There was a summer in the eighties when my life just seemed to disintegrate and then reassemble, and the autumn found my life in a place that I never would have believed.
May was a bad month. I had been under a lot of stress at work, and my colleagues and I could see the writing on the wall. Mrs Thatcher's Britain could be a ruthless place, and the company for whom I worked was slowly sinking in a very competitive market place. At the same time, I became aware that Mary, my wife of five years, was becoming more and more distant. No single reason for that, she had her own career and we were both working crazy hours and only seemed to connect at weekends, as we rushed through our domestic chores to make sure that we had clean clothes and a supply of frozen dinners for the next week. Sex was a thing of the past, as we were both too tired to even think about it.
We spent the Mayday Holiday weekend together, and even managed to find time to sit down and have a home cooked lunch together on the Monday. Mary was a bit distant, and after we had loaded the lunch things into the dishwasher, she suggested that we take a bottle of wine out into the garden, as she thought we needed to talk. As we drank our wine, and went on to a second bottle and then a third, we cleared a lot of crap away. We dissected our relationship, and realized that it was heading nowhere. Mary had been feeling this for a while now, though I had been too tied up in my own problems to notice this, and had decided that, basically, she wanted to bale out. She had already found a small flat near to her office, as one of the things which she found so tiring was the 20 mile drive to and from work every day. The cottage which I had inherited from my grandparents seemed ideally suited, as being in a small village near the Fosseway in Somerset it was nearly half way between her job in Bath and mine in Yeovil; in the early days we had great fun in doing it up. As we both got busier, we found less and less time for housework, and we now had a cleaning lady and a gardener who each did a few hours a week.
We spent the holiday afternoon getting quietly drunk together, reminiscing about the good times, and then getting maudlin about the deterioration in the relationship. Eventually, we staggered inside to bed, and whilst we were both too drunk for anything beyond a hug, we held each other as we drifted off to sleep.
The next day Mary started to make the arrangements to move out, and we both found time to consult lawyers. The separation would be straightforward, and as amicable as these things can be. The cottage was mine, along with my Grandparents' trust fund which still held enough to keep me in my old age if invested well. Mary had no claim on that, and there was very little that she wanted to take, as the flat to which she was moving was furnished and all she wanted were a few family heirlooms and similar items. She moved out on the Friday, without having really told me that, and just left a note saying that she was sorry that things hadn't worked out, and asking me not to contact her as it would be too painful. Looking around the house, it was as though she had never been there.
I got through the weekend, as usual a frenzy of shopping, laundry, bill paying and catching up with personal correspondence. This was before the days when email was a common means of communication, but I had a computer with a word processor and was able to send out a sort of circular letter to our friends to let them know what had happened.
The next week in work was hell on wheels, with various senior executives entering and leaving the building with facial expressions that grew grimmer and grimmer until Thursday, when suddenly they lightened. Naturally, the place was abuzz with rumour, the most popular being that the company had been sold. Sure enough, we were all told to attend a meeting in a nearby community hall, there being no space in the building big enough for such a meeting, at 5:30 that evening for an announcement. All the Big Wigs from Head Office were there, and as the Chairman approached the microphone, the room went quiet. He announced that the company had, indeed, been sold to one of its major competitors, and that whilst the Yeovil location would remain open, there would be some redundancies, as the new company didn't want to duplicate staff. I knew this was likely to mean my department, as the area of duplication was bound to include the administrative department which I headed.
Sure enough, next morning, I was called in to a meeting with my boss, one of the senior managers from head office, and, more ominously, a lady from the personnel department. They told me what I had already guessed, and went on to lay out the terms of the separation package, which weren't at all bad, in the circumstances. Since they wanted me to go straight away, I was to be given 6 months "Gardening Leave" on full pay, during which time I was debarred from making any approach to the company's clients, competitors or suppliers, together with a tax free lump sum equivalent to 2 years salary. Glowing letters of recommendation were given to me with the cheque, and I was escorted by a member of the security staff as I cleared the few personal items from my desk. I was not permitted to access my computer, but had taken the precaution of copying a lot of useful stuff in the preceding weeks, just in case, and the 5 ½ " floppy disks were safe at home containing – you've guessed it – all the contact names I needed at the company's competitors, clients and suppliers!
