there.”
Minutes before he’d driven through Customs’ checkpoint, he’d locked the trailer doors behind me, leaving me hidden behind wooden boxes with a torch, a can of supermarket beer and his homemade cheese and chutney sandwich. But neither the food nor the drink remained inside me once the storm exploded into life.
The conditions outside were clearly too chancy for us to dock, so we remained mid-Channel until the white squall played out. With each dip, my stomach touched my toes until finally the ferry finally ported.
“Look at the state of you!” the driver laughed when he set me free in the car park of a French hypermarket.
He helped my unsteady feet back onto land and I threw my vomit-stained clothes into a bin. I climbed into his cab and changed into new ones I’d taken from someone else’s bag at a homeless shelter I’d stayed at in London.
“This is as far as I can take you,” he said back outside. “Good luck son.”
“Thank you. By the way, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Just call me Moses,” he chuckled and slowly pulled away.
And as his lorry disappeared out of sight, I counted the fistful of French francs I’d stolen from the wallet on his dashboard.
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France
June 17, 5.40pm
Waves from an inclement Atlantic ocean lapped at my feet and made the hairs on my toes sway like a sea urchin’s spines. The rotating beams from a pair of lighthouses sliced through a bruised sky as night swept in. Three concrete walls framed the harbour and prevented the water and horizon from ever meeting. Unable to catch a breeze in their sails, a handful of windsurfers straddled their boards and paddled to the shore.
I was unsure how long my journey from the north to the south of France took as without Doreen’s watch, time neither existed nor mattered. Hours blended into each other like colours in a tie-dyed T-shirt.
I’d spent long stretches of time hovering by French roadsides searching for a friendly smile behind a moving windscreen. Sometimes I found myself hiding in train carriage toilets avoiding ticket inspectors.
It was during days of near solitude when the faces of those I’d left behind began persecuting me. My conscience questioned how you were coping without me. Had you presumed I was dead like I’d hoped, or were you still holding on to faint hope of my return? I wanted to fade from all of your memories quickly.
However, my rational side knew worries were destructive and would only hamper me if left uncontrolled. So I began to train myself to think only of the future and not of the past - and specifically, you. It wasn’t easy, especially with copious amounts of time and solitude on my hands.
Manipulating ones thoughts is relatively simple for a few moments. But the part of your brain that holds in its core everything that’s amiss about ones self, doesn’t appreciate being contained for long. The longer I dwelled on the badness, the harder it would be to anticipate the good times ahead. But I had freedom to choose and I could, if I wanted to, reject those thoughts.
So as soon as something detrimental came into my mind, I snatched it mid-air and quashed it. I reminded myself those memories belonged to a person who no longer existed.
Of course I couldn’t control everything I thought about, but I learned to manage and compartmentalise much of it. And by the time I disembarked at the beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the South West, the wheels were already in motion. The key was to remain conscious and fixed on the present and the future. So I created new memories by focusing on what I saw and sensed the moment I arrived.
I began by inhaling the salty sea mist and smells carried by the wind from the surrounding gastronomy. I appreciated how the mink beach’s harbour resembled a huge toothless grin and I found myself smiling back at it. I was impressed how St-Jean-De-Luz’ historic architecture had been kept so pristine. I could see a Basque church with tiered
Minutes before he’d driven through Customs’ checkpoint, he’d locked the trailer doors behind me, leaving me hidden behind wooden boxes with a torch, a can of supermarket beer and his homemade cheese and chutney sandwich. But neither the food nor the drink remained inside me once the storm exploded into life.
The conditions outside were clearly too chancy for us to dock, so we remained mid-Channel until the white squall played out. With each dip, my stomach touched my toes until finally the ferry finally ported.
“Look at the state of you!” the driver laughed when he set me free in the car park of a French hypermarket.
He helped my unsteady feet back onto land and I threw my vomit-stained clothes into a bin. I climbed into his cab and changed into new ones I’d taken from someone else’s bag at a homeless shelter I’d stayed at in London.
“This is as far as I can take you,” he said back outside. “Good luck son.”
“Thank you. By the way, I didn’t catch your name?”
“Just call me Moses,” he chuckled and slowly pulled away.
And as his lorry disappeared out of sight, I counted the fistful of French francs I’d stolen from the wallet on his dashboard.
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France
June 17, 5.40pm
Waves from an inclement Atlantic ocean lapped at my feet and made the hairs on my toes sway like a sea urchin’s spines. The rotating beams from a pair of lighthouses sliced through a bruised sky as night swept in. Three concrete walls framed the harbour and prevented the water and horizon from ever meeting. Unable to catch a breeze in their sails, a handful of windsurfers straddled their boards and paddled to the shore.
I was unsure how long my journey from the north to the south of France took as without Doreen’s watch, time neither existed nor mattered. Hours blended into each other like colours in a tie-dyed T-shirt.
I’d spent long stretches of time hovering by French roadsides searching for a friendly smile behind a moving windscreen. Sometimes I found myself hiding in train carriage toilets avoiding ticket inspectors.
It was during days of near solitude when the faces of those I’d left behind began persecuting me. My conscience questioned how you were coping without me. Had you presumed I was dead like I’d hoped, or were you still holding on to faint hope of my return? I wanted to fade from all of your memories quickly.
However, my rational side knew worries were destructive and would only hamper me if left uncontrolled. So I began to train myself to think only of the future and not of the past - and specifically, you. It wasn’t easy, especially with copious amounts of time and solitude on my hands.
Manipulating ones thoughts is relatively simple for a few moments. But the part of your brain that holds in its core everything that’s amiss about ones self, doesn’t appreciate being contained for long. The longer I dwelled on the badness, the harder it would be to anticipate the good times ahead. But I had freedom to choose and I could, if I wanted to, reject those thoughts.
So as soon as something detrimental came into my mind, I snatched it mid-air and quashed it. I reminded myself those memories belonged to a person who no longer existed.
Of course I couldn’t control everything I thought about, but I learned to manage and compartmentalise much of it. And by the time I disembarked at the beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the South West, the wheels were already in motion. The key was to remain conscious and fixed on the present and the future. So I created new memories by focusing on what I saw and sensed the moment I arrived.
I began by inhaling the salty sea mist and smells carried by the wind from the surrounding gastronomy. I appreciated how the mink beach’s harbour resembled a huge toothless grin and I found myself smiling back at it. I was impressed how St-Jean-De-Luz’ historic architecture had been kept so pristine. I could see a Basque church with tiered
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