28. A Leap Of Faith

But first I jumped naked off a viaduct in Normandy. Almost naked. We’d driven in convoy, Angel man and me, to a festival in northern France where there were more crew than punters and we lay about in the sunshine smoking pot and he said, Let’s go bungee jumping. It was appropriate, that leap into nothing, trusting a rope I couldn’t see and trusting the calculations of others who said if I reached out my hand, I would touch the water in that microsecond halt between going down and bouncing up. A leap of faith echoed in the leap to leave the squat in Ealing and move to a farmhouse high up on a hill hugged by woodland. I don’t know why I elected to strip, just me and a pair of tiny pink shorts flying from a bridge. Probably showing off. It made sense at the time. I remember Angel man rushing up to do it again and almost jumping before they’d attached the chord. I remember someone doing it on a bicycle. I remember the ridiculous rush of stepping into nothing, my brain telling me I would die. It was a rush to catch the ferry too, that afternoon, we were late, we’d picked up new friends, we had various drugs to hide as we sped to the border. I was so blasé. Being caught – and we never were – never crossed my mind. We ruled the world. It was all about friends, new connections, wherever we went we made them. Two more that weekend who came with us back to the farm. We set them to work stripping carpets and scrubbing underlay, revealing wide floorboards. This house in the country that I owned, to which I’d been sent an ancient key had ancient stone and brick and oak hidden beneath wall-to-wall sixties interior; beige cupboards, avocado carpets and red plastic lino gave way to stone and oak and brick. Everybody worked for free and a piece of what we were building, a scene in a house in the country, wisteria dripping, sun shining, kettle always on. We filled the bedrooms with mattresses pulled from skips and filled them with people. We tore and painted and smoked and practised circus skills in the garden. Everyone was learning to juggle. Acrobalance was all the rage. We decided to start a commune.The Literary Obsessive champions independent artists. Support my work by becoming a subscriber This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe