Monday, 5 January 2009

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.

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