So today was a glorious mid-spring day. The sun shone high, and emanated it’s warmth onto all around.
People smiled and waved a-plenty.
Lucy invited me to Shanklin for dinner, and we initially discussed drawing up a new sign for Shanklin but decided instead to just stick our thumbs out with trust in the universe. We agreed to take a lift to anywhere. But Lucy specifically wanted a lift to Ventnor.
I didn’t expect to beat the bus. The quickest we’ve had a lift together before has been in about 10 minutes, with our wait going over 20 minutes in one windy occasion. There were a lot of our colleagues at the bus stop today watching us, and I did hope for a little more luck.
And suddenly…….Lauren stopped!!
A lovely youth worker going off to Ventnor! What a lovely coincidence! Lucy and I then had to decide if we really wanted to go to Ventnor, which ended up as a no because we were both pretty knackered..
Lauren, Lucy and I
Lauren used to be an art teacher, and still now pursues this with a passion. She loves doing art and crafty things with the youth groups. And when she dropped us off she gave us her card, linking to her website http://www.studiowren.co.uk .
Lucy and Lauren know a lot of the same people, all good people working towards doing good things on the island/in the world.
Yaaaaay for hitchhiking bringing the world together!!!!!
It’s colder, damper, and windier today. It’s been pretty damp and windy all week, actually.
But I could tell Lucy was struggling a bit with our wait in the wind, though our spirits high, despite three buses passing us by..
Many waves, we called for favours, more waves, more waves!!
And plenty of smiles.
The atmosphere was great amongst drivers of today. Lots of funny hand signals, too. And we gave our biggest smiles imaginable.
We had the longest wait for a lift that I’ve ever had on the Isle of Wight. It might’ve even exceeded 20 minutes. But, as I explained to Lucy, it was all worth it really because it was time to be showing ourselves as hitchhiking, giving off that all-inclusive, community-building vibe (though I think Lucy just wanted to get in a nice warm car 😂).
Claire!! Our saviour of the hour!!! And what a lovely lady she is!!
Claire!!!!!!!
She picked us up in her little car, we talked a little about work and why we’re hitching. She told us how she ended up coming back to the island after being in Brighton for some years because she really missed the fields and open countryside. As soon as anything we were in Brading and time to part ways. Claire was going off to Shanklin, so offered Lucy a lift back to homelands, and I embraced the living evening winds.
I said to Lucy when we were hitching that I find it interesting, and important in a way, hitching after a big news event.
A fun one that immediately comes to mind is the East Anglia earthquake in spring 2008. I think I hitched a couple of days later to my dad’s house, a mere 50-mile journey, and talked in every ride about the earthquake. People got a lot of joy out of it.
I remember leaving Skanda Vale (the community I was living in in Wales all last year but visited plenty before) a few years ago after being there for a couple of weeks or so. I wasn’t hitching that time, but taking trains. I noticed that something pretty intense had unfolded in the news (I hadn’t heard any news the whole time I’d been away) because of the atmosphere on the trains and at the stations. Everything was completely on edge. A horrible death had happened in London, and all the media had of course described it in outrageously graphic detail.
My point for giving these examples is to illustrate how an incident that a collective civilisation either experiences themselves or is, in effect, forced to experience by the media has a transformative effect on the actions of the people, and the general vibe going around. So whilst the first example gave a very fun vibe, the second was very negative and wouldn’t have been nice to hitch during.
Today we heard over the radio about an incident that is immediately described as ‘suspected terrorist’. I felt it was my duty to stand there for a few minutes by the side of the road with a joyful smile (because the weather was gorgeous, and I’m generally very happy to be hitching after work!) and waiting till the kindness of someone driving by came about. And Lucy was game too, but we weren’t so concerned with beating the bus today.
Sun being brilliant
The vibe seemed quite clearly different. I counted one wave in about five minutes stood there, and few slight smiles. In my last experience, I would’ve received countless waves and smiles in that amount of time. People seemed like they were immersed in their own worlds.
The bus passed, I put my head in hands again, and a couple of minutes passed still until……..
Charlie stopped!!
Charlie!!!!! 😇
Charlie works also at Neutrik. He’s a nice chap, he was my neighbour a while back when he first arrived and we got on well. He came to Neutrik because of wanting to get out of bar-work after most his working life having been in pubs.
We talked a fair bit about work and quickly arrived in Brading, and he said he’d happily take Lucy back to Shanklin. I gave a card, selfy’d, and bid adieu till the morning.
And I came out to an awesome sunshine lowering over the Brading houses (pic above).
And I write this on a bus going to Ventnor for a badminton club, full of little kids talking excitedly about anything and everything, totally in the essential needs of being here right now 🙃
My Hitch Home 