There is a universe sized gulf between
silence and sound, and the phone alarm exploding in the general vicinity of my
ear is the precise if fleeting moment that the gulf is bridged. I am somebody
who dislikes being roused from sleep. It usually takes some time before my
senses are fully engaged. I can be the sort of person who can look awake, be
fully dressed, and yet still put the tea bag into the kettle then put oats into
a cup before I snap out of that particular mindfunk and start the process of
breakfast again. Once the curtains are drawn, I can take a peek at what is
beyond them. It is instantly apparent that a dreary looking day is dawning
almost reluctantly over this Bristol city street. As I shuffle into the kitchen
aiming manfully at the kettle, the stalwart kitchen clock ticks away time gently
to itself, its hands showing that the time is just past 5.30 am. It really is
not usual for me to be willingly awake this early and it is stretching the
definition of willingly to say I am this morning. Today though is a day for an early
start, just as yesterday evening was an occasion for reluctant alcoholic restraint
in the pub with two old friends, reminiscing over just a couple of beers. Many
years have escaped since we were all in the same room together, some may slip
through the nets before it happens again.
One of those old friends is Ray,
and he has been a guest overnight on the sofa bed in my terraced Bristol house.
We’re off on an intrepid excursion today, but before embarking on a journey
down the many, many long roads ahead, we require food, despite the fact that neither
of our respective stomachs is really awake enough to require filling. The menu
I can offer isn’t extensive, but whatever it is to be, for me it must contain
uber-strength coffee to fire me up for a stint behind the wheel.
It’s been said many times, I suspect, that any journey,
however long, starts with the first step. As we step towards the van, I get
that exact feeling. It is one foot after the other, marking out a few yards at
a time. It’s the first few yards of 1500 miles of road, the first few seconds
of three days of travelling.
Since the arrangements were made to drive to Italy, I’ve been
waiting to see what the van allotted to such an arduous pursuit will resemble.
Behold! It’s a small white Vauxhall with two seats. The back is full of what
looks like an assortment of charity shop tat, but is actually somebody’s
possessions. Really? I remind myself that being instantly judgemental is both
an understandable and reprehensible personality trait.
A driver’s seat is the throne upon which any self-respecting
would-be Monarch of the Open Road must place his or herself in order to begin
their reign. Upon opening the driver’s door, it is plain that this particular
seat may be harbouring anti-Royalist sentiment, because at first glance I
discover a slightly less than comfortable looking amalgam of old sofa cushions
and rope. On second glance, the conclusions leapt to as a result of my first
glance are irrefutably confirmed. This fiendish construction of lumbago-inducing
menace stares casually back at me, alleging profound innocence with its
quaintly wonky contours. It’s the look that an aging farm dog would give a lost
rambler just seconds before it sinks its three remaining tallow-hued teeth
almost intractably into an unsuspecting calf muscle. On an olfactory note, the
seat is not genuinely unpleasant, but there is a general mingling of low level
aromatic funks, the like of which only old vans and their dubious upholstery
can emit with such aplomb. A reliable steed though, at least I hope so, because
it’s going to be a hell of a journey if it proves otherwise.
I have volunteered to drive the first leg so that I can get
used to any idiosyncratic behavioural issues regarding a Vauxhall. I’d rather
be doing that in England before having to do so whilst simultaneously
concentrating on remaining on the right hand side of the road. The journey
starts in a fine drizzle, continues in a fine drizzle, and remains drizzly all
the way to Dover. The only breaks in drizzle are the times when it is raining.
England my England, this ‘green and pleasant land’, this ‘Sceptred Isle’, I
cannot wait to see the back of you.
Dover is not all that Vera Lynn cracked it up to be on this
truly miserable Sunday morning. In truth, its appearance is not enhanced by the
near-horizontal precipitation, I grant you. However, the purely functional
nature of the fencing and gateways, with the Channel beyond, give it the look
of a vast sheep dip. But the queue is short enough to drive straight aboard the
waiting ferry, and our spirits are as buoyant as the bubbling plumes left in
the wake of the vessel as we pull away from the dock, positive because we know
we are heading toward a comparative paradise. I have been aboard quite a few of
these ships, and they all smell exactly the same. The whiff of diesel fuel and
salt spray transports me back in time in that way that only smells can. It
evokes memories of school trips, cricket tours, hitch hiking to and from
Ireland, all in an instant.
The sea leg of our journey is uneventful and calm, surrounded,
of course, by many travellers of mixed nationalities. Some are going home, some
breaking away from the everyday grind of the norm, perhaps. I’m compulsively
nibbling away at a bag of peanuts, staring at maps, discussing the odd plan
with Ray and generally enjoying the concept and reality of not being where I
have been.
