No Fixed Abode

by Charlie Carroll

  I skirted the city past its ladder of locks and pushed on along the Kennet and Avon canal. Here was a protracted nose-to-tail line of longboats which jostled for position about the mooring posts whose maximum staying-time steadily increased – twenty-four hours, forty-eight, seventy-two – as they and I got further away from the city centre. Beyond that, staying-time became unlimited, and it seemed that the boats did, too. Moored permanently and lived in, their roofs were cluttered with car batteries, petrol generators, solar panels, chopped firewood and plastic sacks of charcoal; their path-side windows blacked out or boarded up; bicycles leaned against rotting gangplanks; potted, overgrown gardens on bow or stern or both; empty wine bottles and crushed beer cans on totemic display; old canoes and kayaks either tethered to the side or left upside down in the nearby hedgerow. Painted in primary-colour Hammerite, the longboats had names like Loose Goose, Grimalkin, The Great Escape, Daisy, Celt, Tilly, Border Raider, Tanith: Tough Bros of Teddington and Only Dead Fish Go With The Flow. I saw few people among them, more frequently a lazy cat perched on the roof or a happy, bouncing dog which tumbled about the towpath or barked at me from the safety of a porthole window. Those people I did see were often older and shirtless, barefooted, working on the boat or calming the yapping dog; two cycled past in suits from their day at work to leave their bikes on the grass and lower their heads to enter their boat-homes; another paddled along the canal in his kayak, stepping from his smaller boat to his larger, and carrying with him a briefcase. They were city-workers, living on water in pursuit of an alternative lifestyle away from the suburbs, or because real estate prices in those suburbs had become unfeasible; not homeless, but houseless nonetheless.

  3

  My own lodgings that night were found beside one of these longboats, where a miniature lay-by slipped off from the towpath and down into a cleared thicket in the woods. A heap of grey ash denoted a recent fire, and from one of the lower branches of a sycamore on the periphery hung a crude sign with pink letters stencilled on to it: Jimbo's Jungle. It felt like one of the many dens my brother, my dog and I had made in the woodlands around our childhood Cornish village, and when I slept there that night I dreamed of red-tipped matches and self-made fires.

  I woke in the morning with a thin frost of dew across my sleeping bag. Each night was getting colder, but out here, away from the concrete, it seemed far more palatable than in the city. The sun rose and I laid my belongings out on the towpath to dry while I washed, cleaned my teeth and prepared breakfast. Three boats down, a dog barked, voices mumbled, and the barge began to lazily rock from side to side. I dipped my feet into the canal. A cold burn rose to my ankles and I pulled them out before I lost my toenails. Gasping but happy, I towelled off and shouldered my knapsack. A young woman in a dressing gown appeared from her boat with a mug of tea in hand and stared at me. I smiled, and walked on.

  Not long after, I came across three young men, perhaps nineteen years old, squatting at the water's edge. One had his mobile phone laid out on the grass, and tinny dance music beat from its small speaker. Beside it lay a supermarket carrier bag, and one of the lads reached into it to share out cans of energy drinks and a packet of cigarettes. They stared at me as I drew close. The middle one took another phone from his pocket, placed it to his ear and murmured into it, his eyes never leaving me as I passed. What are you doing here? I thought. It's eight in the morning!

  Some yards later, the path rounded a corner and I stopped, pretending to innocently look at the row of riverside houses which had sprung up, and glanced behind me. The three lads were on their feet, following me, cans in right hands and cigarettes in mouths, one with the carrier bag, the other still with his phone at his ear.

  Adrenalin spiked as I walked on, quicker than my usual pace. Not again, I thought. You're paranoid. You were bullied in Mawgan Porth and scared in Bristol, but not every young man wants to take advantage of the nearest tramp. Get a grip.

  But I was paranoid, and the hectoring inner monologue couldn't assuage that. On this towpath, I realised, there was no means of escape, no direction to go but forward. To my left, the back gardens of the houses were fenced off with insurmountable ten-foot railings; to my right, there was only water.

