Nothing inspires anxiety like an early morning. Your alarm hammering through your dreams. It wasn’t even that early but it was earlier than usual and that’s all that counts.
I’d met Amy the day before. She’d picked me up on her way home from school and promised me a lift back in the morning. It was a cold morning, cold enough to make me question why the hell I’d decided this was a good idea. I tend to ask the same question at the beginning of most trips. A cold shower froze the thoughts harder, suspended them, but eventually they thawed, melted by a cup of tea.
“I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” the text from Amy read. I grabbed my bag and hurried onto the main road, pulling on my jacket as I went. It felt distinctly reminiscent of old school days, running down the same road invariably late for the bus.
Amy’s Honda Civic was far smaller than the bus but far more punctual. Exactly 10 minutes later she rolled into the village with a cheerful wave. I hopped in still half asleep.
It was a paper-thin morning, bracing and hung with mist. Plane trails ribboned across the skies. Amy was excited for the day. She’d only been a teacher for three days so the novelty was still fresh. In fact, she’d not even taught a lesson yet, that wasn’t until Monday, but she couldn’t wait. A few weeks of training had left her eager to begin, eager to try her hand. Though the thought of tricky class discipline, difficult kids and the underlying problem of how to actually teach all swirled in her mind, the promise of the reward energised her.
She used to live in Liverpool, earning her keep nannying but now she was teaching she had moved back into her parents’ house. Easier to concentrate there. And cheaper. Her partner was still in Liverpool. He was doing a PhD on the effects of climate change on the diets of Harp Seals but progress was slow. Covid cocked things up and now his machine was broken and too rare to fix easily. It was he who had convinced Amy to teach, assuring her she’d be good. Besides, there was more of a career progression teaching.
Amy had a sense of quiet self-assurance and an eye for adventure in the everyday - the best kind of eye. You could see it when she spoke of teaching. I asked if she’d ever hitchhiked.
“No I can’t say I have yet,” she explained, “but I’d like to try. I read the other day that meeting strangers is really good for you. It makes you happier. Apparently all the small talk and awkward moments you get in conversations with strangers makes you more self-confident, aware of who you are, and gives you perspective in life as well. That sort of thing’s really good for your mental health.”
She promised when she next had a journey to make and time to make it, she’d give it a go.
We drove past Duxford and the lay-by I’d spent a couple of hours in the day before and rushed onto the motorway. It’s a journey I know well, I’ve done it all my life and it was strange doing it in a stranger’s car, seeing it from their perspective.
Amy dropped me in a service station on the A14 which wasn’t far from her school. It had been a good start. It wasn’t yet 8:30 and I was well on my way. Beats the train I thought. Besides, the headlines all read something about train strikes so I wouldn’t have had much luck there anyway. You never do.
It took me back to when I was hitching down to Stonehenge for the solstice and I’d met a Great Western employee. It had been a perfect summer’s day. One of the kind that’s not too hot. One that doesn’t fill you with dread and questions about why it’s so unnaturally, swelteringly hot. It was a perfect day. I was in a service station somewhere looking for a ride but I didn’t have much luck so I went and stood on the slip road. The first car pulled over, filled with a large man and his tummy. His hair was carrot ginger and he had a bag of McDonald’s squeezed in the slender space between his belly and the steering wheel.
He offered me his fries and together we chomped away, weaving conversation in between mouthfuls. When we finished he extended a chubby hand and introduced himself as Diggory.
Diggory was driving to Dorset. His father had suddenly come down with a nasty illness. Nobody knew what it was. All they knew was it was serious. He loved going to Dorset and hoped it wasn’t the last time it would be to see his old man. You could tell from his manner that maybe it was. With the cement mixer of emotions going in his head, he’d seen me and thought he’d pick me up. He’d never done it before but helping someone out felt like the right thing to do in that moment.
“With all the shit that’s going on, I just thought why not?” He mused thoughtfully.
Diggory had worked for Great Western all his adult life. It wasn’t something he necessarily thought he’d do, but he fell into it after uni and found he liked it. Now he’d worked his way up and was a senior manager. He spoke about it cheerfully, glad to have his mind off events.
I asked about the strikes. It was all over the news then too. He couldn’t quite make up his mind on them. As a manager, he wasn’t striking but he understood why people were. Inflation was rampant and their wages were frozen solid, their incomes were being slowly chiselled away. Regardless of how much they were getting paid, these people have got families and lives. Losing ten per cent of your income every year makes a difference.
