Joe and Tamzin's Pointless Journey: From Oxford to Braemar to Back Again.
Bernard Bryan: Northampton to Leicester.
The rain had begun hauling in diagonally, humid and oppressive, as we hauled ourselves over the roaring motorway bridge on junction 16. It was that British August weather when it feels impossible to keep dry, for when the rain stops spitting we cooked within our plastic coats like steamed broccoli, shrugging off our backpacks and heavy clothes, gasping for oxygen. We dumped our rucksacks, sleeping bags and tent at the entrance to a service station, and I held up the A3 whiteboard for Tamzin to work her artistry. A couple of minutes passed as she spelled out the words M1 NORTH, SCOTLAND in large letters. Within two minutes, we saw a craned neck, brake lights, and a small Peugeot 306 vibrating 20 yards away. By the time we’d gathered our belongings and jogged sluggishly to the car, there stood a small man, smartly dressed with perfectly white hair, at ease with one elbow on the bonnet of his car. He wore the self-assured grin and twinkling eyes of a man who’d laughed and loved his fair share of the hours through three quarters of a century.
“The last time I hitched was about five years ago”, said Bernard with two hands on the steering wheel, giving the tail end of the car a little expressive wiggle. “I don’t see what all this paranoia and stupidity is all about. As if murderers and kidnappers just crawled out of the woodwork with the invention of mobile phones… it’s nonsense!” he gave a little chuckle, taking one hand off the steering wheel to delve in a leather briefcase that sounded like it was full of sweet wrappers. The car was spotlessly clean yet packed with extraordinary things. Freebie pens and empty video cases, phone chargers and business cards. My feet shifted on top of a pair of grey boxer shorts lying flat before my seat. “I helped build this railway”, he said, nodding to the idyllic pastoral landscape on our left, sliced neatly down the middle by the brown, waving, centipede-like ladder track of railway line. “Years ago, that is. You artistic types?” He glanced in the rear view mirror before jettisoning some sort of missile over his shoulder, causing a faint slap as it collided with Tamzin’s neck. I heard rustling as she unwrapped the Werther’s Original and popped it in her mouth.
“Tamzin's a photography student”, I said, “and I study-”
“Photography? Good lord!” He shouted, leaning forward to examine her face in the mirror, “Yes, it's those eyes, of course! I have them too, you see! I was a photography student many years ago, you know? I have been photographing ever since; rolling hills, wildlife, even industrial landscapes.”
“Really? Where did you study-” Tamzin began, but was stopped short,
“I tell you what, students these days think you're broke, I was broke, I say, we were broke, back in my day. We had enough money for three pints of beer a week. A week!”
There were numerous seconds of silence as we dared not speak, in anticipation of being shouted over. He broke the silence presently: “I’ll drop you off in Leicester. What you want to do is carry on. M1, A1, don’t get sucked into Newcastle, whatever you do. Here’s my card, text me to let me know how you’re doing. So why Braemar? Wait, don’t tell me,” he said, suddenly beside himself with joy, “it’s the Highland Games, isn’t it! I tell you, you students think you’re broke these days, I had enough for three pints of beer a week! A week!” His smiling eyes were levelled on my face, a full right-angle from the windscreen. “I had an aunty, while back, in seventy nine…eighty…” the car drifted slightly, but remained in its lane, “she picked up these two Pols, big burly blokes with a massive Alsatian, she said, and they were acting shifty in the back. It was dark, and one of them said: “Are you not nervous, a nice old dear like yourself picking up strangers in the night?” And with that, she smiled, and said: “Oh don’t you worry me lads, there’s few people on this earth as old and crazy as me! If any fine young man dared try anything silly, I’d just run the car off a bridge and we can all die together!” Haaa!” He clapped both hands to his mouth, abandoning the steering wheel entirely. I resisted the urge to reach out and grab it as an overtaking boy racer’s horn moaned into the distance.
I looked at the card, navy blue with a digitally animated picture of a lighthouse, beaming red and blue into nothingness. It read: KS 3 Marking Services, marking by experienced examiners, B Bryan.
I retain it to this day.
