Look who it is! (16 page)

Well, that fateful time of the day approached. Night fell, and I knew what that meant – I had to sleep with Jim. How do these prostitutes do it? It terrified me having to sleep with Jim,
and I knew him – it wasn’t even ‘sleeping’ sleeping, you know. We pulled into this lay-by, and I started unpacking my sleeping bag. I went to use the toilets, brushed my teeth, and started thinking that this so wasn’t worth a hundred quid. Jim undressed and swallowed a tablet – I prayed it wasn’t Viagra – and said, ‘Night night.’

‘Night night, Jim,’ I replied.

I really don’t know who had the most sleep – I, who was uneasy sleeping in a trucker’s cabin with all these cars whizzing past, or Jim, sleeping next to an effeminate temp wearing a velvet eye-mask and Vics on his chest.

* * *

I didn’t get any more work being a driver’s mate. I don’t know whether that was Wicks’ doing or that there genuinely weren’t any more jobs. However, in my grey little temp world it was ‘busy, busy, busy’. In fact, a new temporary receptionist job at Horiba Instruments on Moulton Park Industrial Estate had come in, and Manpower thought I’d be perfect. Horiba Instruments dealt in Carbon Dioxide Emission Testing Machines, and scientists would ring the receptionist from all over the world asking for specific parts and advice. The receptionist would then redirect them to the appropriate engineer, so yes, as Manpower had said, I would be perfect for it.

I turned up at Kyoto Close – apparently Dr Horiba was so into his homeland, he named a cul-de-sac on a Northampton industrial estate after it. I wonder what Dr Horiba would have
thought, as his Rolls Royce pulled around the corner and he saw the burnt-out car in the forecourt and the gypsies’ horses neighing around the adjacent fields. I kept thinking ‘Kyoto must be a shit-hole.’

I turned up on the first day, and told the woman from Horiba that I was from Manpower. After looking me up and down and muttering something about ‘Trade Descriptions Act’, she showed me to my desk in the foyer. It was just me and a potted plant. My job would be to welcome people to Horiba Instruments, answer the phone and open the post. Of course, like the time a few years back when I’d been collecting glasses and working at the Singles Bar at Sywell Motel, Dad decided to start his crank phone calls. So for the first few weeks I had to endure phone calls from a ‘Japanese’ man with very poor English, usually with ridiculous names. That wasn’t really fair for me, because I was already struggling to operate the busy switchboard, plus there were genuine Japanese scientists ringing up with genuinely ridiculous names.

I remember one called Dr Fukishammy, a name that would have been perfect for Dad’s wind-up, but was, I’m afraid, a bona fide doctor on Horiba’s payroll. The job was pretty mundane, but the people were great, particularly Andrea, the managing director’s PA. She would pop all the purchase orders and invoices in the right in-boxes after I’d messed up again. To this day, I still do not know what a ‘purchase order’ is. Nevertheless, I continued to work there, answering the phone, filing, typing, but ultimately dreaming of Mexico, the newly decided first destination for our round-the-world trip.

It’s strange commenting on these tedious jobs from the comfort of where I am now. In hindsight, they seem quite funny in their own little mundane way – the gossip, the petty rules, the ridiculous office hierarchy. But I wouldn’t be doing myself justice if I didn’t mention how miserable and depressed I was at the time. To have one dead-end job is unlucky, but to have one dead-end job after another really starts to affect your self-esteem. You do feel that you’re just a statistic.

You would walk around town and bump into people who you went to school with, all suited and booted, going to jobs where they brokered deals, had power lunches and made decisions. The only decision I ever made was whether it was ‘family bereavement’ or ‘the shits’ when I decided to pull a sickie. You can see why these people find
X-Factor
or
Big
Brother
attractive, can’t you? There are so many grim jobs out there that any welcome respite from the drab existence of a nine-to-five factory job must be tempting, even if it means spending twelve weeks locked in a house with freaks. I’m not too proud to say that I would have gladly joined them – I had nothing to lose.

Socially, it wasn’t looking too good, either. My three years down in London had shaken off what remaining friends I had, so I had no one to go out with, Believe me, I wasn’t asking any of my colleagues if they wanted a swift half at the Rat and Parrot. Even my good old friend and drinking partner had gone. Poor old Carolyn had been struck down with MS, had virtually gone blind overnight and had relocated to Worthing to be near her family. That terrible disease had struck at one of the nicest and best friends I had ever had. It really shows, you
never know what’s in store, and it puts into perspective my witterings about a couple of crappy jobs.

