12

Another week, back in Oxford now, temporarily, after mostly London and the end of my East Sussex time, where I last left it. Things progressing, but slowly; alternating between ‘everything’s all right’ and ‘I just can’t do this, can’t break into modern life, work and home and I don’t know how anybody does it, from the binmen to the busdrivers to the café workers to the city slickers, I just can’t do this.’ Alternating, like the wobbling wave of a current, back and forth – that’s me.

Mikey returned last Monday and it was odd, like he had no interest in me, like he didn’t want me to be there. I felt it and I felt I should go pretty much straight away – especially once I’d ascertained he had no interest in my business idea, in the business idea he’d shown lots of interest in previously, over email. That was a bit disappointing, a bit flakey. But I’ve been flakey too, so I suppose that’s all right. His family, though, were lovely to me, and it really was a cherished time. His mum said she’d miss me; the kids didn’t want me to leave. In all honesty, if I could have stuck a tent/shack in the woods and earned my cheese chopping down trees and building stiles, I wouldn’t have. But leave I did.

I hitched to Haywards Heath – where I knew the station had no barriers – and got on a train back to London, all the way to Farringdon, and at Farringdon a little voice said, ‘get off here’. I got off – and I then got on another train, heading north, and when it got to West Hampstead the voice said again, ‘get off here’. I got off and, lo and behold, the stairs from the platform led right to the street. Internally, I clapped my hands with glee and dreamt about making a webpage detailing all the barrierless stations in London and giving instructions and tips about how to get around without paying. I suppose fare-dodgings a little naughty of me – but what with the recent price-hikes and the uproar surrounding that (not to mention how little money I have and how cheap I am) – I felt sort of justified. I don’t mind it too much. And it’s not like it costs them any extra to move my cold and wandering body about from here to there.

I sold my laptop and camera, by the way. Which means I now have over three hundred and fifty pounds! Enough, I suppose, for a plane ticket to just about anywhere that I’d like to go (mostly Israel). But then again, not really enough, since I’m paying out every month for the eyes I had lasered back in September…

I walked and bussed my way to Stoke Newington, and once there felt happy in its presence; it’s the area of London that most appeals to me and where I’ve been looking for a work and rooms. Strangely enough, there is a pretty good sniff of a job and it all came about by way of a baby’s finger: last month, I was in Whitstable with my good and lovely friends Matt and Easterly and saying how I wanted to move to Stoke Newington and London and that and Easterly picked up my A-Z and said to her two year-old daughter Peony, ‘Peony, where should Rory live?’ Peony popped open a page and pointed and, sure enough, it was Stokey. And, more specifically, a particular intersection which I then made my way to the next day. And there, in the window of the building on the corner, a little ad offering a job working with sporting statistics – sports and numbers: two of my favourite things. So that would be kind of weird if I got that.

Next I went into Piccadilly to go to a Conversations With God meetup, and got to talk about spirituality and spiritual experiences with two lovely people and that was real nice, a rare treat, to be so comfortably with understanding, same-wavelength others, which so rarely happens. Even when in spiritual circles, such as with enlightened Christians or Amma followers, because, as I now realise, there’s always a little gap, a space of non-shared understanding. But that was real nice, and will hopefully lead to something, and makes me think again that London is after all a good idea, despite the noise and the dirt and the zombies and the busyness, because there’s just so much life there and amongst all that life there’s bound to be quite a lot of it that appeals to me. They were good people, those two; I hope I get to see them again.

I also glanced in a free paper and saw an advert for a homeless shelter in Angel, and an advert for an appearance by Danny Wallace at the Apple Store on Regents Street the next day. I left at 10pm and tossed a coin to see if I should go to the homeless shelter; it said no. Instead, I texted this girl Cat, who I’ve never met (we play internet Boggle together) and who had offered help; a few minutes later she rang me and said she couldn’t put me up because she only had a studio apartment she shared with her boyfriend but she’d called another girl I know, Anita, and Anita had said to go to hers. So off I went, to Camden, and to a warm and friendly house.

Three nights I was there, amongst lovely and welcoming people, and there I felt very much at home. It was smashing. It was grand. We talked lots and I felt liked. I cooked them tea, and I felt useful. I coulda stayed there too – but I couldn’t have, not when I know how much they pay and give to live there, and that I would be getting basically the same thing for free. So I left on Sunday morning when all that needed to be done was done and set off on my bike for Whitstable. Which turned out to be a bit of a daft idea.