As our liner glides into one of the many portals to mainland
Europe, I am left with the assured knowledge that ferry terminals are indisputably
ugly, universally it seems, because when we arrive at Calais, it wears a joyless,
misty countenance which stares blankly back at the white cliff broken-toothed
grimace we have just left behind.
With Ray now behind the wheel, we exit Calais. Barbed wire
fencing along the roadsides reminds me that this is a last bastion against the
alleged ravages of asylum seeking hoards. Their desperate plight in this
continental cul-de-sac on this morning of gritty reality somewhat juxtaposes
our utter freedom to travel to the hard but pleasant working holiday ahead.
There are thousands of men, women and children in those makeshift camps hidden
by mounds of bulldozed soil, driven there by a desperation I have never and
will never feel or experience. How lucky I am.
And so on we travel, through the succession of gentle waves of
low hills that is Northern France as viewed from a French motorway. My job is
navigator. Whether I am or not, I feel that I’m quite good at this, giving frequent
geographical updates which are interspersed with occasional bird spotting
reports. I can’t help but allow my mind to wander across those foreign fields, corners
of which Brooke would have us believe are forever England. It’s late May, the
last day in fact, and from that ‘rich earth’, scarlet poppies adorn the verges
as incongruous as cheap lipstick smudges on a vicar’s starched white collar. So
many poppies, waving cheerfully like blood-red flags, reminders to us of a
bygone era of open hostility, grief, pain and death as we fly past. Whatever
occurs upon this venture, I must bear witness to my own good fortune, fortune
which brings it to my life. This bolt-from-the-blue opportunity has landed in
my lap for a reason, and each moment that it brings is to be breathed in as one
would the scent of rose petals at dusk.
We have been on a toll road to enable a fast escape from the
port and its immediate hinterlands. Once that road is behind us, the sight of
harsh fencing has faded into memory like mists under a summer sun. We downscale
one road category, and the scenery calms. France is a big country, and the
spacious nature of the landscape is beginning to add flavour to the tasty
brunch that is an open road. OK, it’s Sunday, I don’t expect a busy road
anywhere, but I am suddenly very aware that there are just less people per
square mile here, which translates quite directly to less cars. I mention this
to Ray, assuming that it would suit him too. He has always, on the face of
things at least, had a laid back style of life. This attitude has sewn seeds,
sprouted, taken root successfully, and flourished to embellish the bare trellis
of the Highway Code with a lavish and colourful vine of eclectic driving
techniques. With the wrist of his outstretched right arm perched on the
midnight position of the steering wheel, fingertips resting on the dashboard,
he nods in agreement that the dead straight stretch of uninhabited tarmac ahead
of us would be teeming with traffic in England. Not necessarily everywhere though,
I’m used to inner city life. By comparison, Ray lives in the middle of nowhere,
a place where he maintains he may not pass another road user on an early Sunday
drive. That fact alone reminds me that I don’t see enough of my own country,
let alone far pastures.
We are a microbial white Vauxhall shaped speck on the Petri
dish map of France, and we are moving, moving inexorably closer to our first
destination, which is a pre-booked B-n-B near Troyes. There are roadside
signposts warning passers-by that locals don’t want fracking here. I have
always felt that France is a country where civil disobedience bubbles near the
surface as a societal reaction to any differences of opinion between the
government and the rest of the population. I hope they succeed in this particular
pursuit of opposition.
We arrive at that first night stop with a feeling akin to job
satisfaction, and exchange mutual gratitude for a near perfectly executed plan.
Ray the Eurodriver, myself as the map reader. And then of course, there’s
Patrick. I haven’t mentioned Patrick until now, because I’m not so sure I like
his company. I have been fermenting growing mistrust for his opinions regarding
my map reading skills, and also developed disillusionment with his erstwhile
assumed helpful sense of direction. He appears to be easily confused by what on
the face of things, seems to be the most fundamental of requests. And there’s
another thing. He has a bloody annoying habit of interrupting our conversations
by suddenly blurting out where we should be going next. We already know, and he
doesn’t take a hint when we say, “Yeah, Patrick, we know that, we’ve read the
map.” He has no compunction whatsoever
regarding pointless repetition, and just keeps on stating the obvious until
we’ve actually made the turn, despite telling him we heard him the first time.
He’s has given me the distinct impression that he’s ‘on the spectrum’.
Begrudgingly, I have to admit Patrick has been a help along the way, though. We
bid him a bland ‘Adieu’ as he’s relegated to sleeping in the van. We head off
into the tidy, clean world of Le Clos Poli.
We are greeted by our gracious hostess, who is quite frankly,
a cliché personified. She is as informative as she is petite, and as far as I
can make out, as she is speaking quite quickly in a potpourri of French and
English, appears to be married to a large St. Bernard dog. That part may have
lost a certain ‘Je ne sais quoi’ in translation, so it’s fortunate at this
juncture that she notices our politely confused expressions. She continues our instructional
introductory mini-tour employing only English and an increased level of
multi-faceted gesticulations, thus rescuing myself and Ray from the profound discomfiture
of displaying our combined grasp of the French language. That grasp could be
likened to one which a morphine affected octogenarian may have upon an
amphetamine crazed and well greased pig.
