The Island of Hope

At 21, I had a lot of trepidation standing in my boots and lumbering a rucksack on the quayside in the catamaran queue at Portsmouth.  I remember it as if I was a soldier embarking for war, only I was alone and was just about to fall in love – fighting was all in the past.  In this queue I was 100 percent alone.  My family, my old friends or more recent were in that past.  Life was in the process of turning my page.  All the assurances they had made, alongside the criticisms, advice, witticisms, cynicisms and tedious leadership struggles, of the few human societies I had engaged n in the past were locked away now, merely memories from which to make future judgements from.  I kept them in a cell in my mind, the inmates to each according disrespect, were entrapped now in the organic walls of my empiricism.  The catamaran fired and rose from the water – I rode the phoenix across the diamond blue of the Solent water, humming free into the future, momentarily wary of the large imposing silhouettes of the Victorian sea forts.  Liberty’s price is the levy of courage.  We docked at the shimmering white town aside the clear deep rocking waters.  Everything was warm.

Cowes was disorienting.  A permanent jetty takes you into the heart of a busy but small and exclusive town centre. Picturesque and tourist tainted, it was a busy sunny day.  I was to meet a van, with the conservation group logo on its side. This would then abscond me off to an unknown destination, I was wary, like the wilfully kidnapped.  My aim was to join this team to rebuild some sea wall defences to maintain a marshland and its hundreds of varieties of rare wildlife.  The others and the van were a mystery, a hesitant expectation, it could be chilled and cool, or it could be arsy.  Rules and constraints, terrible when an unknown expectancy.  I exchanged the greetings and grasped nonchalantly to the inside of the back of the van as it hurtled off.  I was with a couple of nerdy lads with the silly soft lilt of the proper northern accent, and a group of four young women, teachers by their centred conversation. I was definitely more naughty, and therefore kept my suburban accent quiet.  The van cornered at alarming speeds; the lanes were narrow and oncoming vision was minimal, my knuckles were white – like the log hair and beard of our jolly and extremely posh old driver.

We were dropped at the base – a cricket pavilion and pitch, camping on the pitch, cooking in the pavilion.  The van took off with many hugs as the girls hugged the old bearded man.  This place had a history already, this would be a reunion for many of my colleagues to be.  The lush grass was short and flat, very comfortable for my one man survival tent that had been my reassurance since leaving home a few years ago.  As I gazed across with my eye to the ground I lazily rushed over the level haze with the swifts skipping across the surface, making use of the expanse for a much more exciting spectator sport.  Once camped, the group began to organise the food, and I exchanged a few words with gregarious Jane, and slowly the group began to gel.  By sunset we were bustled in number and huddled around a quietly blazing fire, drinking and playing one of those strange travelling games that the middle class know so well in Britain.  Fields were for footballs where I grew up, so I revered in the mellow drinking and took my place in the game quite shyly.  Roger the old man came back to be hospitable and was a definitive socialite, and devious wise old man.  He told me of racing Rolls Royce’s along Brighton sea front in the 50’s when I criticised his driving, an active old man, with fallen aristocratic heritage and time served countryside worker; working alongside him, I caught a hint of what I later read as an opinion in history books: the natural order of things.  After all I worked very hard and he knew everything and liked orgainising.

I joined the puffy eyed group by the road in the cold of morning after my customary time alone with coffee and cigarettes for breakfast.  The van screeched around the corner, and collected us.  The lads tried to chat along with the girls – but this just made the conversation pathetic.  Jane began to single me out quick, for a few close chats – digging for my ideas and history, exchanging her well balanced by liberalism thoughts on what I spoke of, she spoke of her groups reunion here for the school holidays, they had all studied primary teaching at the port on the mainland and the summer tasks for the reserve were a tradition for them now, along with birthday dinner parties at each of their bases across the south of the country – it’s hard to mingle when the clique is solidified by memories you don’t share.  I was quite happy alongside them, soon becoming the useful bloke, I would have slept with all of them so I began to soften towards the imbalance of linguistics and the polarity of class based past times.