillblanes’ and wondered why its usage seemed to have disappeared. Did people not still get them? What were they anyway? They were caused by the cold and manifested themselves around the ankle area. A chill on the blane? What the hell was a blane?

Whatever they were, be-trousered paddling man was favourite to get them. Also double-pneumonia and hypothermia. Never mind the flu and a cold from hell.

She wondered again at the possible causes of his behaviour. Maybe he’d lost his job or been one number off the Euromillions. Maybe his wife was from Barrow-in-Furness. Maybe he’d been told he only had months to live. Maybe he was a passionate, if lone, anti-fracking campaigner. They’d been going nuts about that around here too. Soon as they realised it may devalue their property they were up-in-arms. They’ll put up with almost anything other than that your middle-classes (of which group, she had to keep reminding herself, she was very definitely one), except maybe the price of fuel. Ruin the NHS, scapegoat the poor – that’s OK! Just don’t threaten our cars or our houses. No wonder British politics had got so myopic. Christ! Even the French throw a few cobble-stones from time to time, just to show there’s even just a glimmer of a light of rebellion. Brits just take it up the arse then beg for more.

They didn't even have the guts to be openly racist and xenophobic, had to hide behind the coat tails of Farage and his gang of gin-soaked old ruins and baldy thugs from Essex and Kent.

Gesticulating, paddling man was on the way back. Even he baulked at reaching the sewage works up towards Leith. Heading back down toward the gentile Joppa shores, kicking at the water now and almost losing his balance among the strengthening waves. He certainly wasn't calming down any that’s for sure. Maybe he’d build himself up into such a frenzy that he’d end up thrashing about in the water like a beached fish bucking and twisting in the foam. Maybe he’d just take a flying header into the briny and the flame of his fury would singe like a chip-pan in a sink. He’d stand up erect and stride towards home all figured-out and ready for a warm bath and a change of clothes.

There was an elderly couple on the prom outside the baths. The husband was pointing at paddling man and the wife was shaking her head in semi-horrified wonder. No-one really knew what to do about nutters except of course, stay well out of their road (unless you were a nutter too, then there were no rules at all). At least, we assume that paddling man falls under the category of ‘nutter’. We don’t know why he’s up to his chino’d thighs in salt water but still we assume that, whatever it is, the normal or appropriate response is not to go charging along the seafront in December thrashing through the cold sea still wearing your shoes.

You wouldn't find the Masonic Order behaving in this way!

Maybe he’s foreign. Maybe this is what foreigner’s do. Maybe he’s from some land-locked eastern European shit-hole and he can’t believe he has all this sea to play with.

Maybe he doesn't know the rules of paddling. Does anyone else paddle except the Brits? Maybe someone’s told him about paddling and assumed he’d know to take of his shoes and socks, then roll his trousers up (at least if he was a Mason he’d have at least one trouser-leg rolled up).

This might be one crazy Slovakian paddling son-of-bitch…

Not so long ago this type of behaviour would have gained you entrance into one of the many ‘loonie-bins’ that existed in our fair land. Now you had to pay to get into them. Similarly, in 1970s British sit-coms (‘Only When I Laugh’ being at the same time, the best and the worst of them) as well as Carry-On movies involving hospitals, the joke was that the doctor wouldn't let you out of the damn place. ‘When can I go home nurse?’ ‘Not until doctor has a good look at your prognosis!’ Oooo errr says Frankie Howerd making suggestive faces and Kenneth Connor going ‘cccoooorrrrrrr!’ as Babs Windsor bends over to administer thermometer and shoves her boobs into Sid James’ face.

This sea-striding bloke would have been straight-jacketed by now and banged up in a padded cell. He’d have been sectioned under the Aberrant Paddling Act of 1937 ‘not paying due attention to proper attire’. Nowadays he’s allowed to paddle about like this unmolested.

The sun was fading fast and paddling man showed no sign of letting up on his back and forth journey. 

Whatever the man’s troubles they had a way to run yet. Donna knew she wouldn’t approach this man however curious she was, and Philosophy lecturers had to be curious, otherwise what was the point?

What right did she have to interfere or intrude? If he wanted to talk to anyone he surely would. 

Maybe he was the healthiest one among us? Maybe one day soon there would be a procession of furious unconventionally-attired paddlers assaulting the sea with enraged foot swipes and punching at the sky?

Strangely, she knew this would be good.