A twist in last week’s tale.
A twist in last week’s tale
Two things:
First, last week’s mailout certainly resonated, thanks for the positive feedback, everyone seemed to like it
The second? Well, that follows on from the topic of last week’s mail out, if you haven’t read that you won’t get this.
Let me start by reassuring myself that by now you have read enough of my books and blogs to know if there is any theme at all beyond bikes and travel it’s brutal honesty. Last week’s mailout was written in the moment, not as a sob story and not begging for sympathetic compensation. Anyway the ‘buy me a coffee’ link didn’t even work, just as well really as… here’s what happened next.
So I spent a brief week in the UK, I was so tired of travelling I only visited my closest of friends. Predictable, I spoke to them of the trip, that being, what I told you last week about the stolen money belt and all that (they are not subscribers, so needed telling individually). I took my dawn walks along the beach, eyes open and hoping to find a treasure beyond a golden sunrise to recompense my loss. Why do I never find things only lose them?
Monday I flew back home to Bulgaria. I’d been back there briefly before the trip with mum, to finally complete the sale of my old house, the one you may know as Near Varna. It had taken nearly three years to find a serious, honest, legitimate buyer and I wanted to oversee the selling process despite having given the agent power of attorney. This year being about downsizing my life, I’d also had some bikes for sale for most of the summer on a free ad platform that ran and renewed. I’d mostly forgotten about that and what with the house sale the income that the bikes could generate was less important.
So back to Bulgaria I headed again. Disembarking the National Express bus at Stanstead, I noticed a pair of forgotten headphones on an unoccupied seat, left by the preoccupied owner. So picked them up and bustled through the crowd to return them. In Sofia on the stampede to the shuttle bus someone’s shades fell off the back of their head, I picked them up before they were trampled on and handed them to an oblivious squinting man. Sometimes I feel like I’m the eyes of the world, watching out for them as they stare at their phones unaware of anything else. Leaving the bus I gave my hand to an elderly lady to help her down the step. This all felt good, doing the right thing, not for reward, but perhaps as I was still reeling from the stealing of my money and didn’t wish that feeling on anyone.
A late Monday night landing, and my girlfriend was there to meet me at the airport. She has a wonderful way of reminding me what things were like when I was single. Her technique is letting me return to our house to be faced with an empty fridge and nothing to eat, it’s a little tradition she maintains with endearing regularity, so sweet.
Consequent on Tuesday morning I had black chia with white sugar, cereal without milk or banana and toast without bread. Lidl was my top priority, knowing I’d be buying more than a pannier of supplies I needed extra baggage. For the last time I emptied my daypack of its travel items, perhaps for the last time I would stop hoping I’d see the money belt hiding in it. Like the last 20 times I’ve searched, it still wasn’t there. I took a ride into town, not an entirely unpleasant task as I’d not ridden in over two weeks. When got home with fresh goodies I saw I had three missed calls from a number I didn’t recognise. I had my girlfriend call them back
‘It’s about the bike’ she mouthed to me
‘Which one?’
‘The Triumph’
‘Which one?’ I said again
‘The one with the panniers’ he’ll be here in 40 minutes.
‘Hard or soft?’ but he’d hung up.
I had to assume the buyer was interested in the Tiger, mainly as I don’t want or need to sell the Thruxton now. So I went to the shed where all the electrics had been switched off. The battery optimiser had not been working. The bike wouldn’t start; it hasn’t been used since a trip to Italy last summer. I wheeled it out into the sun, cleaning off dust and cobwebs. Personally give a bike that looks like that any day – dust over rust, the cobwebs show it lives in a dry environment. Eventually with tyres inflated, a year’s neglect whipped away and the big black posing panniers attached, the battery was still undercharged so I jump started it off of her car. It ran with its characteristic yet unremarkable sewing machine sound of reliability and little in the way of throaty thrills, but it was always bought to be a low-profile mileage muncher and in that regard it’s performed flawlessly over the last 9 years.
We went and met the enthusiastic buyer in the village centre (never want to show a stranger what other temptations lurk in the stable) he hadn’t quite got his licence yet. A deal was struck very easily, the bike is accessorised to hell and for anyone in the market for that model it was unarguable the best deal in Bulgaria. It came with every receipt from British purchase and timely service, to Bulgarian registration, all logged and in a branded folder. However the MOT had expired and he couldn’t legally ride it yet. In a token act of generosity, soon as he was paying the asking price, I offered to get a new inspection done. That required me first getting it insured. With a deposit paid I franticly searched through ‘important cupboard’ to get the necessary documents.
Let’s backtrack 20 years…
My lifelong friend in Colorado was approaching his 40th, his girlfriend arranged a surprise party for him. There was no way I could make it, I was due to be in India. However standing in the airport on a New Year’s Eve evening with a boarding pass in my hand, I sat in the bar awaiting the announcement to get on a plane to Bombay, you may remember this scenario for In Search of Greener Grass. Something started to niggle inside me, I had no luggage checked in and, I realised, I could just walk away. Although I had nothing in the UK to walk back to, my seasonal work was over, my house empty, the fridge unplugged and damp bedding dripped over the stair rail. However, despite having friends waiting for me in Goa, I walked out of the airport convincing myself there was dread ahead, like leaving the gangplank of the titanic and got a train back to Colchester. Seven days later I was back at the airport having used my airmiles to get a flight to Denver, to be the biggest surprise at the birthday party. So there we were, about 40 of us standing in a blacked-out garage, farting and giggling as we awaited the arrival of my unaware friend. ‘Surprise’ everyone shouted, but not me, I was crouched behind a trash can full of ice containing the beer keg. His approach was commentated in a countdown to me by and innocent bystander. ‘He’s three yards away, he’s two yards away, he’s in front of the keg…’ up I popped. ‘Surprise’ he looked at me, nonplussed, turned 180 degrees and went back into the throng. The surprise, it seemed, was on me. I. It turned out I was one shock too many, I was supposed to be in tropical India no behind an ice keg in Colorado. He came round later when the onslaught had subsided and he could cope.
