This reminds me of the time I picked up a couple of hitchhikers at the Cherry Blossom Roundabout, the trad place for anyone hitching West to wait (Olds will know where this is….. ) The funeral procession went out on the Westway, past the Fuller’s London Pride brewery (which, until fairly recently, still delivered their beer by dray horse and wagon) and through this roundabout. Anyway, I picked up this couple of lads who had travelled across Europe with their skateboards and backpacks aiming for the Glastonbury Festival, which was where I was going too. They were knackered and very relieved to get a lift all the way. I assumed they’d sleep and kept checking on them but they spent the whole journey gazing out the windows. Eventually one of them said “Your country is so beautiful, so green.“ It kinda opened my eyes to that. I mean, I knew I found it beautiful but the tone of envious awe in his voice made me look at it a-fresh. Also, it wasn’t especially green cos it was mid-June and the harvest was already underway, the weather had been hot and to my British eye it all looked a bit baked. I guess the trees were all in their summer green though. And his words gave me a tiny glimpse of his own homeland, dry and sere and yellow under the flat summer skies.
