Hitchhiking for the 21st Century

There comes a time when we have to accept that Eurostar has become an elite form of transport that is no longer generally affordable (£176 one way for the 6am train to Paris … I don’t think so, Eurostar).

There also comes a time when, as a Francophile and train nerd, I have to accept that even France’s rail network has its limits. No matter how much I stare at the timetable, no train will appear that can get me from the region of Suisse Normande to St Malo on a Friday evening without having to first go east to Paris and then come back west again to the Breton Coast. With no bus service that evening either, I was potentially stranded in Caen while my partner was hanging out in a posh hotel on the beach.

Now was the time to rethink hitching and all the horror stories about it that women have welded into our subconscious by anxious parents (and I should never have watched Rutger Hauer in ‘The Hitcher’, which did for car sharing what ‘Jaws’ did for my ocean swimming).

This, however, is the 21st Century, and while that doesn’t mean we lose the little alarms bells in our heads entirely, it does mean we have apps. BlaBlaCar, for example, is doing for car sharing what AirBnB has done for spare rooms. Started in France, it now covers 22 countries with over 100 million members, allowing people with cars to connect with passengers who need to travel in the same direction and share the journey.

For those who think society is catastrophically breaking down, be comforted by the knowledge that there is a high degree of trust in these online relationships, with the usual star ratings and feedback facilities to give added confidence. BlaBla work hard at overcoming our innate anxieties about getting into a car with strangers. In a recent internal report, 88% of their members say they trust other BlaBla members, which is not far below the 94% and 92% trust we have in family and friends respectively. Work colleagues only come in at 58% trust which begs the question why anyone feels comfortable car-pooling to work.

Setting up an account in ten minutes, I find Tania driving from Caen to St Malo at roughly the time I needed and who could meet me at the station where I was arriving by bus from Clécy that evening. With some judicious re-arranging of suitcases and dog accessories, my backpack is squashed into the boot of a spacious Corolla, and I slide into a seat in the back. Two other young women are taking up the spare seats, making it four complete strangers meeting in Caen, trusting we will all be at the station on time, and trusting that none of us will become Rutger Hauer in whack-job mode.

I do, however, become very conscious that I have 25 years on all of them, that my French is terrible, and that they smell very nice. I, on the other hand, look like a woman who has been camping for four days, walked 20 kilometres to get to a bus stop in the heat and rain, and who now has that faint smell of damp sheep about me from the merino thermals I’m wearing.

After obligatory ‘bonjours’, we are mostly in silence. Passenger 2, next to me in the back, puts her airpods in. I stare out the window. Time passes. Inevitably the passengers have no control over the car play-list but I have now caught up on some of the latest in French rap. We also have no control over the driver’s abilities, and I would suggest Tania stop chewing her fingernails and keep both hands on the wheel, and perhaps could smooth out those lane changes a little, but we arrive in St Malo in one piece.

There is some negotiation over drop off points. Passenger 1 leaves us on the outskirts of town, but as it turns out Passenger 2 also needs a street near the beach so I am delivered two doors from my hotel.

While the train option would have been over £100 and taken seven hours, my 2.5 hour car share cost £12.50, two other passengers also got to where they needed to go, Tania covered her costs, and we helped out the environment a little bit. More importantly, sharing the voyage reminds us that strangers are not always scary people. If the worst that happens is you end up sharing a car with someone vaguely smelling of sheep then it’s not a bad way to travel.

Notes to Self for the New Year 2023

I'm letting the fabulous women of La Mujer Obrera do the talking this new year ...

‘They want to determine what I do in my day, and how we use our creativity, they want to keep us in survival mode, right? But in this other vision, hey, we set the timeline. And we make our plans about how our day is gonna look like as well, right, at least part of our time, as much time as we can take. So that's why it's important to [think] how do we have a little bit of freedom, even if we're living in this chaos, right? And if that's a meeting, if that's an event, if that's us hanging out with the neighbours, if that's playing with the kids, us playing too in the dirt in the community farm … we taste a little bit of freedom.' (Lorena Andrade, La Mujer Obrera)

(The Trouble with Freedom, https://thetroublewithfreedom.wordpress.com/)

The true value of a 'bestie' ...

On the Florence - Milan Frecciarossa high speed train (and what a lovely piece of engineering that is, she says as she removes her anorak) a couple of young women sat across from me at the table. One immediately burst into tears and a long Italian conversation ensued wherein Bestie reassured her friend that it was all his fault (I don’t speak Italian but some things don’t require translation).

Bestie dried Crying Girl’s eyes and then realised that her makeup was now looking rather ramshackle. Out came the travel box of makeup complete with at least two dozen shades of eye shadow, four blushes, several lip glosses and foundation, and for the next half an hour Bestie reapplied Crying Girl’s makeup while all the time soothingly reassuring her that it was still all his fault. By the time we reach Milan happiness, along with eyeliner, was restored to its full glory.

On why middle aged women should take recreational drugs ...

