Learning to Sing

“Don’t talk to me about Margaret Bloody Thatcher”, his knuckles white as they gripped the Bakelite steering wheel within the shabby cab of an old Daf, articulated lorry.

I was struggling to hear him over engine noise and the roar of tyres on asphalt but it didn’t matter, he, an ex-soldier with pop-eye arms and a squint to match, was in mid-rant of a well-practised routine, and here was another hitch-hiker to be educated. This was before the great coal-miners’ strikes of the mid-80s, before the decimation of the UK’s steel and ship building industries, though these disasters were just around the corner.

How did I get to the point where I was sitting in the cab beside this character who was clearly struggling with anger-management issues?

Much of my twenties was spent trying to work out who I was; in the RAF I wasn’t a great pilot, I would get out of a fast-jet flight thinking ‘thank God I’ve just survived another one’, I was too naive for the police (regardless of what they thought), running a couple of hotels improved my understanding of the human condition, but deep down I knew that I was still out there - unknown. In truth it was only in my mid-thirties that I really found my groove, but the corner was turned ten years earlier.

It’s remarkable to me now looking back that as a 20-something I could have been chasing the suburban dream; wife, two-point-five children, golden retriever, estate car parked outside the country house, sports jacket and flat cap. And the reality at 25 years of age was that I didn’t even have the flat cap. Whatever I was doing was not working, it was evidently time for a re-boot – I was going to do some travelling, leave everything to fate, and let the chips fall where they may.

It was over 30 years ago that on a crisp dawn in early March, I awoke from a restless sleep. The day had finally come; my rucksack packed, tent and sleeping bag attached, I closed the door on a grey apartment, on a grey life…this was a massive leap in the dark.

I lowered myself gently in to this great new adventure; from Scotland I took a bus to London staying overnight in the YMCA near The British Museum. The following morning I made my way across town, walking along pavements of lonely, empty, head-down people, mustn’t catch anyone’s eye, and never, ever smile! I understood those people all too well, that was me the previous month, but already I was changing; the sun was shining in a blue sky, buildings were suddenly full of sculptures, where had all these trees come from, busker music meshed with the city hum as a marching tune for my journey.

In the 1980s hitch-hiking was a regular form of travel, particularly for service personnel who wore their uniforms as identification (we used to feel safe in our own country), and for ex-service people such as myself it was still very common. I needed to get out from the city so I took the Underground to Bromley in Kent.

Eventually I was strategically standing at the beginning of a long layby with my thumb out. In no time at all the Daf of earlier lumbered past me and pulled in, I lolloped over and opened the cab door.

“I can get you to Dover”

“Great”

So there I was a few miles on, trapped in the cab of an almost-out-of-control truck listening to the rage of an ex-squaddie. The Falklands War had been a political exercise to win an election, the country was being duped, we were all pawns in a ridiculous game….and so on. As the years pass I often think back to that time, the more I learn the more I think he had a point. Lord knows what he made of the mine closures, the armies of ship-workers and steelworkers dumped on great human scrapheaps, monuments to short-term profit. All of that was destined to happen within the following two years; his head probably turned increasingly deeper shades of red until it exploded.

But at Dover we nodded goodbye, I jumped down from the cab and he pulled away waving out of the driver window with his thumb up.

Later that day I crossed the English Channel into a damp France and then spent the first night in my tent having found a quiet spot away from the road– my RAF training meant that despite the terrain and climate, this was not such a bad experience.

The perspective given by the Daf driver was new to me, I found it challenging and yet it had me asking questions. But other drivers were less forth-coming so I started to ask people about their lives and suddenly I had a new favourite hobby. The thing I had unexpectedly discovered was this; everyone has a story. Thinking back on this now it's kind of obvious, what better than to offload to some outsider you'll never meet again.

Over the next few days I made my way across France, and over the next few weeks I tracked down to the south of Spain, hitch-hiking all the while, encountering and engaging with new people every few miles of the journey:

• there was the man who had been in a coma for two years during which time his father and brother had both died;
• the couple and their children who wanted me to tell them if they should emigrate to Canada, they saw me previously, turned their van around and agreed that whatever this stranger recommended, they would do;
• at some point there was a script-writer who was trying to get his film about Santa Claus finished after the original backer lost all his money in a divorce;
• the shoe salesman who spent hours explaining how he kept track of all the different types of shoes there are;
• a woman who knew her husband had months to live, but didn't know how to tell him;
• a farmer who hated lying to his cows, he felt guilty when they would leave him for the slaughterhouse.

There were inspiring stories, there were tragedies, and everything in between, I met every conceivable emotion amongst my travelling companions.

Now remember that I didn’t know where I was going; I was travelling south as it is the only direction you can take for more than 100 miles when starting in the north of Scotland in a bus. However, in listening to all these people, more than that, in being in their presence as they spoke about things to a complete stranger rather than someone they actually knew, my mind was being broadened.

New possibilities opened up with each journey, the world seemed to be expanding and I began to realise that I would never be able to fit everything I now wanted to do in to one life-time.

The more I travelled the longer I took to cover the distance. The destination became increasingly unimportant, the joy, the learning, the discovery of where I was and who I am, was in the journey itself.

I crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from Algeciras in southern Spain to Ceuta on the northern-most tip of Africa, and later made my way on to Tetouan in Morocco. After some weeks I crossed the border, and then traversed through Algeria, from west to east, and then north to south, crossing the Sahara Desert over a period of six months and all the while meeting wonderful, fascinating people.

['Hitch-hiking' in the Sahara was just that bit different; along with any locals I would pay the equivalent of 50p to travel on whatever load was being carried, while ￡1 would get a seat in the cab, but either case food and water were covered along the way.]

I learned a great deal about myself through these encounters; Ancient Greek sculptors believed the figures they produced were already in the marble and their role was simply to uncover them - something akin to this was happening to me.

The stories from these many, many people helped form my thinking, encouraged me to keep digging, to keep chiseling (I am still chiseling), and indeed to start singing because each of us has to sing our own song.

Finally I woke up one morning and realised that the time had come to head home, I was now ready to begin my next chapter.

What I learned from my unplanned sabbatical cannot all be put into words, however here is what I can tell you:

1.      We are a social species, we think and work best in groups, we spark off each other

2.      When you are stuck, stop, let the world talk to you and be ready to listen

3.      Everyone has a story but they often feel unable to convey it, find a way

4.      There are very few bad people in this world, many times fewer than the news media would have you believe

5.      The really successful people I have met in business already knew the above four points

As for the Daf truck driver who was going to say what he thought and didn't give a damn who was listening – thank you!

[And yes, that is me in the picture, on my way south]

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Iain Maclean is a partner with M2P a management consultancy based in Frankfurt, and managing director of ICIFM a management consultancy specialising in programme direction and management.

Here are some other articles by Iain:

• Learning to Fly
• Learning the Hard Way
• Learning from the Best
• Learning the Secret to Success
• Learning from the Bridge
• Learning from Rugby