Before she moved down south, Carolyn and I partied hard. Even though she was blind, it never stopped her giving it large. She would always get into the thick of it. Her not being able to see was never a hindrance; in fact, we used to be in such states, sometimes I think Carolyn saw more than I did. Whether it was on the dance-floor of a club or at an illegal rave in some dilapidated barn, we would enjoy ourselves. Admittedly, sometimes I lost her, but thankfully I always found her again – although once it was only because I’d found her white stick, brown and bent, wedged in the mud pointing towards the disabled toilets, where she was vomiting. It’s not the classiest thing you’ll read on these pages, but going out with Carolyn and me was never classy – fun, but never classy.

* * *

The magical day 7 June 1999, that day which I’d anticipated for what seemed an age, finally dawned. Not only was it Prince’s birthday, it was also the day Catherine and I were about to start our round-the-world trip. After two years of dreariness following university, my life was about to begin again. My life was about to have a good old shot of adventure. We looked the part, we’d both treated ourselves to brand new sandals, and with the money that the people of Horiba gave me in a whip-round I bought a brand spanking new rucksack.

Dad drove us down to Heathrow, and as we pulled up at Departures I was surprised to see my father crying. That, of
course, made me start crying, and then Catherine started, too. It was strange seeing him cry. I’d only ever seen him cry over
Noel
Edmond’s
Christmas Presents
on Christmas morning. Every year he would be genuinely amazed when the people’s families weren’t in Sydney, Australia, but actually backstage, ready to come through the doors and surprise the awaiting family in the studio. The family would cry, Noel would cry, Dad would cry.

But this time he was crying about me leaving for a year. I gave him a big hug and told him not to worry. I didn’t dare tell him how worried I was. I put on a brave face and didn’t let it show that I was about to embark on a journey into the wilderness, a journey that would take me across the hostile plains of the Chiapas, the forests of Malaysia and the deserts of Australia. Would my body be ready for this undertaking? Yes, it would, and without much bother, really.

It’s only when you get to these ‘exotic’ places that you realise that they’re on such well-trodden tourism routes, you feel a bit stupid for picking somewhere so utterly predictable. The travelling infrastructure is so well-oiled that sometimes you wish you could go a bit off the beaten track, and you end up tagging along with Quentin and Pippa, chartered accountants from Surrey trying to find themselves. Great! No, I’m afraid my fears of finding myself alone in a jungle trying to kill an orang-utan for food were well off the mark. These days you’re more likely to find the golden arches or a Tesco Metro squatting in the jungle than a tribe of indigenous cannibals. It’s a shame really, not because of commercialism – I just have a soft spot for cannibals.

Obviously, this awakening was awaiting me on the other side of the Atlantic, but I was green and excited/nervous. Anyway, whatever happened, I wasn’t clocking in at Horiba Instruments at 8.45 a.m. the next day, so who gives a shit?

The flight took eight hours and, like all my favourite plane journeys, it was uneventful. I didn’t really want to spend all year saving up for this round-the-world trip only to go into the side of a mountain. No, the journey was fine, albeit a little cramped. But it was the height of luxury compared to what we had in store.

According to our
Rough Guide
, our hotel was near to La Plaza de la Constitución in the middle of Mexico City. Plaza de la Constitución or El Zócalo is one of the largest squares in the world. It is used for concerts, artistic celebrations, civic duties or, as it was on 7 June 1999, a demonstration where all the poor of Mexico City descend on the Zócalo to complain to the government about their poverty-stricken lives. You will not believe what greeted our tired eyes as we came up the subway. The Zócalo had been transformed into a shanty town. I say ‘transformed’, but I don’t know what it looked like previously – although I never saw chickens, women screaming and gangs of Mexicans banging makeshift drums out of bins in any of the travel information.

The only tip we had been given was not to look like a tourist. So there we were, standing in what can only be described as a riot, with a rucksack on, reading a
Rough
Guide
and holding a camera. The only other thing that was pastier than our skin was the dead chicken that this 18-stone Mexican woman was waving around her head. It was pretty
scary, but eventually we found the road we needed for our hotel and made a quick exit.