  I walked faster. I did not look round again. I did not need to. My imagination had plugged into overdrive. The one with the phone, I decided, had called friends. There's an old pikey at the canal, he told them. Park up a few miles down and then walk back towards town. We'll pincer-move the fucker. Might have some cash on him. Even if he doesn't, could be fun. I stared hard at the water. Could I swim that? The far side was only, what, ten metres? Would they follow me in?

  Then, suddenly, salvation. A family – mother, father, three blonde children, an ecstatic Jack Russell – appeared from beneath a bridge a hundred metres in front. I slowed. They were loud: I could hear the children laughing. I stopped. Ingratiate yourself, I thought. The mother called the dog to her and picked her youngest up. The father stretched his arms around the shoulders of the other two. He was big: shaven-headed, huge pectorals visible through his tight sweatshirt. The kids disappeared into his armpits. They must have seen my stalkers. The children had stopped laughing. Their guardedness gave me comfort.

  I turned around to flaunt my safety, but there was no one there. The family drew level with me. The mother and children looked at the ground. The father stared into my eyes. The dog barked. They passed. It was me they had been wary of: me with my sleep-starved, bloodshot eyes, my dirty clothes, my stupid beard and my weird smile. Those lads weren't the threat on that towpath. I was.

  4

  'Paranoia's a killer. Trust me there,' Nigel said. 'Looking like you do, acting like you are, you'll find most people will be far more scared of you than you are of them.'

  Nigel spoke from first-hand experience. We had a lot in common: we both had homes, but we both looked homeless. The latter was the reason I had approached him, sat on a wooden bench overlooking the Kennet and Avon canal not far from Bradford-on-Avon, eating an egg-mayonnaise roll from a tinfoil wrapper and drinking from a Thermos flask. He was nearing fifty; long grey hair hanging in a loose ponytail; cheeks washed with sparse but grainy stubble; an old and pink T-shirt which frayed at the seams around his neck; wafting pantaloon trousers. He looked like a tramp, but I suspected from the lack of introversion in his gaze and the lack of hurry in his eating that he, like myself, was new to the game. He had watched me carefully as I walked towards him and, when I drew close, he beamed a toothy smile and called: 'All right, boy?'

  It was time for lunch and I sat on the bench next to him, pulling out my stove and heating a tin of soup. Nigel watched with unashamed admiration as I cooked, crushing his tinfoil into a ball and announcing: 'I've got to get me one of those.'

  I asked him where he was going and where he had come from.

  'Bradford-on-Avon,' he said, answering both my questions. 'I like to walk down here for lunch sometimes. I like to walk. I was about to set off back there, but I can wait for you. We can walk together. I'm guessing that's where you're going.'

  'In that direction,' I said, 'but ultimately beyond. I suppose I could stop there for the night. Where do you sleep?'

  Nigel laughed. 'In my bed,' he said. 'In my house. Sorry, boy, but if you're after a room, I can't…'

  'No, no,' I interrupted, 'that's not what I meant. I'm sorry, I thought you were…'

  'Homeless?'

  'Homeless. A tramp.'

  'Well, I'm not homeless, but I suppose I am a sort of tramp.'

  I cleaned and packed my utensils and we walked along the towpath to Bradford-on-Avon together. Nigel unravelled his story along the way. He had, as he liked to call it, 'a manic case of claustrophobia'. He owned a house in Bradford, bequeathed to him by his late mother along with a sizeable inheritance. Coupled with the benefits he derived from his condition, this inheritance and paid-for property meant he did not have to work.