At some point in a woman's trajectory we become, by necessity, sensible. It may be the career, the need to look after children, the mortgage, the dodgy knees after years of stilettos and/or running on roads. It may just be the years of multi-tasking as professional, activist, sex goddess, carer. As women can now apparently have it all, I am therefore going to advocate the need to let it all go, even if it's just for one night a year. Be unsensible. Find yourself a comfortable festival and pop some recreational drugs.

The advantages of waiting until middle age is that we now have the perfect combination of skills to actually enjoy getting off our trolleys. The side effects of staying up all night dancing can be a bit like jet lag perhaps but we know how to deal with that ... we travel. We spend our days organising ourselves and others, so no matter how spacey we get such is the training of our minds we can remember where our tent is and when and where we booked the massage for the next day's recovery, including that we booked in for an hour so we can tell the hippies trying to jump the queue to sod off. We always remember to put on the sunblock and we don't have to spend ages looking into a mirror - which is just as well if your face takes a bit of a trip without the rest of you.

We have an income so if we forget where we put the teacup from the cafe, no worries, it's just a pound deposit. And while the young ones try singing along to the words to Sympathy for the Devil  we actually know them. (I really wanted to hate the Rolling Stones but damn you Mick Jagger, with your moves and your 'woo woos', you really are rather charismatic). We can enjoy the musicians no-one has ever heard of, and the fact that there are still people selling magic wands and spirulina balls. Another economy is possible.

We have the clarity of insight (both with and without chemical enhancement), to recognise that Nick Cave is not a rock god, not the messiah nor satan, but just a grumpy man having a very long mid-life crisis. (I felt for the young woman he singled out from the crowd - her moment of glory slightly mocked when hit in the head by an inflatable dolphin). Get some therapy Nick and be well.

We can stretch out on the grass wherever we like and not worry that people are dancing over the top of us because at our age it just shouldn't matter any more; like it doesn't matter that I forgot a strip of leg hair in the rapid epilation before launch or that I'm wearing a purple bra under a white t-shirt or that I'm not wearing anything remotely neon in colour or waving glow sticks about. We can fully appreciate how Sinead O'Connor, Moya Brennan, Beth Gibbons and Laura Mvula really feel. And if you think you can move like Beyonce you probably can. Your knees and hips will remember what to do.

We don't feel the need to keep talking about a trip for days on end (do people still not realise how boring this is!). We have the maturity to know when to let it go; that a festival will end and we will go back to our homes that we own, wash our own clothes, have a cup of tea and be sensible for the rest of the year. But if things are still moving the day after in slightly odd ways it's okay. We can cope. That's what we do. The world can shift from under our feet - divorce, mentally unstable partners, cancer - and still we keep on going, fortified by 24 hour Farmers Markets that sell green tea and cheese platters with double gloucester AND goats cheese. 

What to avoid? The Orb .... great music but very, very scary projections of gigantic eyes. Drinking too much toffee apple flavoured cider, no matter how good it tastes. And under NO circumstances take recreational drugs if you are sad or in any way deviating from what your friends would define as a relatively normal state of mind. We all have a suitcase of baggage we carry around but some are more neatly packed than others. There is nothing worse than splitting that suitcase open for the world and all the young ones to see. Crowds will part to avoid you. There is enough of that from the young ones - 'but he said he loved me' she sobs. Well yes honey, but was that before or after he popped an 'e'?

With the usual caveats in mind (yeah yeah I'm still middle aged!) throw yourself into that mosh as Fat Boy sets it alight. Trust that everyone else is on happy pills and looking out for each other. Trust that English men are generally shorter, lighter and politer than Australian men, tend to be on more disco biccies and less beer, and know how to dance (i.e. wont accidently knock anyone out with uncontrollable thrashing motions if they happen to be standing nearby). We have no-one to impress but ourselves, so pick a colour you like ladies and move.

Explaining Mr Darcy

It is a truth universally acknowledged that once a year, no matter how many times I've seen it, I will sit through the entire 6 hours of the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, and wonder, yet again, will Lizzie and Mr Darcy get together at the end. I will go through the agonies of his refusal, her critique, his growing affection, her rebuttal, his acts of redemption, her growing affection, and the final declarative  snog.

What is it about Mr Darcy? Is it the fact that he fulfills a female fantasy of having our bad boy but only under our own terms? Is it because he's loaded and able to supply Elizabeth with the 18th century equivalent of a Bergdorf account and Jimmy Choo shoes? I'm defaulting to sexual selection and strictly biologically induced behaviour and therefore it's not my fault. As psychology studies among university students repeatedly show ... women prefer wealthier men, or at least men 'with prospects', and men prefer attractive women with child bearing hips. Makes perfect sense. Women have to invest in child rearing so we need men who can invest in us, just like a fish needs a bicycle.

So we shouldn't feel guilty about making him pay for dinner. It's just testing his capacity to pay the rest of his life for fish and bicycles. And we shouldn't feel guilty that thousands of us objectify poor Colin Firth, as he dives into a weedy pond to emerge the other side a dripping sex god.