We decided to leave Mexico City and head down south to Oaxaca. Some surfers had advised us to get out of Mexico City and make for the coast, so that’s what we did. Looking back, I regret not spending more time in that city, with its striking architecture and its ruins, but the night before had shaken us up. Besides, I had seen a corpse in a doorway that morning on the way out for a croissant, and that really made my mind up. We’d been there a day and the only Mexicans we’d seen were either rioting or dead. We made it to the bus station and began our six-hour bus journey to Oaxaca.

The first thing that hit us was the massive shanty town embedded in the side of this hilltop. As you saw the corrugated-iron roof and cramped conditions, it made you think that it was a bit like being on this bus, only on the hill they weren’t swerving in and out of Volkswagens and being driven by a man off his face on tequila. I don’t care what you say, the scenery between Mexico and Oaxaca is boring. Cactus after cactus after cactus whizzing past my window, and then a few hills for six hours. Things must have been bad because I started reminiscing about the M6, with its delightfully coloured orange bollards and charming eateries like Little Chef. As the television wasn’t working, the driver popped on the Vengaboys album, and that was that. ‘The Vengaboys are coming and everybody’s grooving …’ on a loop for six hours, and all there is to look at is fucking cacti. I left Northampton for this?

All our fears seeped away as we arrived at this beautiful Zócalo in Oaxaca, dominated by a magnificent cathedral that
itself was framed against the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains. On the top of these stood Monte Alban, these huge magnificent Zapotec ruins. The Zapotecs apparently never made as big an impact as their Inca cousins, so in fact they were a bit like a prehistoric Dannii Minogue, but don’t let that put you off. They are really impressive, these huge stones that some poor sod must have had to carry up the hillside from the valley down below thousands of years before. It is genuinely an eerie place, especially when you walk up the southern platform which was used for human sacrifice. As you stand there looking out across the valley, you wonder for how many people that would have been the last thing they ever saw. Brutal, yet beautiful. This was the Mexico I had waited for.

As we continued our journey through Mexico, we quickly found out that a six-hour bus journey was relatively swift. We were soon experiencing eighteen-hour journeys, weaving up and down mountains. Sometimes we were so high up, we were driving through clouds. In fact, we were getting quite used to the travelling. I don’t know whether we had resigned ourselves to it or the scenery had improved, but it seemed the deeper into Mexico we ventured, the more vibrant and lush our surroundings became. Women selling guava and mangoes, tiny churches teetering on the edge of a cliff, waterfalls, and not a cactus in sight.

Everything was going so well. We’d had a week of exploring. Yes, the travelling had been a drag, but we were getting the gist – there are mammoth bus journeys, but at the end you’re rewarded with a little gem of a town or city. However, I wasn’t counting on getting ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’. Now
when I mention ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’, I’m not talking about the video game for the Commodore 64, I’m talking about severe diarrhoea. ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ is a ‘humorous’ name. It’s especially hilarious when you’ve shat yourself on an Inca ruin. It’s a myth to do with the Aztec god cursing the invading Spanish, but it’s technically a bacterial infection you get from eating the food that’s been washed in their water. Obviously when I was sober, I was vigilant about not having salads or ice cubes. But after a couple of 60p bottles of Corona, you get the munchies in a Mexican village and reading the label isn’t that high on the list of priorities.

It wasn’t too long before, thankfully, we went to a beautiful island, Isla Mujeres, a few miles off the Yucatán Peninsula in the Caribbean Sea. Maybe I’m a philistine; you can see all the history and ruins you want, but until you’ve popped on your Speedos, swung in a hammock and sipped a daiquiri your holiday hasn’t really started. Oh, just me then. Seeing that blindingly white sand and that turquoise sea was such a blessed relief. The last fortnight had been enjoyable, but it hadn’t been easy. Now we were in paradise. Whether it was my body slipping into holiday mode or the skip full of Imodium I’d been taking, my bowels had quietened down substantially.

We carried on our journey down the coast staying at more and more cabanas, beginning our metamorphosis into proper tourists. Our skins turning a lovely golden brown, sarongs replacing our shorts and our insides toughened up so much we were eating the local food off the stalls in the street. There was even no more screaming if a lizard jumped out from behind a cactus, well, maybe just a little gasp.