In the meantime, though, there was more jobhunting and roomsearching, and a certain Danny Wallace to attend to; I made the Apple Store and listened to him talk to a crowd of maybe two hundred people about his books and the Yes Man movie and various other things, and at the end of it a massive long queue formed and I guess people were waiting to have their pictures taken and their books signed and I strangely decided to join it too, compelled by a weird notion to say sorry again for being so mean to him on the internet and –

– the story there is, if you don’t know it, sometime last year I sent Danny Wallace an email saying that I liked his Shortlist articles but thought the last line – a sort of cheesy Woman’s Own all-too-neatly wrapping up the story last line – spoiled the articles and, I dunno, maybe I made a suggestion or something, and he wrote back rather cleverly and amusingly saying, ‘maybe you should just stop before you get to the last line’ – which I thought was fair enough. And then some time after that, Perlilly was like, why are you writing him stupid emails like that when you could be asking him for help since you’re a struggling writer and he’s a well successful one? And that was a good point too. So I wrote him and told him about my book and asked him if he’d read it and then he wrote back saying, no, he wouldn’t read it, because I’d written insulting things about him and his wife and published them on the internet. Ah. Yes. I had. See, a bit before that I’d been ranting in my blog – expressing my frustration, really, about my inability to write (provoked by the success of others: specifically Dave Gorman and Danny Wallace, neither of whom I had read at the time) – and even though I knew it was just my frustration and bitterness and jealousy and envy, the way I expressed was basically slagging off the two aforementioned authors, and their girlfriends (who may or may not have existed, I’m not really sure). And, somehow or other, he had read it – no idea how he would have found it – and I guess that hadn’t endeared me to him. Also, he said it was funny how people always wrote to him saying mean things and then invariably turned around and asked for his help; must be some sort of phenomena going on there: honestly, all I was initially thinking was I ought to tell him about this last line thing because it’s bothering me and when something’s bothering you it’s better to go to the source than complain about it to others, and if it hadn’t been for Perlilly I don’t think I ever would have written to him asking for his help – unless, of course, it was all bubbling away subconsciously and ranting and criticising were just the expressions of my inability to get to the point of what I actually wanted to say, which may or may not have been something like, will you help me to be successful too? But, I digress…quite a bit…so back to the story.

I was last in line – because I thought, what’s the point in queueing, why not just use these free computers and do online stuff until the line has dwindled – and then I said, hi, and mumbled some stuff about trying to be a Yes Man and blah blah blah, and then I said, oh, I’m Rory, by the way, we’ve had some emails together – and he goes, ah, naughty Rory, and I go, yeah, sorry about that (very sheepish) and – oh, I should mention that I had apologised to him a few times and tried to explain, and once I wrote my book I had written again and said, you know what, it’s funny but now I’ve finished my own book I don’t feel bitter and envious anymore and, actually, I got around to reading your Yes Man and found it well inspiring and, gosh, you seem like a really nice bloke, I think I should be nicer, and, sorry again – and sorry again was what I said when I met him, and he said, thanks, and thanks for your subsequent [apologising] emails, and I mumbled some more – I get quite starstruck and stupid, really – and then off I went, feeling a bit better. But – oh yeah, one thing I’d mumbled about was not having anything for him to sign – and half-way out the store I realised I did have something for him to sign: my sole copy of my own book (the slightly dodgy first edition) and so back I went, just as he was wrapping up, and said, actually, I do have something you could sign, and plopped it on the table. He got his marker pen out; he was about to sign it – and then he was like, hey, is this the book? Yeah, I said, it’s all I’ve got – well, it’s that or an A-Z. And, quick as a flash, he wrote, To Danny in it, and passed the pen over to me, and said, I’m having that; that can be your penance. And I laughed and wrote, ‘from Naughty Rory’ and said, oh, but it’s got some embarrassing mistakes in it, it’s sort of a pre-edition and edition, and he said to his friends, oh, I’ve gone and nicked a first edition here, and wondered if he should be doing that, and I said, it’s okay, I’ll get more, and off I went, and inside I sort of felt like, mission accomplished, all this mad toing and froing and catching 4am trains to Gatwick and chopping up deer on a farm in East Sussex and wandering lonely in the cold London night basically homeless and not knowing where I was going and Conversations With God meetings and free, thrust-in-hand London newspapers saying, Danny Wallace here, had all somehow and bizarre-like led to that moment and now I was free to now wander and not chop up deer and not be bizarre, and if it does all lead to anything – if my book in his hand does make something happen – then I will marvel at the timing and synchronicity of all that like nothing else in my life, and praise the holy and confusing upstairs God once more. And if not? Well on I go on my merry way anyhoo…