  'The problem with claustrophobia,' he explained, 'like all
idiosyncrasies, is that it gets worse as you get older. I had it mildly when I was young, but I could still go to school and sixth form. I even lasted one year at university. But that was when it really hit. I had this lecture hall which was two-tiered. I always sat on the ground floor, but the ceiling above was just over head-height, and all that weight was so much to contemplate that I ended up not being able to concentrate on the lectures. All I could think of was that thick ceiling above me, and all those other students sitting on top of it. I had a terrible panic attack one day, literally ran from the hall and caught the first train home. That was the day of my undoing. I should have ridden out the anxiety and returned the next day to fight it. But I didn't. I went home, back to Bradford, and I never left again. Weight became this fixation for me, and I could just about bear it at home when my mother was in, but never anywhere else. I got reclusive and spent the next three years in the house when Mum was there and then in the back garden when she wasn't. When she passed, I couldn't even stay in the house any more.'

  For the last twenty years, Nigel's life had become a relentless pursuit of the outside world. 'I've often thought about just doing it properly,' he admitted. 'Going full-tramp. It wouldn't make much of a difference. Every waking hour I spend outdoors. And, believe me, when I'm outside, all those anxieties, all that insanity, all that weight, it doesn't even register. Sometimes I'm even grateful for my disorder: there's a lot of things I get to see normal people don't.'

  'So why not do it?' I asked. 'Sell the house, live outdoors full-time on the money, go full-tramp?'

  'The cold,' he replied. 'It's the bloody cold. Believe me, I've thought about buying a one-way ticket to Andalucia, taking so many drugs I pass out on the flight, but even the thought of entering a travel agent's to buy my passage, or sitting in the airport, or going through passport control on the other side…' He became visibly anxious at these thoughts, and they tailed off as he removed and shouldered his backpack five or six times.

  'No,' he said finally. 'I've got a system, and it works. I'm happy with it.'

  Each night, Nigel would walk to his front door when he felt himself growing tired. He had garden furniture arranged outside, and he would sit in one of the plastic chairs, take a pill, count the twenty-three minutes on his wristwatch, and then, when he felt 'the droop', would open his door. Years earlier, he had rearranged his house so that his bed lay as close to the front door as possible. Flopping into it, he would pass out for the night, wake in the morning, run outside, and calmly go to get breakfast from his favourite outdoor food stall.

  'That's why I look like a tramp,' he said. 'I change my clothes at the start of each new season. This lot,' he gestured down at himself, 'this is my early-autumn attire. I've got about a month left before I'll need something warmer. All my clothes are there next to my bed. It takes a lot of willpower to stay in the house long enough to grab the next set when I need them, but I manage.'

  'When was the last time you saw the rest of the house?'

  'About two years after Mum died. But it's all right. I've got a cleaner. She sorts it out for me.'

  We walked the last mile to Bradford quietly. Nigel was affable and charming, heroic even in his compensatory systems, but I felt deeply sorry for him. His life was lived around his claustrophobia to a degree I found startling. He was in great shape for his age, for he walked everywhere and ate well (always al fresco, of course), but what had his strange condition denied him? He would never marry, never find work which fulfilled his core, and what would happen to him if he suffered an injury or disease? I pictured him in a hospital bed, and despaired at the thought.

  'You shouldn't worry about me, boy,' he said as we parted company at Bradford. 'My life isn't so bad. I walk, that's what I do. Everywhere. You're doing it now, and you're going to see things all those people stuck indoors for half their life will never see. That's good. It's what you should do. Walk everywhere. Except on motorways. Tried it once. Police picked me up before I'd even made a mile. Worst experience of my life being in that car. Won't be doing that again.'

  5

  For the next few days, I walked east along the Kennet and Avon canal. The sun shone hard, but unlike the Cornish cliffs there was shade if I needed it, and I could be more frugal with my water supply. Every night was colder, but there were always plenty of quiet and sheltered spots beside the canal – after dark, no one walked the towpaths beyond the towns – and once I slept until nine in the morning, something I had not done since Portishead.

  The walk was pretty: pretty in the way England can be in September, but it rarely went beyond that, and I found myself growing bored. It seemed to take forever to reach Reading. The towns I popped up in – Devizes, Hungerford, Newbury – were always the same: small, redbrick, affable, pompous; and the towpath itself maintained such a consistency of appearance that even my daydreams became bland and uninspired, and I found myself checking my watch at ever-shortening intervals.

