“Exactly! But before any of that, you can find your wine, and find your nice dinner, and find your very own squishy hotel bed...”
“That,” I say firmly, “sounds like a most excellent plan.”
Chapter 13
We end up spending a few more nights in the area, as there is a great camping ground nearby where we can tend to all of Joy’s needs, and because Tasha and Lily and their family are staying there and Charlie wants to have more time with them.
He has never had a serious girlfriend, and I have never pushed him on which way his interests lie. It has simply never mattered to me, as long as he is happy. I am guessing from the lingering glances he shares with Lily, the older of the two, that his interests most definitely extend in her direction. I wonder if I should give him a talk about toxic masculinity and avoiding teen pregnancies but decide that I don’t need to. He is not even remotely toxic, and I am in no position to lecture anyone on the latter.
We are invited to their motorhome for a barbecue on one of the evenings, where Luke and their dad spend endless happy hours discussing their vehicles and their travels, and I get embroiled in embarrassing conversations with the mum, where I explain that Luke is not Charlie’s dad, and no, also not his stepdad, and no, also not my boyfriend. She looks so shocked when I explain the truth of the situation that I resolve there and then to simply say, “Yes, he’s my boyfriend—cute, isn’t he?” in the future.
I get a better grip on Joy’s functions and tackle exciting tasks like replacing the gas bottle and emptying the waste tank, and we spend our days exploring the nearby countryside and our nights sitting out and chatting and eating as though we are in the Mediterranean, not the Midlands. It is really rather splendid, aided by the fact that I stay off my email and concentrate instead on the Sausage Dog Diaries.
Charlie does all the boring stuff for me and also posts ferociously on social media. Lily is a whiz at it all as well and sets me up with all kinds of hashtags and promo ideas. I leave them to it, because it is not my scene, but smile in encouragement when they tell me I already have some followers. Apparently sausage dogs are “hot right now,” and a lot of the people who read my posts on the camping forums have joined in the fun. By the time we decide to move on, I have more than two hundred people signed up to the blog.
That is a slightly scary amount of people—what if I’m rubbish? What if I make a spelling mistake, or post a picture of my boobs by mistake, or, even worse, put an apostrophe in the wrong place? Writing on the forums felt anonymous and safe; this feels terrifying. I’ve always seen writing as a form of escape, but this seems to be becoming more than that, and I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m not sure I have the confidence for it.
I adapt my usual policy—Just Don’t Think About It—and simply carry on doing what I like doing. Luke tells me this is the equivalent of dancing like nobody is watching, and I think he is right. It is enjoyable, and distracting, and it feels good to exercise a part of my brain that has long been dormant.
After the third night, we decide it is time to move on, and we make a draw from the hat. For the first time, the tiny ball of paper turns out to be one of my picks.
“Oxford?” says Charlie, sounding disappointed. “But that’s just a place! That feels like cheating!”
“I’m sorry, son,” I say, patting him on the shoulder in consolation. “But them’s the rules—and off to Oxford we go. If it makes you feel any better, we could pretend I putThe Golden Compassinstead? OrInspector Morse?”
“No idea what that one is, must be something from the last century, but yeah... okay.The Golden Compasswill do.”
We set off disgustingly early, because Charlie wants to call in at a stone circle, and after our experience at the last one, we aim to be there before anybody else. He tells us, as we arrive just after seven, that there is an old story about a witch who turned a king and his men to stone, and also that witches used to come here “skyclad.” This, he explains with a smirk, means naked. I assure him that I am not a witch and therefore will not be following suit, but he should feel free to take a nude gallop around them if he feels the call.
“That’d be weird, Mum,” he says as we get out of Joy into pale morning sunlight.
“It would, but I don’t want to restrict your development as a human being. Plus, I grew you in my own body, you know—it wouldn’t be anything I’ve not seen before.”
“I’ll do it if Luke will...,” he mutters, earning himself a jokey kick on the backside from the man in question. We make our way down a pathway through a wooded copse, thick with lush vegetation and alive with birdsong. We are near a main road, but somehow the noise of the passing traffic seems to disappear as we emerge out onto the open space where the stones lie.
It is almost eerie how fast that happens, and I pause to relish it.
In front of us is an enormous ring of pale pockmarked stones, almost shining in the early light. Some are upright and tall, someseem to be having a lie-down. I suppose they’ve earned a rest after being here for a few thousand years. We wander from stone to stone, and I can’t resist running my hands across them, wondering what they were for and who built them and how. So many centuries of human lives have passed while they have stood here—through wars, through revolutions, through eons of change, they have remained, still and silent and strange.
Whoever built them is long gone, together with their motives, but they were still human beings—still people with hopes and dreams, still connected to us, through that long stretch of time, now, standing here together as we gaze at them. It is mysterious and majestic and utterly mind-bending.
We spend a good hour there in that magical place, drinking coffee from the thermos, wandering from stone to stone, finding something new and gnarly about each of them. Charlie tries to count them but gives up when he reaches fifty and gets confused.
Eventually, we settle on the grass in the middle and just soak it all up. The birds, the sunshine, the stones. The still, calm sense of serenity. These ancient dudes definitely knew how to pick a top location.
After a while, a small family arrives—mum, dad, toddler, cockapoo—and we take that as our cue to leave. We have had our mystical moment—now it is time to pass it on to someone else to enjoy.
As we stand up and dust ourselves down and prepare to walk away, Charlie says: “Hey, you know in the Julian Cope book? It tells a story about how women used to come here when they wanted babies, and put their boobs on the stones to make them fertile!”
I involuntarily cross my arms over my chest, and they both laugh at me.
“What?” I say, genuinely concerned. “You never know! I might trip and fall and accidentally land with one of the girls on a baby-stone... and nobody wants that!”
Charlie pulls a face and mutters the wordgirlsin mock horror, and we leave happy and content, and in my case brimful of “just imagine.” We put some money into the honesty box, clamber back into Joy, and continue on to Oxford, which is less than an hour away.
Luke has found a place for us to stay overnight on the outskirts of the city, a few miles out and essentially at the back of someone’s very large garden. It’s amazing how many places there are out there willing to share their space with a great big motorhome.
We chat with the homeowner and fill two backpacks with what I now see as essentials—water, snacks, phones, swimmers, and towels—before getting the bus from a nearby stop.