After that, the next day Perlilly came, and it was normal London life – oh yeah, I went to audition for ‘Going For Gold’; did rather well; could be on TV within a fortnight – and off we went with Camden chums and others to a Kensington piano bar and Perlilly herself is spurred on the move to London and job- and room-hunting too. As for me…well, if a job appears – I believe I’ve applied for enough of them to get something, should it be meant to be – then I’ll move here (hopefully to Stoke Newington, although I do dig my friends’ place in Camden quite a lot) and try and make London work; if not, maybe I should go to Israel, which is probably what I would do if I didn’t have a girlfriend, and really about the only thing I’ve ever fancied doing that I haven’t yet done. Ten years ago, I woulda just gone; now, I suppose, I’m older, and more cautious, and feel more and more like I need to make it work in the world if I’m ever to have kids and support a family and all that (Messiah dreams hard to shake). But I’ve thrown in my lot with London and the world and if the doors don’t open after all my knocking then I’ll take that as a sign and jet off to Tel Aviv and go wandering around the deserts there following the signs and my heart and hopefully rediscover something of the light that I once had so brightly, and which I have either lost or squandered, or which may have just simply faded, over these past seven or eight years since I got stuck into normal life, university and career-thoughts and the book, the book, the damned blessed book: the book that has been the bane and love of my life and, right now, I swear, I can’t tell whether it’s good or bad, or wonderful, or just quite maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever done and, did people just say, ‘you should write a book’ to shut me up and stop me from telling my endless stories over and over while at the same time making me feel self-important and not shut-up at all?

And in the middle of that sentence Perlilly walks in, fresh from waking, and sings, oh come ye, oh come ye, to Bethlehem – and, for sure, a million times over, five or eight or ten years ago I would’ve taken that as my sign and been gone: me, the man who listened to talking trees and left beautiful women for strange and unknown mountains; me, the man who let blown-about newspapers and passing drunkards and spam emails direct his life, a leaf in the river, an old plastic bag tossed to the wind – but today all I think is, write this, eat, then what? Was it a sign? Where has my awareness gone? Where are my tingles? Or am I just normal – cured of the madness of thinking car number plates are talking to me and everything’s a sign and, really, that is just the road to insanity – or is it? Because, surely, life was wonderful when the chanced song from a young girl’s lips singing of distant Israeli Jesus birthplace towns at the very moment that I’m writing about maybe going to Israel was enough to send my spinning once more through the unknown world and jumping on planes and landing penniless in strange and foreign lands with nothing but an inkling to guide me, and yet guide me it did. Let’s see…

1. I keep thinking about going to Israel.
2. I’ve also thought about opening a spiritual/arty/musical café. Although the thought of it right now makes me feel tense.
3. I’ve pretty much said I’m going to move to London.
4. I have a girlfriend who is also going to move to London, perhaps because I said I would.
5. I don’t really have any possessions; basically nothing more than would fit in one small backpack, plus a few things in my girlfriend’s mums garage loft, taking up hardly any space at all. And that’s not gloating, that’s just an illustration of freedom, of not being tied down.
6. I have about three hundred and fifty pounds. A plane ticket to Israel is about ninety quid one way; maybe two hundred there and back.
7. I may be on a TV show soon with the opportunity to win a grand or more. (“A prophet of God told me to go to Israel; ‘don’t worry about money,’ she said, ‘God will provide.’”)
8. I’ve applied for various jobs. If I get one, I’ll take it.
9. I’m due to see Mother Meera on Wednesday; that usually does something to me. (IE, propels me into new realms, new destinations quite rapidly).
10. After that, barring a few cancellable gigs, there’s not really anything doing. If I don’t get a London job then my life will be a blank canvas.
11. I’m not sure I can think of a number eleven; in my head, my girlfriend is the thing that is stopping me; I have a propensity to let this thought stop me from doing things, even though I know she herself wouldn’t actually mind – it’s a fear, I suppose, an old mother-linked issue, perhaps. But one has to do what one has to do, sooner or later…

In a nutshell, we’ll see; I know enough about The Divine to know that, no matter what job I apply for – even McDonalds or fruit-packing – I won’t get it if there’s something else for me to do. And if it is the job for me, then getting it’ll be a doddle. All shall be revealed. In the meantime, I might do some writing – once I’ve finished off my tale of the week…

