NOTES
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At the end of the Krishnamurti week, Anne and Robin stuck to their plan of carrying on hitching around Europe. I thought I was saying goodbye to them for good, but they were both to crop up in my life very briefly again a couple of years later, in separate contexts. Arnrid, however didn't stick to her plan of hitching back to England with me. She announced that she had decided to head in the opposite direction, hoping eventually to reach India! I certainly didn't offer to go with her. In fact, I felt badly let down. I was not at all looking forward to hitching back across Switzerland and France alone, with very little money, no tent or any other equipment and no map. |
| But to begin with, things went pretty well. I got a succession of lifts with lorry drivers along the northern shore of Lake Geneva. I spent the first night dossing in a lovely little wood on the shore of the lake near Lausanne. On the second day I arrived in Geneva, where I squandered some of my precious reserves of money on wine in cafés (in the morning!) before pressing on. As soon as I crossed the border into France my luck changed abruptly. For one thing, I made a very bad decision to take a 'short cut' across the Jura mountains instead of heading for Lyons. But I doubt that it would have made any difference as far as getting lifts was concerned. No-one had told me that hitching was illegal in France. |
| After waiting in vain for an hour or more for a lift, I began walking. I trudged upwards and upwards, through mountain villages - and through mountain rain. It was probably around midnight when I dossed down as best I could in a shop doorway in some village. I was so tired that I slept well, despite being soaking wet and lightly clad. In fact, I awoke with a start in bright sunshine, to find a group of children, on their way to school, crowding round and staring at me in amazement. The cry went up - "Un clochard!" More children came running and there was considerable merriment. Passing adults also stopped, stared and laughed. No-one attempted to speak to me. I strode off, a few children following me gaily for a while. It was the start of a full day of walking, punctuated by occasional stops at cafés for snacks and wine. I had now given up all hope of getting lifts in France. As you will know from earlier chapters, I had had plenty of practice in fast long-distance walking over the years, which was just as well. This fact didn't help with my mood, though, which was becoming darker by the hour. It wasn't helped by occasional encounters with the police, who were very menacing until they discovered that I was "un Anglais fou", whereupon they became merely insulting, then left me to it with a Gallic shrug. |
| I'm not sure how many days it took me to reach Dijon, but only one other dossing-place remains in memory for that stretch of the journey. It was in Dôle. I found an unlocked garage door. The car inside it was unlocked as well, so I slept on the back seat. Once again, I slept well and woke only when the owner came for his car in the morning. He seemed paralysed with astonishment, so I mumbled "Bonjour" and went on my way - rapidly. By the time I reached Dijon, having walked at least 160km from Geneva, I was so desperate to escape from this ridiculous and frightening situation that I decided to spend nearly all of the rest of my money, including that reserved for the boat fare back across the Channel, on the train fare to Paris. I remember having to stand the whole way because the train was jam-packed with raucous Spaniards. I suppose the train had started from Madrid. |
| I arrived in Paris after dark and (surprisingly for August) it was foggy. I therefore saw very little of the city as I wandered about. I found another station, where many dossers were lying about in the concourse, but the cry soon went up that les Flics were coming. The dossers seemed terrified of the police and scrambling to their feet, quickly disappeared. I did likewise. I followed one dosser. He clambered over the wall of a cemetery, so I clambered after him. We got talking, using a mixture of his poor English and my even poorer French. He was a courteous and intelligent man. We passed the night sharing his wine and philosophizing. Sadly, all I remember about our conversation is that it was very interesting. |
| Next morning, I spent the very last of my money, except for some small change, getting a suburban train to the northern outskirts of the city. Things then got worse than ever. Not only was it still impossible to get lifts, but driver after driver thought it hilarious to hoot and sometimes to pretend to be stopping, then to pull away again after I had run to the car. This also happened in England, of course, but much less frequently. Whenever cars had children on the back seats, they could be seen pointing and laughing. This idiotic behaviour of drivers and their offspring seemed a feature of northern France in particular. Putting up with this and the frequent attentions of the police, for the 280km (or more?) of walking from Paris to Calais, worked me into a bitterly Francophobic passion, and reduced me to a pretty unstable state of mind altogether. As a result, I can't remember very much at all about the places I dossed in over the week or so of this epic northern arm of the journey, with one notable exception. |
| This one remembered night was an occasion that saved the French from total damnation in my mind, unfortunate though it was in itself. During the afternoon of that day, somewhere near Amiens, I'd made the dreadful discovery that it was possible to buy a whole litre of plonk for one franc (5p). This was exactly what I had left, having bought the occasional baguette (my only food since Paris). I bought the wine and continued on my way, swigging from the bottle as I went. I came to a little bridge over a canal. Arnrid's rucksack, though far from being packed full, had become very burdensome by now, especially as the weather was hot. Inspired by alcohol, I decided to punish Arnrid for deserting me by flinging her rucksack, together with its contents (except my passport), into the canal. The next thing I remember is staggering across fields in the blazing sun, still clutching the now nearly empty bottle, before collapsing in the middle of a meadow. A litre of wine was not usually a disastrous amount for me in those days, but on this occasion it was combined with exhaustion, hot sunshine and not much food. |
| It must have been several hours before I came round, because it was by that time nearly dark. Two youths were bending over me. As soon as they saw I was awake one of them asked "Tu as de l'hash?". I shook my head. I was feeling very ill and was unable to get to my feet unaided. The two of them got me up and began half-dragging me across the fields. After what seemed a very long time, we arrived at a farmhouse and they took me inside. In the kitchen was a scantilly-dressed woman with a man sitting on her knee. They stopped kissing and cuddling only for long enough to greet me. I remember nothing more of that evening except that I was puking all over the place, even in the bath. As far as I can remember, no-one seemed particularly put out by this. At one stage the woman, who was presumably the mother of the two boys who had rescued me from the field, said sympathetically "Ah - la rouge!". |
| The next morning I awoke in a comfortable bed, my boots and trousers having been removed. I was offered breakfast, but was of course still too ill to be interested. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently embarrassed to want to be on my way as soon as possible. The two boys escorted me as far as the road to Calais and I continued my trek. For years afterwards I meant to try to find out exactly where that farmhouse was, so that I could thank them properly, but gradually any memory of topographical details that might have provided sufficient clues to the location faded. After a few kilometres of slow walking, I recovered enough to quicken the pace. There was a lot of road still to be tramped, hundreds of car hooters and grinning back-seat children still to be endured, more insults from gendarmes to come, and two or three nights of dossing still in prospect. |
| When finally I reached Calais, I thought I must be dreaming. It had taken less than two weeks to get from Saanen even though at least 440 km of the journey had been on foot, but it had seemed like months. I had no intention of letting a little thing like the lack of a boat ticket prevent me from escaping from France. I joined the queue for the ferry and said to the man inspecting the tickets "I'm a British citizen and I've got no ticket and no money to buy one."
"See the purser on the boat" he said and waved me through. The purser issued me with a ticket in exchange for my name and address. I never got the bill. Within minutes of leaving the ferry terminal in Dover, I got a lift - he was going all the way to Brighton! This extreme contrast with my experience on the other side of the Channel was to have a dramatic if relatively short-lived effect on my thinking and attitudes. |