Hitch-hiking, charm and fiction - from Becca

Antonia's account reminds me also of hitching procedures Mark employed.
Never lost for words Mark would manage to make the driver feel good
whether that was by listening, talking or effusive thanks. All totally
authentic, if occasionally excess to requirements. What wasn't genuine
was the flavour and type of degree he was studying. If asked he was
doing Sociology at Warwick, History at Essex - anything apart but
Classics at Oxford. He did it out of sensitivity to class, status and
the hitchhiking contract and also mood - he couldn't have born to kill
the conversation. And if the truck driver did want to pursue it, he
was, of course completely able to bring any subject alive with fact or
opinion or a thoughtful chew of his forefinger.

hitch-hiking North - submitted by Antonia

One summer Tom was in a car crash, when his brother Hugo was driving and he was in the passenger seat. Tom got the impact, and his hip was broken. It happened up in Durham at the start of the summer long vacation, and no doubt some plan or other was ruined by this accident. Mark and I decided to go and visit our immobilised friend, so the obvious way to get from Oxford to Durham was to use Mark and Tom's method, i.e. hitchhike. I hadn't done this before, mainly because of all the terrifying warnings issued especially to girls about hitchhiking. But I knew I'd be safe with Mark. It turned out to be a fun and memorable journey, not exactly direct because we went via Cambridge where we stayed with Mark's family for a night. But the thing I remember most is Mark's failsafe hitchhiking method, which he didn't explain to me until it was actually put into action. "Stand there," he said, strategically placing me by the road, while he lurked some way off behind a convenient bush or other shield, with the backpack. His theory that a single female hitchhiker has more success than a couple, or a couple of male ones, proved absolutely right. We never had to wait more than a few minutes. A lorry or car would stop to pick me up, and then Mark would emerge from the bushes, to the chagrin of the driver. "Get in the front," he'd tell me, or "You get in first", if it was a big lorry cab. My job was to flirt mildly, but with Mark right there I was in no danger of a misunderstanding. We did brilliantly - our best lift took us almost the entire length of the M1 in a ritzy new car, driven by an entertaining man who worked on the North Sea oil rigs, diving to do repairs and spending days underwater in a diving bell. He was keen to show off his car - it was something that would seem crappy now, a Ford Capri or something, but it was fun at the time. I liked the big lorries too, because even though they went rather slowly, it was great to be so high up above the road. So we got to Witton Gilbert remarkably quickly and then kept Tom company, probably decelerating his recovery a good deal by dragging him out to the pub each evening.

art uprisings

A YouTube video sent to me on facebook reminded me of one of Mark's wheezes for earning money. We thought it was an excellent idea to get paid for doing nothing, i.e. sitting in the Ruskin School of Art with our clothes off and not moving for 3 hours. Or trying not to move...The idea was that you arrive at the Ruskin and disrobe behind a screen, then head out to the coldish room and sit or stand more or less as still as a statue for 1 ¼ hours before a break and then another 1 ¼ hours. Good money and, it being Oxford, who worried who knew the naked truth about us? You could meditate, sort out your problems, even sleep, provided you did not move, although some movements were involuntary.
Among the serious art students, there was one who caused more than her fair share of problems. She was a beautiful slim blond artist student who would sit at the front in a short skirt and wooly tights (if cold). She liked to sit on the floor with her legs spread wide, possibly for balance. She spent hours licking her lips or her pencil and then holding it up, apparently to get some idea of size/shape, etc.
She was doing it deliberately, we decided, as we compared notes on what would work best to control the inevitable response - usually the most effective were in-depth meditation about visting the dentist, imagining facing a polar bear naked on the North Pole ice, etc. (we were too young for tax returns). We had nothing to hide behind, and many curious eyes studying us. We never saw the resulting sketches.

Dances with forest

In Thailand (1983?), one trip included a jungle trek from Chang Rai. We hiked up forest-clothed mountain flanks, sleeping in small villages. Porters carried up warm cokes and beers by another route, to sell to us each night at progressively higher prices. Sleeping was in huts, eating the spicy food each traditional village provided. I don’t think any of it was dog, although our guide pointed out one or two long-haired dogs with chunks cut out of their haunches, then tied up to heal. The handover for our party from one village to another could mean passing a couple of fierce-looking local Rambo types, sporting huge machine guns and watchful eyes at a river crossing as lines of women passed with produce or poppies. One well-guarded valley and hillsides belonged to the Kuomintang, where they made pineapple liqueur (lao sapalot?) which was red and tasted like delicious cough liquid. We had 2 energetic and hairy New Zealanders with us and after all had indulged in the herbs freely sold in large bags in back alleys, and fortified ourselves with pineapples, we would overtake the traditional dancing displays put on for our benefit, with displays of kiwi dances, Pole Cat strut or other rockabilly. The day after the Kuomintang, our guide was far behind as we moved on, clutching treetrunks with one hand and his head with the other, the sun far too bright suddenly. We’d walk to the next hilltop and wait for him to catch up. The biggest machine guns were near the Burmese border, in the heart of the Golden Triangle, where Mark and me climbed up and over the ridge into what we were told was Burma, sitting and smoking a bit while contemplating the endless sea of forested mountains ahead. We wondered what lives were being won or lost in those forbidden valleys, but not what lives we could expect.

Painting Houses

Many holidays were spent painting houses for family or friends, some with Mark. The ideal painting job was the family cottage in Norfolk, near the coast. We'd arrive, sometimes by hitchhiking, and then paint day in or out, sunshine streaming through the windows, and Radio 1 blaring out. Conversations could easily continue all day, punctuated by long visits to the pub or the trek down to the sea where the waves waited at the end of a very wide, shingly beach. Once in the pub were darts games, against two apparently experienced players. The more we drank, the more the darts seemed to glide exactly where we wanted them. We were as astonished at our amazing victory as were our opponents, it took two or three days of amazement before we gave up trying to understand our brief moment of darts brilliance.