A Birdy in the Bush.

[Birdy]

Hope this amuses some of you. As many of you may know, I am off to Africa in a couple of weeks, and writing about my travels, this is a little bit of an introduction.


I don’t know when it was that I decided I couldn’t live a regular life. My friends and parents would probably say that I never think before making a decision. I would disagree; I do think. I think, ‘I know this is a stupid idea, but will it give me a stupid story to tell afterwards?’

When I was 17, I was all set to go to university. I was ready to study English and Arabic at Durham, but I woke up one morning with a hangover and had mental diarrhoea. The epiphany sat in the corner of my room, looking at me with patronising eyes, and questioned me, ‘so, why you off to uni then? You think for a second you’ll actually make it through four years of little direction and lots of free time? You’ll be drunk and failing before you’ve even handed your first essay in.’ Then it sat on my shoulder while the world slowly sorted itself out around me, just gently tapping away at my resolve to meet expectations.

By midday, I was in the armed forces careers office, and by tea time, I had my place booked for selection ten days later. My mum cried. A month later, I found myself in basic training, two years later, I found myself in Iraq. My mum was brought to tears again; I’ve never been a great son.

The army, and Iraq in particular, were stupid things to do when there are so many other options available to a not completely retarded young man; but they ticked my second box – they gave me the stupid stories.

I am de-mobbed now, out of wearing combat pyjamas, and back to the real world. But once you’ve been in the army, or in a warzone, you never really leave. The body can come back, but some part of your mind will always be left there.

2.
‘Give me some direction here, I’m flying blind!’ The pilots’ voice was insistent, almost panicked over the intercom. It buzzed and hissed around my helmet like a bee in a bottle. I couldn’t give him any direction, I didn’t know what the direction was myself, and the only person who knew the direction was terrified into silence.

How did I find myself 200 foot up, strapped on to the side of a Lynx helicopter with some stringy Iraqi kid, struggling to understand his terrified breathy exclamations through a static addled intercom, over the pilot’s jargon filled chatter and the constant thunder of the blades; trying to hold a classified map in one hand, my rifle in the other, aiming a torch at the map with my mouth, desperately willing myself not to fall out of the jinking machine? I would probably agree with my parents; I do make stupid decisions. The shy and physically awkward boy who picked up his A-level results on a sunny day five years ago never imagined that this future laid waiting in the short summer shadows to mug him. The August breezes never told that boy, as he sat with his friends in the local park, toasting their successes with warm lager and cheap dope, that five years would roll around in five minutes and see him hanging out of a gravity mocking machine over some Middle Eastern Dustbowl. How do you go from smoking weed and feeling stupidly smug about exam results, straight into manoeuvring yourself into the door of a war going helicopter, dangling your legs on the skids like an extra from Black Hawk Down?

That was then. This is now. All I have now is stories to tell. Apocalypse Then has dribbled into Lethargy Now. I am a civilian. No more pretending to be a soldier, no more chatting crazy fish languages, no more tanks and helicopters. No more combat trousers and rifles. Back to leathers, back to fast bikes and slow days. Back to boozy afternoons telling war stories to strangers in bars who couldn’t understand even if they wanted to. I am the old man in the back of the bar. At 22 years old. Back from sandy countries where people don’t much care for my presence, back into grey and pleasant lands where people don’t much care for my existence.

England. I was born here. She gave me her ways to roam and blessed me with those suns of home. But I can’t love her. It is no longer home. I’ve been too far and for too long. Nostalgia is the closest thing I can get to love; a pallid and oft mistaken substitute. It is cosy, but it is a 3 bar electric heater next to an angry crackling log fire.

Coming back from a country where a riot is a screaming rubber bullet bouncing stone throwing affirmation of anger to one where it is a bunch of spoilt kids having over indulgent house parties is euthanasia for the soul. Coming back to a country where the only crunches are credit or masturbatory self improvement rather than seismic. A country where passions are fashions and love means a mortgage and a lifetime of hire purchase agreements. This isn’t life; it is a wafer thin diversion. Coming from day on day excitement back to this is hard. Deflated and silly, I feel like the man who thought he had pulled a stunner only to be handed the bill after the deed was done.

I made the mistake of returning to the house where I was born, harbouring fantasies of roping in some willing patsy to pretend to be my loving girlfriend to accompany me in looking around it. It’s not for sale. The owners have painted it a sick yellow and turned the green garden into a gravel drive. The storybook apple tree has morphed into a waterless stone fountain, no longer bearing hard little bitter fruits tasting of summer holidays. A curious bug eyes child stares at me from my old bedroom window; it is like looking back into myself. Somehow the kid staring out of a draughty single glazed window became the adult sat smoking soggy cigarettes on his bike, looking up at the window and wishing he was back watching Live and Kicking and eating buttery toast in the house that he couldn’t imagine ever not being his home. The curtain drooped and he was gone, and I was still here. An old man walking a dog shuffled past. The dog was pleased to see me, bouncing on his lead and laughing with happy dog eyes. The old man only looked at the floor when I gave him a ‘morning.’ Maybe it’s me. Maybe it is the bike? Maybe it is the fact I haven’t shaved for a week and I’m wearing a battered combat jacket and boots, a look somewhere in between Travis Bickle and the man who sleeps below the underpass? ‘You lookin at giving me some spare change punk? ’

I know the answer to my inertia. I have to get away. I’m off. No longer a semi willing servant of her majesty, I’m getting out of here. I don’t know exactly where I am going, it is enough to know that I am going. An old before his time giffer patronisingly told me ‘yeah, when I finished uni, I went travelling. You need that time to find yourself.’ Balls, I know exactly where I am. I just don’t like it very much. I’ve always known where I am, I was there. I don’t need to find myself. I need to lose myself.

