The Bourgeois Bicycle Caravan

Off and away. But Braunton boasted little fan-fare for the Bourgeois Bicycle Caravan as she sailed southwards, along route 27, with bow grimly aiming at France. After deliberations in Weare Giffard and some timely advise from Grandpa Sid about the dangers of pissing into funnels at great altitudes, the troupe crossed the shoulder of mighty Dartmoor. Not before camping in a pikey stronghold that housed all manor of immobile mobile homes and some “loud-as-fuck” owls.

Once Hellybutt had decided that it was far more beneficial to not trust the lies of locals, who had obviously never left the confines of their village, the road suddenly became clear and the descent began into the ancient port of Plymouth. The ferry booking to Roscof was also professional executed.

It seemed that the idiots had taken over in Plymouth and Bodean was glad to be leaving his pagan kin behind - “HOIST THE GODDAMN ANCHORS” he screamed as the ferry pulled away.

Rain is plip-plopping off all the eaves in North Devon. Hellybutt watches the undersized street outside. Cars go by. Different colours and sizes. One car beeps, this small back-road is being used as a bypass for some bad town planning. He wonders who the head council man is and by God look at the harrowing situation he has unwittingly created, there’ll be blood on his hands before long. Wow - the bicycles still weren’t ready and the village was getting smaller everyday.

Then the phone rings and Jimmy Bodean is the barer of proactive news down the line. He says he just received a phone call from an Eye-talian leather dealer. Bodean tries to emulate a kind of accent, but it’s no good. Yeah yeah yeah. What did he say? Hellybutt wants to cut to the chase. And so it turns out that Andrea, from just outside Venice, has got some real good looking leather saddles and bicycle bags, that could possible find there way to the currently static caravan.

So everybody cheered the very next day when the rain stopped, the bicycles came out of the workshop and the Eye-talian was true to his word. Those seats looked better than the geriatric cycles they was put on top of. And somewhere off the western coast of France a seabird circled hungrily above the churning sea.

And so it goes - they came together in Cardigan town, there was Del da Foster, Harold Hobart Hellybutt and Jimmy Bodean. It seemed like a good place, with a big river running out to the sea, but no otters in it to be seen. Had the local people been lying to the three of them?

“No time for goddamn otters!” muttered Bodean.

He was right they supposed, they had meetings to attend. Not before da Foster and Hellybutt purchased Swedish hunting knifes, which in minutes had nearly sliced some fingers off.

Bodean led the way, as the others swished and cut the grey air close behind, and soon enough they were in a velvet adorned room being greeted by Sir howies Dukem. It was understood that howies Dukem had made his fortune in textiles and was now interested in expanding into the caravanning business. Tea and biscuits clinked and slurped away and it appeared that they had mutual objectives, that sure a deal was to be made - all the while a guy  called Dick Dasterdly (maybe an acquaintance of howies Dukem) sat in the corner crying over his lazy dog.

Time was overdue and da Foster went off to a ferry terminal in Pembroke - he wanted to go drinking in Ireland for a few days and thumb through old libraries - and so he went, and Bodean and Hellybutt charged towards Devon to pack up the infernal caravan and left Dukem and Dasterdly to turn the cogs and chastise that woeful dog.

A seemingly easy question which can be afforded a simple answer. We are James Bowden – Englishman and Photographer – a man who gathers flowers constantly and will come each time you call. We are George Foulds – writer and sometimes lost Tasmanian. And we have long been friends.

But life is seldom that simple and people don’t always know who they really are and so it goes…

James often believes he’s a man called Jimmy Bodean, who is a true artist in search of the image perfect. This will be captured in the final dying throes of a seabird, so Bodean says. And George knows his real name is Harold Hobart Hellybutt, an author of two incomplete novellas and numerous poetic failures. In the interests of artistic self-preservation and rambling adventure, the duo has embarked upon an expedition, which will be forever known as, ‘The Bourgeois Bicycle Caravan’. 

Plunging southwards along the western seaboard of France, the caravan will be a concert of motion, conducted from the seat of a bicycle. There will be trailers brimming full with necessities. Surfboards, cameras, pens and pencils and books of Russian beat poetry. This experiment will no doubt encounter waves of consequence, Wild West frontier folk and an endless road of tumultuous joy. But will this bare the fruits so desired by Bodean and Hellybutt?

Climb aboard the contorted caravan, as the first horn blows on the hunt for the wounded seagull…

…

Jimmy Bodean - picture man  (aka James Bowden)

Harold Hobart Hellybutt - scribe (aka George Foulds)