Disconnected (Connected series Book 1)

by N. P. Francis

  The article I had read that morning popped into my mind as I drove to my parents’ home through the country lanes of Devon. It was about Puma Punku in Bolivia. Monumental slabs of stone sixty-five tonnes or more slotted together like Mortise & Tenon joints, as if a carpenter using sixty-five ton slabs of stone was building some crazy big wall. It hurt my mind considering how this was possible within our current understanding of the physical world. The joints are so tight no knife can be slotted between them. Carpentry with massive stone blocks. Yet no chisel marks can be found. Making Stonehenge look like a load of Jenga blocks compared to Lego. The stone blocks came from two quarries up to fifty miles away and there’s evidence that these quarries produce blocks of four hundred tonnes, where were these now?

  There are also carvings in the ruins of what looked to me like ET coming through a door surrounded by cartoon chickens and dinosaurs. I was trying to picture what a four hundred tonne stone block would look like as I pulled into my parents’ drive and parked. I pressed the button to put on the handbrake of my van and reality hit me like a sock of rancid butter across the face. End of daydream, reality was back.

  I sat in the van for what felt like ages going over what I was going to tell my parents. They had seemed surprised to see me back in the UK after all. Even more surprised to see me get a 9 to 5 type job in the area I grew up in and begrudgingly accepting that I was doing this with a girl I had only met little more than six months earlier.

  Well, Devon had everything apart from mountains and it had one other thing that nowhere else in the world had for me. Friends, friends with a history that was more than twelve months old. Friends I went to school with. Supportive, accepting of embarrassing tales, and non-judgemental; mostly! Importantly to me, they’re also always ready to go to the pub and put the world to rights. Some nights after a few pints it honestly felt that if we were put in charge we could solve so many of the world's problems. I think this is the same overconfidence that allows me to talk to women in bars all over the world no matter whether we have a common tongue or not. I also often wonder if our leaders are also permanently half cut, as if they’d been in the pub too. It would explain a lot.

  I had often felt my French or German was much better after a few pints. I would not want to be a politician after a few though and my Mandarin, that was never helped buy drink, that was a nonstarter, much like Sambuca. Daydreaming again and avoiding the issue at hand. I needed to face my parents. Why face them? They were my parents, they would be supportive as they always had been, wouldn’t they? It was at this point I realised I wasn’t going in to face my parents. I was going in to face myself. I had been in my own head all morning. I had not spoken to anyone about what had happened. Stu had just let me in last night when I knocked on his door at 12.30am and had gone to work before I woke.

  My parents live in a small Devon village having moved there before I was born. They moved to the village around 2012 from British suburbia, somewhere on the outskirts of London, looking for a country life. Once there they had got stuck into village life and a traditional part of the UK had woven themselves inextricably into the fabric of the local community. This often involved the local village churches which had played a predominant part of my early life.

  Mum ran a small but successful coffee shop in the village showcasing local baking and selling local handicraft. She also had two function rooms that allowed her to host community events or parties. Dad made wooden sculptures and taught traditional woodcraft. He’d become quite adept at the pole lathe over the years. There was often a small group of people sat on bodgers stools looking attentively towards Dad when I got home from school. The only reason they were not locals now was that they had no ancestors buried in the cemetery.

  They lived in a family home on the outskirts of our village, a detached four bed with large garden which ran down to a hillside stream that bisected the village. There was a small two-acre woodland the other side of the stream that my dad had bought when I was about five. I have many happy memories of building bridges over the stream, damming it up and playing in the woods with my two younger brothers. Both of whom live away from home now. One in Australia as a land manager of some sort and the other in IT and closer to home. It was he I had to thank for introducing me to Carla and my current life-changing predicament.

  In many ways that home and the woods had encouraged my love of being outside. I was currently sat on my folks’ slowly degrading driveway with various hardy flowers and grasses coming through the deep red bricks. This was next to my mum’s wildflower front garden that encouraged so many bees and insects. In the summer it could be considered an adrenalin fuelled ten metre race from the drive to the front door. My parents were not fans of formal gardens, more of encouraging nature in all its beauty. They strongly believed this reflected God’s beauty.

  As I opened the door of my beloved van the noise of the August insects feasting on the flowers hit me. Even in Mum's garden actually hearing an insect noise over the noise of the village was rare but the day was warm and still and no noise of hay-making could be heard. Today though was a busy day for insects by all accounts. I may love adrenalin sports but having been stung four times on the head as a kid I decided to use the side gate and go around the back, no point in unnecessary risks.

  As I went through the gate. I shouted, “Mum, Dad?” It was Saturday morning so they could be easily be away at the local market.

  “In the kitchen!” shouted Mum. “How are you? I wasn’t expecting to see you today. I thought you’d be on Dartmoor with Clara or something.”