Bed and Breakfast means precisely that, and so after
introducing ourselves and attempting to converse in, not just broken, but
completely annihilated French, we are recommended a local eaterie which is a
short drive away. First we need to rinse away the day’s grunge, and after a
quick scrub up, we clamber back into the van trying not to wake Patrick up in
case he wants to ruin dinner by joining us. Soon, we are arriving outside Chez
Gibus.
I am sometimes guilty of preconception on a grand scale. I
have imagined, as if influenced only by the amateur dramatic societies of
middle England during the 1950’s, that the restaurant would be run by a portly
chap squeezed into a fully buttoned waistcoat, his perfectly waxed moustache
pointing at a quarter to three position underlining a pair of kitchen-heat
rouged cheeks. Suffice to say however, one did not envisage the gentleman who
greets us as we amble slowly through the door. He is an East Asian man of
diminutive stature, dressed in loose fitting chef’s blues, and sporting a long
thin straggly grey beard. He greets us in French, and of course, swaps
seamlessly into English the moment he realises how far we are going to bite
into his Sunday evening if he forces us to order food using any off-piste
language skills. It’s already starting to grind with me how embarrassing it is
trying to conduct a normal life using a conglomeration of my long forgotten low
grade O level French and Ray’s GCE equivalent. Add to the recipe the kind of
addling that an early start and a long drive will engender upon the human mind,
season it with hunger, simmer for two long, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard minutes
et Voila! Soup de Chagrin. Come back Patrick, all is forgiven. How we need his
insistent Brogue to steer us manfully away from carnage upon the rocks of
lingual ineptitude, toward the becalmed waters of bilingual ability.
Food is prompt, sufficient and delivered with charm. Wine is a
half carafe of house red, unspectacular but pleasant enough. Once the meal is
concluded and paid for, we thank and bid farewell to this Vietnamese/Frenchman
who has received and fed us with graceful and efficient hospitality.
I am designated driver for the journey back. This is my first
stint on the ‘wrong’ side of the road for nigh on fifteen years. There is a
mantra reverberating around my cranial region, “KEEP RIGHT! KEEP RIGHT! KEEP
RIGHT!”. By the time we’re halfway back, I feel totally comfortable with it as
long as I have the mantra. It’s the junctions that are the weirdest. But since
there is a dearth of other vehicles anyway, we can enjoy the quaint
architecture of the genuinely cute village without becoming one of tomorrow’s
talking points by crashing through a gate into one of the well manicured lawns.
Once back to the b-n-b, we can digest our dinner and our day
whilst planning a route for tomorrow. After a brief description from our
hostess of what to expect for breakfast and deciding when we would like to take
it, we adjourn to our room. Our room is pretty much spotless. There are small decoupages,
humming birds stuck to otherwise plain walls. A brief reconnaissance of the
bathroom reveals an en suite. I wonder what en suite is in French? Gosh, how I
wish I had listened more to my French teacher at school instead of indulging in
teen fantasies involving the mountainous environs which were hidden beneath her
roll-neck sweaters. And back from the world of dreams, one cannot help but
notice again what a very tidy space our room is. Not for long, because both Ray
and myself are not feeling in a tidy mood, what with the fatigue and all. In
the morning however, I will be rested and become tidy again. I’m not so sure
that Ray requires tidiness in life. He’s always been a little like this. It’s
one of his endearing features. In our youth, I was always amused by how he
could walk without falling over because once his shoes were removed, within
seconds both socks would be dangling halfway off his feet. He is a man of many endearing features.
We settle down to a messy map reading and route planning
session. Once we’ve agreed upon our strategy for the morrow, we groove on into
what remains of the evening. Ray is skyping home, I do texts. They don’t take
long, so I defer to my holiday pottering routine. It is at times like these, I
enjoy taking photos of the night creatures mesmerised by, and attracted to,
artificial lighting. A Clouded Border becomes the latest addition to my
collection of lepidopteran souls.
Soon it is time for sleep. Sleep will require ear plugs and
music, because Ray may be snoring. At a distance of five yards, it is enough to
clash discordantly with my snoring. As a result, I have resorted to Nirvana. Not
in the spiritual sense, in the Seattle sense. Soon however, it becomes apparent
that Kurt’s beauteous angst may prove a tad unsuitable on the lullaby front,
and he is usurped by Node, a little known combo churning out fairly random dark
ambient splurge. Node carry me out into deep, deep space. I am an abductee of
their sound, borne willingly upon their nebulous cloudship of dark matter.
There beyond, through the worm hole that is the night, the parallel universe of
the next morning will, as always, be waiting to greet me.