The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde - ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
I was off to Warwick in October, thankfully making the gap year a link between two things. This was more important than it sounds, as having skipped the normal application time during sixth form, I’d effectively been drifting off into a land of No Education, and if university hadn’t worked out, I’d have been left with only my A-Levels and the incredibly useful expertise in shelf-stacking I’d acquired that year to fend my way in the world.
After catching the bus to Newport, there was a half-hour gap before starting work, that I used to call / enquire / hassle Warwick about my application. After getting through to the Engineering Undergraduate Office for the seventh time in two weeks, they got fed up with telling me that I was ‘under consideration’ and put me through to the Head of Department, who was a touch derogatory about my maths grade, but said he would admit me on the trust that I would, in addition to the preliminary reading lists, go over my A-Level maths again, wrestling with my weak points...
“Oh, and if you happen to take a maths textbook with you, wherever you’re going, that would be a good idea.”
Now I was keen. I wanted to get a degree in engineering. I wanted to get a degree in engineering to help the Third World, or, in more egotistical terms, I wanted to get a degree to help Save the World. That’s a pretty hefty ambition, I think you’ll agree, but under no circumstances was I going to lug a Pure Maths textbook around Europe and Morocco, to delve into in the quiet moments. I didn’t want any quiet moments. If there were going to be quiet moments, I was damn well going to be quiet in them, and not submit myself to the low-grade noise of slowly grinding teeth and involuntary groans that fill the air around me whenever mathematics is attempted. It was the first and only time in my phone-Warwick-until-they-cave strategy that I faltered. I don’t think he noticed though, as I followed it up with a large burst of effusive thanks.
I was in.
Miranda and I split up. She was and in all probability still is an amazing person, and looking back, it is something that I can’t justify very easily to other people, and only just get away with justifying it to myself.
I did it.
I called and told her that when I was travelling, I wanted to be wherever I was in every sense; not standing in Rome, for example, wishing I was in Leicestershire with her. I made a decision, did it, and as soon as I put the phone down I felt awful. This lasted for about twenty minutes, and then I went upstairs to start packing. There are a lot of things you will think of me because of what I have just said, most of which I expect wouldn’t be suitable for print. Well, this was something I’d worked hard for, dreamed of all my life more or less, and in all probability I wasn’t ever going to have this chance again. After university I would be working, during university I wouldn’t have any money, and ‘two weeks in Torremellinos’ holidays were the best sort of travelling I looked like being able to do after this point. This one, untarnished opportunity to be on the move, go places I’d only ever read about, places with exotic names and different ways, new sights, new sounds, even the smells - I was enthusiastic about the smells. That’s how geared up for travel I was.
The last thing I wanted was to regret being wherever I was.
That’s why.
The days between finishing work and waking up painstakingly early to actually, after all this time, go, were long and gorgeous. I could have worked longer, as much as an extra week, maybe more... The shelf-stacking job was a huge improvement on working nights, but it was still shelf-stacking, and there is a limit to how long you can do that voluntarily, of your own free will, with no compulsion to stay. Well, I excuse myself by saying that. I find it highly unlikely that it will ever make anyone’s PhD thesis topic, so I’m reasonably sure I’m not going to be conclusively proved wrong. So it is true. Believe it.
We took our original trip plans and twisted them around completely to incorporate going to Crete for the wedding of Dave’s cousin. It was the fact that after all our planning we could pick up one corner of our entire journey and flip it over like a pancake that started to get me excited. There was nothing we couldn’t do if we wanted to. We were going to be travelling completely on whim. If we wanted to change our plans completely when we were away, we could, and that was our business. We could stop completely in a place we liked, leave places we didn’t like, go places we heard good things about, skip places we’d heard bad things about. It was going to be a tiny, two and a half month burst of complete freedom. I thought I’d been excited up to this point, what with needing to mentally kick myself up the arse to get out of bed each shelf-stacking morning, but I was wrong.
At the point I realised there was nothing but a few days between me and the rest of Europe, it was as though whichever gland produces the chemicals for excitement was locked into overdrive, and I was bouncing around the place with more energy than I’d ever had in my life.
I have never been very good at packing. Looking back on everything, whether it was childhood family holidays, week-long camps with the Air Cadets or going to stay with friends, packing is one area that I really, categorically, without fear of contradiction, totally and utterly fail at. I approach it with the technique I learnt to apply to none-too-important assignments at school:
You accept that packing will happen. Packing is vital. Packing just doesn’t necessarily have to happen now, or indeed, any time soon. How long does it take to pack a bag? I have everything I want to take within a few rooms in the house (probably), so why should I worry and spend days doing it?
