So that was a funny old week – full of water (and also biscuits). Monday I was supposed to work but couldn't hack it so gave myself the day off and ended up desperately escaping the city driving NorthWest, anywhere NorthWest, thinking Otley, Ilkley, somewhere pretty and quiet and away from it all, maybe with rocks and rivers and who-knows-what. In the event, I wound up in a place called Blubberhouses by a reservoir, and found some beautiful mystic woodland and thought about going on a three-day walkabout sometime soon if it ever stops raining. Also went down by Bolton Abbey and sought out the The Strid, which my mum had just warned me about the day before; it's some killer stream that eats up the people who are foolish enough to try and jump it and spits them out several days later all bloated up and drowned. It's famous, apparently. I wanted to jump it but couldn't see a spot. It looked pretty insane, actually. There's some stunning country up that part of the world.
Three fascinating facts about me:
1. I haven't worn underwear since February 1997; not once. I was commando before commando was even invented
2. I've walked across the Mississippi by railroad bridge. You can see that bridge in the shocker-of-a-film 'Elizabethtown' when Orlando Bloom passes through Memphis
3. When I was 10, I shook Prince Charles's hand.
I failed miserably in my New Week's Resolutions, seemingly spurred by those declarations to devote even more useless time to doing useless things on the computer. Alas, I've replaced Risk with myspace and facebook! But I suppose we can soon fix that: I put my laptop up for sale on eBay and hopefully it will be gone this week. No doubt I'll buy another one in due course, but that should be enough to knock it on the head for now. No, a Sunday write and occasional email check at the local library'll do me.
Four things I want to do:
1. Write a book
2. (Re)discover God – and make more of it the second time around
3. Go on Big Brother
4. Stop feeling like I always want to get away.
Something else was going on this week. A boredom; a sense of uninterest; the word 'dissatisfaction' never far from my mind. It reached its pinnacle on Thursday: a struggle to get through the day at work; another rainy drive home – this November rain in June – and the traffic backed up just outside Wakefield. A sign pointed to the left, towards Stanley Ferry, and I thought, "I could go down there, wait out this traffic" – and then I thought, "what's the point in that, I'll just sit/walk in the rain and then get back on the road and then home and it's all the same, I'll feel the same, might as well get it over with now." I resumed my original course – and then I turned anyway, as though something made me.
Five thoughts I've had this week:
1. I should sell everything I own, save for my guitar, my sleeping bag, and maybe my car
2. Apart from God, I don't think anything will ever satisfy me. I mean, temporarily it will – but nothing much lasts
3. I gotta get away from here! Leeds, London, Bristol, New Zealand, Norfolk – anywhere!
4. I wonder, did I trade my future happiness for a magnificent pair of breasts?
5. I should get back with my X – but have it better, and have loads of things totally different.
I walked down the drizzle, marvelling at the houseboats and thinking how rubbish they looked, like floating caravans, except parked in water, next to paths, next to gawkers, and with the noise of chug-chugging engines all the time; I'd thought a while ago it might be nice to live in one, and this showed me it probably wouldn't. That was worth going out of my way for – I love discovering that something's not really for me; shining a light on my thoughts and desires and seeing the emptiness in them, even if it costs me time and money (studying to become a teacher, anyone?) So, houseboats? No. But beyond that realisation, it didn't appear there was anything else there for me – until, that is, I went a bit further than planned, away from the houseboats and onto some pedestrian bridge and stumbled upon the most wondrous sight I ever did see! Suddenly, there, in the river, something that gave me excitement and thrills and creative sparks and imagination! Beauty and madness and illumination! It was garbage – floating garbage: thousands of footballs and branches and bottles and gas canisters and tyres and barrels and an upturned boat and a million other things besides, all turning circles in the water trapped with the current and forming crazy patterns all coloured and swirling and insane in the magnitude of floating plastic heaven. I just knew I had to be a part of it.
Six strange things I've done:
1. Walked naked around the Norfolk countryside once for about four hours, having left my clothes on a river bank because it was nice and sunny
2. Woke up in a hospital wearing only my boxer shorts, six miles from home and thinking I was dead; I'd dropped a load of acid and jumped out of my friend's flat window
3. Slept in a broken greenhouse in South Kirby after missing my last train home (also spent the night 'sleeping' in a rainy and cold children's playground, several different cemeteries, inside two churches, on a bed of jagged rocks, a thousand feet up a cliff face after a poorly thought-out spontaneous climb, a university machinery room, four different jails, and under a table in a Paris convention hall, as well as a Paris shop doorway in chilly November)
4. Drove a car through a charity shop window – and then took nine years to pay for the damage
5. Rollerbladed on the Interstate near San Diego
6. Reduced my entire worldly possessions to a sleeping bag, a guitar, a toothbrush, a passport and two changes of clothes (as well as three pounds sterling in money).
I can't tell you the joy I felt when I saw that floating menagerie, that circus of trash. I've been thinking for a long time that I just wanted to drift down some river on some homemade craft, but I'd kind of scotched the idea because everybody told me the rivers around here are too dangerous and dirty. But seeing this something clicked and – beyond the sheer mad beauty of it all – there was also something in me that said, "this is where it is going to happen." And so, today, I armed myself with two bicycle inner-tubes and a camera and set off walking through the rain to seek my Huck Finn/Lewis and Clark style fame and fortune on the murky, uncharted waters of the Calder. It was a mad adventure – it was just what I needed. It was getting soaked and not caring a damn (not even feeling it); it was getting nettled beyond nettled, and just loving the tinglingness of it all, and taking pictures of my legs; it was balancing on planks and branches and dragging tyres through the water and attaching them to abandoned wooden palettes while all around me the army of bottles and snails swarmed and stank and footballs bobbed, one half white, one half brown, whispering to me, "you can fall in, that's okay – but don't drink the water." It was struggling for hours with that makeshift raft, smiling up at the walkers on the bridge above me, the rain never stopping, the challenge and the silliness of it keeping me hooked, not bored, and happy. It was stepping onto that raft finally and finding that, yes, it did float – unsteadily, sure, but it stayed up there – and then paddling in vain through the sea of bottles, pulled always back into them by the current, levering off propane bottles and logs and not really getting anywhere, until by some heroic effort I managed to reach the bridge and pull myself across the river by holding onto the ironwork – and then that magic moment when, halfway across, having reached the faster moving part of the river, it took a hold of me and sought to pull me and my raft back into the brew while arms strained against the flow and struggled to maintain that perpendicular trajectory. It was man against river, tiring muscle against ceaseless current. The glory of nature against the dreams of a child. And nature won – but not without a struggle, and not without bestowing the gift of that joyous satisfaction in having tried and fought, and finally been defeated by an unbeatable foe. Oh, the happiness in watching my grip slip from that bridge, and knowing inside that it was inevitable, and still holding on until the last second – not in despair, for I knew that I was beaten – but just for the thrill of it; the challenge; the madness; the game. I was a child again today, exactly as I was 20 years ago, nettled up, playing in dirty water, pursuing fruitless and pointless tasks with unbounded enthusiasm and involvement, in the rain, in my shorts, soaking wet and loving it. I recommend these days to anyone.
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