Aaron Connor (21 page)

The wind whipped through our
clothes and chilled us to the bone. We didn’t care. We were free.
We were free to do what we wanted. What we wanted to do was try to
change the country’s view on people like us, one small step at a
time.

By this point we’d already gone
up and down the country trying to do some good, but we weren’t
finished yet. There were still some more surprises in store.
Nothing on this trip went according to plan, but it usually turned
out for the better. Even though we were heading for London,
England’s great capital, I accidentally took a wrong turn and ended
up somewhere unexpected.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

What should have been a half an
hour journey, took over two hours. Both I and Lizzie were
completely baffled by this. Neither of us knew that we’d gone the
wrong way. I drove on and on through the night, determined that I
was going in the right direction. I wasn’t though. I was pretty
off. What I didn’t know was that I had in fact gone all the way
around London, through Buckinghamshire and had ended up in
Gloucestershire. I know, I was a right pleb.

When we should have been in the
heart of the nation’s capital, we found ourselves driving through
the countryside. We past farms, tractors, fields, sheep, cows and
soon we came to a quaint little farmer’s village. The place was
made up of thatched fairy tale cottages. We drove past a few
traditional pubs, little corner shops and alongside a wide river.
We also drove through a village square where, according to a sign,
the farmer’s market is held on a Monday.

We pulled up into a Bed and
Breakfast to rest for the night. The place was in a little farmer’s
village, which was hidden within the countryside. If we hadn’t
followed the signs for the Bed and Breakfast, I doubt that we would
have even found the village. It was nice. It was just a small,
quaint and peaceful little village. It was the perfect place to
chill out after our intense visit to Scotland, just somewhere nice
and quiet.

The Bed and Breakfast itself
was an old house that had been converted. Inside was like being
inside someone’s front room. The “foyer” was nothing more then a
small corridor with a staircase leading up to the various rooms.
Sitting on a chair by the front door, was an old fella wearing a
tweed waistcoat. He was asleep with his arms crossed and was
snoring away. According to his name badge, his name was: Sir
Phillip Taylor. He had a huge, bushy moustache and on his waistcoat
were various military medals.

I and Lizzie just stood in the
corridor, unsure whether or not to wake him up. We were very tired
after two hours of travelling, fed up that we couldn’t find London
and wanted some rest. This old bloke was doing some resting of his
own, and it would have just been plain rude to wake him up. Lizzie
spotted a brass bell on a small table against the wall. She walked
up to the bell and hit the little button on top of it, making it
give out a loud and high pitched ring.

This certainly woke up Phillip,
as he launched from his seat and stood to attention giving us a
salute. His sudden movement made the both of us jump with surprise.
He faced the both of us, saluted us again and brought his arm
straight to his side.

“
Good Evening”
he said, he spoke in a loud voice and had a posh accent, “Welcome
to Victory House. My name is Sir Phillip Taylor, but you may call
me Sir Phillip. I’m assuming that you require a room?”

“
Yes” I
replied, “We’re a couple, so a single will do fine”

“
Jolly good!”
he said, “Wonderful stuff, wonderful stuff. Would you like some
breakfast in the morning?”

“
Yes we would”
answered Lizzie, “By the way, do you know where we could get some
petrol, our Moped’s nearly empty”

“
Well, ah . .
.” he began as he gave the question thought, his thick grey
eyebrows sunk into a frown, “ah yes! There’s a small petrol station
just on the edge of town. I don’t imagine they’ll be open now, so I
suggest that you go in the morning. Is that all you require, young
sir and young madam?”

“
Yes” I
answered, “That’ll be quality!”

“
Yes!” he
said, as he went to his table to pick up the checking in book,
“Quality it shall be! I promise you that your stay at Victory House
will indeed be, as you say, quality. Right, just sign your names
here . . . “

He held out a large leather
bound book to us and gave us a pen to use. It was a simple lined
paper book, on which Sir Phillip drew a basic table for checking
people in. It had a place for the name and time you checked in, and
a place for the time you checked out. Lizzie and me, in turn, wrote
our names in the right place and copied the time from a clock that
was hung on the wall behind Sir Philip.