So, yes, yesterday – we woke up in Camden, Perlilly went on her merry job-hunting way, and I thought I’d cycle to Whitstable, to see Matt and Easterly. But, boy oh boy, getting through London is hard work; especially with a slightly heavy bag (all my stuff) and a fucked-up bike: two hours it took me, just to make Greenwich (all the map-reading and wondering ‘bout how to cross the river). And a bit further on, nearly 3pm now, I’m kinda stuck and not digging it, and I spy a barrierless train station (Eltham; open barriers, actually) and I think I might just chance that, and take the fare-dodge express. But as I’m sat on the platform a text comes from Perlilly saying dinner (with mum and mum’s beau) in Soho at 6, please come, please come, and me thinking, Yes Man, promptly swaps platforms and heads London way once again, to yum yum Thai food and dinner with the mum, and dinner with the mum is good because, having left here (here being Oxford, the mum’s house, where I now sit) I suppose I’d felt a bit awkward about seeing her (mum-related issues again?) but there was no awkwardness at all, and they said, come back to Oxford, and I was tired and beat and it was, of course, too good an offer to say no to. Plus, anyway, I’m sort of saying Yes these days as often as I can. So, in a nutshell: read what I wrote above.

5

Monday 29th December, I decide, is the day to leave Oxford: Christmas is over and done with; lovely girlfriend Perlilly is flying off on holiday; London is quite seriously beckoning. I’ve become bored and staid. I’ve lost myself in doing nothing – in computer habits – in laziness and dead-ends. There’s no action in Oxford. And I’ve a sniff of a job Stoke Newington way, which is an area I like, and it seems like a door has opened and I’m ready to walk through it. Plus, I can’t stop thinking about opening a funky little coffee house restaurant…

It takes me hours and hours to get myself together. I’ve hardly got anything. I’m procrastinating – getting my computer just right, making sure everything left behind is safely stowed away. I’m frightened and unsure: why am I leaving a life of luxury and ease for a life of uncertainty and discomfort? I could weep – but what’s the alternative? A life of boredom in a town where nothing happens. This life is so hard sometimes; I’m no good at it.

I pick up my bags and exit, and decide The Thumb will be my saviour. And it is.

I ride soon enough in a nice car with a nice man and it’s warm and a respite from the harshness of this winter. He takes me all the way to North London. He might have taken me all the way to Stoke Newington, but for my aloofness in telling him my plan. He drops me in Finchley Central and everything’s going to work out. Then, for some reason, I walk the five miles to Tufnell Park where the friends who have previously opened up their couch to me live. It’s a long walk in the dark with those bags. And they’re not home, nor replying to my text. I walk another mile to Camden, to where other friends live, and their windows are dark and lifeless too. I don’t have their number. It’s the void between Christmas and New Year and they’re no doubt with their families. All those empty beds and warmth! It’s nine pm and suddenly I’m homeless and wandering.

I walk to the cinema; coin says go spend £8.80 – a quarter of my entire worldly supply of money – to see ‘Yes Man’. I sit waiting and write a little; at least this coming here is provoking certain feelings in me. Like lostness. Like I haven’t got a fucking clue what I’m doing. In two hours I’ll exit this theatre into the cold London night and it’ll by then be 11 pm and I really will wonder what I’m doing. With my whole life. The Christians say we should follow God’s instructions – but what are God’s instructions? If only She’d tell me, surely I would follow.

I think. I wrote a book – that felt like God’s instruction. I’ve done it now, and the thought of it makes me want to cry. I don’t know why. What else?

1. Nine years ago a woman in a car told me she was a ‘prophet of God’ and that I should go to Israel. I’ve thought of that lots over the years but I haven’t been. I’ve thought of it lot recently too.

2. I have strong feelings about trying to open this watering hole, this American-style restaurant with its deep couches and funky furniture, its mind-expanding bookcases and live music and art. But I haven’t a bean in the way of money and how do you do a thing like that when you haven’t a bean. It’s a feeling, that’s all it is. Are feelings God’s instructions?

I watch the film and it’s kind of stupid but kind of good and, of course, I feel resolved to say “yes” to every little thing.

I exit the film and there’s still no word from my friends. I revisit their places – another two miles – and the windows are dark and the knocks go unanswered, and all those lovely London rooms just a sliver of brick between us. If only the world didn’t need to lock its doors and we were all free to come and go and sleep where we liked, us wanderers, leaving everything exactly as we found it.

