SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 33)

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

There is something deeply calming and therapeutic about driving. I do not suffer from road rage and can drive for hours, allowing my automatic reflexes full rein while my mind sorts, files, computes, ruminates and calculates. It wasn’t long before I found myself heading towards the west country, as if I might drive until I fell off the end of the British Isles.

It was the spring of 1996, still cold enough to keep the grockles at home, but survivable with a bit of clever forethought. I bought an ordnance survey map of Devon and Cornwall to find the remotest beauty spots. I set about exploring, but always careful to keep my distance from populated areas. I was not in the right frame of mind for socialising. I chose beaches, riverbanks, old quarries and lakesides to park up for the night because they afforded me washing facilities, albeit somewhat chilly. I rarely stayed in one spot for more than a single night.

After a few days, I phoned home to speak to my son, Dan. He was not surprised that I had gone wild and awol, but he was shocked when I told him that I had no intention of coming home. I asked him to take over as the ‘man of the house’ and to pay the bills. He took up the challenge with surprising ease by renting out my bedroom to a friend and moving his new girlfriend, Sarah, in with him. When I phoned my friend, Katie, she laughingly told me that she had spoken to Dan in the street. Apparently he had mockingly wailed, “My mum has left me!” and she had pointed out that he was lucky I had not thrown him out to stand on his own feet years before! At twenty-four, Dan was more than capable of managing the house. I think he relished the opportunity to taste a bit of real independence.

As the weather warmed up, I continued to explore until I ran out of money. I had one friend who lived in a small Cornish village, so I called in to visit her. Rosa helped me to fake residency at her house so that I could claim unemployment benefits. In those days, rural residents would complete a postal claim and receive their benefits direct into their bank account. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Just before August Bank Holiday, which falls around the last weekend in that month, I set off on a long circuitous route I had planned out on my map. It had been hot and dry for weeks in Cornwall, but no sooner did I pull away from Rosa’s house than it began to pour with rain. It was a tremendous downpour, intensifying as I approached the steep uphill climb to Launceston town in a queue of slow traffic. From my slightly elevated driving seat I could see over the high hedges and, horrified, I watched a small car aquaplaning fast down the hill, completely out of control. At the foot of that hill the road swung a very sharp left and, if the car continued on its trajectory, it would have hurtled over a ravine. With micro-seconds to spare, I opened my window to signal that I was slowing down and I positioned my van so that it took the impact of the car in the right front wing. My tool box flew out from under the passenger seat and spilled its heavy contents all over me, I was whacked in the face and legs by flying hammers and spanners. The windscreen popped and the van’s wing folded inwards. I lifted my feet off the pedals just before they would have been trapped in the folding metal. The little car bounced to a standstill as I forced my crumpled door open and fell out of my seat onto the soaking road. I ran to the passenger seat of the little car and opened the door.

The driver, a young father, was still clinging to his steering wheel. His baby was secure, but screaming in a carrycot beside him. In the rear seats two under-fives were safe, but crying with shock. One small trickle of blood showed that the eldest, a girl, had bitten her lip. The father looked at me and simply said, “My wife is gonna kill me!” to which I had to reply, “Nah mate! She will be happy you are all OK!”

When I turned around to look at my van I was mortified. It was a total write-off. I went to the back doors and opened them. My mini-home in the rear was a jumbled mess. I got in and began trying to re-organise it when a sweet elderly lady, dressed in a hooded mackintosh and boots appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea. She had placed a saucer over the cup to keep the relentless rain out… She reached into her pocket and handed me a couple of Rich Tea biscuits too!

It was only then that I noticed her little cottage nearby and that the accident had blocked the left hand side of the road. An elderly man, dressed similarly, was directing traffic, alternating the flow up and down the hill until the police arrived. The road was like a river.

