The Mission

It was a mission.

But it was the result of a journey.

A journey where, despite acknowledging that we had achieved everything we had set out to do, it felt as if we had failed. We had ended up in Haywards Heath drinking the worst Guinness ever served, rather than being able to say “Fuck Brighton!”…

It started in 2008. On a cold, winter afternoon in The Sultan in South Wimbledon.

The Sultan says "Fuck Brighton!"

Or rather, I should say, that is where it started for me. Lukey picked up the dregs of a conversation that he had had with Davey about the possibility of travelling to Glasgow by bus. Not a coach. Not a simple turn up at Victoria Coach station and travel for eight hours to awaken as you cross The Clyde. No. They discussed the possibility and plausibility of travelling on scheduled local bus routes, hopping from town to town, city to city, county to county. Lukey and I quickly discussed potential routes and reckoned – finger in the wind – that it was probably achievable but incredibly difficult. We concluded it would take days but the journey would be so eye opening that it would be incredible to try.

“The Journey” was a dry run. We decided to find out how easy, with no research or preparation, it would be to travel from Tooting Broadway to Brighton. We chose to catch the first bus heading vaguely south, get off at it’s destination and then seek out the next bus heading vaguely south. We figured that we would reach the South Coast eventually. We guessed Brighton was the most likely end to the journey. But we agreed that the journey was more important. Even if we reached Brighton, we would not waste time staying and looking around.

We failed, as I have already said, but we learned that it was incredibly easy if you chose to put your mind to it. We had got caught up looking around Reigate and going shopping for a new tie at Gatwick Airport. If we had been more determined, planned a route and less inclined to amble, we’d have reached Brighton and been home before tea.

So we set ourselves a greater challenge. We would travel to Bristol. It was to be a mission. We would research. We would plan.

At around 5:45am, one Saturday morning in early March, Lukey and I met up with Davey at a bus stop on Colliers Wood High Street. You know the one. Just down from the River Graveney. The one outside the bathroom showroom, opposite the “modern” tandoori restaurant that glows orange at night. Yeah. The one where the friendliest staff in the World work make you feel such a leach when they see you walking away with a takeaway from the substandard competition on the other side of the road. Yes. That bus stop!

Davey was early. Very early. Beyond early. About an hour earlier than we had agreed to set off. We boarded a bus to Kingston. It may have been a 131. I cannot recall. We were in good spirits which improved when we realised that leaving early meant that we were banking precious minutes for delays along the route. Kingston was a blur and we remained a full hour ahead when we reached Heathrow Airport to board our bus to High Wycombe.

High Wycombe seems a strange route to take to get to Bristol and you are right. But it got stranger. We were heading for Thame, which sits to the North East of Oxford, before heading to Swindon, Chippenham, Bath and – eventually – Bristol. All in it took about nine hours, I guess. Nine hours is better than the ninety to one hundred and twenty minutes by car.

The geographical reasons for the unusual route are locked in economics clashing with the physical environment. I won’t discuss it in detail here, I did too much of that at UNL in the 1990’s…

But, you probably want to know why we were doing this. And – my dear friends – I am unsure whether I will ever be able to quite explain. Certainly, I know I will not convince many of you to re-tread our steps and I don’t seek to. But I will give a go at thinking through some of my motivations:

As a starting point, I loathe advertising.

I loathe being told what to think, what to buy or how I should feel. I distrust any organisation that tries to convince me that something that I might covert, want or desire is something that is an actually necessity. Want and need are two words that have become synonymous. And that is wrong. I have a default setting of “contrary”. I always have. Perhaps it’s born of arrogance, I don’t know. But back in late 2007 or early 2008, around the time of Lukey and my conversation at The Sultan, I had been annoyed seeing a poster at Stockwell station day after day after day on my commute to work. It told me that if I was feeling lost or direction-less, I needed to visit Goa in India. The advert implied that it was only here that I would be able to clear my head and make sense of my life and place in the World. Of course, I may have been reading too much into it, but that is how I was perceiving it. And – given that this was my perception – at a level it was “true”. The opportunity to travel by bus, I decided, would demonstrate that I could do exactly the same sitting on the back seat. You can "find" yourself anywhere you wish to. Sales executives are liars. 