I walk again, up and down, wandering, and at twelve thirty I spy the ticket-barrierless platform of Tufnell Park station and hope for a train. Trains are warm. And they go places. This particular train goes to Luton Airport. Luton Airport is warm also. And people can sleep there. I go but the airport station isn’t barrierless. I wait half an hour in the cold and I take another train north, towards Bedford; this really is madness. There’s nothing in Bedford but just maybe I can ride the trains all night long and won’t get caught by a guard. It’s two am and now I’m riding a train back south towards Gatwick. And Gatwick is barrierless and at 4.30 I am on its benches and attempting sleep. I sleep a couple of hours, on and off, as one does in the bright lights of the airport night. A policewoman wakes me and some point and asks me if I’m there to catch a plane. I say I just needed somewhere warm and she lets me be, after checking my name on her radio. Again, how have I gone so quickly from dwelling in four-bedroomed, four-bathroomed splendour with wonderful girlfriend and luxury to this? I feel I could slip off this Earth so easily…that it is so difficult for me to make this life work…

In the morning I wander about, and read the newspapers, and think I quite like this, my new airport home, and toss coins to see what I should do next. I remember my friend Mikey lives close by – my friend Mikey who has expressed an interest in joining me in my restaurant idea; he’s got money, he says – but for some reason I don’t want to call him. Coin wants otherwise, though, and I do. No answer. Answermachine. I leave a message and just as I’m about to hang up his posh-sounding mother picks up the phone and says hello. She knows me, of course, because Mikey and me were on Countdown together. She says Mikey’s away for the week but why don’t I come for lunch? It’s just the oldies – her words – but I’d be very welcome. It sounds a bit mad and I don’t think I’ll do it but YES is in my blood and, let’s face it, I’ve got nothing better to do. More fare-dodging and a spot of easy, welcome hitching and I’m there, coming down the long drive into splendour: the family farm, lots of buildings and a large pond for boating and it’s a little like a picture postcard. And, wow. Mummy welcomes me in and I meet the pa and we three and set down and have a lunch and chat away and they’re awesome and friendly and interesting and funny, and obviously very, very cool. Mummy says, what are your plans? and, why don’t you stay the night? and YES has me again. And then I go off to help Nick, the dad, chop up a deer and, sure I’m a vegetarian but what the hell, it’s all molecules and just sensations on the body and no reason on Earth why I shouldn’t be doing this. And it’s fun, and everyone’s so nice, and, oh yes, this is the life. Dinner is had and all of a sudden everything makes sense.

I work the next day with the dad chopping down trees and shifting logs and building hedges in the woodland that he owns and it’s so, so marvellous to be out there in that cold crisp air working up a sweat and being a man and earning my cheese. I haven’t worked outdoors or really been outdoors for so long – not since my caravan-dwelling days back in ‘02/’03, not since the sawing and hammering and carting and lugging of the ranch in ‘98 – and it’s bliss. We break for lunch and I for once feel ready for bread, satisfaction and hunger in my bones. We return and I could do this forever, and if only I could be a simply woodsman out there every month of the year, because cold and the need to be indoors means nothing when you’re felling trees and hurling logs. And ma and pa seem to appreciate the way I’m helping and say, stay tonight as well – and the next night – and the next. And soon enough they say, well why don’t you stay till Mikey gets home, on Sunday and Monday, and that sounds like a grand idea to me. In the evenings we play Rummikub and chess and I meet more of the family and children and in-laws, and it’s roaring log fires and enjoyment and games and, yes, when Mikey gets here and we talk about our business plan and decide to go ahead with it all that madness of making myself homeless and wandering cold London streets will have sorted itself out and revealed itself to be merely Life directing me to where I actually needed to go. Like I say: marvellous.

More tree-felling and meals, and a bit of amateur Andy Goldsworthy-ing in the woods, and being surprisingly useful in helping to fix zips and chainsaws, and build long-needed stiles, and it’s great to be able to give something back and not feel absolutely beholden, as I usually would in this situation. Occasionally I feel uncomfortable, and wonder if I’m being a burden, and want to escape – but I decide that’s just my own issues and they seem fine with everything – they’re offering – and I ride it out. I love this way of life. And maybe it was nothing to do with coffee shops and London, it was all about getting out of Oxford and finding something good. And maybe Nick will want me to stay here and assist him in this good honest man’s work in the woods…

We go to church – they’re good, enlightened Christians – and afterwards I play with the kids and have half a dozen of them on my back amid giggles and games, and show them how to devil stick, and this Barcombe place seems like nowhere I’ve ever been in England, all communal and everyone-knows-each-other and free. The children wander around in the woods on their own and their parents encourage them, and encourage them to climb, and encourage them to walk on cracking frozen ponds six feet deep, and it’s how life should be and how life was before health and safety and illogical fears about child abduction and knife-crime. Community. Spirituality. Friendliness. Support. Yes, it’s lovely.