01 - "He'll hurt his heel if he jumps and it'll take ages to heal!"

 

It was a beautiful, warm summer's day in Stafford in the Midlands. I'd caught the bus at about midday (no matter how far I was going, I've seldom managed to start journey before this time unless I was depending on public transport), and got off at the last stop before the motorway junction (J.13 on the M6) to the south of the town. After that it was a short five-minute walk to the junction, and then I was sitting beside the slip road leading up to the south-bound side of the motorway. There was no sign of any cars going in my direction, so rolled an Old Holbourne cigarette and smoked while thinking of life the universe and everything.

Every time a car went by, I stuck out my thumb and looked hopeful, and it wasn't long before a car stopped and I hopped in*. The first lift*2 took me to the motorway services just south of Birmingham and after a ten-minute break, I'd picked up another lift all the way to Bristol - my final destination as far as hitchhiking was concerned.

It was the start of the summer break at North Staffs Polytechnic and I was heading back to my Mum's house in the small village of Farmborough in the countryside south of the city of Bath in the south west of England.

Everything had gone like clockwork, and I had arrived in Bristol without paying anything faster than if I'd caught a coach or train. However, the last lift didn't take me into the centre of the city, where I could have got the bus straight to Mum's house; instead I was dropped off in Avonmouth, not far from the motorway junction and about 15 miles from the centre of the city. The sun was still shining and it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so I started walking along the A403 towards the city centre. Hitching within a city is always more complicated than between them, and there didn't seem to be many buses passing, so I kept on walking, holding out my thumb during the first 20 minutes in the hope that someone would stop. No one did, so I continued on until I reached the beautiful Avon Gorge, spanned by the Clifton Suspension Bridge - in my opinion, one of the most beautiful in the world.

Walking beside the main road, through the gorge, brought back memories of the day when I went rock climbing there with my friend from Plymouth Polytechnic, Paul. These memories led to an excellent pub in the district of Clifton called the Coronation Tap. After three hours walking beside a busy main road under a late afternoon sun, I was feeling tired and thirsty, and the thought of a pint of Scrumpy made my mouth water! The only problem was that the pub I was drawn*3 to, was in Clifton, at the top of the gorge, and I was walking beside the River Avon at the bottom!!!

"What the hell!", I thought, "I've just walked 12 miles, what's a short climb? Especially with a well-earned rest with a pint of cider in my hands at the end of it!". So as soon as the sides of the gorge started to drop, I turned left and walked up to Clifton and quickly found the pub I was looking for.

By now it was about 8.30pm and I dropped my rucksack on a seat and tiredly made my way to bar. Ummmmmmmm! That pint of cider was good. I was feeling good, too, and stretched out my legs and savoured the delicious taste. The atmosphere in the pub was good and soon one pint led to another. At about 9pm, a couple of girls sat next to me on the long seat I was relaxing in. They both had small dogs on leads*4 with them and after a few minutes, the dogs moving around under the table had managed to wrap*7 their leads around my legs tying me up! This was all it took for us to start chatting, and at about 10pm the girls stood up to go. "Are you going to the party?", one of them said before leaving. I thought for about a second and then said "Yeah, where is it?". They gave me the address of a house not far from where I could get a bus back to Mum's house, so after another couple of pints that's where I headed. I don't know if you've ever drunk British Scrumpy, but if you have, you'll know that it's a very powerful drink indeed! From this point onwards, everything becomes a bit hazy. I can't remember getting to the house with the party at all, although I must have walked there. The party itself was great, lots of people I'd never met, good music (I remember dancing to Marianne Faithfull's 'Broken English'), and I probably smoked some hash. The last bus home was at 11.50, so at half past eleven it was time to make a move. I said goodbye to the hosts when I'd found out who they were and made my way downstairs to the garden outside the house. This garden was some distance above the road, and when I got to the edge I thought "how am I going to get down to the road? I can't remember where the gate is". "Why not jump?" a sub-conscious thought told me - so I did. As I was plummeting through the air, I had time to think "My God! this is a long way!!!!!". I landed on my feet with my Doc Marten's boots making a 'crack' like a gunshot. "Ouch!" I thought, and hobbled to the bus stop on the tips of my toes. I got home on autopilot, and the next day found that if my heels touched the ground it sent a shooting*5 pain straight to my brain. Mum took me to hospital, where, after x-rays, I was told that both heels were badly bruised, but luckily not fractured. I was given some pieces of foam rubber to put inside my trainers to cushion*6 my heels and told that I was to try to stay off them for at least a month. As a result, my summer holiday was spent mostly with my feet up, and it took about three months before I could walk comfortably again. I'm sure there's a moral in this story somewhere, but the truth is that more than twenty years later in life, the only thing I'd change would be the decision to jump - the rest I'd probably repeat in exactly the same way as I did when I was 22 years old! I'm much too old to start becoming sensible now! :-)

 

 

* Verb - definition 4

*2 Noun - definition 11

*3 Verb - def. 6

*4 Noun - def. 5

*5 Verb (v.intr.) - definition 3b

*6 Verb - def. 4

*7 Verb (v.intr.) - definition 1