Chapter 100: An Elegy to Hitchhiking
It’s been a month short of seven years since I first hitchhiked. Where the Monte Mar Drive slides into the Freeway 101 just out of sight of the Golden Gate Bridge. California. A woman in a Lexus with a bob and big shades said she couldn’t bear to see me standing there, so she stopped and began my hitchhiking career.
It’s been almost two years exactly since I first hitchhiked in Britain. I stood by a pink Edinburgh sign and questioned if any Brit would ever stop. Covid was still rippling and most assumed people wouldn’t bother with a stranger anymore. A bunch of teenagers flipped me off, then a moment later a rigger and a lady from Denmark pulled up. The nonchalance with which they said “Yeah, we’ll take you” gave the whole project legs. In those few words, they showed it wasn’t a big deal to give a stranger a lift.
I’m not sure how many rides I’ve had since, maybe close to 200. In the scheme of hitchhikers that doesn’t give me much clout. There was a woman who was crowned Miss Hitchhiker by a local mayor in America. She’d hitched 15,000 miles and was only 19. More recently I heard of a man who wears a funny hat, who stands every Sunday on the edge of Barnstaple and hitchhikes as far as he can. I’m sure he’s had many more lifts than 200.
Not far from Barnstaple, near the Cornish town Liskeard, a driver told me about an NHS scandal. London councils were offloading elderly people, often from ethnic minorities, to Cornish care homes to fill their quotas and save money. These people were being sent to places they’d never visited nor heard of, hours from their families. The driver worked for the Cornish NHS and was left, helpless, to break the news to these unfortunate people. He was pinned by the coldness of the situation, its facelessness.
The world can often feel faceless. We spend endless hours on social media, looking mostly at people. People cooking, dancing, telling stories, laughing. We look at people who are dead, or people being killed. We look at people selling us things, selling, selling, selling things. Then a cat does something silly. Then we look at more people dancing.
In short, we see no shortage of people. But we interact with none of them. For all the empathy inspired by a person on a six-inch screen, it’s not the real thing. I once met a homeless woman in Brixton. She said she’d gone viral shortly before doing a dance in Manchester. But she had got nothing for it, no money, no help. She was still sleeping in a wet sleeping bag.
Every morning, when I am not hitchhiking, I commute across London. I usually take the overground to Liverpool Street and the tube to Baker Street. In that time I see several thousand people but I wear noise-cancelling headphones and observe most others do too. I consume some form of media every moment of the journey and have no interaction with anyone on the train. Unless I’ve spotted some loose acquaintance, in which case I’ll probably hide behind my book, bringing the page close enough to smell the glue.
Hitchhiking therefore offers a certain release. My headphones come off, ears open. It promises a fleeting connection, a chance to share something with a stranger. Such moments are a lubricant to life. They allow the exchange of experience, wisdom and ideas. They facilitate the sharing of stories, real, embellished or just made up, many might have deep meaning, most will not, but any one of them might change your life in a way you never expected. In such encounters, something is exchanged, passed between you like a coin pressed from palm to palm.
It also gives me a buzz. Perhaps not quite as vivid and raw as that first time in California, nor that first time in Edinburgh, but it’s a kind of drug in a way. Nothing beats the feeling of meeting someone remarkable. Hearing their stories is like reading a short story. It wraps you up with a brief glimpse of some other world. Like a great short story, it leaves a lingering fingerprint that glows in your memory. A coin in your pocket.
But more than that, you feel a strange sense of love after a journey. Someone once told me love is the most ambiguous word in the English language, and somewhere in its mountains of meaning, I think there’s a place for the bond between driver and hitchhiker. No one could put it better than bell hooks, though she wasn’t referring to hitchhiking: “When we are taught that safety lies always in sameness, the difference, of any kind will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear - against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect - to find ourselves in the other.”
The man who told me about the Cornish care homes also told me about his youth on the road. He interrogated the memory as we drove towards Liskeard, rolling up his sleeve and reaching into it. It was as if he was searching for something.
He told me that he grew up chopping logs because his father had done the same. But when he turned 17 he hitchhiked through Britain. “I was a big lad at that age. I looked like a man. But really, I was a child,” he said.
The journey changed him, took him out of his bubble and showed him the world, or at least just enough of it to know there was more worth seeing. “I came back a man,” he recalled, “There are things you learn hitchhiking that no book can teach you. You can’t be taught that stuff. You have to learn it. It’s real lived experience.”
Most people these days will never hitchhike. Many wouldn’t feel comfortable, others can’t find the time. But what I’ve learnt over these last 100 chapters is that it’s not really about hitchhiking. It’s about people.
You can get that fix in many ways: in a corner shop, cafe, on a date or on a train. You could meet someone in an art gallery in Mayfair or sitting at a public piano in a train station. The concept is no different. But personally, I find hitchhiking easiest.
“It’s nice to see a hitchhiker again,” the man in Cornwall concluded, “I’ve always thought people are good at heart. You know, kindness is still a currency.”
And so, I’d say, it is.
Thank you all for staying with me this far. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support. I’m excited to announce that I’m going to publish Britain by Thumb as a book soon and need your help! (Not financial don’t worry.) Most publishers require a sizeable following, something which, with my punishing lack of self-marketing abilities, I am still chasing. It would mean a great deal if you could share this with any friends or family and get them to sign up! Every email counts. Once again thank you for all your support and sending you all lots of love. Plenty more to come.
Nico. x
I began my hitchhiking days in California, too, but long long ago now. Went with a friend and it was really something, meeting so many people. No bad experiences, worried my mother sick of course, but everyone was so generous and informative. Great stories and best of luck with your book!
Beautifully put - I agree that there is so much to be gained by risking an interaction with a stranger, particularly in our too-online existence. When I meet people during my wanderings around the city, I feel a similar sense of gratitude and connection.