Ceçi n’est pas

Ceçi n’est pas ….. by Chris Green

Tiffany and I arrive at Kemble station, in the Gloucestershire countryside. We have taken the Great Western train down from London and are planning to explore the Cotswolds. We are keen walkers and have heard there are some fantastic walks in the area. We are booked to stay in Cirencester, a small market town on the southern fringes of the Cotswolds, a few miles from Kemble station. We have left the car at home to get into the slower pace of rural life.

We climb into the back of the station taxi to take us to a family-run hotel in the town. Our driver, Uzoma, introduces himself. He is dressed in African tribal clothing, a swathe of bright red material wrapped around like a skirt and an abundance of multi-beaded necklaces, bracelets and earrings. His skin is back as night. Tiffany and I expected a less flamboyant driver here in the provinces, but perhaps everywhere now has become more cosmopolitan.

Leopards are to the best of our knowledge not common in Gloucestershire, so it is a surprise when Uzoma points one out. The leopard is busy finishing off its lunch, a small pig perhaps. Uzoma says something, but his delivery of English is difficult to understand. Is he trying to tell us something about the leopard, or something else? In the back of the car, I nod. For all I know, I am agreeing for us to be taken into the Heart of Darkness.

It is a fine day, and Tiffany and I settle back to enjoy the Cotswold scenery. This is what we have come for. Shepherd’s Bush might sound as if it’s in the country, but believe me, it isn’t. It’s the hub of West London, buzzing with activity, twenty-four-seven. Nothing rural about it. You never hear farming conversations as you go about your day and you never see tractors. You expect to see tractors here in the country, but the one we glimpse through the undergrowth is painted sky blue with fluffy white cumulus clouds over it. Tiffany says it reminds her of a painting she has seen.

‘I can’t remember the artist’s name,’ she says, ‘but he did a series of strange pictures of apples and bowler hats. Oooh! What’s his name?’

‘I know who you mean. It’ll come to me,’ I say, trying to get to grips with the idea of surrealist farming in rural Gloucestershire.

We turn onto a dirt track leading us into a thickly forested area. Surely there must be a more direct route to Cirencester. It didn’t look far on the map. After a mile or two taken at a slow pace to avoid the potholes, tree roots and fallen branches, Uzoma pulls up in a clearing. He utters a few words, ‘boom bah bah boom,’ the gist of which we take to be that he will be back shortly. He isn’t When he has not returned after half an hour, we have ruled out all reasonable explanations. After a lengthy discussion – we can’t stay here – why don’t we just drive off – we can’t do that -he may have fallen – he might be dead – one of us should stay – you go, I’ll stay – no, what if you get lost, I’ll go, you stay – why don’t we both go, we set off together to look for him. When we return without Uzoma to where we think we are parked, there is no sign of the cab.

Neither of our phones has a signal. We are up the creek without a paddle. Whether a map or a compass would be helpful is hard to say, but we don’t have either. We follow the track came in on, only to find that it leads into thicker jungle, until it disappears. Tiffany and I argue a little about our relative orienteering skills. I suggest hers are poor; she maintains mine are non-existent. After a few more pots at each other about sense of direction and spatial awareness, we agree bickering will get us nowhere. We take stock of our surroundings. The guidebooks did not prepare us for the exotic backdrop. Monkeys swing from the trees, parrots call to each other, and the air is thick with insects. The temperature has risen by several degrees and the humidity is stifling. Had we suspected the Cotswolds were so tropical, we may not have come.

It is late afternoon, but night descends quickly here. We have seen no one. This is getting scary. Apart from being lost in an inhospitable, alien environment, with the possibility of a visit from the leopard, or a poisonous snake, we have absolutely none of life’s comforts. No food. No water. We do not even have a lighter to start a fire with.

‘Ray Mears would be to get a fire going,’ Tiffany remarks pointedly.

Ray Mears would probably have understood Uzoma’s English or have been able to converse with him in his tribal tongue. Ray Mears certainly wouldn’t have got lost. Mostly, though, Ray Mears is not here. We are. We have the clothes we stand up in, t-shirts and jeans, nothing to wrap around us as a makeshift blanket.

