Hitching Hell

Ann The Beermonster, self, Jill the Ripper

If I ever have another day like this one, I’ll happily place a noose around my neck and play on the swings. It was supposed to be one of those simple “hitch it to Sheffield” days. No drama: up, out, posters plastered, job done. Getting there was easy enough. Finding the venue — Take 2 — took a bit more public transport detective work, but I got there in the end (it's in Attercliffe). Getting home, though, turned into the kind of nightmare that makes you wonder what the fuck you’re doing with your life.

By 6:30pm I’d managed two lifts as far as the Snake Pass moors, then another that dumped me in the East End of Manchester. From there it was a bus across to the other side of the city, then a long, cold wait that produced only two pissy little lifts in the next three and a half hours. That left me stranded outside Knutsford on some A-road pointing vaguely towards Chester. It was dark, wet, freezing, and looking like I’d be stuck there all night.

The rain pissed down, but I had my Sony Walkman, and Nick Cave for company. John Peel had introduced me to Kicking Against The Pricks, Cave’s LP of not-so-standard cover versions, and Wayne had taped it for me from his vinyl copy. I played that cassette to death, and out there in the wet night I found myself duetting with Nick Cave to By The Time I Get To Phoenix — only I swapped Phoenix for Colwyn. A sodden lunatic with his thumb out, singing his heart out to the hedgerows. Every song on that tape was a high point. Years later I finally bought the CD, but back then, that battered cassette was my lifeline.

Eventually, mercifully, I got a lift to Chester and bolted for the station, racing through the rain with two random blokes to catch the last train home. £5.10 for a single, rolled into Colwyn late but still alive.

The day wasn’t a total loss. On the way over I’d stopped in Glossop and knocked on Jill The Ripper’s door. She was in, looking gorgeous with her hair plaited orange, purple and black. She was warm, welcoming even, but very cordial. She showed me photos of The Damned on tour, and her very boring-looking boyfriend — “I’ve been with him a year now,” she quipped. Whatever spark had once lit up between us the year before had gone out, and I knew it was me who’d snuffed it. Just another reminder of how fleeting things can be when you’re living half your life on the hard shoulder of the motorway.