As young teens, my friend Jackie and I hitchhiked back and forward from Glasgow to Grimsby all the time. I say Grimsby, but I really mean Cleethorpes, Cleethorpes by the sea. We loved it. There was sand, pubs and boys and what’s more, these boys thought the Scots to be exotic creatures and to be fair, compared to the Yorkie girls who flooded into Grimsby and Cleethorpes every year, we were!
Although technically jobless, we did a bit of ‘cash in hand’ work here and there and as soon as we got any kind of stash together, we put our thumbs out and hitchhiked our way there. We loved hitchhiking, and you couldn’t have paid us to travel any other way. We were smart in our choices and we had both been brought up in a scheme on the Southeast side of Glasgow. We were clever girls, we had a very strong intuition for emerging situations and we were as tight as a drum.
But truly we met so many nice people, people who often went out of their way to make sure we stood the best chance of travelling on. And we went some random places, I mean places that we quite honestly would have had no reason to go to. Goole for example, it’s pretty grim, but the people are amazing. After getting dropped off in Goole and fondly waving a man off in the tiny wee car that we had been squashed into the back of for the last 50 miles, Jackie announces loudly “I’m loving the Goolies” A passing kid laughed with a snort and realising what she had said, Jackie buckled and fell over. It’s only fair to tell you at this point in our lives, there was a great deal of hashish about our persons. I liked a ‘wee toke’ or two but I was only a parttimer, Jackie was a stoner. She was a Head and a one-woman entertainment system. I laughed when she laughed, and I didn’t even need to know what we were laughing at.
One trip we got picked up by a travelling sales girl. We were on a road just outside of Barnard Castle, when she pulled up alongside us and agreed to take us to Scotch Corner. Her name was Liz and she was what my mother would have called a free spirit. Her car was full of bread and cakes. She had all this food because her job was to drive around Northumberland looking for little corner shops to sell the company’s wares to. She had to persuade the shop owner to let her put a stand in their shop, and then get them to agree to trial a daily delivery of fresh baked goods. She let us go to her last call with her and we heard her amazing patter as she ferried cakes and pricing lists back and forward from the car to the shop.
After this last call, we headed off towards the A1 and Jackie, mad with the munchies kept raving about how amazing the car smelled. Liz told us to help ourselves to what was left over and Jackie didn’t wait to be told twice. She might have been a wee lass, but she could eat like a horse and she sounded like a horse going “mmm mmm mmm” the whole time. Liz and I chatted while she ate and it was with such ease, it really was as if we had known each other for a lifetime. Full of food and stoned, Jackie fell asleep and when she woke up, we were at Liz’s house in East Grinstead and Liz was taking us out to a club then onto her friend’s party. We were there for 3 days.
Because of the unquantifiable nature of our trips, we would arrive at my brother’s house at all hours of the day and night. When I think back now he was amazing. He never once moaned at us or made us feel bad. He just let us in, fed us and didn’t ask for a thing in return.
We would party in Cleethorpes until our money dried up or homesickness kicked in and then we would turn tail and head back ‘up the road’. On one homeward bound trip, we got a lift almost immediately. He was a lovely chap and he picked us up just outside of Grimsby and dropped us off at around 10pm just outside of Brighouse. The only thing we knew about Brighouse was that Terry Wogan had sung a song about ‘The Floral Dance’ and he was accompanied by the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. We had been dropped off at a roundabout near a slip road to the motorway. We got clear of the corner and dumped our rucksacks on the ground and sat on them to hitch and wait. We waited and we waited, but hardly any traffic came past. I was dark, but it was warm, so exhausted and fed up we flopped onto the slope of the landscaped hillock behind us and decided to get stoned. I had forgotten my rule of never smoking anything Jackie had rolled and so I got a big smack on the side of my head which put a new flight of stairs on the top of my head. Poleaxed we lay on our backs and looked at the stars above us in awe. We didn’t know anything about stars but we did know that lying there in the dark, away from the lights of the towns and cities, we had never seen so many in the one place and in the whole of our lives we’d never seen anything so beautiful. We spoke deeply about the universe and the origins of life as only stoned 18-year-olds could. We joked, exaggerating our thoughts until we were helpless with laughter and we truly forgot that the rest of the world was there. A noise cut through the air and made us leap out of our skin, and it was a car horn. We looked up to see a man and woman staring out at us from their car window looking really concerned. They asked us if we were ok, and what we were doing there and we told them we were trying to get back to Scotland but we had given up on ever getting a lift. The woman told us to get in the car and that they could take us as far as Penrith.
Lying there was the very first time I had considered myself part of an awesome big universe and low and behold it welcomed me in with a gift. This beautifully fussy couple gave us tea from a flask and sandwiches from an array of Tupperware and this was so welcome because thanks to grass we had just smoked we were super starving. When we got out of the car at Penrith, the woman gave us a can of coke, a packet of crisps and a KitKat in case we got stuck again.
Would you say the Universe sent us these beautiful people or was it that we give up trying to manufacture our desired outcome and the act of surrendering drew a different kind of attention or help to us? It was probably sheer curiosity that made them stop, wondering why 2 girls were lying on the ground laughing. Having met them I am certain that they would not have stopped for 2 punky looking girls sitting there with their thumbs out.
Sometimes the right thing to do is nothing. Let the situation settle and just see what turns up. When you have tried everything, make sure that you have not forgotten to try giving up.
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