Clutching my carrier bag, I was escorted to the car park and as I pulled out past security, I handed in all my passes and headed north on the old roman road towards my empty home. That night, sat in front of the TV with a bottle of scotch and a glass, until finally I woke up watching an Open University programme at some stupid hour in the morning when I staggered to bed. I spent Saturday just pottering around. I went to the supermarket in Shepton Mallet, and stocked up on food and drink – especially drink – and then cleared out the accumulated crap from the last five years and took it to the landfill at Dulcote Quarry. As I drove out from that site, I decided to go into Wells for dinner, but as I dropped down the hill I saw Glastonbury Tor in the distance, and went there instead. Still restless, I bought fish and chips from Knights – probably the best chippy in the West – and drove home. Oddly enough, I slept well that night, drove to Shepton to buy papers, and spent a lazy morning reading them. I went to the village pub for lunch, and it was indication of how long it was since I had been there that not only did I not recognize any of the patrons, I didn't even know the landlord. After a mediocre lunch, and several pints of quite good beer, I left the pub when it closed at 2. I staggered home, fell into my armchair, and dozed the afternoon away. I awoke at about 7, with that nasty taste in the mouth and slightly tacky feeling that comes from a mild evening hangover. Deciding that more beer might be the solution, I made my way back down to the pub. Trade was quiet, and I got chatting with a few of my neighbours and caught up with some of the village gossip that I had missed. The biggest topic of conversation was the Travelers. Glastonbury was a mecca for the New Age travelers, and the summer usually saw an influx of rickety looking vehicles and falling apart caravans. Attracted by a variety of festivals, from the respectable Glastonbury Festival (still known to locals as the Pilton Pop Festival) through an assortment of unofficial and illegal gatherings, the West Country seemed to be a traveler magnet. I was aware of their existence, having sat and fumed in the traffic jams such festivals caused, but hadn't really given them much thought. That evening, I learned, there was a traveler site not far from the village. Apparently, a group of travelers, or "damned hippies" as one older villager, a retired army officer, called them had purchased a parcel of land which included a disused quarry and some woodland. They had managed to get mains water and electricity laid on, and the site was occupied by a varying number of itinerants. The local council seemed powerless to do anything about them, as any attempt to serve papers regarding the flagrant breach of planning regulations stumbled when attempting to identify an owner. I asked how this was possible, since I knew of the existence of the Land Registry. A local solicitor explained that not only was the land in question unregistered, "that won't be in force here for a year or two" but that the plot had been divided up into a large number of ten yard square plots, which the travelers, plus a few local speculators, kept passing around so that any records were way out of date. The lawyer seemed almost admiring of the way this was done, and after his third pint almost wistful as he opined that the government would somehow find a way to close this loophole. Whilst the general consensus seemed to be utterly condemnatory of the travelers and their way of life, "scrounging parasites", dropouts" and "the great unwashed" seemed to be the most popular epithets, I noticed that the lawyer seemed almost defensive of them. I asked him about this when we found ourselves in an oasis of quiet at the bar, getting refills. He explained that the travelers actually put quite a lot of work his way, not just the land deals but the various incidents involving unroadworthy, untaxed and uninsured vehicles that came before the local magistrates. I expressed surprise that they could afford him, and he laughingly told me not to be fooled by experiences. A number of the travelers actually held down steady jobs, quite a few made a living doing casual work, and a few claimed Social Security.
I made my way home from the pub at closing time, feeling very much the worse for wear, and again fell asleep in the chair clutching a glass of scotch. I woke up as the sun rose, with a splitting head, and a sticky place on my shirt where the scotch had fallen when the glass slipped from my hand. For the first time in years, I had nowhere to go on a Monday morning, and feeling at a loss, I thought that perhaps a walk might clear my head. After a shower and a change of clothes, which made me feel semi human again I wandered along the lanes, breathing deeply the Maytime smells of the countryside; these seemed to consist alternatively of new mown hay, or pig slurry, depending on how the wind was blowing. Before too long, I found myself at the plot of land where the travelers had their camp, and I leaned on the gate for a while looking in. There wasn't a lot to see; the gateway led to a rough track, which wound through a few trees. I could see what seemed to be a cliff about fifteen feet high, against which I could see a couple of buses with darkened windows. There was some washing hanging on a line, and further away the skeleton of an old bus and a couple of cars on blocks; a couple of dark haired children running around laughing happily as they played in the sunshine.
I heard a voice in with an unplaceable but slightly familiar accent from behind me, "Another one come to gawp at us, are you? We're not another tourist attraction you know. Maybe we should charge, you know, put up one of those telescopes like you have at the seaside that you can put money in?" I looked round, and saw a smallish woman, in her mid to late twenties. She wore a loose fitting shirt and jeans, and pair of startlingly bright blue eyes glared at me through a mass of blonde hair. "I'm sorry," I began, "I live in the village and was out for a walk. I only just heard about you guys, and I thought I would come and see what all the fuss is about. I'm sorry if I'm intruding." She continued to glare at me. "You've come to see what all the fuss is about, have you? Well, what have you seen? Have you seen enough yet?"
I looked back at her stern face, with her slightly bushy blonde eyebrows lowered over eyes in a somewhat hostile frown. I thought for a moment, "What have I seen? Well, I've seen what looks to be a scene of some domestic harmony. Children playing in the yard, washing on the line. Almost Elysian in its tranquility." Her frown deepened and became almost scornful. "Are you taking the piss, or what?" she asked. I hastened to reassure her. "I'm sorry, that was a bit uncalled for. I do have to say, though, that I can't see what all the fuss is about. You don't seem to be doing any of us any harm." The woman's scowl didn't let up. "We've got every bit as much right as you have to be here. More, actually, on this bit, since we own it. So you're trespassing."
