I first saw Tom dangling off Salisbury Cathedral. He was applying a painstakingly thin layer of mortar to a statue of King David, suspended on a rope high above the great cathedral door. I didn’t know that was him of course, not until he picked me up a few hours later, at the top of the endless hill that climbs out of Salisbury towards Blandford Forum.
He had long black hair, a beard, and was wearing a vest; he looked a little red from a day spent in the sun. On the floor of his slightly beaten car was a half-open packet of ham.
Restoring Salisbury Cathedral’s ancient masonry was just a side gig for Tom who had just finished a mythology master's at the Dartington Trust near Totnes. He was 29 and spoke with a searching softness that you might imagine of a mythologist. He asked about my journey, where I’d been and what I did when I wasn’t travelling. “Can I ask you a question?” He inquired gently, “What are you searching for on this journey of yours?”
I told him I wasn’t searching for anything in particular, “Getting away is always good though, it’s a good way to work things out.”
He contemplated my words quietly for a moment, then turned to me and said softly, “Can I tell you a story?”
“Of course.”
“It is the story of Parzival. It’s a medieval, Arthurian tale but one of timeless relevance,” He released each word with subtle profundity, “Parzival was a young and wild knight. He had a beautiful red suit of armour and gallivanted through the land being reckless and foolish, more interested in what his armour looked like than in the proper ways of the knight. One day he came to the kingdom of Gurnemanz who was a very wise king. Parzival stayed for a long time and learnt a great deal from him about patience and honesty. He also took a strong liking to Gurnemanz's daughter who loved him very much. After a few years, Gurnemanz came to love the Red Knight like his own son and offered his daughter’s hand in marriage. But Parzival was unsure. Though he was very fond of the young princess he was unwilling to settle down and bear the responsibilities of marriage. He bowed to the king and said, “I am afraid, my lord… That I have not caused enough trouble yet.”
He relished the last phrase, reciting it with a faint smile.
“I like it,” I told him, “It’s a good story.”
“It is a story of adolescence and of a young man vanquishing his youthful impulses. And, you see, Gurnemanz understood what Parzival meant by that phrase. He knew that experience is the only way to learn.”
He linked the tale back to my journey. “In a way, what you are doing conforms to the classic hero’s tale, the Monomyth: The hero, in this case, you, travels away from home and meets all manner of challenges and has all manner of experiences. When they return home they can truly appreciate what they have.”
In the ‘40s the American writer Joseph Campbell discovered such an arc underpinned practically every great story throughout time and across cultures. Indeed, even now many still follow this very pattern, from The Hobbit to Harry Potter, The Odyssey, Beowolf and Jane Eyre. It’s even in The Hunger Games and Shrek: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day,” Campbell writes in The Hero Of A Thousand Faces, “into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” Little wonder George Lucas worked closely with him when making Star Wars because it too is no different.
I was still intrigued by Parzival and Gurnemanz’s daughter though, “So, did they get married?”
“Yes,” Tom replied, thinking quietly again for a moment, “But then he ran off and never saw her again.”
He set me on my way and said a lofty farewell adding airily, “I hope you find what you are looking for. You are still young and you have not caused enough trouble yet!” I felt as if I’d met Gurnemanz himself.
I was drifting for a few days, with not much idea of what to see and nowhere to be. I zigzagged slowly from town to town, enjoying the warmth of summer and the gentle countryside.
After Tom dropped me I had a beer in Blandford Forum and then spent the night outside town, camped in a tall grass meadow right on the banks of the Stroud. Still exhausted from Stonehenge, I flung myself into the river for a cool dip and then slept like a log, too tired to start at the night’s noises.
The morning sun was blazing when I got up and I walked to the nearest main road. “Shaftesbury” was written on my sign. I was picked up by a man named Mitch. He was a Bristolian, and like several other Bristolians I’ve met before had a superb ability to fit the word “fuck” into every sentence.
He asked how long I’d been waiting; I told him nearly half an hour.
“Fuckin’ ‘ell!” he replied, before adding, “Must be ‘coz everyone round here’s a Londoner.”
Mitch wasn’t so sure about that part of East Dorset. For him, it was too full of private schools, Londoners and “retired colonels from Surrey picking up the telegraph with their fuckin’ labradors.” It also lacked the diversity of Bristol which was full of communities from all over the world. Ironically, he explained, the private schools brought the only cultural diversity in the area and apparently during Covid the area was full of stranded Chinese pupils.
It turned out he was quite the local guide though and he showed me several sites as we zipped through the lanes in his soft-top Mazda, the roof back and the wind in our hair. I especially liked Hod and Hambledon hill which had been an iron age fort until the arrival of the Romans. Its steep bank rose sharply above us, casting the road in shadow. “They’d lived perfectly happily,” Mitch explained grumpily, “until the bastards came and murdered the fucking lot of ‘em.”
Mitch’s Mazda was quite a squeeze for me and my large backpack so I was glad to stretch the legs when I got out in Shaftesbury. I had a look at Gold Hill, made famous by the Hovis advert and the two Ronnies spoof, and went to the rather boring local museum where I had to tiptoe out past the front desk so I didn’t get roped into giving a donation.
Feeling nicely stretched I headed back to the main road and to my surprise, was picked up in an even smaller soft-top car, something I hadn’t realised existed. It was a convertible Smart car, evidently not designed with hitchhikers in mind. I hopped into Paul’s passenger seat and together we whizzed off. Despite being nearly suffocated by my bag, it was a great little thing, and we shot about like we were go-karting.
