by Tony Hawks
Titch was sleeping soundly, so I left her on the bed as I dressed and headed out into town to grab a quick bite to eat. Tavistock appeared to be a nice market town, but I didn’t see much of it – just the walk from the hotel to the pizza restaurant where, alas, yet another Christmas party also happened to be taking place. I dined alone, trying to fathom the nature of my adjacent revellers by using a combination of people-watching and eavesdropping. They were a docile young crowd, abstemious and sensible. A far cry from some of the festive rabble who had tormented me from time to time in London. In the mid-1990s, when I’d been making fairly regular appearances on TV, during the party season I used to avoid public transport, for fear of being recognised and then ‘bothered’.
On one occasion at around 4 p.m., a full three weeks before Christmas Day, I figured that taking the tube home would be safe. To my great alarm, at Leicester Square, a huge party of inebriated office workers entered the train and shouted, jostled, and gave dreadful renditions of Christmas songs that were already dreadful enough before being submitted to this indiscriminate slaughter. I braced myself, closed my eyes, and hoped that I would be left alone if I gave the impression of being asleep.
No such luck. Soon I heard a rowdy male voice pipe up.
‘Here, that bloke over there, isn’t he off the telly?’
I’d been rumbled. Never mind, I could ride this out if I kept my eyes firmly closed.
‘Where?’ asked a screechy female.
‘There. Opposite. I’m sure he’s off the telly.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one who’s pretending to be asleep.’
My heart sank. I was about to be ridiculed by this riotous group, whilst being closely examined by the rest of the carriage, inwardly asking the question, Is he off the telly? I don’t recognise him. There weren’t many options open to me. I could hardly rise to my feet and declare at the top of my voice:
‘LOOK, MATE, I’M NOT PRETENDING TO BE ASLEEP. I AM ASLEEP. SO KEEP IT DOWN, BECAUSE I DON’T WANT YOU TO WAKE ME!’
Actually, I could have said that and, in retrospect, I think it’s precisely what I should have said. Instead, I just sat there meekly whilst the mouthy young man ridiculed my pretence at slumber and his mates had stabs at why I might look so familiar.
‘IS HE A NEWSREADER?’
‘NAH, HE’S THE BLOKE DOES THAT PROGRAMME ON ARCHAEOLOGY.’
‘NAH, HE DOESN’T LOOK CLEVER ENOUGH.’
Five more stops. That’s how much longer I had to endure this humiliation. And that’s why I’m happy to earn my living from books and radio.
I allowed myself two large glasses of red wine to help wash down the excellent pizza. Why not? A luxurious room was awaiting me and that was worthy of celebration.
When I made it back to the hotel, Titch was asleep where I’d left her. I lifted the duvet and snuggled in next to her.
My life had come to this.
I was sharing my bed with a pig.
***
Nothing happened, honestly.
OK, I’ll admit that I enjoyed it. Waking up and having the cutest little pig lying next to me was not a horrible experience. However, I am greatly relieved to inform you that I didn’t find it sexually arousing.2 Titch was not eager to wake up and begin the day. There was the faintest of grunts where she acknowledged my presence and then she was straight back to sleep again.
At breakfast, a CD blasted more distasteful Christmas songs at me. The worst was ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’. This song tells the story of a cruel man with a white beard, who knows if children are ‘naughty or nice’ and doles out presents to the good ones and ignores the rest. It’s copied out of the Republican Party manifesto.
When I made it back to the room, the teenager was still asleep on my bed.
‘Come on, Titch!’ I announced. ‘It’s time to get up. Triumphal arrival in Plymouth in just a few hours.’
Two snorts by way of riposte. It was almost as if she didn’t understand the magnitude of the day ahead. A phone call over breakfast had established that it wasn’t going to be as much of a disappointing anticlimax as I’d envisioned. Being both incompetent and a bit lazy, I’d failed to organise – or get anyone else to organise – any kind of party or celebration for me and Titch in Plymouth. The regional TV news people had been on the line, though, and they were going to meet us at the Mayflower Steps at midday, and film a nice interview. After that, I would take Titch on the train to Totnes, where Fran would meet me and we’d return Titch to Pennywell Farm. Yes, this was our last day together.