Whether travelling from Redhill to Crawley or Thame to Oxford, I knew that I had as good a chance of “finding myself” as I did giving a holiday company a stack of cash to travel half way around the World to stay on a Western owned, compound holiday resort in India. Beautiful beaches or no beautiful beaches.

This encouraged me to make the initial journey. We decided that we would head to Brighton but not stay. Once we arrived, we would turn around and hot foot back to London by train. We would not be drawn in to the idea that Brighton was our destination. It was just the end of our journey that day. 

Fuck Brighton!

I like the idea of seeing what space looks and feels like. How towns fit together in the landscape. Modern travel destroys this. You set off from one location, cocooned in a vehicle, and magically appear in another sometime later. Automotive travel has made it progressively easier. Roads cut through hills and valleys to fit the most practical lines and routes. By-passes allow you to avoid bottle necks and make the world a far smaller place. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It serves mankind well, but it can be a bit boring, can’t it?. I mean, how much do you miss seeing while you sit in your plane, train or auto mobile? 

Local buses take the long way round. They provide those links to places off the beaten track. They need to dwell and pause in order to fulfil their function. They can be laborious and - at times - tedious, but they give you an opportunity to watch and see and listen and observe. They make it easier to better to understand the space around you. Better to build your mental maps…

Sometimes it is good to be “slow”.

I love people watching. And, buses are a great place to watch people.

Here is an example. Back to The Mission. 

We encountered DJ Choons.

DJ Choons joined us one stop beyond Oxford Coach Station. Not quite at the railway station. There was immediate tension. Davey, Lukey and I had spaced ourselves out across the back three seats of the bus making it’s way to Swindon. Route 66. Given the iconic route number and our own pilgrimage to the West and all the opportunities available in Bristol, Severn Beach and Clevedon, we had high expectations. Something good was going to happen. DJ Choons meant that we would not be disappointed. It was clear that we, or more pertinently, I was sitting in DJ Choons preferred seat. The spacious one by the fire escape. The one with the leg room. The best seat in the house. To the obvious hilarity of Davey and Lukey, DJ Choons spent the first ten to fifteen minutes of the journey intermittently staring me out.

DJ Choons boarded the bus with a skate board. I forget the design but it was scuffed to shit. He had all the kit befitting his attitude. He was no poser. It was clear that he skated and he was serious in his pursuit. Wearing cans that put my little £2.99 bud earphones with a loose connection on the left ear to shame. Perhaps they were Beats, I cannot honestly recall. He added this to a garish hoodie, a beanie hat, faded/worn and loose fitting jeans finished off with a battered and bruised a pair of Vans.

And a Freedom Pass.

DJ Choons was in his mid 60’s.

He eventually forgave me for the theft of his seat. We ended up in discussion with him about skateboarding. Turns out he was there since it’s (inexplicable) rise in popularity in the late 1970’s. Once a month he crosses from Oxford to Swindon to visit what he told us was one of the best skate parks in the country.

I’m never going to understand skate boarding. Never. As a kid, I was rubbish and that was my best chance to learn. Even if I had the spirit and heart to give it a go, I doubt I could get over the embarrassment of failure. Sheepishly, I would claim defeat and give up. But, regardless, I genuinely hope that when I reach DJ Choons age, I have the spirit, passion and desire to keep doing what I want to do for myself and on my own terms, regardless of convention or what others may think or say.

DJ Choons is an inspiration.

A terrible little sketch of DJ Choons from my notebook.
Inspirational.

And this pulls me back to another reason why I enjoyed the adventure.

