It was late evening and I was hungry but by now we were approaching Langport. There was only one pub in town and Keiran said they did great burgers. He’d been down there at the weekend with his mum. “You know what,” he said, perking up for the first time, “I had the nicest zebra burger in there! Zebra tastes fucking good.” I decided he definitely didn’t want to work with animals.
He dropped me off outside the pub and we said goodbye. When he was gone I realised I’d never found out what his third failed life goal was.
I had a normal burger in the pub which was very underwhelming, not because it wasn’t zebra (which it wasn’t), but because it was dry. I decided I wouldn’t stick around and listen to the rock band who were tuning up and instead ducked out into the evening. Langport was a beautiful town. On almost every high street house, big cloth flags dangled down, decorated with all kinds of colours and designs. The buildings were very old and it had a completely untouched aura. At that time of evening, the streets were deserted but for a group of women wearing burkas who pottered along the lane by the town’s ancient stone gate.
I spent the night camped by the river Parratt, tucked out of sight of the footpath and half in a hedge. There are few places as serene as a riverside meadow on a summer’s evening. I stripped off and slid into the glassy river as the sky grew blue. The fish were all I had for company. Concentric rings drifted outwards evidencing their brief forays to the surface but they seemed to clear off once I got in. I realised that it was my first wash in 5 days which perhaps explained it. I had one of the ciders Stuart had given me earlier that day and watched as silver finials of dew formed at the tops of the reeds. It was a sweet moment
The next morning could hardly have been more different. The sky was black and a strong wind crashed over the flood plains as I made my way to Huish Episcopi. I was amused to discover some joker had put a sign up saying the village was paired with Las Vegas. Perhaps it was something to do with Huish Episcopi’s largest employer: an abattoir. I could see a few workers heading into work, followed soon, no doubt, by plenty of unfortunate animals. I regretted ordering a burger the night before.
A blue Mercedes minivan picked me up from the misty grey roadside. The back was eerily empty but the driver Victor and his girlfriend Louisa were very friendly. They had a baby who gazed through the headrests at me with, curious, startled eyes as it clung to Louisa’s shoulder. We found common ground over Glastonbury as we motored along the A303 in the drizzle.
“You didn’t get in?” Victor was surprised to hear, “Ah man I got in 4 or 5 times! Coulda helped you out.” Louisa casually confirmed she’d broken in too. Victor ran a bakery and had a tiny shop in what looked like an abandoned coaching inn, sitting precariously on the edge of the dual carriageway. They apologised as they pulled in and hoped I didn’t mind the delay, ushering me inside to have a look. There wasn’t much in the shop, most of it got delivered first thing to restaurants and cafes but Victor chucked me a bag of doughnuts and a couple of pasties. He had a quick argument with his mother about something and then we got back on the road.
The doughnuts were good. Proper sugar-coated jam ones, the kind we used to get all the time at school. I don’t think I’d had one since. They had been Victor’s ticket into Glastonbury a few weeks before. “It was easy, mate. All I did was walk up to the gate with a big box of ‘em and through I went! I’d drop them off somewhere, go around the festival for a bit and then go do it again. Simple as that!”
Louisa mostly made her living as a model. Tall, slender and blonde, in her wide-brimmed hat and loose blouse she looked like something from Woodstock. She’d simply borrowed her mate’s wristband and flashed the guards a smile to get in. I thought back to my hours-long battle with the thick forests, unscalable steel walls and beefy security guards and wished I’d had doughnuts or a charming smile.
It was beginning to rain as I waited on a busy roundabout somewhere on the A303. I was there a while before a small van pulled up. The driver was going to Dagenham so I hopped in.
His name was Aleks and he was Bulgarian. He had thick black curls laced with silver slivers, thick ash tray stubble and pungent breath. To begin with, he was gruff and the opening exchanges were strained. He leant casually on the window with one arm, cocked away from me. I tried to get something out of him asking how he liked it over here.