Swim Grid Grrrl, Swim

So ladies, here's your chance. Airtel are looking for Grid Girls for Delhi's Formula 1 race at the end of the month. You need to be 'confident, fit and glamourous'. There's an aspiration. You also have to take part in a reality programme where you will wear t-backs and hot pants, as well as swim suits and bikinis. But this is not just some beauty pageant, for although you have to share your hobbies and interests, and your height, bust, weight and waist measurements, for the compulsary swim suit round, according to Indian newspaper, First Post, contestants have to not just wear their cozzies but know how to swim.
 
Now, I confess that I do occassionally watch F1, but only because I want to see justice finally done and the Red Bull management acknowledge that Mark Webber is a better driver than Sebastian Vettel and that they were wrong to rob him of his championship hopes last year. And when I do watch it I have to also confess that I've never seen a pool anywhere near the grid. But I guess knowing how to swim could be handy should it suddenly flood in Delhi on the weekend of the race.

Contestants also need to be able to heft weights, at least the weight of any costumes they may wish to use 'to enhance their look', although usage of said costumes is, fortunately for fashion victims everywhere, subject to approval by the programme producer/channel.

One burden contestants don't have to carry is knowing whether her education qualifications and experience will be considered at the time of screening. The answer, according to the 'frequently asked questions' section of the website, is: 'No, contestants will be judged based on the judging parameters. Past achievements or educational qualifications will not be considered as a criterion for selection'. So if you are a mechanical engineer who could actually design an F1 car, forget about it, as long as you can swim that's all you need to worry your pretty little head about.

Like a Fish needs a ....

Sighted, 11.30pm, Saturday 18th April 2009: woman in little black dress, 4 inch stilettos, lacy stocking tops, cycling her racing bike down Shaftesbury Avenue, the West End of London. Ladies, there are no excuses left for not getting onto two wheels.

On Dogs and Women

Out for a morning jog around the colony of East Nizamuddin in New Delhi, I was suddenly aware that I’d trespassed into the territory of some fairly angry looking stray dogs. ‘Stray dog’ is a bit of misnomer in India. They’re not really stray. They know exactly where home is. And this lot weren’t going to have foreigners in it, especially running foreigners dressed all in black wearing a hot pink cap with a bit of mould on it.

Chased into a corner I held my ground against bared fangs and barked outrage, thinking ‘damn you Pamela Anderson for your sentimental interference in India’s dog curtailment programme, I’d like to see you jog around East Nizamuddin in your cossie facing this lot of rabid mange encrusted flea bags’. I was also reminded of other spaces that create such fang bearing moral outrage. While I’m sure the dogs of East Nizamuddin don’t care what my gender is, it seems members of India’s various Hindu cultural nationalist organisations still find it unacceptable that women should loiter in places they deem as places they shouldn’t be hanging about in.

Last week, for example, a group of women were beaten and thrown out of a pub in Mangalore by members of the Sri Rama Sene (SRS), the militant outfit of the Rashtriya Hindu Sena (National Hindu Army), panting and barking about ‘un-Indian’ behaviour. Why does what women do, say or wear still cause so much anxiety for some men? And why do women still have to bear the burdens of morality and tradition? And that’s not just in India. Europe’s in no position to be casting aspersions on the rest of the world. Please note the infamous arse slapping incident in 21st Century Dublin noted in the first posting on this blog. And English men seem obsessed with staring at the tits of Page Three Girls (oh sorry, that should be ‘glamour models’). Why did Karen Matthews become the pin up girl for male commentators who saw her as representative of the downfall of the UK (let’s not mention the myriad of men who control government and financial institutions and the mistakes they’ve made … instead it’s women who are to blame who have too much sex with too many men who end up fathering children they refuse to take any responsibility for). I’ve always been fascinated as to how George Bush Jnr reconciled his remarks justifying his invasion of Iraq to the Australian Parliament by stating that the United States was saving Iraqi women from the ‘rape rooms’ of Saddam Hussein, with killing tens of thousands of them in his military operations.

And what’s with the name calling? Apparently the SRS were throwing around invectives such as ‘prostitute’ and ‘whore’. I remember once walking down a street of Delhi respectably decked out in my usual salwar qamiz when, after refusing the advances of a group of well educated young men, I was called ‘a strumpet’ and ‘a harlot’. Clearly they were studying Shakespeare in the final year of high school. In a pub with a group of friends in Sydney, when we politely rejected the advances of a young man, his parting shot was ‘lesbians!’

Why all this acid throwing when a man, and by extension his sense of order and place in the world, gets rejected? In fact I think I’ll be so bold as to suggest that if we were to look at much ‘cultural’ conflict in our complex, diverse cities, we might find that it’s not always as much about ethnic difference as about gender, power and keeping sex in the family despite incest being our biggest taboo (‘family’ used loosely here to define a group of people with reasonably similar practices and values that tend to panic when someone transgresses the boundaries of expectations, like hoisting a dress too high, because that extra inch of skin on display challenges their authority over someone else’s body and mind, emasculating them in the process – I’m not referring to the genetic kind of family, I’m not that sort of girl!).

All this snarling and yapping and ogling and slapping. Time to do something about the dogs snapping at our heels, ladies. I say politely, pedicured with decorum, show them the underside of your joggers, your six inch stilletos, your doc martins, your loafers, whatever your footwear of preference!