At this point you read a book, go to the shops, watch TV, stare vacantly out of the window or do anything else but pack. This period can last for a maximum of up to twenty minutes before you are due to leave, and I’ve seen some people last longer, but with me, the panic generally sets in the night before and I start the frenzy of packing. Whenever I plan what to take and make a list etc, I always end up missing out huge swathes of stuff that is astonishingly obvious to everyone else but for some reason doesn’t suggest itself to my furiously concentrating brain. The family anecdotal chestnut that gets wheeled out in any potentially embarrassing situation is the tale of the time I packed diligently for weekend’s gliding in Hampshire with the Air Cadets, spending five hours the preceding day polishing my boots, and on the day, I absent-mindedly left my cadet uniform hanging on the back of my bedroom door, and only realised when I got there.
If I leave packing to the last minute, I’m usually attempting to send my limbs in several directions at once, and in the midst of this panic, my brain sits and gently frets its way through the trip or visit. Travelling – a book. Arriving – a gift for the hosts. Staying – clothes to sleep in. Waking up - wash kit, towel, toothbrush, toothpaste, industrial strength deodorant...you get the idea. Panic-packing might not seem a great idea, but I don’t forget the more glaringly obvious things, and whichever way you look at it, for me, that’s a plus that organisation and planning just doesn’t have.
Two days before leaving, I had my backpack empty on the floor, and Mum had attempted to chivvy me along gently by leaving a few of the more obvious items in its vicinity. A towel...some suntan lotion...my shoes...my passport...
Since the day I rid myself of my brace of three years, and got contact lenses for the first time, I realised that I didn’t want to be part of the crowd any more. That’s a real cliché, and doesn’t really go far enough, so I’ll refine it; I didn’t want to be part of the scenery any more.
I’d gone through school being a geek that started mumbling and/or losing fifty IQ points whenever any vaguely attractive girls spoke to me, and I was more than a bit fed up with the role I’d carved for myself up to that point. I had been hidden behind people’s automatic assumptions based on glasses and a brace for years, and I wanted to change. All this seemed more than enough justification for the hat.
The hat arrived in my life about two weeks before we left. My Mother has always held the belief that my sister and I are somewhat vulnerable to the elements, leading to the string of enormous coats and ridiculous hats that spanned my childhood, and gave rise to a host of running family jokes about balaclavas. Two weeks before we left, one of the major conversational topics was headwear, with Mum the ever-concerned no doubt picturing me staggering in circles in Moroccan desert, delirious with sunstroke. At one of these “Well, you need something,” moments, we were in Marks and Spencer, and with visions of looking like The Man from Del Monte mixed with more than a little Michael Palin, I jokingly started trying on Panama hats. Mum bought me one.
Backpacking on pennies...wearing a Panama. Well, I’d stand out a little, it looked good, and, if the worst came to the worst, I could sell it and use the money to book into the nearest five star hotel.
The time went quickly, and I prepared a little each day. I had my books: phrasebooks for French, Spanish and Italian, and the Lonely Planet guidebook to Western Europe. After I’d bought it, I noticed the wonderful people at Lonely Planet had included a free bookmark. I read what was written on the bookmark, and with the sinking feeling of someone who was already geared up to risk life, limb and wallet on the basis of the information in the book I was holding, I turned the book on its side and read the spine. The legend “Lonely Planet – Westen Europe” was embossed there.
They’d made a typo on the cover. I was poised to rely on them for telephone numbers, addresses, references, money exchanges, and advice on laws and customs, you know, little things that would mean the trip would pass without any nights in jail, and they had broadcast to the world the fact that they couldn’t spell ‘Western’.
Gemma and I co-ordinated a little of what to take and what not to take. Somehow, and I’m still not sure how this worked, she had a smaller backpack than me, and managed to fit all her clothes, a Morocco guidebook, spare shoes, first aid kit, sleeping bag, roll mat and a tent into her bag, and then told me she had enough space if there was anything I wanted to take that I couldn’t fit in mine. She pointed out that by virtue of her being a girl, and the trip being in the summer, the sum of her packed clothing fitted into a single plastic bag, and everything that we had to take individual versions of, the female versions were much smaller – shoes, underwear, clothes generally...she opined that I’d look ridiculous in a crop top, and that one of my t-shirts took up the same amount of space as her five tops.
I felt bad, bombing round Europe with a girl, what with her carrying the tent and everything, and the vestiges of any gentlemanly principles I had caused me to feel quite awkward about it. The rest of me wasn’t too bothered, and went back to attempting to fit everything I had into exactly half the space it took up outside of my bag.
16th May 1999, Sunday
The hotel is booked, the Eurolines coach from London to Paris is booked, and the National Express coach from Portsmouth to London is booked. We are in fact, contrary to all sense and expectations, ready and organised. I’m packed (after a fashion) and good to go.
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