Back to the source: Mark Hooper’s latest walk takes him to his birthplace.
‘I’m 49. Divorced…’
‘And are you falling apart?’ [laughter]
‘…Yes.’
Not my words, readers – but rather the words of an anonymous caller to an unknown radio call-in show, re-enacted and re-recorded for Paddy McAloon’s sublime 2003 album, I Trawl The Megahertz.
It would be a little melodramatic to say those words had haunted me over the past 22 years. But I can’t deny the impact they had on me when the album was re-released (under the Prefab Sprout name) in 2019 – a few days after my 47th birthday – and became a regular go-to listen during the various lockdowns a few years later, with its themes of isolation, despair and the healing power of music. If not haunting, it would be fair to say I felt the refrain as a cautionary whisper in the ear as, aged 49, I found myself separated, if not yet divorced. ‘Don’t fall apart’ seemed quite apt (if bottom-level) advice as I moved into a rented flat, forced to reconsider the straight track that my life had seemed to be following until then.
I only mention this because – on the eve of my 53rd birthday, as I prepared to head to my birthplace, Totnes, for only the second time in my life (the first was a bit of a blur to be fair), I read a post on social media from someone I have followed and admired for some time. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you your career is over when you hit 50,’ they announced with life-affirming gusto. Except, rather than affirmation, I found his good intentions had the reverse effect on me. My God, I thought, do people really say that? It had never even crossed my mind that my career might already be past its sell-by date. So thanks for that.
But that post did at least prompt a reaction from me. Tired of being gaslit by wannabe tech bros and world leaders alike – and equally in despair at the left-wing echo chambers in denial at how they’d enabled it all – I decided to finally quit social media. I originally intended to slip quietly into the night but, realising that I had a group of friends I only communicated with through Instagram, I created a post announcing I was about to quit and to DM me to stay in contact. Inevitably, this left the impression with some people that I was making a Grand Gesture and was – in the words of Paddy McAloon’s faceless caller – Falling Apart.
The truth was the exact opposite. The day I quit – Year Zero of my new social media-free life – I was in a moment of rare blissfulness. Sat outside my own little #cabininthewoods (as bookmarked in my Airbnb wishlists), listening to Devon birdsong and the gentle trickle of a stream, I picked up my phone to check a different kind of stream – and made my Last Post. I was halfway through a long weekend, exploring the South Devon coast with Dee, retracing places I knew only vaguely from faded family photos – Totnes, where I was born, Kingsbridge, where my mother worked, and Dartmouth, where we had all lived before I could remember.
Our little cabin was the epitome of an off-grid bolthole (albeit with a Netflix account). We arrived in the dark, with the rental car’s in-built satnav offering up a rough approximation of our destination. After a few about-turns, we finally found the entrance to the property – a long, single-lane track off a single-lane road, bordered by those towering hedgerows that the West Country does best, obscuring all sightlines. All this made the morning scenes even more pleasing, as we awoke to a view across soft, sunlit rolling hills that we had been oblivious to when we arrived in the deep darkness of a Devon midnight. It’s easy to slip into pastiche and cliché here, but it doesn’t help matters that the landscape was so unrelentingly stunning. In search of some reality, we set off for the nearest supermarket.
I must admit, I was expecting a moment of revelation in Totnes, and it took a while to come. There is an undeniable mood to the place. The faces were typically warm and welcoming, but I felt myself trying too hard to fall in love with the crystal shops and vegan restaurants, the quaint painted murals and eccentric sculptures peering over walls. I came for connection, but I couldn’t escape the feeling of being a tourist in my own ‘place of origin’ – somewhere, I realised, I knew only from writing its name down in endless forms. It wasn’t disappointment as such, but I did feel a twinge of jealousy as a young girl gave a nod of recognition to Dee, who was born thousands of miles from here, in a different continent, on a different ocean.
But, suddenly, as we wandered under the bridged archway into ‘straight’ Totnes at the bottom end of town, I felt a pang of recognition. Something about the juxtaposition with normality made me see the magic. And then there was the River Dart. Even if I didn’t know Totnes, I knew the Dart. It rises high inland, on Dartmoor, just north of Ashburton – where two of my oldest and dearest friends lived – and flows through Buckfastleigh (adding that extra kick to Glasgow’s finest tipple), before running almost apologetically behind a mixture of commercial and residential buildings in Totnes. I can’t explain how, but something about seeing the Dart winding its way along the edge of the town made me feel like I was home at last.
Later, we followed the river to Dartmouth where – as you may have guessed from the name – the Dart reaches the sea. We crossed to the other side of the estuary by ferry as foot passengers, following a short, steep road to the church perched on an outcrop above the river’s mouth. From this idyllic setting, as we read the tombstones and gazed at the impossibly beautiful scene below, sounds drifted up to us from below, as two locals moaned about the council and the traffic and refuse collections. I wanted to shout down to them to forget about their bins and look in wonder at the view that had awed some of the greatest sailors and explorers the world had ever known. But instead, I smiled inanely at them as they scowled back at me, just another grockle clogging up their footpath.
Back on the other side, as we trudged past boarded-up pubs and restaurants shuttered for the off season, we read blue plaque after blue plaque dedicated to overachieving maritime figures – detailing in just a few sentences their unbelievable tales of bravery and adventure, occasionally tempered by questionable colonial associations. Finally, we found refuge in the chippy to end all chippies, with freshly caught fish, battered within clear sight of where the boat had landed, and typically warm, cheeky, kind Devonian staff who included us in their gossip, unlike the suspicious couple on the other side of the Dart.
And then I went to the toilet – and at last, I felt like I’d finally found my spiritual home. As I stood over the urinal and perused the nicotine-toned nautical chart wallpaper inches from my face, I smiled at the soundtrack – the shipping forecast replacing the usual piped-in soft rock playlist. Very postmodern. Except, as I listened, I realised this wasn’t in fact the shipping forecast, but rather ‘Shipping Forecast’ – a poem by Brian Perkins (I googled it). Speaking with familiar, Received Pronunciation vowels, the disembodied voice took on an increasingly surreal air. Part Richard Dimbleby, part Stanley Unwin, the slow intonation slowly morphed into nonsensical rhyme:
Forties, fifties, sixties, Tyne, Dogger, German Bight, French Kiss and Swiss Roll: westerly, becoming cyclonic, good.
Humber, Thames, Bedford, Leyland-DAF, Dover Sole, Hake, Halibut and Monkfish: regular outbreaks of wind, rain at times, good.
Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Ginger Rogers and Finistere: light flatulence, some rain, very good.
Lundy, Fundy, Sundy and Mundy: wind South West, becoming cyclonic, bloody marvellous.
Rockall: sod all wind, heavy showers, absolutely incredible.
I tried to explain the joke to Dee but, coming from a different ocean, she didn’t recognise the obscure references. But, weirdly, it was only then that I really felt myself. I had cast my net, dragged up buried memories, and cut them loose. I had looked out on the same waters that had enticed the greatest navigators for centuries. And, at last, I realised it was what was out there, not what was behind, that drove us all forwards. I took a few photos, posted them on Instagram, and then, the next day, deleted my account. See you on the other side.
