Chapter 116: Parachutes
Peak District Part III
There was a woman dangling from the ceiling. She wore a navy blue pinafore, bonnet and boots. Her name was Dolly Shepherd and she was a pioneering parachutist, apparently. ‘I had it in my head,’ the caption beside the model quoted, ‘that if I had to be killed, I’d like to be killed completely: good and proper.’ She lived to 97 in the end.
I stepped out of the museum, back into the town of Ashby de la Zouch. Fine shavings of drizzle hung in the air as I found a roundabout on the edge of town. The cars hissed on the wet tarmac. It wasn’t a good place to hitchhike but I didn’t wait long. I ran with my bags towards the car as it pulled over.
‘Don’t worry. No need to run,’ the driver called as he calmly walked towards me. Ian shook my hand and helped me load my bag in the boot.
Amy was in the passenger seat wearing a brilliant blue dress and a fascinator the same shade. She was going to an old friend’s wedding. The sweet snap of perfume filled the car. Ian meanwhile was looking after the baby—who eyed me curiously as I got in—so was dropping Amy at a friend’s nearby.
Ian said he liked doing small acts of kindness for people where he could. He hoped karma would come back round one day but even if it didn’t, he enjoyed helping people. We agreed the world could do with a little more of that spirit and he said he’d like to see a good news website that only published positive stories; there is a lot to say if only someone could put it all together. We wondered why we’re so drawn to bad news. Ian said he’d seen a plane crash in Brazil yesterday. I’d seen the video too, the plane spinning flat as it fell to the earth like a sycamore seed.
Ian worked for Hotel Chocolat. He ran all the cafes. It was enjoyable work and he liked how it made people happy. Before that he’d worked for a clothes company that was bought by Next. Next is on a bit of a rampage, I discovered, buying up small companies, digesting them into its system, making people redundant. Hotel Chocolat had recently been bought by Mars too. ‘The big corps will swallow us all,’ I said pessimistically.
Ian reckoned that the two owners would have got close to £300 million each when it was bought. If that had been Amy, she said, she’d be living on an island somewhere, doing something good.
Ian had worked for an oil company before. He’d been there almost 20 years doing all kinds of things including food services. As part of that, he’d helped a man called Gordon who’d set up a water charity. Gordon was Ian’s real-life hero, a truly inspiring man. They sold bottled water and for every one purchased, money was donated to building wells. Some of the wells were linked to children’s roundabouts so as the kids spun round they’d pull water out of the ground.
We came into Burton-upon-Trent. For most Brits, Burton is a brewing town, famous for its beer. For Amy and Ian, it was Covid town. When it hit, they had been living in a one-bed flat with a tiny garden just big enough for a chair. They’d take long walks because that’s all you could do. Still they remembered it fondly. The sudden sense of community, when people clapped the NHS and were kind to each other. Like the pandemic, all that seemed to have passed.
When the pandemic hit, Ian and Amy had been in Thailand. It had been blissfully quiet. China had already locked down and many of Thailand’s tourists come from there. The lagoons of Koh Pipi were empty, the waters clear. By the time they left, there had been six people in their hotel. ‘We still had to make reservations for restaurants though,’ Amy remembered with a laugh. I told them I’d been lucky enough to go to Venice during Covid. I saw St Mark’s Square with barely a soul but for a glum vendor dragging a cart of unsold tourist tat.
Shortly after we pulled up outside a row of houses and Amy climbed out, holding her fascinator against the wind. English weddings eh, we laughed. ‘Have a lovely time.’
Ian knew a good spot to drop me further on. As we went he told me about all the countries he’d lived in. ‘I like Britain,’ he said, ‘But it’s a small island at the end of the day.’ He’d grown up in Australia and had lived in Nigeria for 6 months when he was quite young. He recalled playing on the beach in Lagos and a huge fight breaking out. He also remembered asking his mother why kids would come up to the car selling single bottles of Coke. At that age, there were many things that didn’t make sense but he said it was odd to think back to the country club and the golf course nowadays.
The thrill of travel had never left though. He loved getting away. We talked about Morocco and Spain. Ian said Spain is really just Blackpool but hot. ‘And that’s coming from someone who’s from Blackpool!’ I admitted that I’d never actually been and Ian said it’s great if you embrace it. ‘They tried to turn it into Vegas but it didn’t really work.’ Then he said that he’d once been in a helicopter over Vegas and the pilot had looked down on the playground of blinking lights, towers and fountains and said it was a city built by losers. I thought that was clever.
After an hour or so of chatting, we pulled into a service station. In the distance I could see the grubby beige funnels of a power station, standing quietly like huge lampshades against the grey sky. I waved goodbye to Ian and went to find a coffee.