  When Reading finally appeared, I learned from a walkers' signpost on its outskirts that I had travelled 105.5 miles from Bristol, and still had another 66.5 to London. Achievement mingled with trepidation: together they gave birth to stamina, and I pushed on.

  The canal led through The Oracle: a heavily built-up part of central Reading, where Las Iguanas, Café Rouge, Mission Burrito, McDonalds and the House of Fraser coffee shop bulged out like toes dipped over the canal's edge. I felt like I had wandered out from the desert. Sunburned, crack-lipped, slight limp from a pain in my knee I had forgotten about, the half-smile of the half-mad, my teeth clean but my clothes filthy, I walked timidly through the throngs of mothers and toddlers noisily queuing for an autograph from a man in a Peppa Pig outfit. I had spent so much time on the canal from Bath alone – I had barely spoken to anyone since Nigel – that this sudden influx of people provoked a strange fear in me, and I shrank from passing shoulders and bags, as if worried I might contaminate and infect. In return for my tiptoeing and sidestepping, I was paid no heed. Some moved backwards almost imperceptibly as I approached, but most did not even notice me.

  Just a mile away, the Kennet and Avon canal met the Thames. It cheered me up, for this was another watershed: the home stretch, which I intended to follow all the way to Central London. At the confluence were boats, walking families, trees, a thousand swans, and no houses. I sat on a patch of grass and boiled noodles for lunch. The old women in sun hats stared at me from the passing Mary Stuart, followed by four young males rowing a gig while an older man in sunglasses rode a jet ski next to them and shouted: 'Almost there… let it come to you… don't go searching… sit, sit, sit… have patience.' The whole vista – along with the perfect weather: cloudless sky and a light breeze – felt so quintessentially English that I decided to complete the landscape by taking a nap under a nearby weeping willow.

  6

  When Laurie Lee walked east from his Gloucestershire village of Slad in 1934, his first sight of London was from Beaconsfield. For me, in 2011, the city seemed to begin miles before, perhaps even as far away as Maidenhead. From there on, urbanity rose above the Thames-side trees and spread across the fields with increasing regularity. At Windsor, the overhead planes flew lower and lower, louder and more frequent. A cluster of palatial mansions appeared to enjoy exclusive rights to the riverbank, and the white acorns directed me away and out along a roadside.

  Windsor itself was bright and rammed with tourists who took photographs of the royal castle, the royal statues and the royal mailboxes. There had not been so many tourists since Cornwall, nor so much wind. The latter seemed apt here.

  I walked on without stopping, determined to reach the M25, the border-crossing to London proper. I contemplated various methods of celebration: perhaps I should sing a song, do a little dance, as I passed underneath the motorway. After all, that would be it, at that precise moment I would have walked from Cornwall to London. I had settled on London Bridge as my finishing point, but that was as arbitrary as Land's End, and I hadn't even started there. The tram
p was by no means over – I had come to London to live in it homeless for a while – but the walk which surrounded it almost was, and the prospect of stepping under that motorway and appearing on the other side with arms raised and voice bellowing grew more and more exhilarating the closer I got.

  Sadly, when I came to the low, elegant bridge at Bell Weir Lock, the footpath had been closed off. Following a sporadic and often contradictory string of signs, I was navigated around the A30 and through industrial estates in such a disorienting succession of right angles and U-turns that I was unsure exactly when I was under the M25 or the A30 or even on which side I was, and my grand London entrance was something of an anticlimax.

  So too was my first stop: Staines. Staines was used in comedy for the same reason Slough was – its pejorative double-meaning was apt. Staines exemplified how horrible London could be. Shopping trolleys and wooden pallets lay in the river, rusting or rotting; front gardens were overgrown and unkempt, strewn with moulding toys or supermarket crates; rubbish bins overflowed and stank; the air seemed filled with wasps. On the high street, opposite Poundland, was the '98 Pence Shop'. The only thing which Staines sought to surpass itself in was mediocrity.