“
Jolly good”
said the old man, “Spiffing, righto let me show you to your room.
Do you have any luggage?”

“
No” Lizzie
replied, “We’ve only got the clothes we’re wearing”

“
Ah yes” said
Sir Philip, “simplistic. I like it. Only the essentials, what? That
will be £20 then, £10 per night for the room and £5 each for the
breakfast. Don’t pay me now though, you can do so whenever you
decide to leave. Are you ready?”

“
Yes” we
replied in unison,

“
Very good!”
said the old man, “Then follow me, this way”

Sir Phillip was doing a little
march in front of us and began to ascend the stairs.

“
And a hup,
two, three, four” said the old man, matching in time to his
counting, “hup, two, three, four and a hup, two, three,
four!”

Me and Lizzie, for a laugh,
imitated the old man and marched up the stairs like we were in the
army. When we arrived on the first landing, the old man did the
march on tip toes and talked quieter.

“
Hup two,
three, four” he whispered, “and a hup two, three, four. Here we
are!”

We finally arrived at the door.
Silently Sir Philip handed us the keys. Lizzie put the key in the
hole turned it and quietly opened the door. We both turned to Sir
Philip and nodded to him with a smile. This was as a way of saying
“thanks”, while at the same time not waking up any of the other
residents. The wonderfully exocentric old man returned the smile
and gave us another one of his salutes.

“
Carry on!” he
whispered.

The old man scurried away on
tip toes. Even on tip toes he was still doing a sort of crouched
march. Both of us kept on watching the funny old man until he
disappeared down the stairs. As me and Lizzie stood there in the
corridor, I had already decided that Sir Philip Taylor was an
appsolute legend.

To me, Sir Philip Taylor was a
perfect example of the Britain that once was, the Britain of
optimism. The Britain of getting through moments of great darkness
with a smile, a salute and a good old sing song. The spirit of
Britain has gone in recent years, we now moan about daft things and
choke ourselves on anti-depressives. Sir Philip was part of a
generation that went through a horrific war, and yet came out the
other end stronger then before. Now that, I think, is a role model
to look up to. Everyone in this cynical world of ours should take a
page out of Sir Phillip’s book. We need to bring that spirit
back.

Lizzie and me went into the
room and found it to be nice. It looked like a bedroom of someone’s
house, as I guess that’s what it used to be. The bed was large and
had a very old fashioned duvet cover on it with a floral pattern.
An old television was up on a shelf in the corner, the remote for
it was lying on the bed. Opposite the bed was an old fashioned
table with white paint, pink outlining and on the bottom of the
table legs were supports designed to look like a bird’s claws.

Lizzie sat down in front of the
table as there was a large mirror sitting on it, she grabbed a comb
that was lying on the table and sorted out her messy hair. That’s
the only thing about riding bikes with a helmet; it gives you bad
helmet hair when you take it off. If you don’t what helmet hair
means, it basically is when your hair sort of moulds into the shape
of the helmet you’ve been wearing. It can really make you look like
a pleb.

I sat on the bed but didn’t
turn on the telly, as I didn’t want to wake everyone else up. I
just sat there and stared at the ceiling. I was reminded then of
how I used to do this in my bedroom back home. I completely forgot
that I used to enjoying doing this. Staring up at that ceiling I
could finally concentrate and get my mind in the right place. A lot
had been happening in those last few days. Now it was the time to
let it all sink in, a time of recollection, a time for me to fully
understand what me and Lizzie had done so far on this road
trip.

When I really thought about it,
I realised that we’d both done a lot in the last few days. We’ve
already been to Scotland and back, helped out a rock band, helped
some young actors escape from a violent mob, helped a young man
find love and helped a silly old man learn his lesson. I lay there
feeling quite proud of all we had accomplished, but knew that there
was always going to be room for more.