  That innocent statement sent my stomach crashing through the floor. Although I’d faced so many challenges out in the world the next few steps into the kitchen felt like I was eight thousand metres up on the south face of Everest; each step took effort. I hated failure and this felt like failure. A failure to hold together a relationship, a failure to judge people correctly. Again hindsight is a wonderful thing. Clara was obviously not the right person but less than twelve hours since the revelations I still felt raw and exposed. Right now the home I grew up in was still my refuge, even at twenty-six with thousands of miles and years of travel under my belt. I had never put down roots anywhere else, support networks were definitely few and far between and I suddenly knew the value of them.

  “No, Mum, there’s been a bit of a change of plans there,” I said trying to put a humorous tone on the comment. But my voice cracked as I said it. Mum put down the jam jar she was about to sterilise. Too many blackberries again I guessed.

  “What do you mean?” replied Mum trying to look relaxed but with that rather obvious concern only a worried mum can manage.

  “We broke up last night.”

  “Oh…”

  Mum just looked at me waiting for me to fill in the blanks. I sat down at the table and the kettle Mum had been boiling was put to use making a cup of tea. How British, I thought. In other places, I mused, Schnapps was often produced at times like this, no matter the time of day!

  “Well?” said Mum eventually. “You can’t just come in say that and then clam-up. You’re not your dad.”

  That brought the first genuine smile to my face for what seemed like ages. It felt good and washed away much of my melancholy and reserve. “I found out last night that she has been cheating on me with Doug.” No point in hiding anything, I thought. Those were the facts after all and hindsight again is useful. Maybe I should have waited for Mum to swallow that mouthful of tea before blurting out such a blunt statement. We spent the next few minutes mopping up the table and putting the recently sterilised jars back with the jars waiting to be sterilised whilst I filled Mum in on the details.

  With two new cups of tea and a plate of her famous cookies now on the table, we talked for ages. I felt some relief that mum had never met Doug. He too was a relative newcomer into my life. As all good mums do she was on my side and said many of the right things. However, when she said, “You know your dad and I will be relieved. We felt that Clara was c
hanging you and not for the better. Everything you’ve done for, and with, her since you met was the polar opposite of what you’ve done since you left college. It must have put a lot of pressure on her too, to see that change from the person you were before.”

  “What do you mean ‘the person I was before’?” I said slightly bemused.

  “Adventurous, driven, imaginative, restless.”

  “I’m still those things,” I said.

  “Working Monday to Friday, nine to five?”

  “Yes,” I replied in a mixture of indignance and uncertainty.

  “Really? Where’s the adventure? Where do you see yourself in six months, six years from now?

  “I was hoping it would be with Clara. Maybe starting a similar adventure to the one you and Dad have had here!”

  “You’re so different from your dad and me. Clara is a big city girl, make-up, shoes, bars, and all that. Last Saturday when I saw you after your shopping trip to Exeter I’d never seen you look so bored and frustrated. Clara looked ecstatic with her new dress, shoes and perfume.”

  “I was trying to save money. We’re, no we were, saving up for a deposit and I can’t justify the new hiking boots I want if I’m not doing any trekking anymore.” What had happened? This was almost becoming an argument.

  Softly Mum said, “Repeat that sentence for me please, and listen carefully to what you are saying.”

  I remember starting that sentence. I stopped quite quickly. Mum psychology is a dangerous thing. It strips away your defences while you are not looking. Why was I saving up money and Clara spending it? Thank God we did not have joint accounts! Come to think of it that dress was the one she wore out last Saturday when I now know she was meeting up with Doug. Ah that hurt and made me angry. I’d been at home working on a college course to try and get a promotion in my new career. Medical sales it turns out is fairly cut throat. You’d think selling things people need would be easy. That at least explained where my drive was. However, now sales seemed empty without a reason to meet the customer.

  We sat a little longer, Mum watching me think and me looking out the window to our small patch of woodland.

  “Good blackberry season again this year,” I said eventually.

  “Yes,” said Mum with a smile on her face. “You can help me catch up as you’re here. I told Dad I’d have this done when he got back. And assuming he’s not talking after the market he’ll be home in twenty-five minutes.” We both knew Mum and I had at least an hour.

  “Can I stay for lunch?” I asked. “I’d like to see Dad and find out what his latest adventures in the wood have uncovered.”

  8.1Back into the wild

  There are three good things I found out about one hundred per cent commission sales jobs.

  1. When you have a CV that does not fit into employers’ expectations you can get a job in sales.

  2. When you have a reason to sell you can make sales.

  3. The notice period you need to give is not long.

  During my time back in the UK trying to begin a normal life, all three of these facts had their very specific purpose. Originally I thought that all three would help us get on our feet while we set up our lives and we worked out what we wanted to do. What I realised over the month following the break up was that motivation is everything in sales, without it closing is hard. However, in the type of 100% commission job that I had being able to walk away at a moment’s notice was liberating.

  In the first two weeks after Clara I think I closed three sales. I had been closing eight a week before and my boss was rapidly losing patience with me. I was close to finding out point three can work both ways. I was one week away from being given no more leads!

  That weekend Stu and Barnacle decided to take me out to a local crag with some new friends I had not met before to try to cheer me up. That was as much a turning point as being told ‘I slept with Doug’ by my ex. The climbing trip was the positive change I needed.

