A beautiful afternoon has come!! After much cloudy greyness since I woke for work this morning, the sun tore through the clouds to shine it’s magnificence down on all of us.
So, this made people I guess quite happy. But this was 4pm traffic. It’s not my usual crowd at all (I’d had an acupuncture appointment today after my Friday lunchtime finish). Plenty of families. I’m not sure I got one wave today – but instead had loads of different kinds of funny signals. I didn’t understand what any of them meant.
There’s a range of different signals you’d experience in Britain when hitchhiking (the signals change from country to country). Often people will give the flat back of the have pointing either left or right – meaning they’re turning off sometime and the lift wouldn’t be so useful (theoretically – but in my experience, especially if I’m stuck in a very bad spot, any lift can be a good lift).
Another good one is when people put both arms up, like saying they either can’t do anything or they don’t know what to do. But this can often be confusing – it can sometimes mean that they don’t feel confident to stop in that spot, and so it can make the hitchhiker feel a little self-conscious about if the hitch spot is good/safe enough to stop in.
People sometimes make an action regarding a roundabout. I don’t know if this means they’re turning round, or they’re finishing at the next roundabout, or going a different direction then.
But today, the signs I got were completely different. I had numerous people seemingly sign out complicated directions that they were going in that clearly wouldn’t be right for me. I don’t normally get people so enthusiastically giving obscure signs, so it was very unusual getting a few people doing the same today.
Anyway, happy to smile and continue onwards, I saw a live-in camper, a big one, and had a feeling he’d stop. He had a big smile on his face when he pulled up. But his van is left-hand drive, so it was quite complicated getting in (and it’s really quite big…!).
Great guy though, nice to talk to. He’s a carpenter, working on a really nice house in Ryde at the moment. His van is his work van now – he and his family rent a house in Ventnor at the moment. They were away in France for a year recently, pays Basque, but work was quite dry and a new baby was coming, so time to return to the Isle….
Joby and I posed a photo in front of the van, and he said he hopes we meet again. I hope so too.
I walked off, and bumped into Tracey (my colleague I race home against every day, who gets the bus and I almost always win) and her little very excited and adorable dog Ella. We talked just a couple of minutes, and wished each other the best of weekends. Apparently the weather’s going to be nice for us.
🎶🎶 Hitchhiking can bring the world together 🎶🎶
My Hitch Home 