The best lift that I ever had went from London to Wattsville, a tiny village about eight miles north west of Newport, South Wales. As usual I took the tube to Chiswick, got out at Gunnersbury station and walked along the Chiswick High Road to a roundabout beneath the M4. It was a Thursday rather than a Friday because it was Easter time. The traffic was treacly and at first I thought it would not be long before I got a lift. Everyone was going away for the four day long weekend. But unluckily for me most of the cars were full of families or friends (not mine) and had little room for me. The single occupant vehicles were going so slow that they had a good chance to scrutinise me before driving off and leaving me there. The stop and start mood of the traffic forbade those spur of the moment decisions which usually prevented hitchhikers from waiting there all night. I waited a good half hour with my little cardboard sign and nobody said to me "Where are you going?". Then I saw that a large articulated lorry was creeping past in the outside lane and I noticed that on the front was written Scotland and Wales. A quick bit of thinking in my head told me that if the truck was going to Scotland it would not be heading for the M4 and therefore it must be going to Wales. I then observed that the driver of the wagon was pointedly ignoring me. I remembered that many professional drivers were not allowed to give lifts for insurance purposes and that this was probably why the guy was not likely to. The traffic creeped again. The truck was alongside me now and still in the outside lane. I looked around for other hopeful looking rides and glanced back at the lorry and saw that the driver was calling me over. I ran straight out in front of the cars in the lane I had to cross and climbed up into the cab to the beautiful sound of Pink Floyd's Final Cut.
The juggernaut operator had the stereo on and loud, his favourite group was Pink Floyd and he was in a hurry to get home for Easter (and Thursday's dinner). If there had been a seatbelt I would have put it on as no sooner than we were on the motorway the traffic got a lot lighter and a lot faster and one of the fastest moving vehicles was the one I was in. A quick examination of the driver confirmed my suspicions, the trailer was empty, enabling us to cruise at 80 miles per hour along the M4 in the good old days of no speed cameras. On downhill strtches we went for and sometimes hit the ton. Finally Cut we moved through The Wall to arrive at The Dark Side of The Moon and Wales at around the same time. The driver was one of the few who could pick up hitchhikers and read, so he knew I was going to South Wales please. Yet he still asked me where I was going. I told him Wattsville, expecting him to reply, "where's that?" as most people who lived in Newport eight miles away had never heard of it, but he surprised me by saying he could drop me there. Wattsville for those of you who don't know is two lines of houses either side of the mainroad that goes up the valley from Crosskeys to Pontllanfraith, and my kind chauffer lived just beyond the latter. He explained to me that he normally went up another valley that ran parallel to it, but it was no skin off his back to go up my one for a change. So less than two hours and one minor fuckup later, I was climbing down from the cab literally outside my Dad's house where everyone believed that I had come by train because I had arrived so quickly. I was home