I tried not to think about it, as I prodded Titch and woke her from her deep and seemingly peaceful slumber. If possible, I wanted to leave the bedroom in the same state I’d found it. They’d been good to me at this hotel, and I didn’t want Titch fouling the room and me having to scrub away at the carpet with my Defra disinfectant. Circumstantial evidence had provided me with the information that Titch liked to have a wee just as soon as she got up and, having processed this, I now had a brilliant idea. Why didn’t I lift her straight into the bath?
‘Come on, Titch,’ I said, as I lifted her gently towards the bathroom, ‘I promise not to put the spa on.’
Like all good ideas, it needed to be tried, and Titch seemed a little bemused. Her hooves had not been designed with baths in mind. Mud, yes – ceramic, no. Wet ceramic especially. The bath hadn’t fully dried out from the previous night’s trauma and Titch’s little trotters slid and slipped. Momentarily she seemed like a tap dancer on speed. The clatter of her tiny hooves was complemented by some squeaks and snorts, but soon she settled and found her footing. To my amazement, she then placed her delicate derrière over the plughole and emptied her bladder.
‘Way to go, Titch!’ I said, desperately needing someone to high-five. ‘You little beauty.’
Titch was toilet-trained and ready for high society. We just had to await the appropriate invitations.
The local press greeted us as we prepared for departure, and the hotel staff posed for a photo with Titch, myself, and the loaded bike outside the establishment’s stately front entrance. I was then introduced to a man called Andy, perched on an impressive-looking mountain bike. He was the owner of Dartmoor Cycles and announced that he was going to escort me out of the town and onto Drake’s Trail, the last leg of my epic adventure.
Francis Drake is big in this part of the world, and a large bronze statue of him welcomes visitors arriving to Tavistock from the west. Drake was born at a farm just up the road, and his vast and dubiously obtained fortunes had enabled him to purchase Buckland Abbey, eight miles away. Of course, he spent most of his time at sea, circumnavigating the globe and plundering treasure from Spanish vessels. I remember being taught at school that he was a hero. The word ‘pirate’ was never used, but I urge you to do a little research on him and you can decide what nomenclature is best suited – ‘heroic pirate’, perhaps? (Although it would depend how ‘heroic’ you considered slave trading to be.)
I’m pretty certain he had nothing to do with the 21-mile cycle and walking route that links Tavistock and Plymouth. He’s simply lent it his name, posthumously, that’s all. I’m not sure who organises this kind of stuff, but I’d like to let it be known that after my demise I’m prepared to lend my name to future projects with which I have had no connection whatsoever. Feel free to name rivers, seas, inventions, life-saving drugs, and new species of wildlife after me. It’s a gesture that I’m quite happy to make.
The crisp morning had transformed itself into an unusually bright and sunny one by the time Andy, our personal guide, left me and Titch on the trail by the entrance to the Grenofen Tunnel. This former railway tunnel is 374 yards long and was built in 1859 by Brunel. In spite of having two very silly first names (neither Isambard nor Kingdom were on the list for us, if Fran gave birth to a boy), Brunel had to be the greatest of the Victorian engineers.
At the time of writing, I am the same age as Isambard was when he met an untimely death, after suf
fering a stroke aged just fifty-three. There are not many similarities between us, and I hope that age of death doesn’t become one. I have concentrated less of my time on building railway lines and bridges, with the result that he has really trounced me in this domain. (I have built twenty-five fewer railway lines, and more than a hundred fewer bridges.) He also came quite a bit higher than me in a 2002 public television poll conducted by the BBC to select the ‘100 Greatest Britons’.3 Brunel, however, lived his whole life failing to bond with fridges, Moldovan footballers and pigs in the same way that I have, and as a result he may well have considered his life a failure.