But he also thought the union was full of crackpot extremists. He’d known Mike Lynch and said he wasn’t a nice guy. Said he was one of those who was totally ideological, saw life through Marx’s glasses and was completely obsessed with striking. Regardless of the conditions he would have called a strike. Nevertheless, Diggory respected the sheer skill of organising a one that size. It was the first national rail strike in decades and industrial action on that scale, across multiple companies is a serious undertaking. Only someone utterly devoted could pull off something like that.
I told him about a salty Scotsman I’d seen standing outside COP in Glasgow who had a similar opinion. He had a speaker and a microphone and was shouting furiously into the grey drizzle. “Stop listening to those CIA, MI5 motherfuckers,” he cried in his thick Glaswegian accent. He jabbed his finger towards the conference twisted with anger, “They are just leading you on a merry fucking dance! Get out here and strike like the rest of us. Coz that’s the only power you’ve got!” This time he jabbed the finger at me.
He went on to offer some practical advice. “In the first month, strike for just one day. In the second, strike for two days. In the third, three days!...” He kept going and when he’d got to about ten I walked off. Nobody paid him any attention, they had far more important things to think about, but unfortunately, anyone who might have told him to shut up was obviously on strike.
We came onto Salisbury plain. The traffic was crawling. I’d liked Diggory, I was sorry for his dad but he was a friendly man.
“Thanks, Nico!” he called as I got out, “It’s been emotional.”
The morning was filling out as we drove up the A14. Yao had a coffee in hand and flecks of silver in his beard. Having a stranger in his car was the most natural thing in the world. Lincoln was his destination, London his beginning.
“London’s big,” he told me, “The biggest city in the world.” I didn’t doubt it. “I have friends in other cities and it’s quiet there. London though, London is always speed. Always, always speed.” He shook his head slowly.
Yao was born and raised in Abidjan, the capital of Cote d'Ivoire. He left when he was 28 and found his way to London and its universities, studied hard then got a job. 30 years later he was still there with a 37-year-old son and three other kids in their twenties. He wanted the youngsters to get into IT. That’s what Yao did and he knew it was well-paid and steady, a service industry always in demand, whichever way the winds blew. One of his sons was my age. He had an economics degree but wanted to be a personal trainer instead. Yao respected the decision.
I asked what was in Lincoln for him. A house, he replied. He owned several houses around and about. Several in London too which he rented out. Renting in London’s crazy, I said. Finding a room is a maul, an expensive maul too.
He lived in South Sydenham but had lived all over south London. Most of the areas were totally different now to when he lived there, especially, he thought, Brixton and Peckham. There’d been a lot of gentrification.
“What’s happening in Brixton and Peckham is not gentrification,” Yao corrected, “It’s social cleansing.”
He saw it as a tide of white middle-class people moving in and pushing out the black residents. Prices have risen so much that it’s impossible for poorer people to afford to live there so they’re being forced further and further out. New flats are built but they’re well beyond the budget of most.
“I used to go to bars in Brixton which were predominantly black. Of course, there were white people too, everyone was there. I went back recently and there was only middle-class white people. It’s social cleansing, That’s what it is.”
Conversation moved on and we found ourselves talking about colonialism. Yao didn’t think we’d see any kind of apology in our lifetime. That, he thought, would invite compensation and that was a can full of too many worms.
“How do you value in today’s money a million pounds of gold taken then? It’s impossible.” He wafted his hand.
If our conversation had been recorded, historians many years from now could probably have dated it to the exact day: Trump in court, Bolsonaro on gay rights, Putin and his nukes, Boris and his lies, strongmen, climate change, poverty and food banks, the lot.
“I think the leaders will find a solution,” Yao said with a considered nod, “That is why they are elected. If not for that then what are they there for?” I disagreed. I could think of a hundred other things they’re there for, most of them not good. I told him that was very hopeful. “You have to be hopeful,” he replied.
Yao dropped me in Newark barely past 11. I had a coffee in McDonald’s next to two old ladies then walked right across town, cutting the ancient place in half. I liked Newark. It was beautiful and its town square looked more like a European piazza than anywhere I’ve been in Britain.
One corner was populated by a few cheerful patrons drinking morning lagers in the sun. They looked like they were having a good time. Perhaps they were on strike. Either way, I was also glad I wasn’t working that day. I was glad to be out seeing the world. Maybe the salty Scot was right, maybe striking is the answer.