When a policeman arrived at my rear doors, the first thing he wanted to know was if I had had a drink. I said, “Yes, thank you! An elderly lady gave me a cup of tea!” Which confused him a bit. “No.” he stated, “I mean - have you been drinking alcohol?” and I laughed at the absurd confusion. “No, officer.” I said, “I don’t drink alcohol.” He then explained that a helicopter was on its way to airlift me to hospital.

“Whatever for?” I asked astonished. The young officer mumbled something about injuries and best to get checked over. I was having none of that. I told him that I was fine and had to stay with my van because it was insecure. He explained that a tow truck would be arriving soon to remove it from the road.

When the paramedics arrived in the helicopter they tried to persuade me to go with them, but I could not understand what all the fuss was about. I felt completely fine. I said that the other driver appeared to have a bit of whiplash. I watched as the three little tots were carried to the helicopter with their father and they took off heading for the nearest hospital in Plymouth.

When the tow trucker arrived he swiftly dragged my van up onto the low loader and I went along with him in his passenger seat. The rain had eased off by then and I enquired where we were going. “Pensilva” came the reply, which meant nothing to me at that time. We arrived at a very small breaker’s yard which shared a scruffy back lot with several other small businesses. The driver off-loaded my van onto the rough ground and disappeared.

I found Pensilva on my map and ascertained that I was about 5 miles north of Liskeard, on the edge of Bodmin Moor. It was hardly a tourist destination. In fact, it was a deserted rubbish dump! I presumed that the Bank Holiday weekend would mean that I would not be seeing much activity, so I scouted about and soon found a tatty tarpaulin cover for my windshield and plenty of firewood. I was able to cook a decent dinner and, exhausted at nightfall, I simply went to bed in the back of the van.

At the crack of dawn I woke up completely unable to move without pain. That’s funny! I thought, as I rolled off my mattress and wriggled to the back doors. As I swung my legs out I caught sight of my knees. The left one was doing a marvellous impression of a football. I had pains in just about every joint from my pelvis to the floor and, as is normal for me upon waking, I was bursting for a pee. I had no choice but to lift my skirt and pee on the ground right there. That was when I spotted that there was a door open at the back of the nearest building. Fashioning a walking stick from the firewood I had acquired, I slowly picked my way over the rubbish and junk.

“Hello?” I called as I hovered in the doorway, waiting. Silence greeted me and I spotted a doorway marked ‘Toilets’ - Ooh marvellous! I thought. I can get a wash!
I hobbled over to the door and opened it. Directly in front of me was a large mirror over a sink. I blinked a few times. I approached. I could not believe what I was seeing.

My face was unrecognisable. One eye was almost closed and black. Under both eyes was black. My top lip was like a raw pork sausage and my forehead was pebble dashed with digs and scabs.

The instant I observed all this I felt the pain of it. How was it that I had not noticed any pain anywhere before? This was most curious. No wonder the police and paramedics tried so hard to get me into the helicopter! I looked an absolute fright!
I realised that consciousness of injury triggered awareness of pain. This discovery went on the back burner of my mindscape survival manual. To be thought about later….. at great length.

I began to remove my clothes and saw that I was bruised in the chest, from the seatbelt and all down my left side, especially my thigh and newly acquired football shaped knee. I resolved never to place a toolbox under the passenger seat again. I remember it flying slowly in the air and flipping over. I remember the steel body opening up and all the contents flying into my face. It was so bizarre that I felt no pain from any of this until I actually saw the damage.

I washed as best I could. It took me ages, but still there was no sign of any people about so I went back to the van, built a fresh fire and made coffee. I painfully pottered about like that for the following two days. I was sitting by my fire on the third day when a gleaming black Mercedes pulled into the dump. A tall slim man got out and walked over, hailing me. He had a newspaper in his hand. He explained that he was from the nearby Gypsy Travellers site and his mother had sent him to invite me to dinner. He gave me the newspaper, indicating that the road accident was front page news locally. The article reported that the children and their father were all discharged from hospital and had returned home.