After the failed trip to Brighton I happened to reread “45” by Bill Drummond. 

Later that year, “17” was published. Both feature inspirational stories of journeys that he has or may not have conducted. I still find Bill’s observations of the norm or the mundane hopelessly inspiring and have been absorbed and lost in videos of Gimpo’s adventures on the M25 or listening to his rambles as he filmed the Docklands Light Railway. I've lost hours of my life far, far too often. With the buses, I didn’t start with an intention to ape Bill’s attitude and approach, but his work resonated in my heart and head. I recognised the spirit of the journey as a worthy endeavour or adventure.

And, finally, I guess, I made that journey "just" to be with my mates. Doing something a bit different that sitting in a pub. Looking for a different stimuli that would allow us to spark and spar off each other, like mates do. So, we ate Tunnock's Caramel Wafer Biscuits and tried to work out what possessed Lukey to bring so many Scotch Eggs. We decided that Pheasants had evolved and changed their natural call to mimic "The Fonz" from Happy Days and generally talked a lot of bollocks.

But why am I writing this today?

I happened on a series of posts on Instagram by an American/Cambodian psychedelic band called Dengue Fever. They are travelling to playing some gigs out in the Far East. But it made me recall that day travelling to Bristol.

Chhom Nimol of Dengue Fever on Instagram

All through “The Mission” I had a Dengue Fever track running through my head. “Seeing Hands”. I’d just bought the “Venus on Earth” album and was in love with the opening track.

Before Lukey and I set off to meet Davey at the bus stop in Colliers Wood… you know the one etc… I played “Seeing Hands” to him. I explained that it wouldn’t leave my head and that it would be my soundtrack to the journey. And it was, all the way through Kingston, Uxbridge, Thame, Wootton Bassett, Box and Keynsham.

Back in my post titled “22^nd August - Alive With Pleasure”, I noted how a Viva Voce track got me thinking about cycles and closure. Fate. Well the same thing happened that day.

Arriving in Bristol we stumbled over a bar on Balwin Street called “Start the Bus”. Inevitably, we had to go in for a drink. We didn't know it existed and had walked into Bristol aimlessly looking for somewhere that was "calling" us. We passed and declined a fair few venues, before "Start the Bus" came into view. Inevitably, “a drink” turned into “many”. But as soon as we were first served our first, Dengue Fever's “Seeing Hands” fired up on the PA… I didn't request it, I didn't expect it. It just worked out that way. It told me that the mission was complete.

Here is a cracking live version... Check it out... If you listen closely to my head, you can hear it playing, still...

But how does all this relate to my time in the Middle East?

I’m not sure. Perhaps I’m choosing to tell this story because I have waited too long to write my version of events down. I've tried and failed a few times. One day, it was inevitable that I would reach the end of the story.

Alternatively, I could include references from my past couple of month’s experiences to support or illustrate some of the points that I have made. I mean, I’ve travelled to and from Riyadh a fair few times now but seen nothing of what is between. To me, it is just an endless, tiresome strip of tarmac through a dusty, yellow, grey desert between Dammam and Riyadh, but a journey at night betrays the number of settlements that lie between. The continual lights on the horizon show how little I have seen so far in my stay. And that inspires me. I want to take the long road. I want to stop and to listen and to see how Saudi Arabia slots together settlement by settlement.

Grey Road From Dammam to Riyadh

Or you could take another look at the photographs of Khobar posted a couple of weeks ago. Again, I deliberately stepped away from the bright lights and undoubted, impressive beauty of The Corniche. The photo’s sought to seek out an alternative real life in Khobar to the one that is so readily available to see online. My urge to seek the mundane, the average and the normal continues.

A Little Version of Khobar

Of course, it may be that I chose to tell the story because I have little to say this week (I’ve been locked into work and physically and mentally broken) but that I am enjoying the discipline of sitting down and writing.  

Who knows?

Does it matter?