At first, I thought it would be an otherwise uninteresting leg. We chatted pleasantly for a fair while about this and that, his day at work and the weather etc but nothing of real interest. Then he mentioned he was into foraging and in no time he was giving me all sorts of tips and tricks on what’s good to eat. Mostly, he recommended nettles and dandelions, gently blanching them before making them into a garlicky salad. I was eager to learn, so asked if we could go out foraging together that evening. “Of course!” he replied, “I’ve got a spare bedroom too so you could stay if you wanted.” I took him up on his kind offer.
Paul lived just outside Sherborne in the quiet hillsides of T.S. Eliot country. East Coker, the village that gave its name to the second poem of Eliot’s Four Quartets and also the site of his grave, was just 5 miles west.
Slowly as the evening wore on, Paul revealed his story. Until a few months ago Paul had lived in Swannage. He’d had a beautiful flat overlooking the bay and was doing well for himself. Then one day he was attacked with a knife by his friend’s drunken husband. The horrifying event left a scar on his left cheek and unsurprisingly he was badly shaken.
A few months later an even more horrendous tragedy struck. The old lady in the flat below had a stroke and dropped her cigarette. The whole building burnt to the ground. By a turn of misfortune, Paul’s flat wasn’t insured at the time and he lost everything. His dog had been in there too.
After the tragedy, he moved to a village near Sherborne. Though his last house was destroyed, his profession was overseeing the building of new ones and he lived in a brand new house himself, nestled in a gleaming estate on the edge of the village. “It’s beautiful isn’t it,” he remarked proudly as we drove up the dark black tarmac, “And I’d know: I’ve spent my life building houses.”
Coincidentally, Eliot’s East Coker could hardly be a more relevant poem. Written in 1940 as the world collapsed into total war, it’s an elegy to the cyclicality of generation and destruction: “Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended/….Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires/ Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth/ Houses live and die: there is a time for building/ And a time for living and for generation.”
We never went foraging in the end but played tennis in Sherborne instead. His French bulldog, Knarla, joined as ballgirl. Then we went to meet his two friends, Peter and Abla, who lived in a sheltered home nearby. We all played pool in the shared living room and then piled into Paul’s van to go for a pint in the Yeovil Wetherspoons.
Peter and Abla were a wonderful pair, simultaneously fascinating and hilarious. Although Peter was ill they were both bursting with life. Abla was Algerian and was a highly qualified doctor. Thanks to Britain’s immigration system, however, she was unable to get a job here so spent her days caring for Peter and revising for the citizenship exam. She had a wicked sense of humour and a great sense of fun, mocking fantastically the absurdity of the Life in the UK test questions. She shook her head as she read out questions like, “What disease did Edward VI die from?” and “How many years did Charles I rule without parliament?” both apparently necessary pieces of knowledge.
She was 26 years Peter’s junior and had saved his life several times with her medical training, spotting things missed by his doctors. Having spent much of his life in a hot desert sun Peter had melanoma, though from the grin on his face and his cheerful chatter you’d never have known. Just a few days before he’d had half his ear cut off thanks to Abla, who’d spotted the cancer and convinced the doctors they had to act swiftly. Luckily they reconsidered and operated the next day.
Peter had had quite a life. He’d lived in Syria, Tunisia, Iraq, Ukraine and several other countries that by strange coincidence had all descended into war since. He’d been a window cleaner and then a fisherman in Jersey before becoming a Latter Day Saint, a decision taken mainly to reduce his alcohol consumption. He and his wife, herself a Mormon, moved to Salt Lake City and Peter worked with his brother-in-law as a bounty hunter. They’d hunt down fraudsters and criminals and get a reward for those they caught. “It was just like the movies,” he reminisced fondly, “except we had way more information and there were never any shootouts.” I asked how they’d track them down. “It was amazing how stupid some of those guys were. You mostly just found them down their local bar! My brother-in-law would arrest them then we’d cash in a few thousand bucks. It was great.”
He’d been a Mormon bishop too and had once had a half hour conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace. More recently he ran a business in Tunisia but had lost everything in the Arab Spring when his business partner used the disruption to steal everything. His wife of 50 years ran off with the same partner. Despite it all, she refused to divorce him formally so when he met Abla several years later they had to get married in Algeria where polygamy is legal. The process had obviously given him a taste for it and he’d soon become quite the polygamist. Far from minding, Abla actively endorsed the whole thing. He explained how, on their last trip out to Tunisia, he got engaged to a 28-year-old called Doha. Abla pulled out her phone and enthusiastically showed me a photo of the three of them huddled up, grinning in a restaurant. “She told him she wants to have his babies. Ha! Ha!”
Having seen the world and all its craziness, Peter didn’t much fancy spending his last years in Sherborne but continued to look for the positives. “At least I get a shag every day!” He piped cheerily. Abla took a sip of ale, looking utterly unfazed. “For most at 81 it doesn’t work,” he chuckled, “but it’s just about the only bit of me that does!” Abla confirmed it did indeed work and we all had a good laugh.
After dropping them home, Paul and I drove back to his and I slept on the sofa bed in the living room. The next day Paul had to go to work early. Rather than asking me to leave with him, he left the keys on the counter so I could see myself out. It was a small gesture but at the same time, it was a staggering one. I was slightly awed to be holding the keys to a stranger’s home, stood inside their living room. It is a peculiar feeling being alone in someone else’s home, especially if you have only just met them. You’re standing in their world, and it’s alien and unfamiliar. Everything seems very still and it’s as if somehow you’re not really there.
I packed my bag and slipped out through the front door. He’d given me the code to the little black safe box on the outside wall and I clicked it in before carefully placing the key inside. Then, feeling a gentle glow of amazement, I walked off through the newly built houses.
What an amazing set of stories - wow! Your journeys are so compelling. Tom’s link between your journey and that of Parzifal - such a wise young man - has really resonated with me. 😀
Another fascinating read. 👍