As though one ever knows the real name! Let me draw out from the convolutions of memory maze what happened some years ago when I picked up a hitch hiker who loomed up out of the mist and driving rain of the upland moor. Perhaps I should not have been driving; too tired, drained from long frustrating days of not achieving the planned progress on two important projects. Wanting to get home, but I should I have found some quiet and cosy B&B and slept for twenty-four hours. But there I was, as it was getting dark, trying to keep my eyes open and not hit the sheep that were straying across the tarmac. Then this particular sheep fixed me with its dull eyes and stretched up on its hind legs and lifted an imperial finger to indicate, yes, she/he would rather welcome a lift.
I opened the passenger door and yelled out into the rain and wind:
– Where are you heading?
But he/she/it didn’t seem interested in answering my question; simply shouldered its way in and shut the door and sat, slumped and breathing audibly, and waited for me to drive on. There was hair and there was wool and whilst my mind attempted to fix on human it failed to fix on male or female, I could not quite rid myself of the first image of sheep. And the smell didn’t help – rank, wet wool, yes, the creature stank and it was in my car.
I might have muttered something or other but on I drove and as we drove into the night the creature next to me began to mutter; a sort of talking to itself, although if there were words I didn’t recognise them.
From then on the road begins to drop in height and as we dropped in height I could see the twinkle of lights in the occasional farmhouses. Home was about an hour’s steady driving but for sure I didn’t want to arrive home with the hitch-hiker. Which meant I would have drop “him” (let me refer to him as him) somewhere or other. But where?
I had ceased attempting to listen to his muttered litany and began to be involved in my own muttered litany: effing and blinding my way through the frustrations of the last few days and hoping to distract myself from the stink and noise of my guest. But then my ears picked up a sound that I could make sense of: sea, or for that matter, C . . . anyway I took it to be sea. The hitch-hiker was nodding sagely and repeating the word, sea.
– You want to go the sea?
More sage nodding.
Well, okay, I checked the petrol gauge, feeling grateful that this would prove to be a solution to the problem of how to get rid of this unwanted guest, and so navigated westwards in the direction of the sea. Eventually we arrived. A particular small pebbly cove had come to mind as a place to head for. It meant parking the car and taking the small narrow path down the low cliffs to reach the beach. I opened the door for him and he scratched and scrambled his way out, pushing against me, so that I had to grab hold of the door to prevent myself being shoved over the edge. And then he was taking the steep, twisting path in great strides and then as he disappeared from view I had the sudden realisation that this must be a dream. Of course! I’m asleep. Thank goodness for that. And now I needed to piss. What a relief.
The moon was up and laying its silver mantle on the sea. Small waves rushed up, throwing themselves eagerly at the pebbles. I peered down hoping for a glimpse of him, the question of dream or sleep or some other sort of reality put on one side for the moment. Here we go, I thought as I slipped and slid down the path, hanging on to handfuls of tough grass, tearing the knee of my trousers and probably the skin, down to the beach with the insistent gnawing of the sea close at hand. There were items of clothing, a coat, a shirt, a roughly cut sheepskin. I was now at the edge of the sea, the waves lapped at my shoes, but I took no notice because my attention was on something or somebody that followed the motion of waves, up and down. Was that the head of seal? Watching me and then in a moment of panic, I thought it was smiling at me, and then, well, it slipped beneath the surface. And that was that.
I would like to say that I woke up in some nice, cosy B&B with one or two images from a near forgotten but strange dream. But there I was sitting on a beach as the sun rose through the mist and there around me was an old tatty, smelly sheepskin, a jacket of some sort, a shirt . . .