The Wake of An Old Sedan
London to Newcastle Part II
1985 - the key date for this trip. The year of the last Hitchhiker’s Manual, the last year my dad hitchhiked to Newcastle. Forty years this year. I was recreating the journey to see my brother there before he left uni.
Well, Julio stopped in a baby blue Nissan saloon from 1986. Close enough. It was a beautiful thing. Boxy and neat, like those Mercedes rappers liked in the 90s. I learnt it was a Nissan Bluebird—a sedan. I thought of the Pink Floyd song ‘San Tropez’, Breaking a stick on a brick on the sand, riding a wave in the wake of an old sedan… It looked like that kind of sedan.
Julio was a cool guy. He seemed to fit into the car as if he were a part of it. Shining black wayfarer sunglasses, baby blue lambswool sweater, same colour as the plating. Claret chinos that matched the faint lights behind the steering wheel.
This was the Nissan’s first outing of the year, though Julio was only on his way to work. He didn’t drive it in winter because the salt on the roads corroded the undercarriage.
Julio said he had several classic cars. Five in total. Three classic Mercs: one from 1968 and two from the 80s. He also had a Mazda but he was selling it, hence why he was commuting in this. It was a 70-mile round trip and the Nissan would drink a quarter of a tank each way.
Julio was a political analyst for East Africa. His company would research a topic in depth, like the state of telecommunications across the region, and then sell that to their partners, mostly the British government. He was off to D.C. soon for three weeks, then Africa after that.
I told him about the political campaign I once followed in Zambia. My cousin was standing for parliament in the far west of the country, in a part where there were no roads. In the rainy season campaigning was done by boats. When I was there, it was 4x4s on deep sandy tracks. I joined her for a week before it became obvious that having a young white man on the trail was too contentious. I was packed off.
It was a tough campaign. She’d been running for the party in power, the party everyone wanted out. But the region she was in had been run by the opposition for decades. The minister visited once every five years for the campaign. Gave everyone 50 Kwacha (£1.60) and then disappeared, elected. He did the same that year, though everyone was glad the old president was gone.
Julio couldn’t take me far. His office was just a junction or two up the A1, so he could drop me at the Peterborough services. It was progress at least and I was there by 2. I’d been on the road for four hours now and had only advanced a fifth of the way to Newcastle.
I thanked Julio and waved him off round the roundabout. I looked about. I know Peterborough services well. It was where we used to come when term ended at school. I’d had many a McDonald’s burger from here. No time to be spared this time though. Still four hours straight drive to Newcastle. Cars rolled in and out of spaces, concertinaing between the shrubs.
As I paced out, I suddenly spotted an extraordinary sight. One I’ve never seen before, not in three years of hitchhiking. It stopped me in my tracks.
There, sitting on the verge, backpack beside her, thumb to the road, was a hitchhiker.
She was middle aged, wavy hair, squinting into the sun. I rushed over the tarmac, excited to say hello. Her greeting was dejected. “I’ve never seen another hitchhiker in the wild,” I beamed. “It’s great to meet you.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” she replied.
“Why, how long have you been here?”
“Three days…”
The lady’s name was Phillipa. There were two empty cans of soup beside her, lids bent open. Red smudges around her mouth. She apologised for not being very friendly. She had mental health issues and wanted to be alone.
Everyone was very nice here though, she told me. They let her sit in the petrol station last night to keep warm. They let her use the shower too. The night before had been spent in this spot trying to get a ride. The night before that was spent in the trees in her tent. It sat beside her packed away in a neat red disk. People had bought her food too.
She told me she loved the outdoors. She’d been homeless for 10 years and was on her way north to the town she was from. She could access a foodbank there and stock up on some vouchers to last her a month or two.
She hadn’t seen a hitcher for a year and told me to be careful.
“If you get a lift in less than an hour, I’ll take it personally,” she said. “You see, I’ve been here for three days. I wouldn’t be too hopeful.”
Quietly, I was quite confident that I would get a lift in less than an hour, though I realised I’d have to go round a corner, out of sight.
Plus it was fairly obvious why she was struggling catch a ride. She was sitting by the exit to the lorry petrol station. Only lorries passed this spot and lorries don’t pick you up. Their insurance doesn’t allow it.
Still she seemed fairly content and I didn’t want to teach her to suck eggs. She’d been in this game longer than I.
I offered her some food and she said she’d love some chicken nuggets if I didn’t mind. I was off to McDonald’s after all. In return for a box of 20, she offered me a tin of salmon from Lidl. I turned it down. I’d mistakenly bought a tin a few weeks before and the mangled spine and dry, sawdust texture had put me off the stuff forever. She insisted though, saying I could give it to my brother. Besides she didn’t have a tin opener so couldn’t eat it anyway.
I left the service station, giving Phillipa plenty of space. I went down to the slip road and found an unsatisfactory place near the confluence.
It only took forty minutes to catch a ride.
I was a hitchhiker back in the 80s, about when your dad was. But I never tried it three at a time!