story of a nomadic traveller | public service escape route

5 | must reads

*parts 1—4 of this story are all avaialble under the section ‘must reads’

Somewhere within a predawn hour came time to leave the bedsit.

   Go on with the few possessions I owned carried on my person. Go away, towards the unknown with a single ticket in my pocket and a head full of hope for adventure. Go over there, towards new lands with histories that inspired great works, immigrant literature written on the edge of society by those maddened enough by their own existence to question all of it. The circumstantial evidence I found on my walks before I left showed me what I needed to see about where I was from. Besides, the faithful had their devotion, why couldn’t I make travel mine?

   I woke to a darkness that exists just before sunrise. Once I had drank some water and rolled a smoke, I dressed in a Janis Joplin T, hoodie, green bomber jacket with metal zipper, torn jeans and converse trainers that refused to die. At a sink I splashed cold water on my face, ran it threw curly hair in need of conditioner, brushed teeth. I threw a backpack over a shoulder and entered a hallway lined with empty bottles, piles of unopened mail. I tiptoed out of my shoebox room like a thief in the night. The sound of my drunk housemate Pete chuckling at a TV drifted down the staircase like smoke. I hadn’t told him I was leaving.

   I hope you make it out of this place one day, mate, I thought.

Outside the streets were empty. But the evidence of another heavy night out on the town remained visible: polypropene boxes smeared in burger sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup. Empty bottles of vodka, cider and beer smashed against asphalt. A pair of stilettos missing a heal was placed on top of a crumbling wall. The smell of piss and vomit, kebab meat and trampled French fries. All of it made my stomach turn. ‘This place is a social war zone,’ I said to no one. Instead, I walked at a brisk pace to my first point of departure, began the commuter game of hurry up and wait.