I thanked the man for the invitation but was reluctant to show my face to anyone. He looked a bit shocked, then said “But that is even more reason to come! Let my mother help you, it would mean a lot to her!” and with that, I felt obliged.

During that evening it was agreed that I should stay in their guest caravan and the following day my van was stripped of its contents, which were brought to me in the tiny pink and white guest caravan. Later, the van was also stripped of everything valuable which could be recycled or sold on and finally my tax disc was sent off for a refund. When the family spotted my fully comprehensive insurance they encouraged me to apply for a hire car. I could not believe it when the insurance company provided me with a brand new red Nissan Micra, delivered to the gypsy site.
Mine until the claim was settled.

Amazing.

After about a week, I was able to walk, drive and looked a lot less like Quasimodo. There was some talk about a place called Fraggle Rock. Apparently this was a safe park up for New Age Travellers, but there was nobody living there at the time. It was decided that they would tow the guest caravan to Fraggle Rock and make a gift of it to me! All this generosity completely overwhelmed me so I asked what motivated it. The answer I got was unexpected. Apparently, I had been described in the newspaper article and on local TV news as a Traveller woman, living alone in her vehicle. The action I had taken to save the lives of that young family reflected positively on the whole Traveller community in Cornwall. They said that their generosity merely matched my sacrifice.

Fraggle Rock was an enchanting space. It was a remnant of an old road that nobody used any more. It was about 200 yards long and terminated with a banjo shaped cul-de-sac which looked like it had once been a small roundabout. It was surrounded by trees on both sides and a steep rocky incline led down to a good sized stream. There was one other vehicle parked on site and that was not occupied.

At night it was spookily quiet, with swift rustlings in the thick undergrowth. During the day I cleaned rubbish away and set about building a pool in the stream. I had been working on this project for about three days when I was suddenly called by a gruff voice from the roadway above. A large man, with very long black hair and a beard was standing close to my caravan. He had a small blonde and angelic child at his side. I climbed back up to the roadway and introduced myself. He said his name was Danny Hemstock and the four year old was his son, Khan.

I offered to make a coffee and we chatted for a while. Danny was scouting for a park up on behalf of a small community of New Age Travellers who were about to be evicted from a place called Whacker Quay, just a few miles away. They had no choice but to move within the following week. Danny said that, as the only person in residence at Fraggle Rock, it was up to me to give permission for them to move in. He suggested that I should visit Whacker Quay to meet everyone. So I did.

Danny and Khan lived in a well fitted, red double decker bus and I was concerned that, even if we could get the bus into the tight entrance, it might not pass under the overhanging branches. However, there were no other options. Fraggle Rock was the only known park-up which was unlikely to be evicted because ownership of that sliver of land was uncertain. The council did not want to claim it and the Highways Agency did not include it in their portfolio. It was effectively, no-mans-land.

When the day arrived for the move we formed a convoy with Danny’s double decker at the front. It was up to the other smaller vehicles to delay the traffic on the A38 motorway just long enough for Danny to use all three lanes to pull off an incredibly difficult manoeuvre tighter than any hairpin bend. He inched his bus through a gap with barely a hair of spare space either side and then slowly down the disused roadway running between the trees, almost parallel to the motorway until he parked it right next to my pink and white caravan. I was impressed, it was skilful driving and he did it at the first attempt.

Everyone else filed into the hidden lane and took up residence. I went from solitude to a full sized community complete with copious kids and dogs!

Over the following weeks, I continued with my clean ups and improving the washing pool in the stream, only this time I had a bevy of willing little helpers splashing around me. Our gypsy friends from Pensilva contacted their gypsy liaison worker at the local council office and mentioned that we might need some help. He appeared one day with his clipboard. He asked me what we needed. I suggested a skip would be nice for rubbish and he wrote that down. He asked me if the children were going to attend school and I doubted it. He wrote that down too. Within days a skip was delivered to Fraggle Rock. We asked for it to be placed near to the entrance and therefore away from the living vehicles.

