We fell out later that afternoon, argued I mean, got to calling each other names (all of them true) She tried to bite me and wouldn’t let me fuck her then got even more annoyed when I told her I was going out.

“Out there?” she asked wildly “In the dark? You’ll get lost!”

I laughed at her, told her I’d go to the brothel in the village and get some oats there if she wouldn’t give me any.

“That’s all you think about!” she threw at me. It was true. I did.

But I went out anyway, went on a little jaunt, on my own. And yes I did get sort of lost.

Now Darkest Essex is much darker than Darkest Norfolk, and more dangerous too. They are all foreigners there after all! A quick glance at your map will show you where Essex is.

Don’t go there if you can at all avoid it.

Go through it of you must but stay on the M11. Think of it as Spanish Harlem in the USA or Chapeltown in Leeds. Lock all your doors, stay in your car and pass through the county of Essex at speed.

I was going with an Essex girl at the time, so I do know what I am talking about. It was some time ago, before the war, but I don’t think things have changed very much. Yeah, lived and worked there, if you could call it that, in Essex that is. And after work, which was mostly spud picking or scrap metal cleaning I used to go off in search of the bright lights. I was a bit impetuous for my age (13) but was learning the ropes fast. Anyway, just like a well paid job, or a girlfriend with both beauty and brains the bright lights were nowhere to be found. All I ever found were several rather dim ones, one of which was a one woman brothel in the front room of her own house.

I hadn’t a car of my own at the time being very poor and virtually homeless and everything – you know the sort. So to get about I was forced to rely on Shanks’s Pony or what is known as “Public Transport”.

Generally “Public Transport” means either the bus or the train. Well there were no trains in Essex, except for nuclear waste carriers and one other which ran at midnight every third Wednesday. This would only take you out of Essex to somewhere else, anywhere else, it didn’t matter where so long as it was out of the county, which is what everyone who didn’t live there wanted to do.

So in my case to get to the bright lights meant catching the bus.

Now as a county, Essex has very little to offer in the way of bright lights. Come to think of it, it has little to offer of anything else either. It consists mostly of muddy fields, abandoned USAAF airfields and deserted desert with a few eastern European/third world type settlements such as Harlow, hidden in it. The people who live there don’t usually go very far. Horizons terrify them and make them dizzy. Give them anything with “Made in England” written on it and they are lost completely!

With me so far?

So I am restricted in my wanderings by the vagaries of the bus services. Essex buses don’t run very often. Nobody who lives there wants to go anywhere and those that have, did so so long ago, last week at least, that they are still too frightened to go anywhere again.

There is this peculiar to Essex phenomenon known as “The Last Bus” This means that in order to get back from wherever you have been to wherever you want to end up you must catch this bus on time. There will not be another one along for a week if you miss it.

In Essex on a Saturday night the last bus leaves town and hence the “Bright Lights” at half past seven. Now, so that I could get back to where my small abode in the back of a showmans’ wagon was situated, I had to be at the bus stop at twenty five past six. It was winter time remember and therefore quite dark by that time. This intentionally enforced early closing of everything was so good for morals, crime figures and security. Look, the local constabulary and religious leaders could say; here is the fair county of Essex, safe and secure because there is no one abroad after dark!

Not much of a Saturday night out I think you would agree but there you go. I was young and foolish and would get over it.

Worse was to follow though. Somewhere between Harlow and Lielow and a lot of places called Matching Green and Shallow Bowells in between, (a glance at the map will show you where those places are, was my stop, a crossroads known as “Bobbingworth Mill”.

There is no mill there. There is nothing there in fact, except for a dip in the road, usually full of rainwater, an overgrown hedge and a one armed signpost leaning the way down the road.

In the 1960’s a lot of the distances shown on signposts in Essex were still given in furlongs. (It was to do with confusing the invaders) (Yes I know we haven’t been invaded since 1066 but Essex is, after all, a bit behind the times)

The bus conductor (they still had them then) said he’d call me when the crossroads came along, then stop the bus so I could get off. Well that was what he was paid to do. He was the conductor after all. So after an hour or two of going round and round in the darkness, as promised, that is what he did.

The bus drew up, stopped and I got off……

It was like stepping into pool of pitch. After the dazzling five watt bulbs lighting the inside of the coach the Essex countryside outside was indeed in utter Stygian darkness. I blundered into a hedge. I fell over a bullock (or was it a hillock?) banged my head on a damn signpost and in the baleful light of my rising temper could just about make out the words written on the arm of the thing. Willingale 38 furlongs. The signpost had but the one arm so there could be no mistaking which way I had to go, so I set off whistling merrily, seeing nothing except the tops of hedgerows against a dark grey sky, oceans of mud and the occasional tree.

I got steam up, got into my stride, ate the last bit of Cadbury’s dairy milk chocolate I’d found in my pocket (complete with fluff) and after an hour and a half of brisk walking found myself standing back at the damned crossroads again.

