Denim Mountain

I think I nearly died on that mountain. 

I woke at 4am, head on a backpack of pants, socks and a disposable camera, lying on a metal Stansted bench with a family of four sat politely by my feet. I’d arrived by the last evening train and spent the night. 


A guy called Dom told Matt to ask for Francois at Turin airport. Francois was how we were going to get to France, but we’d never met him, couldn’t recognise him and didn’t know where he’d be. We waved down the first coach we saw outside the airport and as luck would have it Francois stepped off to shoo us out the way. He didn’t know who Dom was, but allowed us on the coach to sit with the anoraked middle-age skiers.


We stepped onto gritted mountain pavement. Denim jacket and converse trainers. 21 years old with no forward thinking. I Looney Tuned to a cash machine across the ice and entered my pin code in vain, but my overdraft was maxed out. I had some cash in my pocket and spent it on fried potatoes in pitta bread. A Mic-Mac. The remaining cash we spent in the Aldi where all the staff at the checkout added up the shopping total in their heads. 


We met Magda and dumped our bags in her small apartment and drank beer watching Baywatch in French. I stepped out on to the balcony and took this photo of the mountain. 

In the evening, we hitchhiked along the mountain to another village or town. The driver passed us his joint.  He spent more time looking back talking at us on the backseat that he did watching the precarious mountain road. 

We drank a local spirit with strangers who threw a firework at me while I was pissing in the snow. We played drinking games with playing cards, but the same person was losing every time and his chances of not losing were becoming increasingly slim, so we drank when he drank. 


When the rocket fuel ran out, we went to a nightclub. 

 

The nightclub entrance was filled with hundred-pound ski jackets. I kept my denim jacket on. The crowd were a snowboarding crowd, who were similar to a skateboarding crowd - athletes with better hair. Me and Matt weren’t from that world. We were more at home at backroom punk gigs in Tottenham. The humour was dumb and the bravado was high. I was becoming more and more introverted so I leant out and walked outside. 


I found myself stumbling alone along a dark mountain road. Denim jacket and converse trainers soaked in the snow. The road hugged the edge of the mountain. Why am I here? My vision was blurred with the alcohol. I thought I saw a pack of wolves in the white. 


I followed blurry strings of lights to a village, but couldn’t find Magda’s apartment. I was drunk and exhausted and lay down on the side of the road in the soft snow. 


My supervisor consciousness spoke up at this time: you can’t sleep here in the snow in denim and converse because you will die. I got up and walked back onto the mountain road. I have no idea how long I was walking but after some time I saw another village in the distance. When I got closer I could see an Aldi. The door must have been open to Magda’s flat, because I woke up fully clothed in a bed. Soaked denim and converse.


Exhausted, cold and penniless, we made our way back to the UK a day later. I had no money for the train from Stansted to London so pretended to be asleep when the ticket inspector came. No amount of shaking us was going to end our sleeping ruse. He got bored and left us alone. He probably looked at us and felt some pity.


Matt left me at Waterloo to catch his train. My last train had already left. I headed to the South Bank to try and find a bench to sleep on before jumping the first train in the morning.


Out of instinct, I headed to an old phone box. I picked up the receiver, no idea who I was going to call and I didn’t have any money to call anyone, it just felt like something I should do - like an 80s kid with nothing left to do but reverse charges call their pissed off parents. 


I hit the button to hang up a call and a £1 coin was spat out. I grabbed the coin and palmed it like I'd stolen it and headed to a bus stop. After an hour, a bus full of clubbers and late night workers pulled up. 


How much to Surbiton, I asked. £1 the bus driver said. 


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