After some late night debate about whose fault it really is that we are in this predicament (Shaun and Dawn, our next-door neighbours for recommending the Cotswolds, Darren and Karen, from our Ceroc Dance class for saying how stimulating it was to travel by train) we huddle together, exhausted, on a mossy log, and try to sleep. The Cotswold jungle, however, does not sleep. The rustling of nocturnal wildlife and plants that go bump in the night keep us awake until near dawn. This allows us plenty of time to listen to the jungle hubbub and imagine a number of grisly fates. Being swallowed whole by a twenty-foot anaconda, being covered head to toe by tiny spiders.

We are woken shortly after dawn by falling fruit, which is welcome, as we haven’t eaten since our meagre sandwiches on the train the previous day. The fruit is large and red and orange and looks like a variety of mango. I peel one and bite into it. It is ripe and sweet. We tuck in greedily.

The canopy appears to have re-invented itself since the previous evening. We are still surrounded by rampant vegetation. But it is denser, or less dense. It is greener, or less green. The elements that made up the landscape seem oddly mismatched, its shapes and images cast few shadows, giving a stage-like effect.

‘It reminds me of a Henri Rousseau painting,’ Tiffany says.

‘It reminds me of a Francis Ford Coppola film,’ I say. ‘Do you want to guess which one?’

We decide to let the sun be our compass and head south-east, or is it south-west? By and by, we arrive at a lane. Thinking a car will soon be along, and we will be rescued, we sit and wait. No car comes. Time appears to have ceased to exist. Was there a psychoactive ingredient in the fruit we ate, we wonder.

The sun is now overhead. Having been led to believe that all roads lead somewhere, we start walking. The jungle gives way to more sparse vegetation, but the clumps of trees and hedgerows prevent us from seeing very far ahead. The lane twists and turns. We curse Shane and Germaine, our teenage children, for suggesting we leave the car at home. There are no junctions, no water sources, not a single car, no phone signal, no hint of habitation, no animals grazing, in fact, no sign of life apart from small lizards basking in the sun by the side of the road and the occasional flock of geese flying high above us. Around mid-afternoon, a bright red object flickers in and out of our vision. As we approach, it becomes clear it is a red telephone kiosk. We hurry towards it and pull the door open. We are enveloped by a cloud of smoke. On the shelf by the side of the receiver is a small brown briar pipe, a wedge of tobacco smouldering in its bowl. A rogue thought struggles to surface, but buries itself before it materialises. I pick up the headset. There is no dialling tone.

We go through our customary decision-making process about whether to stay put or move on. By the time we arrive at one, it seems too late to go after the mystery pipe smoker, so we wait. The scrubland became bushier or less bushy, but no one turns up at the phone box for the rest of the day. We spend an uncomfortable night in the undergrowth. I dream someone has taken the road away and I have to cross a bridge with a cauldron of wriggling snakes beneath me. Tiffany dreams she turns on the shower and was showered with ants.

We have never actually seen an Airstream Trailer before. From a distance, it looks an alien spacecraft. It is an imposing sight, its polished aluminium glistening in the sunlight. We approach it cautiously. No one is about, but we are becoming used to being the only visible people on the planet. The door to the Airstream is open. We step inside, taking in its aluminium interior walls, its cosy little bed settee and kitchenette. Most of all, though, the two roast beef dinners with a platter of hot vegetables laid out on a small aluminium table catch our eye. If someone is thinking of coming back to eat them, then bad luck. We devour the meal with some gusto. And the bottle of Californian Cabernet Sauvignon goes down a treat. The Cotswolds surely is a queer world.

There are photos of a couple, perhaps in their late forties, around the place. The state flag in the background suggests they are from Texas and it seems they are called Hank W. and Honey Pie. Dressed in a variety checked shirts, bolo ties, cowboy boots, Stetson hats, buckled belts, and cowgirl skirts, they are pictured variously at a line dance, at a rodeo, at a hoedown, at a barbecue, and at Gracelands. We make ourselves comfortable, dipping into nachos, pretzels and other goodies from the cupboard, before dropping off to sleep around early evening.

Hank W. and Honey Pie do not return. We wake with the dawn and look out of the window of the trailer – on to open prairie. We venture outside. Our vista is a wide plain of rolling grassland. There are no trees to be seen in any direction. All we can see is a large sculpture of a penguin and a trombone, and a fifteen-foot frosted glass onion. We are no longer amazed by unusual sights in the Cotswolds, it is clear we were dealing with a strange people.

How far away do you think the horizon is? Tiffany asks, putting faith in my spatial awareness again.