Now normal roads have a right hand side and a left hand side, yes? Well in Essex all roads (except the M1 which wasn’t built then) are six feet wide and have bushes growing down the middle. This means that you have to walk on either the left side or the right side to get to wherever you are going without hurting yourself.

Back at the signpost I stood and fumed. I ranted and hollered at the muddy fields, the darkness in general and Essex in particular. I called it all sorts of unkind (but true) things (some of which were later adopted for use in the Oxford English Dictionary) Steaming I peed up against the signpost, muttering murderously about furlongs, hedges and Essex girls generally.

Then, relieved, I thought about what I’d done. Being wayward, as I have said, I’d walked all the way on the right hand side of the road (or was it the left?) Anyway whichever side it was, it was obviously the wrong side and thus, in the darkness, the little turn off to Willingale had been missed.

It was with a heavy heart and a small blister that I set off again. This time I did not whistle or eat anymore chocolate (just the fluff)

The whole of Essex was darker than ever, a lot of clouds had come over from silly Suffolk and were threatening me with rain. I kept my head down and my mouth shut, fearing a wet night under a November Essex hedge without so much as a Tesco plastic carrier bag to keep me warm dry, and, marvel of all marvels, hours later almost saw, sticking out of the hedge, the sign for my road. It said cynically: ‘Willingale 28 furlongs’ so I knew I must have, at last, been going the right way. How glad I was not to have blinked at the time or I surely would have missed it!

I marched on, growing hotter and wetter as I progressed until eventually I spied a landmark I recognised. The silhouette of a dead elm tree with a single bough left to its trunk and that bending dangerously across the road. The field with the fairground wagons on it was on the other side.

The gateway into the field was muddy as gateways into muddy fields always are. But this gateway was equipped with a particularly nasty variety of the stuff. Early metric, thin and horrible, being first of all made in Essex and secondly, full of newly fallen ex-Suffolk rain.

I got myself quite damp and dirty going through this mud but managed it in the end without too much fuss. This left me one last obstacle to circumnavigate.

Towzer the fearsome guard dog.

Now for reasons best known to showmen and other animal lovers, Towzer had been chained to a lorry all his life. The chain was heavy and usually attached at the opposite end to Towzer himself, to an axle or a tow bar and was long enough to allow Towzer the privilege, occasionally, of being able to lie down. Just. Shelter was provided by the underside of the lorry and bedding consisted mostly of mud with the occasional crisp wrapper or residual patch of cow dung added, or omitted, depending upon whether the month had an P in it or not, for good measure.

This situation did not produce a happy dog! It did however produce exactly the kind of dog which was required for the job, which was to, at each and every person who might venture that way, bark savagely.

Well even though the damn dog recognised my smell and the password I hissed at it, it was so fed up, cold wet and hungry, (as was I) that simply for something to do, to warm itself up a bit, it began to emit a terrific volley of barks.

Well a light came on in a trailer and another in the van. Muscular hairy arms reached for shotguns (and that was only the women) A voice hollered (at the dog) and I hollered back, putting on my best Essex accent to very good effect. (I will talk to you later about accents, but now is not the time or place)

Another light came on and the first one went off. Towzer ceased his barking, having done his bit. He fell back down into fitful sleep in the Essex mud. I found my wagon, the steps at the back, the ricketty door and finally the disgruntled, half asleep girlfriend still waiting patiently in my bed.

“I thought you wanted to fuck me?” she said.

By now it was way past eleventy three in the morning and I was so tired I fell asleep without touching her.

Until awhile later anyway.

We woke very late the next day, which was a Sunday and were therefore even later for church than usual. Goodness me didn’t we get told off by the vicar! He called us Blooming Heathens. He was right I suppose, thinking back on it. I’d got odd socks on and the arse out of my trousers and she, as usual had forgotten to put on her bra. There weren’t that many people in the church either, just the three of us, with the Vicar, bless him, dressed in a clean white frock.

I didn’t learn anything from his sermon, in fact I didn’t learn anything at all that day except the best way to deal with Essex girls, signposts, and public transport, all of which stood me in good stead later on when I became a milestone inspector but the moral of the sermon was I think, well immorals anyway: One, when in England never use “public transport” Two. Never ever venture into darkest Essex without an armed guide - and never at night. Three. Wherever you are, always have a map (any map will do), a shilling, a torch, a compass, (magnetic not drawing) a piece of string and a bar of Cadbury’s full cream milk, (without fluff) in your handbag (or overcoat pocket if you are a woman)

And Four, if you are living in the back of a showmans wagon with an oversexed Essex woman don’t go out and leave her in the dark. Shag her as much as you can. And as often.

And as for the county of Essex itself, well for those of you who have a map of Venezuela, Taiwan or the Belgian Congo from fifty miles up in space, Essex is that area just above London with the sort of wiggly right hand edge. It always rains there, the natives refer to each other as “Mowlder” and pregnant unmarried girls, of which there are a lot, all wear tight red miniskirts with white high heeled shoes, black or dark blue bras with a semi see through white blouse over the top.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

© Aahlu. .2002 – 2010.

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