Chapter 12: There Goes the Vicar

Bude to Barnstaple

Clifftops near Bude

“Oop, there goes the vicar!” Stuart said with a chuckle nodding towards the old man tottering through the village.

“Not wearing his dog collar,” I observed.

“Nope… he’s retired. Or, at least, he should be retired!” Stuart chuckled again and shook his head, “Especially after the job he did at my niece's wedding the other day. Oh, it was awful! Completely butchered it. He got sidetracked by some joke and completely forgot to do the vows!”

“We laugh about it now but we didn’t at the time, I tell you. People were furious!”

The vicar tottered on round the corner.

We were on our way from Bude. Stuart had been picking up some building supplies but didn’t have to be at the site until that afternoon so he was taking it easy. He had a wonderful trouble-free way and a good laugh was never far off. Though he could only take me a few miles up the road, he was a generous and trusting man and offered me a cuppa since we were going right past his door.

We pulled up the drive and he proudly pointed out the three houses he had built, all lined up next to each other. We nipped inside the middle one and put the kettle on while he showed me the deck, the fields and the horses out behind.

Stuart pointed out the taller house next door and said it was his brothers. “That’s the money side of the family,” he laughed warmly and explained how his brother had followed his father’s footsteps and become a funeral director. Back in the day, it had been commonplace for joiners and carpenters to double up as coffin makers and his father had done exactly that. Stuart’s brother had taken on the business and was highly accomplished himself: at one point he’d even been the president of the National Association of Funeral Directors.

Sadly he wasn’t about, I’d have liked to meet him. I’ve always rather liked undertakers, ever since I met a group in Cambridge who told me that since they spent their working days being austere and softly spoken, every few months they’d all get together for a good old blowout. They’d been mid-blowout when I met them and were great company. Likewise, I’d had a hilarious if slightly bizarre few hours in the Hippodrome Casino with another. He was draped over the roulette table in the small hours of an autumn night, still in his funeral garb of striped trousers, tails, waistcoat and top hat. It’s hard to make the depiction not sound depressing - perhaps it was - but he’d been great company too.

We drank our tea in the kitchen with Stuart’s wife, Julie, and I asked about the impressive salt and pepper shaker collection that adorned the end wall. There were shakers of every description: flamenco dancers and sphinxes, beach huts, dolphins and surfers, buildings, columns and flags from every corner of the globe, all neatly displayed in rows. It was a brilliant exhibition of the world in all its different shapes, sizes and colours, expressed through the humble medium of salt and pepper shakers. Many were bought by friends, most they’d bought themselves, but all had a story of some kind - much like people, I thought.

Stuart and the shakers.

Before we went on our way, Stuart ushered me into the garage. There was a fridge in the corner and he opened it up spilling yellow light on the floor. It was full of cider. “Here, you better take a couple of these with you,” he said with a grin as he slid a few out, ice cold, “That’ll keep you going.”

I’d only advanced about 8 miles from Bude by the time Stuart dropped me with a toot and a wave, but distance is not always a virtue when hitchhiking.

Some 63 years ago, north Devon was graced by some hitchhikers on their way to stardom. Before the days of their famous mop-tops, 16-year-old George Harrison and Paul McCartney thumbed their way south from Liverpool. They stayed in Paignton on the beach then rode north through Devon, catching the ferry to Wales. Writing about the formative experience 40 years and a life of untold fame later, Harrison recalled the journey. "We saw a woman [somewhere in Devon] and said, ‘Excuse me, do you know if there’s somewhere we could stay?’ She felt sorry for us and said, ‘My boy’s away, come and stay at my house.’ So she took us to hers - where we beat her, tied her up and robbed her of all her money.”

“Only joking,” he added before describing the onward journey to Wales. One night, camped in a field in Harlech, a downpour forced them into the farmhouse of a family called the Brierleys. Their boy John was a keen musician and they stayed up listening to Elvis and playing snooker. The Brierleys were kind hosts and the boys stayed a whole week. They even came back the next year. McCartney accidentally stole a blanket though and some time in the 80s Mrs Brierley wrote to him reminding the now veteran rockstar of the altercation. “I’m sorry about the ‘debt’,” McCartney replied scribbling a response on a speeding express train somewhere, “I hope the enclosed cheque will settle our money differences.” 40 years later, the letter itself was auctioned with a £3,000 starting price.

As I waited in the layby I looked up ‘hitchhiking salt-and-pepper shakers’. Sadly no such thing existed but perhaps when I’m a world-famous rockstar I’ll have some commissioned and send them to Stuart and Julie.