Back to last Tuesday
As I paw through the folders in the ‘important cupboard’ what do I see? My money belt! Unzipped and clearly with a wedge of dollar bills in it. My reaction was not to discard the vision as an hallucination, nor was it disbelief, but I still had to turn around and deal with ‘the rest of the party’ that being the bike sale.
I jumped on the Tiger and being uninsured and with expired MOT, took 55kms of back roads to get into town and become officially and legally documented. This gave me time to think.
Remember last week’s mail out? Again after time to think, I’d convinced myself the money belt was stolen, I knew by whom and when. I had some serious rethinking to do. Remember I said last week what everything is the reason this is happening for? Well, turns out it didn’t happen, the thief that is, but something did. It’s a fact I took $500 cash down from my room to pay the deposit for the hire car. Having had the money in my money belt for the entire summer ride from Bulgaria to Bishkek, my mind filled in a blank. It assumed that’s where, I’m my manic, fatigued, jetlagged state, I took the cash from. It knew I had about another $500 left in there, saw it in fact, saw that I paid the deposit in 20’s yet there was a $100 bill still. These assumptions didn’t happen until I went to look for the money belt two days later to check into a different room. That’s when I literally turned all the luggage upside down looking for the money belt… and I did it repeatedly. I even zoomed in on previous photos on my phone taken in the room to see if it was on a dresser or bed or something. It was nowhere to be seen. Mainly because I’d left it at home. I must have, before I left home, taken out the $500 in cash I knew I would need for the deposit and left the rest, living by my life long mantra ‘never carry with you more than you can afford to lose’ but I have no recall of taking only $500 and leaving the belt behind. In fact, I know I put some Turkish lire in the belt too for the Istanbul layover. I still don’t know what happened to that money.
Here’s the thing. As I laid awake the night I discovered the loss. I meticulously retraced my steps. What I didn’t realise was my mind was filling in the blanks. This loss was not reported for insurance compensation, not declared to police for retribution, no claims or blame, and the tale was not retold for sympathy. It was, I was convinced, a factual account of events but the tale has twisted. In my preoccupied, manic procurement of the hire car, on one of my trips from room to forecourt I left my hotel door unlocked. A door to another room on the landing was open, the occupant clearly permanent. Perhaps a live in cleaner I guessed by the personal effects on display. I surmised that anyone who resided full time would know full well the sound of a door closing and footsteps, and on some level, be aware they didn’t not hear a key turn. Equally the occupant closed her door somewhat forcefully when she saw me looking through. That, 2 days later, was enough evidence for me to conclude that she was the culprit, an easy theft; hear I didn’t lock the door and then my footsteps go down the stairs, look over the balcony to check I was two floors below, whip into my room see the money belt on the counter, and take it, it could be done in seconds. And I swore it was.
This brings me to the reason that everything happened for. So I spent the first half of the trip crying over the spilt milk of the $500 theft and the second half fretting over the lost deposit due to the scratched-up door. Neither occurred and no one, could have told me, even suggested that there was a ghost of a chance I left the money belt at home. If I’d even considered it was a possibility I would have asked my girlfriend to look, I’d didn’t, she didn’t.
If there is a lesson to be taken from this, it’s the inaccuracy of eyewitness interpretation. I would have bet my favourite cat that I took the money belt abroad with me. In my mind I saw it but my mind filled the scenario with assumption, what I didn’t actually witness in the moment. I can’t trust it, while I’m living the dream it’s writing fiction.
So today I completed the deal, I’ve sold the Tiger, last month I sold the house, and I still have the $500 I would have sworn was mislaid in Kyrgyzstan. Remember me saying I don’t have many stories of theft and loss only suspicion, caution and mistrust? Well, I have to retract last week’s tale of theft and now be mistrustful of even my own mind. I still can’t believe it, despite the visual evidence. In fact while putting away passport, and other journey documents I’m still, after 12 days, habitually looking for the money belt which was never there and was always here at home and is now safely reunited with the returned deposit and awaiting its September journey to the US. You ever listened to The Streets concept album ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’? It was a similar story of mistrust with a false accusation outcome. This story though is far more believable, as it actually happened, although I still can’t believe it. To cope with this, a little bit of me still thinks that karma exercised its ultimate power. I’m thinking that due to me returning the headphones, sunglasses, and giving a helping hand to granny, karma reversed time, crossed continents, and altered reality to return to me what I never deserved to lose. Because I find that easier to swallow than the possibility that I never took the money belt with me, never saw it in Kyrgyzstan, never removed the $500 from it for the hire car. However, evidently, none of that actually happened.
So clearly I’m shot to bits. I’ll end this mail out as I ended last week’s one: I need a drink.