‘Twenty miles, as near as dammit.’ I say. It is a figure off the top of my head.

‘We can’t walk twenty miles across prairie,’ she says.

‘My thoughts exactly. Let’s wait to be rescued.’

Hank W. and Honey Pie certainly keep the trailer well stocked. We have enough tinned food for weeks and there must be a year’s supply of nachos and pretzels. And a very nice-looking cake.

We begin to view the Airstream as home. We become accustomed to looking out across the empty prairie. A new sculpture appears of an eyeball, a spiral staircase and a rubber glove. In the evening, holographic Beatles play Helter Skelter backwards on a blue and white chessboard stage while hooded plasticine ayatollahs set fire to faceless conquistadores nailed to Ikea crosses. What, we wonder might have been in the cake? But through it all, the prairie itself remains relatively constant. It seems grassier or less grassy, greener or less green, the grass taller or less tall. The horizon, twenty miles away, continues to look a long way off. The sky provides us with greater variety. Sometimes it has a blood-red hue and other times there are vivid rainbows, even when it isn’t raining. One day it is dark all day, not just grey, but end of the world dark. The next day, or is it the same day (time here seems arbitrary) there is no sky, just a void where the sky once was.

It is desert outside. I wake Tiffany to tell her about the sandy incursion. We have been sleeping most of the afternoon, after a large lunch of tinned paella and nachos, and a glass or two from Hank W. and Honey Pie’s ‘cellar.’ Together we look out the trailer window. The silhouette of a camel caravan against the horizon as the sun is going down is a breathtaking sight. Unfortunately, this is not what we see. No camels. No sun. What we see instead is a developing sandstorm. Until you’ve had the experience of being inside a tin can that is being pounded relentlessly by trillions and trillions of tiny fragments of the earth’s crust, you cannot imagine how loud this can be. The Airstream rocks backwards and forwards. Several times, we think it is going to be blown over. It has become dark. We are terrified. Cans empty out of cupboards and the furniture slides up and down the trailer. The storm lasts for hours, by which time we are nervous wrecks.

After a lingering look outside to take in the perfect patterns of the spectacular sand dunes that have formed, under the light of a full moon, we go back inside and start to clear up. We gather up cans of linguini in white sauce, chicken vindaloo, wiener schnitzel, borscht, okra, veal fricassee, chilli con carne, along with packs of pretzels, Pringles, assorted crisps, nachos and a lobster radio.

Lobster radio is not a dish. This is a battery radio shaped like a lobster. Tiffany takes it to be homage to Dali’s lobster telephone. I try to tune in the radio but the battery is low and we can only pick up Radio Gloucestershire. There is a local news bulletin on. We listen to items about a fire at a superstore in Cheltenham and a little about the alarming rise in binge drinking in Stow on the Wold, before an item much closer to home.

‘The search is still on for the couple, Vincent and Tiffany Rose, missing in the Cotswolds since Monday last week. They were last seen at Kemble railway station………..’

The battery dies at this point

Next morning we look across the moor. Yes, the moor. A little hilly at first glance, but there seems to be a clear path through the bracken and heather, so having packed a few provisions in a bag to keep us going, we take it.

It is a bewildering landscape. Soft watches hang from winter trees. A double bass stands upright amongst the heather, and a large bunch of ceramic bananas points to a large limbless stone torso. A London cab painted in sky patterns was suspended in midair. Overseeing the landscape was a giant statue of a fish.

‘Bonjour.’

Walking briskly towards us is a figure in a black suit and a bowler hat eating a large green apple. Tiffany recognises him from a painting.

‘Je m’apelle Renee,’ he opens, kissing us both in turn on each cheek.

Have we inadvertently crossed the channel?

‘J’ai plaisir……’

Renee grasps that we do not understand French. He continues in English.

‘I’m very ‘appy to tell you that you ‘ave passed the audition to take part in ‘Surreality TV.’ If you would just like to waltz up here to the walrus, I’ll introduce you to the other contestants.’

‘We did not ask to be on this – what did you call it – Sur’ Surreality TV,’ I stammer. ‘Why? I mean how?’

‘You remember Errol and Cheryl who you met at the Cocteau Twins reunion concert last year?’ Renee beams as the cameramen dressed as penguins move in closer. ‘Well, they dropped us a line at Surreality TV.’

‘I remember the painter’s name now,’ says Tiffany. ‘It was Magritte.’

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