We were in the countryside, so
I was thinking of the possible people who might like our help. A
farmer might want some extra hands on his farm, I thought, maybe we
could assist the village in their annual harvest, who knows?

As I pondered this, Lizzie came
and sat next to me. She lay down beside me, shuffled up to me,
wrapped her arms around me and gave me a kiss. I returned the kiss
and held her hand. She rested her head on my shoulder and breathed
slowly.

Once again, even though I
really wanted to, this was not the place for our first time. The
room the nice, the atmosphere was nice, everyone else was asleep,
the countryside outside the window was nice and everything was
nice. The only thing that was lingering on my mind, was the
possibility of Sir Philip walking in. The last thing I wanted
during sex is him barging in and shouting: “Do it for England!
Tally-ho! Show her what for! Ha-ha!”.

No, a bit of a turn off, don’t
you think. It wasn’t the right time yet. I had no idea what the
right time might be. Besides, I wasn’t in any hurry to have sex. I
loved Lizzie. Anything we do together gave me pleasure beyond
belief. In a relationship, sex is just an extra pleasure, whereas
the love itself is the main pleasure. It’s such a shame that boys
and girls my age are so pressured into having sex. Sex and sleeping
isn’t really that important when you’re a teenager, yes I feels
good, but what do you get out of it other then a higher chance of
getting Herpes?

Maybe this is just me. I know
that everyone has their philosophies and theories about sex.
Personally I only think that sex can be as beautiful as it should
be, when it’s performed with someone you truly love. Your love for
that person fuels the pleasure and makes it an unforgettable
moment, other then doing some nasty hooker that you’d rather forget
about.

That night was like all of the
others nights as we just snuggled, kissed and fell asleep in each
other’s arms. No sex, just love. At the time, I have to admit, I
was pretty happy with that. Being with Lizzie was enough. To hold
her in my arms, to feel her body against mine and smell her perfume
was enough for me. I didn’t need any extra thrills. I loved her. I
can’t really say it enough, I fucking love that girl! Sorry for the
dodgy language, I just needed a stronger word to add to my
case.

We slept peacefully that night,
with no idea where we were. We did not expect what was to happen
the following morning. If we had known where we were, I think that
we would have been too excited to sleep. We slept silently in that
lovely, soft and spongy bed, without knowing that we were about to
take part in one of the most famous annual events in Britain. If
only we’d known.

Then again, the surprise that
came the following was fantastic. The sun was shining thoroughly
through the thin curtains. The birds were singing and the fresh
country air filled the room from the open window. We were just
lying in the bed and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere, when Sir
Philip burst into the room.

His face was rosy and bright
with excitement.

“
Come on you
two! The cheese race is going to start soon!!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

If you are reading this book
from outside of the United Kingdom, and you have no idea what The
Cheese Race is, then allow me to explain.

The tradition involves many
people, usually in silly costumes, chasing a wheel of cheese down a
steep hill. We do it every year and it is always a big event. The
event always takes place on Cooper Hill, which is an extremely
steep hill. There’s always those people who go too fast and end up
doing a flip, trip and roll. To be honest the only reason that
people go to the cheese event, is too see how many injures there
are. Before coming to Gloucester to see the event for myself, I saw
it first on YouTube. Blimey, they can have some pretty nasty
accidents going down that hill. Nonetheless, the both of us were
excited to see the famous race.

The two of us got changed as
quickly as we could. In the corridor we could see loads of people
coming out of their rooms, most of them in humours costumes. I saw
some men dressed as old women, a women dressed as a fireman,
several men dressed as Lepricons and one man who was dressed as
Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. When me
and Lizzie finally came out, we had several people comment on our
“excellent Chav costumes”

We went down the stairs where
Sir Philip stood holding the door wide open for everyone. Joining
the crowd of people who were on their way out, we noticed that the
funny old man was once again doing one of his salutes. Soon we were
outside in the Village Street, where crowd of people were all
dressed up and heading for Cooper’s Hill.