By Ray Wilson
We finished our work early.
“Do you fancy a trip to the Elephant house—the weather is nice—we can pick up the items for Sally en route,” I suggest.
“Alright, let’s go,” the missus replies.
“I’ll grab the hound and meet you out front.” I say
We decide to take the car for a change—we drop the hood—the heat on our skin, the wind in our hair. The hound is strapped into her dog’s bed on the rear seat. She sniffs the air eagerly as we drive through the Ashdown forest, bright with autumnal shades and mellow fruitfulness. The sun shines through the trees, casting dappled shadows on the road ahead. At first I didn’t see her as I changed down the gears, coming up an incline out of a sudden dip.
She was standing by the roadside—a large rucksack at her side.
“Where are you heading for?” I shout, stopping the car by the grass verge a few yards away from her.
“Rodmell,” she replies.
I glance at the missus before saying, “We can take you to Sheffield Park; that’s on your way, isn’t it?”
The woman nods gratefully.
“I’ll get in the back,” the missus says.
The hitchhiker slips into the front seat, hoisting her rucksack up and placing it in the footwell in front of her knees. “Okay?” I ask, adjusting his rearview mirror as we pull back onto the road.
“I am a gardener,” she explains. I have an interview this afternoon. I love the challenge of really overgrown gardens; my joy is transforming them.”
“Have you noticed insects are less abundant these last few years?” She continues turning to look at me. “It’s worrying, but I try to create habitats for them in the gardens I work on.”
“Yes,” I reply, “I think it’s a combination of pesticides like glyphosate and other toxic sprays coupled with EMF emissions from 5G towers and the weather, or what I’d consider to be manufactured weather.”
Our conversation delved into the minutiae of magnetic effects disrupting the ability of bee colonies to map their environment—toxins in the skies—toxins in the water—toxins in the food—disruption of farming. It becomes very obvious very quickly that we are all very much on the same page.
I pull off the road into a service station just off of the roundabout.
“Put the hood down; I am getting blown away in the back,” my missus says. “I am missing out on the conversation.”
“Look,” I turn to the hitchhiker. ” I am going to keep ongoing and take you as far as we can.
The hood motors clicked and whirred. I swung the car back onto the road and headed off in the direction of Rodmell.
She told us about her bicycle accident and how she disliked public transport. “It was bizarre—a gentleman stopped—he saw me pushing my damaged bicycle—he helped me into his car, and on the way to the hospital, he diagnosed my injuries—he told me everything I needed to do—turns out he was a specialist in these things. He said I had broken a rib—he was right, I don’t cycle much now.”
She told us she liked walking, but she explained that: “My feet ached from miles of walking, and my mind was tired yet buzzing with thoughts—hopes, dreams, uncertainties. The wind was still, and the only sounds were the occasional rustle of leaves and the hum of tyres. Nobody stopped for me, and I found myself praying, not in the formal way, but in that quiet, wordless plea you make when you need something—anything—to get you to where you need to be.”
“Just the right lift,” I whispered to the universe, my hands jammed in my pockets as if that might anchor me to something. “Please, the perfect ride—I saw your car approaching—I really didn’t think that you were going to stop.”
“You know,” she said, turning her head to look at my missus sitting in the rear seat, “sometimes the road itself gives you the answers, not just the destination.”
“I’ve been thinking exactly that – especially lately. It’s like… I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what. Maybe the journey’s supposed to help us figure it out,” my missus replied.
She smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of doubt or knowledge. It was one of shared experience, of someone who had once been on a journey of discovery—learning that many of the things we collectively indoctrinated with from birth are pretty much all lies.
“That’s the thing about the road,” she said rummaging around in her rucksack and pulling out a packet of tissues. “It doesn’t always take you where you want to go, but it tends to take you where you need to be.”
I had been quiet up until now and chimed in with a gentle laugh. “Yeah, we picked up a hitchhiker a few years ago during the COVID fiasco—only a young guy, but he told us so much about human nature and a lot about what to do. Nobody else wanted to help him.
“They ran away from me,” he told us, “like I was a leper—they wouldn’t even let me use the phone to call my mum.” Back then, we thought we were doing the rescuing, but we’ve come to realize… sometimes we’re the ones who need to meet certain people.”
I could feel the weight lifting from my shoulders, not because I suddenly had all the answers, but because I realised it was okay not to. The road would show me in time the way it had shown them. There was no rush. Just the journey.
“What do you guys think about the COVID vaccine?” she blurted out.
“I can tell you a lot about all the so called vaccines—and you are not going to like it!” I say.
“It’s a bioweapon, isn’t it?” she said. It’s all about global depopulation—they want to kill us. How can we stop them?”
“There are many ways, as in Kung Fu, to use their strength against them. My current favourite is utilising a technique I call little acts of defiance; after all, no one wants to overtly break the law. The best recent example is the government’s chicken registration programme: one chicken, now its a flock, so many are registering the birds in their freezers, and then a week later saying they’re dead—anything to collapse the system and throw a spanner in the works,” I say.
We drove on through the leafy lanes, the three of us bound not by destination but by this fleeting, perfect moment of connection. The little village of Rodmell stretched out around us, ancient and mysterious, and for the first time in a long while, it felt like we were exactly where we needed to be. I drove down a narrow road towards the church and turned off the engine.
The hound sat up, eager to go out walking in the lush fields. The conversation shifted to lighter topics, laughter filling the car as we shared stories and jokes. The weight of the world seemed to lift off our shoulders, if only for a moment, as we enjoyed each other’s company in the peaceful surroundings of Rodmell before our hitchhiker bade us farewell and we headed off on our separate ways—we had yet to pick up many items for Aunt Sally’s homecoming before the Elephant house shut its doors. The sun was lower in the sky, casting a warm glow over the landscape as we made our way back to reality. The memory of that brief moment of serenity stayed with us, a reminder of the importance of taking time to appreciate the simple joys in life.