  We headed down to Dewerstone just north of Plymouth. My favourite granite crag in the south-west. Some impressive multi-pitches and evermore single pitch sport routes. Ever since global warming properly kicked in around 2020 the once damp crag had been drying up and the damp moss that once covered the rocks in the narrow wooded valley above the river Plym had been receding year on year. Global warming has been proving all but the worst predictions conservative. This increase in climbs at Dewerstone was a tiny consolation.

  We drove down in my van, the VW THE1. The first generation VW Transporter series with a one hundred per cent hydro-electric engine. This van was my pride and joy. When in Europe it had been my home. It even had a split screen as an homage to the original VW camper. I could get one thousand miles per litre of distilled water from my baby. The worst pollutant was the rubber I left on the roads!

  We pulled into the car park and hiked upstream to the crag. Stu had brought a new harness he wanted to try and Barnacle, as always, had forgotten something, this time it was his rope. No matter where we went and how often we checked we could not get anywhere with Barnacle without something unexpected happening. What I did not know was Barnacle had got himself a new HTC AlphaWon with the new ARM quantum-nano chip and EXUni graphene battery on an 8G contract. It meant that even deep in the narrow valley where no normal signal could reach he could speak to anyone on the planet. The phone acted as its own signal tower and could last a year on a normal charge. I had not been keeping up with tech and this was all new stuff to me. Within an hour Barnacle had a new rope thanks to a solar-drone delivery from Amazon that homed in on his phone. That was cool.

  We got set to climb Vala in the Devil’s Rock area. A sweet multi-pitch we had done many times before.

  “Stu, Barnacle. How are you?” came a shout from the path by the river. Two girls were there, the two that Stu and Barney had been teaching to climb during my last sojourn in the Alps. They insisted nothing was happening between them and that it was all about the climbing. This was the first time I had met these two girls and they looked like they could climb and were worth teaching to climb! Clara was becoming a memory.

  “Amy, Chase, come on up!” shouted Stu back to them.

  My sense of humour was fighting my sense of propriety. I just wanted to work ‘Chasing Amy…’ into some innuendo filled insensitive remark to my mates. I got the impression this would be a mistake. I stayed quiet.

  Stu had been single now for a few years and the last girl he had dated we had made occasional laddish jokes about. He had not appreciated this. Stu was a fit and healthy typical surfer type with sun bleached blonde hair and naturally tanned skin. Although I am not gay I could never understand why he did not have women lining up. Barnacle, on the other hand, was tall and skinny with long black hair in dreads, deep brown eyes and looked like he bathed only on his birthday. He wrote a very successful climbing blog and consulted with Exeter Uni’s College of Engineering, testing products they wanted to be put through their paces outside the lab. This meant he very much kept his own hours and when not climbing was gaming and getting geeky with tech. He was normally fighting off girls and showed absolutely no interest in any kind of relationship beyond his climbing harness or latest handheld gadget.

  Amy was about one metre seventy and looked like track or gymnastics were her background. She had fair hair and blue eyes. Chase looked to be of mixed oriental background and also appeared very sporty, about one metre sixty and looked like she normally worked in an office with her painted nails. Both looked happy to be there and the speed they got kitted up showed they knew what they were doing.

  “Chris, this is their first multi-pitch,” said Stu. “Barney’s going to lead the first pitch. I’ll go up to pitch two. Can you see Amy and Chase up to Barney then me and lead the third pitch? Barnacle can then climb through with the girls coming on after. I can then clear pitch three and meet you at the top. After that, it’s the pub.”

  “That sounds like a wrap,” I replied. “It’s like being on holiday with someone else guidin
g!” I tried to make it sound like a joke at my expense. It back fired.

  “Drop it, Chris,” said Stu. My sense of humour was still not tuned back in enough to use in public yet. Stu had been guiding with me for a couple of years but had had to come home to look after his mum after a car crash which disabled her and killed his dad. He now had a job that paid the bills and allowed him to look after his mum. He managed to get out climbing about twice a month if he was lucky. He missed guiding.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Let's climb”

  That climb showed me what I love to do. Help others enjoy the outdoors. I got more enjoyment showing Amy and Chase how to second and climb a multi-pitch than I ever got selling medical supplies. And not just because they both looked great in a climbing harness. Carla did not like to climb. The best I could do with Carla was a half day walk on Dartmoor. I was truly beginning to wonder what chemical imbalance had led me to fall for her. Mum’s words were ringing in my ears as we topped out of Vala.

  “That was awesome!” said Chase as we packed up the kit ready for the descent. Seeing the genuine joy on her face was as good as any pay cheque.

  “If you like that there are loads of other climbs all around the SouthWwest from sea cliffs, inland crags, quarries and small bouldering spots we can take you to,” said Barnacle. “Have you checked out my South West UK climbers guide on my blog?”

  “I checked it last night,” replied Chase. “I wanted to see where you were taking us.”