Taking The Telegraph Road

It happened so fast, it was up before I really realised what had just happened. Getting into a mass circulation daily is a pretty big deal for me. I got a DM out of the blue from a commissioning editor for The Telegraph - you can read the article here - and was tapping away pretty much immediately. The process was surprisingly solicitous; I expected them to just take it and make edits as they saw fit, but there was in fact an exchange where the editor suggested additions and showed the alterations he had made. The biggest changes were to the order of topics, but almost all of the text was my own. I’m very pleased about that. It was also good fun to write to a brief, rather than just ramble on about whatever pops into my cabeza.

One thing that came up was illustrative of how drivers think differently. There is an anecdote, in the piece, about how on a run to Germany I may not speak to anyone in the office for four days. The editor altered the word order to make it sound like I was describing a downside, I had to point out that, for me, that was an example of a good thing.

This might sound terribly anti-social, but most long-haul drivers would much rather be left to get on with the job, rather than be on the phone to the transport office all the time. I suppose that’s an anathema to anyone who works in an office, or in any other environment where one is working with others all the time, which, I suppose, is most working environments. It has to be pointed out that most calls from a transport office to a driver are just variations on “are you there yet”, and therefore hardly good examples of the warm glow of human companionship.

But still, I’d imagine that if your day consists of meetings, phone calls, and speaking with co-workers sitting nearby, the day of the average long-haul driver might seem very alien. Up to ten hours of solitary driving a day, perhaps one or two brief phone conversations with transport, and, at most, a handful of brief, mostly functional, conversations with forklift drivers. And that would be on a particularly active day, socially. I’ve had days, going down to places like Spain or Italy, where I’d wake up in the morning, drive four and a half hours, have my mandatory 45 minute break, drive another four hours, then have my daily 11 hours rest. Perhaps I’d have a conversation with another driver over a truck-stop meal. Or perhaps not. Again, I must stress I’m not complaining about this, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. Human beings are astonishingly adaptable, and what might be torment for one person might be just a normal day at work for another. We just get used to it, we can get used to almost anything.

I’ve probably gotten too used to it, far too used to it. An outside observer of my life might well notice something that most of the time I don’t; that I spend almost all of my time alone, and outside of work as well. It’s probably not entirely healthy, if I’m honest.

Yet it’s probably been something I’ve needed to do. And I’ve done it to myself, that’s for sure.

There seems to be something that happens when we volunteer for duress. There are plenty of times people have done things that are physically unhealthy, but spiritually or psychologically beneficial. Many religions advocate fasting, and studies have shown it can increased cognitive clarity. People take unpleasant psychoactive substances in order to achieve different states of consciousness, and as we punish our bodies with exercise it releases endorphins. Could periods or lives of solitude be a similar thing?

It’s not unprecedented. Jesus spent 40 days and nights alone in the wilderness, the idea of the spiritual hermit spans many different faiths, as does monasticism, asceticism, and celibacy. Have I subconsciously directed myself into such a life?

When my marriage ended in 2018, I returned to the UK utterly broken. I was broke, homeless and alone, but more than that I was bereft of answers. If I had assumptions before, they were all in tatters. Perhaps I never truly believed what I thought I knew about spirituality, relationships, work, the wider world, or myself. But now I knew that there was so much to learn, so much to grow into.

At one level this was quite conscious. To help me better understand the wider world I embarked on a deliberate course of listening, consuming audio books and podcasts as I drove around. The other aspects may have been more subconscious, yet no less enlightening. Probably more so.

And when will this end? When will I stop being this hybrid hermit, quasi cut off from the rest of the human race? Well, in a sense, you’re probably reading the results of the return. Writing turns the inner-voice into public output, which makes getting into a publication such as The Telegraph even more significant.

And what about a more tangible reconnection? What about a coming up from the depths to paths more travelled? Well, I want to do that - or at least I think I want to do that. But it may yet never happen. There’s a chance I’ve forgotten the way.

A long time ago came a man on a track
Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back
And he put down his load where he thought it was the best
He made a home in the wilderness - Telegraph Road, Dire Straits, 1982