Not all of Brunel’s work has survived. Not long after exiting the Grenofen Tunnel, we crossed the brand-new and extremely impressive Gem Bridge, a viaduct built to replace Brunel’s effort, which had been so crap that they’d had to demolish it in the 1960s. Thereafter, the picturesque trail proceeded to lead us ever onwards through wooded river valleys and open moorland, where sheep and horses wandered freely. On occasions they had ambled onto the trail itself and required, in homage to Drake, circumnavigation.
Drake’s Trail became the Plym Valley Trail and Plymouth drew ever closer. The sun shone, the bike performed well, Titch slept, and mile after mile, decorated by exquisite scenery, was completed. Everything was going well. Too well for me to feel comfortable. I am a positive person and not one who expects setbacks, but something inside me couldn’t accept just how wonderfully things were progressing this morning.
The reason for this gentle but persistent anxiety made itself known to me when I stopped to open a gate, shortly after we’d passed through a town called Yelverton. I looked down at the rack on the back of the bike and, to my horror, I saw that my rucksack was not there.
‘Oh no, Titch!’ I cried out. ‘The damn thing has fallen off. Bloody useless, shitty, ratchet strap!’
That morning, like every other morning, I had been unable to loosen the ratchet strap. That morning, like every other morning, I had wedged my rucksack under the intransigent, unreasonable and loathsome strap, and fixed it in place using the stretchy bungee cords. Evidently, this morning I had not made a good enough job of this. Result? Major setback.
What should I do? I could cycle back, retracing my path, and I would probably find the bag lying on the trail somewhere. However, I’d been cycling for over ninety minutes, and the bag could have fallen off quite soon after I’d left Tavistock. There was now less than an hour to go till the midday TV interview. The best option seemed to be to press on and hope that the bag was handed in. Quite where it would be handed in, and who by, remained a mystery. I alerted Radio Devon to my predicament and they kindly agreed to ask relevant Devonians to keep an eye out.
I continued cycling, my mind mainly preoccupied with trying to identify exactly what I’d put in that bag. The good news was that it was mostly clothes, all dispensable, and some of which Fran had been trying to get me to burden a charity shop with anyway. The not-so-good news was that the cash which people had been handing me along the way was in the front pocket. I wondered if there was anything in the bag that would identify me and help any finder to locate me. Sadly, I thought not.
‘Shit!’ I said, just as we hit the outskirts of Plymouth.
It had been a disgruntled curse, relating to the loss of the bag, but it also served as an apt description of our new surroundings. Flyovers, superstores, and industrial units were replacing the jewels of nature that had been on display for the last two hours. Man – ingenious, resourceful and industrious – had a gift for creating the ugly, something he demonstrates regularly on the fringes of cities and towns. The now somehow weary trail led us alongside the River Plym – no longer pretty, but grubby and functional – and towards the historic part of the city. It was here, I dared to hope, that a small TV crew was waiting expectantly.
I thought that I had allowed plenty of time for this final leg of my journey, but the drawn-out entrails of the city seemed to go on and on, and it was clear that I was up against the clock once more. Eager cycling, coupled with a well-performing bike, meant that I cycled into the area that I took to be my arrival point at 11.57 a.m. Pretty good timing.
Two men – one with a dog – applauded. A photographer waved, and a cameraman and colleague with a microphone gave me a thumbs up. This part of Plymouth looked decidedly different to what I’d seen so far. The old harbour had escaped the destruction of the Blitz and resembled a quaint and authentic fishing port. It could easily have been the film set of a period drama.
No drama today, however. Five men and a dog hailing the triumphant completion of a coast-to-coast cycle by man and pig. I unzipped my coat, revealed my cargo, and further polite and disjointed applause was elicited. Two passers-by, oblivious to the nature of our presence here, stopped and admired Titch.
‘Where are the Mayflower Steps?’ I asked the photographer, after he had introduced himself as a freelancer hired by the local rag.
‘Right behind you.’