Sick Dogs, Mediums
A small Mazda came to a stop in the lay by in front of us. It had a thin boarder-collie poking its black and white head out of the window. We trudged over to it, seeing the outline of a colossal, weather beaten woman leaning over from the driver's side to unlock the door. When she turned to peer at us through the space between the two front seats, I noticed that she had the head of a chihuahua poking out of her lap, its body tucked into the space between her legs and round stomach. Tamzin moved over to the passenger window and the two exchanged greetings. I heard a cockney burst of “'ope you don't mind dogs” from inside the car. The sound was so adverse to those of the Perth car park we'd been loitering in for the last two hours that it rang with a sort of exotic familiarity. I began to trot jovially to where Tamzin was standing, then stopped short, suddenly noticing that the collie's face and jaw were quivering violently, as if it were freezing. Tamzin said something to me as she walked round to the boot and began slinging her luggage in, but I was entranced by the collie. Our faces were level, and we were engaged in mutual examination. It had a skeletally thin face and body, with exposed ribs and a dry, hanging tongue. The most intriguing and unsettling thing, however, was the way in which it looked at me. It seemed to champion its left eye, a milky white orb with a vast, black hole at its centre and, like a fencer behind the button of his sabre, the hound pointed at me with that eye, as if it was its last defence, its entire wiry body poised and trembling behind it. It was impossible to look at the wretched creature without assuming it was ravaged with a very human madness. I gently rested my hand on top of its head; a papery, knobbly structure that the skin barely stretched around. A flicker of undulation tensed its skin, but it didn't flinch or break the maniac stare. I stared into the crystalline structure of its iris; flecked with brown and ringed with bloated capillaries. A hand jolted me from my moment by tearing the rucksack off my back and dragging it towards the boot. “Want to help me with the bags, or play more wild west shit with the dog?” snapped Tamzin. “They're taking us to Berwick Upon Tweed”. I snapped out of it and moved around to get in the car.
“Parkinson's disease”, announced the woman, grinding the worn, little gear stick up to fourth. The collie's paws were on my lap, and I was getting toasted in the direct line of its feeble, rattling pant. “One eye an' all. We think it might have been done by a human. Won't ever let it face you, that eye. He's useless in crowds.”
“Last owner was a right nasty fuck!” I started, searching for the source of the voice. A small, grinning man peered round from the passenger seat, who up until this moment, I genuinely didn't know existed. His wrinkled, small face was framed by large, tortoiseshell glasses and a helmet of black-grey hair.
“Language, Jamie!” scolded the woman, cheerfully.
“They're students, Michelle. Bloody decadents, look at 'em! I ain't gunna shock em with any 'fing so tame as that!” He laughed loudly, and I joined in. It was nice to have people talking to us after so long standing in the rain.
“Jamie!”
“Ahh!”He made a growl of contempt and disappeared back behind the seat as quickly as he'd emerged.
“Anyway yes, Parkinson's”, the woman went on, her voice deep, slow and deliberate. Her green eye filled the whole of the rear-view mirror, and seemed an omnipresent force, levelled on both of us. “Broken legs on him.” I looked to my right at Tamzin's lap, where a small, wire furred terrier, about the size of a loaf of bread, was engaged in some herculean task, each movement punctuated by tiny, wheezy grunts. He would lift up his two tiny front paws, drop them down onto the fabric of her jeans, and clench them into tiny, little gripping fists. Then, with the greatest of effort, he would drag his entire body, complete with trailing, useless looking back legs, across the length of Tamzin's thigh. The whole process was pretty mesmerising.
“Evolution in motion, mate”. The man's face had appeared again, but nipped back behind the seat before we had a chance to respond.
A space of time passed where it felt like it was just me, Tamzin and these two ailing beasts, heaving and panting and clawing their way through the latter years of their allotted time on earth. I wondered what they made of us, these tormented creatures, what our presence stirred within their sentient databases of association with mankind. “Do you work for an agency that rescues dogs?” asked Tamzin.
“No”, replied the woman. “No one pays us. We just take dogs that nobody wants from the pounds.”
“One man's problem is another man's pride and delight”, chimed the man, beaming round the seat.
“That's so nice”.
“Is it?” he said.
“Where are you two heading today?” I asked.
“Oxford”, I heard them both say.
“Oxford?”
“No, Ox-ford. Little village outside Tweeside,” said the woman.
“Oh, that's a shame. We're heading to Oxford. Would've been a good catch!”
“Tis but a mirage, young scholar,” laughed the man.
“What's in Ox-ford?”
“A haunted manor house, supposedly”, said the woman. “We're going to turn up, undergo some standard procedures and see what evidence we can find”.
“Evidence...Really?”
“We're mediums”, said the man. “One man's load of bollocks is another man's bit-on-the-side”.
“That's...interesting”.
