‘Nobody jeered and the police didn’t move me on.’ Photo: courtesy of the author.
Poetry in motion: James Priestman takes his itinerant witness to Edinburgh
‘My name is James, I’m a travelling poet and I would like to recite a poem.’
I began day one (17 August) in Northamptonshire, for a lunch with my father (who is in residential care) and two of his cousins. One of those relatives took me to a service station on the A1, just north of Peterborough, and I began hitchhiking at 4pm. After an hour and a quarter, I was picked up by Philip in an electric Ford Mustang Mach-E. His opening comment was one I have heard before: ‘I never see hitchhikers these days.’ I explained that I was heading to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, and hoped to have an opportunity to perform some of my poems at the Friends Meeting House. Philip is just a few years younger than me (I am fifty-five) and works as a partner in a large accountancy firm. He had heard of the Quakers but not met one before. We had a wide-ranging discussion and at 8pm he dropped me at the Leeming Bar service station in North Yorkshire. I ate at McDonald’s and then walked into a wooded area where I took out my roll-mat, inflatable mattress, sleeping bag and bivvy bag and settled down. In the late evening the McDonald’s car park became a place for young people to meet, beep their horns, play music and occasionally try a handbrake turn. I looked up at the starry sky and got a good night’s sleep.