These steps are so called because they are believed to be the ones that the original Pilgrim Fathers descended, before setting sail for the body of land that has since become known as the United States of America. Religious dissenters, they were pious, pure and pissed off. I don’t know a huge amount about them, but my guess is that they were keen to set up a community where ‘going large’ with burgers and fries was not an option.
They may have had limited success to start with, but the settlers who followed them engaged on a greed ‘free for all’ that has created the economic climate for the world’s largest number of dollar billionaires,4 not to mention the highest number of privately owned guns per capita. These Pilgrim Fathers were no doubt an austere bunch, and their daughters would have been incredibly difficult to ‘get off with’, but the simple values by which they had chosen to live would not have got their country to Number 2 in the shameful chart of the world’s worst polluters, and then stubbornly refuse to do much about it.
Titch and I did our photos and chat for the media, whilst I simultaneously chomped on some fish and chips, kindly donated by a nearby establishment.
‘Here, you must be hungry,’ a girl in a Rockfish T-shirt had said, proffering a healthy portion of England’s most famous seaside fare. ‘Here’s our donation to the cause.’
One of those wooden forks would have been good, but it wasn’t part of the package. As a result I ate the fish and chips with my unwashed hands; the same hands that had been handling a pig all morning. Fran would have been appalled, being someone who sticks rigidly to conventional advice when it comes to food hygiene. I always defended my rather laissez-faire approach – currently peaking with this latest effort – by claiming that a certain exposure to germs helps build up our immune systems. I’d never really looked into the science, or indeed the validity of the claim, but the information was extremely useful in enabling me to defend a need to be something of a slob from time to time.
Needless to say, doctors and nurses don’t handle pigs before treating patients, and this fact certainly adds strength to Fran’s argument. On the other hand, I am still here – typing this – so I have survived. There. It’s not always a bad thing to rebel against the conventional wisdom of the day. Next time you see a rather bossy ‘Now wash your hands’ sign in a bathroom, walk straight past it. Leave it five minutes and then wash them. Show them who’s boss.
I was deeply grateful for the media presence. Not only did these interviews prevent a damp squib of a finale, but they ensured that Titch and I would be on TV in the front rooms of many a West Country home this evening, and in the papers on their breakfast tables in the morning. I just hoped that a few viewers and readers would dig deep and make a small donation. Moldova awaited.
The regional news crew finished their filming by getting me to cycle around Plymouth Hoe, with Titch hanging cheekily out of the sling, turning on her charm for the camera. This was the spot where, more than four hundred years before, Drake had nonchalantly finished his game of bowls before pre
paring to do battle with the Spanish Armada. This story is most probably apochryphal,5 since there were no eyewitnesses, and the first written account of it was given thirty-seven years after the event.
I mean, why would you wait that long before jotting down a momentous event? For me, the worst offenders in this department have to be the writers of the gospels. Most scholars accept that they were written a good twenty or thirty years after the death of Jesus. Well, what were the great scribes of the day up to?
‘Hey, Matthew, that was a cracking story, wasn’t it?’
‘What was?’
‘Jesus’s life. Overturning the tables of the money lenders, turning the water into wine and feeding the five thousand. Talk about drama. I bet you can’t wait to write about that!’
‘It’s on my list. I’ll get to it when I’ve finished “The History of the Pebble” and “Sandals – Leather’s Great Prize.”’
‘I see. You’re confident of getting all the facts right?’
‘Facts, schmachts.’ Pointing to his friend’s feet. ‘They’re cracking sandals, where did you get them from?’
Suddenly, Titch and I were alone again. The camera kit had been packed away, warm goodbyes and wishes had been offered, and cars had been driven off. An ordinary weekday in Plymouth. I may have been on the hallowed turf of Drake’s nonchalant bowls’ game, but there was no sense of history now. No celebration lunch awaited us. Nosh had already been unceremoniously dispatched out of sheets of newspaper by my grubby, multitasking hands. The party was over and Plymouth City Council could stand down any staff that they had earmarked for clearing up the debris.