We built a stone circle in the banjo shape by lugging big stones in bread baskets from the rocky river banks. I taught the kids how to circle dance there…. and the adults would use it at night for firelit gatherings, parties and music away from the sleeping children.

Then we acquired an old horse box. The kids and I worked hard to clean it out and convert it into a school room. I began teaching them to read and write. We received books, notepads and pencils from the Gypsy Liaison Officer. We decorated the walls with our drawings and spent more and more time there as the weather cooled through October and November of that year. Danny installed a wood burning stove.

I awoke one chilly morning hearing the children in distress and I quickly jumped into some clothes to find out what was wrong. One of the lurcher dogs, a beauty called Blue was unconscious on the roadway. The children said he suddenly collapsed. I smelled a foul stink of rotten meat on his breath and realised he had eaten something really toxic. I sent one of the oldest to get a syringe from the heroin addicts who had just moved onto the site. I sent another to get me some table salt. Yet another to bring me some warm water. Then I lifted the lurcher onto his wobbly legs and began massaging his stomach inwards and upwards, towards his chest. When the children had prepared a syringe of salty water I squirted it into Blue’s mouth, quickly followed by two more syringefuls of warm salty water. Blue began to gag and his eyes rolled around. I kept up the massage, going as deep into his underside as I dared to go, lifting him off the ground with each push. More salty water, more massage, on and on. It seemed to be a long time before he bore his own weight on his legs and retched violently. He threw up the remains of a large dark brown, leathery fungus which grows around the base of some trees. I am no expert, but we hunted all through the woods and chopped up the fungus, bagged it all and put it in the skip. We didn’t want any other dog making the same mistake.

After that, Blue was always waiting outside my caravan in the mornings. He followed me like a shadow unless he had more pressing business, like guarding the roadway against intruders or midnight poaching with his owner. All the dogs took their jobs very seriously and they acted fierce to strangers. However, every one of them was a much loved and obedient soppy lump in the right hands.

Just as the weather began to freeze a new family arrived at Fraggle Rock. They were known to Danny and the others from Whacker Quay. Sue was a well-known gypsy woman from Wales married to Giles a French, highly resourceful gypsy man. They had two big vans towing two big caravans loaded to the brim with kids and dogs. I think they had seven children at the time. They parked up very close to Danny’s bus and quickly took part in all the activities - meaning that my little school doubled pupils overnight! Sue used to ignite a brazier fire outside her caravan at dawn every morning to keep them all warm while she calmly fed and watered her brood. She was a spectacularly great and amazingly cheerful mother.

Giles took one look at the intense trees overhanging our few hundred yards of roadway and said they were blocking the light, which would make the lane colder and damper than it needed to be. The next day, he and his oldest sons had climbed the trees and were chain-sawing through the overhanging branches on both sides of the lane. That made a tremendous difference, the atmosphere improved with so much more light.

Being closest to the entrance, Giles decided we needed speed bumps to protect the dogs and kids from visitors who simply did not think. He created two speed bumps with a load of tarmac that he ‘acquired’. They were so big that after driving over the first, most people parked between them rather than risk losing their undercarriage traversing the second! Boy racers learn quickly!

Another change arrived with Sue and Giles. Every day Giles and his oldest sons would get up early and go to work. They would return just before dark, usually with a van load of food that they had collected from the skips at the back of supermarkets. This food was liberally distributed to everyone on site. It consisted of food that had just passed its sell-by date but was, generally, safe to eat.

I was cooking for myself and usually had plenty, so I rarely went to Giles’ van to collect a few bits. I was also very careful about what I ate because the poisoning I had suffered the previous year had made me sensitive to wheat products.

And thus it was that the whole of Fraggle Rock went down with severe gastro-enteritis, during a thick freezing snow storm and I was the only person still functioning without a sick bucket attached to either end!