Providence

Having failed to hitch for over two hours outside Thorne, I was picked up by a thin, balding man in an HGV. Wiping the rain from my brow, I entered the cab without caring where he was headed which was, as it happened, his depot just off the M18 outside Sheffield. He had to drop me, though, at the junction so as not to ‘get done’ for having unauthorised passengers. Then I noticed he was wearing a black pleated miniskirt, his legs like woolly breadsticks exposed as though trousers were for fools. The clouds had broken and I was gladly purblind in the sunset.

            In twilight, he pulled into a gravel driveway, explaining that this was as far as he could take me and wishing me all the best. My thanks were as swift as my exit. He remained there a minute, perhaps changing into something less weird.

After circumambulating the busy junction for my bearings, I wrestled with my rucksack to find my A-Z. Too far from Leeds where I have friends, too unfamiliar with Rotherham, I decided to hitch into Sheffield where I might catch a train to Stockport.

            A futile endeavour.

            In darkness I tramped four miles along the A630. My sore eyelids blinked at the tower of a Morrisons looming over distant trees like a mirage. That big green ‘M’ was a beacon.

I washed my face in the gents, bought fags and apples, mumbled something of desperate gratitude to an insouciant cashier, and sat outside alternately smoking and eating for an hour.