136. Hitching a lift
Carriageway stowaways.
Dear Reader,
In my life as a disorient almost every trip I make is a mystery tour. ‘Every time we go out it’s as if you’re doing the journey for the first time!’ is something Jim tells me often.
‘Great!’ I say. ‘It keeps things interesting!’
Well, travelling with uninvited companions can make things interesting, too.
Mice had got into the garage, and my parents’ supply of stored apples was suffering. Sticky and showing signs of nibbling, the fruit was being enjoyed by pests rather than people. Traps were set.
My brother and sister-in-law had been visiting, and had plugged their car charging lead into a socket in the garage, the up-and-over door having been left open a crack for the purpose. They sent this text on their way home:
I have never hitchhiked, and nor have I given any strangers a lift. For years now I haven’t even seen a hitchhiker – thumb held perpendicular to palm, other hand holding a piece of cardboard with a destination printed loud in Sharpie.
Like my brother and sister-in-law, though, we’ve had a hitchhiker of the unplanned kind.
On a trip to visit Jim’s grandfather in absolutely torrential rain late one winter’s afternoon we heard a loud BANG on the roof of our car. Assuming that we had simply thrown a small stone up onto it as we’d driven through a gravel-lined puddle we didn’t think much of it. The windscreen was fine – what did it matter?
We were relieved later that the rain had stopped, and although we were still being battered by a stiff wind, the drive home was rather more comfortable than our outbound journey.
‘What’s that?!’ Something revolting-looking had caught my eye at the very edge of the windscreen. ‘It’s disgusting, and it’s moving!’
Jim sensibly kept his eyes on the road while I kept him appraised of the situation with a typical Rebecca-style running commentary.
‘It’s a slug!’
When we stopped at a junction I took the opportunity for a closer look, peering out through the wet windscreen into the darkness beyond.
‘No, a snail!’
Reader, a snail is several steps up from a slUGH 🤢 slug on the attractiveness scale. Dressed in its spiral outfit, this mollusc benefits from better PR than its naked cousin, the latter to my mind having absolutely nothing to offer.
‘Pretty hardcore creature!’ said Jim. ‘How did it get there?’
When it had been parked outside our house the only parts of the car that had been in contact with anything else at all had been the tyres, and Reader, it’s a long journey for a tiny creature to get from wheel to windscreen, never mind a whole expedition into the next county powered by an internal combustion engine.
We tried to reverse-plot the snail’s journey from where it must have started. Out of our garden, across the driveway, onto the tyre, along the axle, then an insanely complicated and uncomfortable journey for a gastropod to explore parts of the chassis before coming back out onto the smooth, more slither-conducive bodywork of the car and then up to the windscreen.
‘But why would he want to leave the comfy soggy ground of home to travel at 40mph in the dark with us?’
‘He?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You called it “he”!’
‘Of course. And I’m calling him Denzil.’
(Reader: I know that snails are hermaphrodites, but please indulge my choice of reference gender for Denzil. If it makes you feel any better about it, I anthropomorphise everything from teapots1 to vehicles2.)
Knowing nothing of our conversation about him, by this time Denzil was making extraordinary progress across the 5’ expanse of laminated safety glass, his own-rear view mirror in impressive and highly efficient operation in the strong wind as his eyes on stalks blew back behind him.
‘He’s really going for it!’ said Jim. ‘I wonder what he’ll do when he gets to the other side?’
‘Well, he’s going to turn round and come back again, of course.’ Reader, at the time I was swimming every day at the local health club, and had already assessed Denzil as a kindred spirit. ‘He’s doing lengths, just like me.’
We were both quiet for a moment as we watched Denzil – his eyes still pointing backwards – advance in a remarkably straight line across the glass.
We began to get even more silly.
Not far from the village, and with the second-to-last roundabout still to negotiate, Jim asked me whether I thought Denzil was looking forward to getting home. ‘Had I better park exactly in the same tyre tracks, so he doesn’t get disorientated?’
‘Definitely!’ I replied. ‘Actually, I think I’m going to get out of the car before you put it onto the drive, just to check that none of his friends and relations have a search party in progress. You wouldn’t want to run them over.’
CONTENT WARNING: MILD PERIL
⚠️
As we laughed, Jim was distracted by the rain starting again. And hit the wiper control.
😧🐌‼️
We arrived in silence onto the driveway. Even if Denzil had survived being flung from the windscreen, he hadn’t made it home with us.
Jim woke me up in the night. ‘That bang on the car roof? That had been Denzil!’
Our snail hadn’t been our snail; simply a hitchhiker we’d picked up en route to Grandad’s, caught as it dropped from an overhanging branch. Dislodged from the windscreen two roundabouts from home, he’d got as far as he was going for that trip.
Wonder where he hitched to next?
Love,
Rebecca
📚 Reading 📚
📚 In this beautifully-written post
of reports on the results of her strategy to spark a conversation with the question ‘Are you feeling stressed today?’
📚 The link below is to the first chapter of ‘The Byrd Report’ by
of , a series in which Gail is delighting me by recounting her experiences raising three rescued baby starlings. Spring is springing, and Reader, you’ll love this:📚 Regular readers of ‘Dear Reader, I’m Lost' will be no strangers to my ongoing light-hearted letter-writing project with fellow Brit
of . It’s his turn to reply to me on Wednesday, and you can find the archive of our chortlesome correspondence here.Aside from our letters, Terry writes posts on a variety of topics, and in his series ‘Experiments in style’ he demonstrates – often in hilarious fashion – the sheer versatility of the tool of language. This one’s a doozy:
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Hamish
Bumble, Posy, Pepper, Colgate, Shackleton
What if that was his game? Get flung from windshield wipers as an extreme sport for tiny molluscs? 🐌🪂
I absolutely love this post! Denzil's adventure would make a super Aardman sketch, complete with antennae blowing back. Can you imagine him telling his family about the journey when he finally dragged himself into the house (Of course he has a house! Complete with rugs, family portraits on the walls and occasional lamps), wiping the rain off his eye stalks and asking for a drink (not beer - that's lethal for snails) . His little kiddles, Walter and Harriet, would gaze at their father in awe, with their eyes (yes!) on stalks and Beatrice, his wife, would cluck and stir the nettle stew on the hob...