“It doesn’t matter if I like it here,” he replied matter of factly, “What matters is that I am making it work. Would I be making it work better if I was in another country? Maybe… maybe not, but I don’t know so I don’t think about it. I am making it work here for now so it is good…to answer your question.” He turned and looked at me blankly and I felt foolish for asking.
Though a serious man not given to jokes, he did warm up as we made our way east. Having barely said anything to start with, after half an hour I could hardly get a word in. He had a strong accent and spoke loudly and slowly as if he was addressing a large crowd on a windy day.
It turned out he was a great intellectual and very intelligent. He knew vast amounts about all sorts of things. He began to tell me about how Elon Musk was planning on launching 1300 satellites into space. Aleks was unimpressed, apparently, there’s already far too much space junk in the near-orbit. He explained with precision how most satellites are commissioned for 30 years and then they automatically come back. The trouble is most don’t last the length of their commission and break, leaving useless debris hurtling around the earth. Another 1300 of these would be a disaster even if it meant, as Musk promised, that the whole world would have internet.
I suggested my opinion that the greater danger was the staggering power he would attain from controlling the world’s internet. Surely no one should have power like that, as everyone knows it fundamentally corrupts the brain - just look at Putin.
Here Aleks boomed gravely, “Ah! Now, this is where I will have a different opinion from you!” A waft of breath swept through the cab.
Being Bulgarian, Aleks spoke Russian and unlike most westerners had followed the Ukrainian crisis from both perspectives. He had concluded that the western narrative of the war was just as deluded as the Russian one. His argument rested on the fact that western influence had been slowly encroaching on Russia, making Putin feel threatened. He divulged how recently six nuclear missile bases had been built by the west in Ukraine.
“What caused the Cuban missile crisis?” He turned and asked suddenly.
“Err…Khruschev building missile bases on Cuba wasn’t it?” I remembered tentatively.
“Exactly!” He cried. “And before, Kennedy tried to invade Cuba to get rid of those nuclear weapons - the Bay of Pigs - how is that different from this? It’s not!”
The car was very hot and I was exhausted after a bad night’s sleep. However, somehow his measured, commanding speech broke through my fatigue and every word he said registered crystal-clear in my mind.
“The other thing they don’t tell you,” he continued, getting into his flow now, “is that 60% of Ukrainians identify as Russian. And!” He waved a thick, hairy finger in the air, “The Ukrainian government are not the valiant, brave victims they make out they are.”
He described how since 2014 the neo-fascist government bent on Ukrainian racial dominance had been in power. The so-called “separatists”, he told me, were in fact the real victims. Unable to convince them to change their identity to Ukrainian, the neo-nazi Azov began bombing them.
“This government has been bombing its own people for 8 years!” he cried. Though speaking incredibly loudly, there was no anger obstructing his clarity of thought.
There was a personal dimension too, which perhaps informed his opinions. Over a million Bulgarians lived in Ukraine and since this government’s been in power they’d been forced to change their names and abandon their identities, he explained.
“Is that an honest, democratic government? No!”
I didn’t know nearly enough to convincingly rebut any of his facts, nor have I confirmed or dispelled them since, but I was fascinated to hear them spoken with such conviction. Regardless of whether any of it was true, it brought home the reality that if you believe something then it is true - until, of course, the day you realise it’s not. Who knew which of us was right, probably neither, but Alek’s perspective made me consider all things in a new light, far beyond the Ukraine crisis. I didn’t necessarily agree with him or think he was right but it didn’t matter, there are more than one ways to look at something. A chair looks different from the front as it does from the back. Nevertheless, it’s the same chair.
We reached a point of mutual agreement and were tired from our 2-hour-long discussion. We neared the M25 junction closest to the overground where I had asked to be dropped. To fill the sudden silence I asked how he liked Exeter, the city he’d just moved to.
He looked at me as we pulled into a layby on the edge of the city with his dark eyes and thick sprouting eyebrows.
“Splendid,” was all he said.
Splendid!
I have really liked all of your stories to date, but and it's only my opinion to much talk of politics and not enough of your journey or places you passed on this trip. I know the road well. Looking forward to reading the end journey.
All the best Stuart