Stuart

-

A car screeched to a halt and swerved over just before the end of the layby. It was small and driven by two rough-looking old blokes. The passenger climbed out slowly amid a cloud of dust, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He pulled his seat forward and pointed to the cramped backseat. He watched me, his face was blank of expression as he held the door. I looked at the driver. He was bald and had a thick, leathery face. He didn’t take his eyes off the road or his head off the headrest. I felt distinctly uneasy as I nervously peered into the dark smokey car. The cramped backseat could hardly look less appealing. Decades of bad press came welling up and I saw the headlines: Hitchhiker murdered in North Devon… But despite all that, something compelled me to get in. I took a deep breath and squeezed inside.

As I hugged my knees to my chest I thought I’d made a mistake. With no back doors, it felt claustrophobic. I asked them their names. “Terry,” said the passenger, “and Keith,” said the driver. They had low gravelly voices heaved out through cigarette puffs. They looked like characters from an east-end gangster movie. I glanced around the car, hoping to find something to make me feel more at ease. Through the smoke, I noticed a half-empty bottle of ketchup wedged down the side of my seat.

Terry broke the silence, “So, you been to Glastonbury then?”

The question was asked with a joviality and an interest that banished my worries instantly. They looked rough but I soon realised that they meant well. Far from being hardened east-end gangsters, they were friendly, even if gruff and almost impossible to understand. Keith piped up to tell me how angry he was that Boardmasters festival had been cancelled. “Absolutely outrageous!” He said grumpily.

“Well did you see Adele cancelled her US tour?” Terry grumbled back. His accent was thick so I had to lean forward to pick up what he was saying. He’d seen the news that morning. “People would ‘av paid thousands to go out there and see her! They will’ve bought floights an’ ‘otels and everything!” He shook his head, “An’ now she’s gone an’ fuckin’ cancelled it!”

Keith agreed with a grunt. “Fuckin’ joke! They won’t see a penny back from that.”

Very relieved that I was indeed safe I leant back as much as I could in the circumstances and set to wondering what the hell the half-empty bottle of ketchup was doing. It was Heinz blue label - 50% less sugar and salt. Initially, I thought it must have been dropped, but on closer inspection, I realised it lived there, neatly tucked in the door panel. Why though I never determined.

I did however learn that both Terry and Keith had lived all the 70-odd years of their lives in Bude. I asked if Bude had changed much.

It had they said, full of tourists now. “Fuckin’ city people,” Terry mumbled.

“Always stand roight on the edge of the cliffs to take photos,” Keith mumbled back, “People get killed like that!” He shook his head. It was the first time I’d seen it move from its stony position on the headrest. I kept quiet about the pictures I’d been taking from the clifftops the evening before and then Keith ejaculated with a sudden bout of fury, “It’s like they’ve never seen a fuckin’ field!”

They dropped me off opposite the hospital. Terry climbed out slowly, pulled the seat forward and held open the door with the same blank expression as before. Looks can be deceiving.

A boy named Billy took me on from there. He had glaring white veneers that seemed too big for his mouth and wore a black basketball flat cap. He was a boxer, a professional one, and had had three pro fights and won all of them. Covid had been a heavy blow though and had upset his growing momentum. He hadn’t fought since and was now injured with a broken thumb. He told me about the fights he’d had in London and how he’d managed to sell out the venue once or twice. When his thumb was fixed he hoped to mount a challenge for the British super-welter-weight title.

Billy and his agent had spent long days together driving all across the country for fights. On several occasions, they had picked up a hitchhiker. It was always the same guy, an old man who went by the name ‘Matt the Hat’. He ran a record shop in Barnstaple, a small dusty place, full floor to ceiling with records of every kind. He detested technology and felt it eroded our ability to interact with each other. He only bought a laptop over lockdown to claim government grants to keep his shop afloat. Every Sunday, Billy told me, he would stand on the North Devon Link Road with his thumb out and he would hitch as far as he could.  Then when he felt like it, that day or the next, he’d turn around and hitch all the way home.

It turned out Matt the Hat was quite the local celebrity. He’d been interviewed in several newspaper articles talking about his records, his hat and his hitchhiking. He told Devon Live that it was one-to-one contact that made him tick, “I have time for people and have respect for real, human contact. I think we need it as a society, as a species.”

No doubt with his extensive musical knowledge he would have been familiar with George Harrison and Paul McCartney’s hitchhiking trip. Perhaps he would have read Harrison’s comment, written just before he died in the early 2000s, that, “Nobody would dream about hitchhiking these days. Firstly, you’d get mugged before you got to the Mersey tunnel, and secondly, everybody’s got cars and is already stuck in a traffic jam!”

George Harrison wasn’t wrong about much, but I’m sure Matt the Hat would agree he was definitely wrong about that.

Mike