“Is it?” they both said.
The woman's eye left the mirror from where she was watching us. I looked back into the eye of the collie.
Kaspar: Berwick Upon Tweed- Northampton
We heard a clunk from the front end of the vast, gleaming lorry one hundred or so yards away, and the left-side door of the cab swung open. There was a pause, and then a tall, strongly-built man in a tight red t-shirt tucked into light blue jeans jumped out. He rolled his bullish neck, extended his arms to the sky, then took a few paces back and forth, his shoulders and hips swaying in a slow, masculine swagger. Tamzin and I exchanged a look, then began walking towards him, slowly, a metre or so apart to make ourselves more visible, and I held to my chest the whiteboard with M1 South, Oxford! written on it in bold, black letters. He spun around a couple of times on one foot in the grey gravel, making a far-off scraping sound, with his solid and powerful arms loose by his sides. He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, presumably cigarettes, and cupped his hand to his face, confirming my guess through omitting a cloud of smoke. We slowed to a halt about 20 yards from him, waiting for him to notice us. He began throwing a few weightless, limbering shadow punches into the motorway air. It felt like a pretty awkward, voyeuristic minute or so, standing there rock still, not wanting to announce our presence or walk away. Eventually he saw us, stopped what he was doing and turned, facing us head on. We couldn't tell how breaking his illusion of solitude had affected him, so we remained statuesque as he examined us for a few long seconds, worried that any sudden movement could upset a delicate territorial balance between us and end the standoff in disaster, like startling a bear. Finally, he raised one arm, beckoned us by hooking his forefinger a couple of times, and shouted “OK.” We struggled to suppress our delight as we hurried over to the cab.
The man was Polish, and spoke very limited English. I sat in the front with him, jealous of the sheepskin covered bed behind the seats he had beckoned Tamzin to as he hefted our luggage into overhead netted compartments, but also filled with a boyish exhilaration at sitting in a vast leather chair, high up, before a massive windscreen and hundreds of tiny buttons and lights. The man laughed at the expression on my face when he flicked off the handbrake; a tiny, black, dashboard appendage no more than four inches long, whose smooth little click! was followed by a blast of hydraulics that shook the bones. It was exciting to feel such monstrous weights shifting beneath one's feet, at the manipulation of tiny controls. It was then, as we hauled onto the motorway with the spiky, guttural sound of Polish Hip-Hop filling the cab, that something fell into place within my perception of the trucking experience, and my previously vague sense of a certain romance of life spent on the open road distilled right there, and sparkled into reality.
The man had a peculiar hairlessness about his arms and face; his head adorned only with a short strip of dark, curly, heavily gelled hair running a rectangle over his scalp, to curl into a tight mullet behind his neck. The interior of the cab smelt like aftershave and new leather, and the peach tan of his muscles exuded an oily glow. He extended a hand sideways, keeping his eyes on the road. “Kaspar”. I shook it with a grateful smile.
“Joseph”, I said.
“Woman?”
“Tamzin”.
“O.K…” He leaned forward on the steering wheel, nodding his head pensively, searching for something. “...Vakatteon?” He asked, looking unsure.
“Sorry? Vac... Oh, vacation!” I beamed at him, “yes, we have been on a vacation. In Scotland!”
“Oh”, he said, deadpan, putting a cigarette in his mouth. “I go Scotland.”
“Really? Where did you go in Scotland?
“Glasgow”,
“Cool, Glasgow's cool, do you like Glasgow?” He looked at me as if it were a trick question, waited a few seconds with an agonised smile, then exploded in thunderous laugher.
“No! Fuck! Glasgow, shit? Fuck! Haha!” I heard a squirt of compressed laughter from Tamzin's seat, and I turned and gave an evil face.
The next three hours passed mainly in silence, although by the time we reached the Newcastle service station I had learned a few essential details. Kaspar's journey southwards had started in Glasgow, where he had picked up a cargo of Petroleum pumps (two words I can't imagine sounding better in an accent other than his), and his mission was to take them to Holland. His sleep destination for the night was to be Northampton, leaving us almost within spitting distance of home, a ludicrously good result for one lift. The only problem was, it would be past midnight by the time we got there, judging by his journey time estimation of “Eight”, which I presume meant hours. We discussed this problem over a sticky table inside the pit stop canteen, our stomachs groaning as they attempted to break down the large amounts of sugar, caffeine and mono-sodium-glutomate we had just shovelled greedily down our throats.
