Wakey, Wakey

I had decided not to travel into Europe as Harry and Meghan were featured in a Daily Mail article called, "The Wider World" on the day after I had purchased a ticket from Amsterdam Sloterdijk station to Barcelona for the Flixbus that travelled on the Eurolink train. In one of the Daily Mail’s photographs, Harry had seemed to insinuate across an intelligence community that I had taken a ticket from out of the mouth of the dragon. That was it for my travel plans. 

 

I had been given a Eurohike tent that had been a donation to Emmaus and had been brought in by one of the van crews. One of the companions had approached me on the tills and taken me to one side and said with a mock authoritarian air, "I need a word with you Justin," and "in private!"

"What's wrong?" I asked. 

"Can you step through here," he said pointing to the door of a neutral room situated in-between the main house and the workplace. 

 

I walked through the door with him and I repeated, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he said, "take this up to your room; it's a tent and a sleeping bag!" I smiled at him and thanked him, I thought I may have been in trouble for something that completely alluded me and I took the camping equipment up to my room which was on the top floor. 

 

I should have been on the Ouibus from London Victoria to Amsterdam on the evening of February 14th, Valentine's Day. I'd said forlorn goodbyes to my beautiful black manageress who gave me her number, "Call me," she said, and I was in love. I stayed in Norwood an extra night and was on a National Express coach to my home city in Wakefield the following day. I checked into a travel lodge just off Sun Lane in the early evening. They required a deposit of a hundred pounds which they took from my bank account. 

 

I messaged my info-source, "I'm in Wakefield, do you want to meet?"

He responded "Where are you?" I told the info-source the location and within an hour he drove around to pick me up in his car. I hadn't eaten since London and so we went to Pizza Hut on the industrial estate. I was telling him how unpalatable the quality of Pizza Hut's food was on the West Coast, "Hardly any cheese at all, and old manky vegetables". The same brand seemed delicious in Norwood however, and in Wakefield they were much more expensive and with smaller portions than Norwood. The info-source didn't order and he drove us the short distance to his flat. On the way I thought he asked too many personal and irrelevant questions that mildly irritated me and I was reluctant to answer. His flat was contemporary, clean and tidy; he had interesting artwork from local artists on his walls. I ate pizza in his living room. 

 

At one juncture I was able to ascertain that he really knew nothing at all about what was going on, "How could I know, you've been gone for years and we haven't talked". 

 

The others cannot have told him! The gravity of my situation was too immense to express. Why couldn't he see the newslike headlines emerging like tulpas from my social-media pages? 

 

"Jib is a moody isolated git, he doesn't talk to me, he'll sit there for hours not saying anything". 

"He was like that when I knew him last". 

"He's much worse now, I'll text him and see if he wants to come over and see you, but he won't answer". 

 

I rolled a cigarette and we stepped outside onto the small balcony, he asked, "Why would you think Jib wanted you dead?"

"Because we had a fight," I said. The info-source said he couldn't remember this event; it was over twenty years ago, "Everybody's done things like that," he said, "I'm quite certain he doesn't want you dead". 

"You don't know what happened do you?" They kept it from you". 

"What happened?" 

"I can't tell you, but Bob has gotten me into a lot of trouble, there's much more to Bob than you realise". 

 

I had questioned whether Bob had really died or whether it had been a staged event, "He's definitely dead, they took Sam in for questioning". 

"How long has it been since you've seen Bob?" I asked.  

"I haven't seen him since I was last up there with you". 

"That was 1998!"

"Yeah".  

 

I was driven back around to the travel lodge and the info-source talked about how "Bob's son is an awful, vile human being! Lost, in his own narcissistic illusions," he added, "He'll try to sell you stolen goods". 

 

I had never personally gotten along with Bob's son, the last time I had seen him he was threatening me with violence.  

 

Back in the room at the travel lodge I checked online news-media and I saw that the Eurolink train that I should have been on had been stopped on the tracks. The report said the reason for this was; an old unexploded world war 2 bomb had been discovered near the tracks in France. The surface story was a skein like cover and bullshit. 

 

The following day I walked around town taking photographs on my tablet and phone and I checked out the new mall at Trinity Walk. I had remembered talking about Trinity Walk before and after I had left Wakefield, about how the language was great, but the environment was nothing special, "The language is wasted," I had complained. I had said to Bob, "we should be doing the Trinity Walk," and I had done an audition for Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks in front of him, Bob hadn't looked too impressed. I was thinking about this and taking a photograph of the Trinity Walk sign when my oldest friend from high school said, "Hey!" 

"Hi," I said, "I didn't think you were going to be around". 

We hugged and she invited me over for Sunday lunch and I accepted. 

 

A year earlier she had been assaulted by a gang of youths on a council estate after I had derided “Alpha Males” online, for been like “primates” and I had used the term "The new Eliza-Beth-ans". She had described the attacker as been someone "showing off in front of his mates", he had struck her with a baseball bat to the head. It had been avenging Beth in high school that had gotten me into a lot of trouble with Pakistan in my youth and in part why David Bowie sings about, "Black-eyed ravens" spiralling down. It may also be the reason why the surname of the pop-singer's statutory rape victim is "Maddox". Unless this is a coincidence, they both share the same surname. On the morning following her assault I had walked into Walmart, fed-up with the workers gathering in a circle at Safeway, I had walked the extra distance and even though I didn’t know the staff at Walmart, one idiot manager was standing before two of his disinterested workers and chanting, “we have to get back to basics!” It was ill-timed, I had blamed Basics for the attack on my friend, and blamed the police state's bullshit media fabrication department for having turned me into a killer which was believed by the gullible and passive consumers of media within the local community.

 

I wondered onto Wood Street and noticed rather disappointingly that Just Sandwiches had closed down, it had now been replaced with Bradley's; maybe we have fed the 5,000 now? I thought to myself.

 

I took photographs of what had formally been Just Books which was now completely boarded up and difficult for me to look at. I wished I'd been able to run the store; it had been a dream of mine to own a bookstore forever and a day since. 

 

As I walked past Wakefield Cathedral, Bob's son walked towards me and past me without recognition or acknowledgment. He had the glazed look of a perennial junky and I had looked deeply into the pinned pupils of his eyes, he checked out my green-hooded top and my hair length, but it had been twenty years since he had last seen me and had not noticed who I was. 

 

On the Sunday morning the info-source picked me up and took me around to my friend's house for Sunday lunch, we swapped tents, his was far lighter to carry than the Eurohike tent and we said goodbye, "I'm not sure when it will be again," I said. 

"You look after yourself".

 

I had brought my friend a gift of chocolate cake which I didn't eat and she cooked an amazing vegetarian Sunday lunch that filled every inch of the plate. We chatted for several hours and afterwards her husband drove me around to the hotel Campanile for a night in the cheapest room in Wakefield. 

 

I thought about what I might do. I had left my room and my job at Emmaus and even though I had been busted for buying a Eurolink ticket, I really didn't fancy sleeping rough in Britain during the cold winter months and I still really wanted to hitch-hike across Europe. I thought I might double-back, they wouldn't expect me to go into Europe now, maybe I could purchase a ticket and get across?  And so, from an alternate Gmail account I bought a National Express ticket from Wakefield to London Victoria, and from London Victoria to Amsterdam Sloterdijk station. The following night, I was on a ferry across the channel to Calais.