The plan is loose. But it has bones. Start in Africa, and then go somewhere. Why Africa? Why not? It’s cheap to get there, and I heard Africa is a pretty big place. It may not be the blank space on the literal map that it once was, but to me it is still the blank space. I know nothing of it. It is the biggest adventure left in a world scribbled with asphalt and mapped with GPS. Conrad’s dark heart waits for me, with tinpot dictators and kids with AKs wearing Man United shirts in disunited nowheres. From Africa, hop onto a boat to America, sounds easy when you say it quickly. In my head I’m practically on the road already. It’s tapping at my door with dusty knuckles, whispering through my letterbox, slinging daydreams like bottles slid along cowboy bars, telling me of forgotten towns in nowhere zip codes, populated with simpering Daisy Dukes, manhole hissing urban backstreets with yellow taxis and black kids. Just another flat out burn through Baker and Barstow and Berdoo, and then onto Hollywood freeway and into frantic oblivion. I can hear Bukowski’s typewriter tapping and see Burroughs flowing past on his strands of rancid jissom. Invites wait, to college parties with girls gone wild and American Pies, to have Sex in the City and dine on Gatsby’s lawn. Everything I know about America is from books and songs, films and stories. All my life, watching America. I hear the streets are even paved with gold. After America, who knows? Just keep going, just keep on wandering until the money or the enthusiasm dries up.

Any good cowboy needs a steed, and every Maverick needs his Goose.
Goose comes in the form of my best friend all the way back to school days. Tom. He has the same hankering to get away from the Island, and the sense and maturity to stop me being a knobhead all of the time. He also happens to be an engineer and a mechanical genius. If he can’t fix it, it is probably beyond help. Without his company I would be walking within 10 miles of leaving home, and propping up some needy bar by 12 miles. He also happens to be an ace photographer. I need him. He needs me less; not much call for Arabic speaking ex soldiers outside of a warzone. He still can’t be Maverick though.

As for the steed; since I was 17, I have been riding sports bikes, chasing rev limiters and three figures as if an R1 borne reaper was up my tailpipe. But there is a time for going fast, and time to slow down. A sports bike makes sense in England, for getting somewhere; not going somewhere. You can ride around the world in 19 days, but how much can you see in 19 days? We’re in no hurry. Flicks through HorizonsUnlimited, the motorbike traveller’s bible, show dozens of bikes, all with their own fervent supporters. A fat fistful of salt is needed, trawling through posts from armchair travellers more familiar with spec sheets than foreign streets.

Fat shirehorse GS 1200s are popular, but too lardy and techy for this boy. Might give the impression of being professional or prepared; two accusations that have never been levelled at me. XT600s and DRZs have their supporters. I have had both bikes, and both were capable and utilitarian - and ultimately unlovable. If they were women, they would be called Jane, or Emma, live in semi detached suburbia and get told they ‘have lovely personalities.’ Small capacity trail bikes also have their fans, but I am not one, I don’t want to live with an excitable terrier for months on end. An ADD kid might be fun for a day, but ASBO tendencies are not long term love makers. One bike sticks out over all others.

The Cub. The chicken chaser. The C90. The pizza bike. Tom shares the same perversion. From an idea on one day, Ebay porn the next, straight into standing in day old dishwater coloured Bedford, so dreary and post past it modern it would give Lowry a stroke. In between the locked up lock ups and weed tortured concrete, under a leaking sky the shade of an industrial accident, sat my new love. To anyone else she’s a dog, but to me she appeared a pearl red dressed fox. Only two previous lovers, one old guy, one gay guy. She needs me. Tyres kicked. Bars waggled. Pre purchase checks completed. A monkey changed hands, and this monkey jumped on the back of his cub.
Bedford to Lincoln, flat black slashes of arctic stalked motorway. Middle England; wet and tepid as yesterday’s cup of tea. Not the Cub’s territory. A testing first date. Motorways are less fun in the left hand lane. Being sucked and blown on your first time out with a new lady is normally ‘a good thing.’ Less fun when being sucked in and out of ‘Big Dave’s’ lorry slipstream, and blown into the verge by his wake. Throttle pinned, head down, 45 miles an hour, Cub screaming over the murmurings of my red wine hangover, I’m wetter than a gay fish and can’t see a bean through spray and visor mist.

Blue lights, flashing in mirrors that shake like a two day dry junkie. Shit. They can’t be pulling me for speeding surely. Jerkily clunk down all three gears into a layby, miss neutral and almost lose it, cop parks up behind. I can smell booze and fag breath in my Arai. Excuses already being pulled mentally. ‘Sorry Officer, I dropped a cigarette in my helmet and had to pour in 3 bottles of shiraz to put the fire out.’ Plod walks up to me as I take the inappropriate race repped hat off. What can he want? I am on a bike that is so friendly it has a heel down changer to avoid shoe scuffage. Does he not know that you meet the nicest people on a Honda? ‘Good afternoon,’ I simper like the useless whore I am. Just a nod back. ‘What happened to your ‘L’ plates?’ is his only answer. Sweet Mary mother of Allah, he thinks I am a scooter chav chancing it without plates. He’s so shocked when I show him a full license that he doesn’t even ask to see my insurance. Fortunate really.

First ride shaken down on the Cub. I’m in love. Tom has his ready too. He is equally smitten. For him it is his first; he has virgin love for it, like first fag or first shag, first love; his first ‘big’ bike after passing his test. We now have a pair of braying donkeys just waiting to judder whinnying out of the stalls. A few weeks of partying goodbye, a few weeks of (Tom) fixing up my bike and getting it worthy for attacking the world; then we are off. We can’t stop here; this is bat country. I finally know my direction.