Accidental Tourist: You will meet a tall dark danger

Life is full of hair-raising adventure

PARIS again, waiting for a train. Back then. I used to work until I had the fare to wherever, then make a plan on arrival. Usually Plan B, I noted as my guts caved in from hunger, was the same as Plan A, just done more frantically. It guaranteed adventure and, subconsciously, I knew I would one day make money out of it. Shivering in an alleyway behind the Gare de l'Est, I recalled the words of Céline: "Anybody who talks about the future is a bastard." Quite so.

I'd been on the streets for three days, having a splendid time eating from bins before I thought of a new trick. I'd buy a coffee in McDonald's and nurse it until someone went to dispose of their leftovers. At this point, I'd leap up and mime, with eyes like a puppy in a slaughterhouse for elephants, can I have it? Normally, depending on how crazed I looked, a feast of fetid food was mine free of charge. The hardest part was nursing the drink, which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is not my strongest point. Needless to say, I was always getting on the wrong train.

It was a long time ago or maybe only a few months, you know how quickly time passes after a certain amount of it, but I arrived back from Paris with a full winter beard, looking twice my age and not caring at all. Carrying the standard liquid offerings, I went to see a friend who lives up on the mountain. It was a faraway place, humming with sunlight and shadow. Hidden. Magical. Alive. Even the silence held its breath there.

Her house held many good memories for me and at night, as the candlelight swung and flickered over our faces in the garden and the moon-ripped ocean burned softly below, it was easy to imagine you were sailing on a clippership, madly adrift but drifting with a purpose. One dreamt of such places. One travelled to find them.

When my friend saw my new hillbilly look, she said: "Well, that's got to go!" And I honestly thought she meant me. It was decided, as I was freshly back in town, that as a treat I would be shaved by my friend and another girl, an absolute knock-out, as it transpired. A man could ask for no greater homecoming. I couldn't believe my luck. Normally, for such treatment, I have to phone my bank manager and ask for another extension on my overdraft. The wine was opened, the glasses filled and re-filled, the soap and razors prepared. My beard literally quivered in the twilight with anticipation.

The quest towards my chin began. My eyes closed, another world became apparent to me. Witty. Intelligent. Erotic. One of the better journeys I've experienced with my face. My friend vanished, leaving me alone with the knock-out and we chuckled as if we would never know sadness again. Though I was awake, when I looked at her face I awoke as if from a long sleep, it was as if a century had passed in that moment yet, unlike Rip van Winkle, I was now unbearded and real, she had found me under there. As she finished, making sure to leave a manly strip of hair under my lip, she kissed my cheek very, very gently and I felt myself falling in love for the first time in my life. All those wasted years now redeemed. How wonderful life can be when it isn't being the opposite, I smiled, my chin oblivious to half-eaten Big Macs forever.

Love has its own agenda, its own time, its destination a mystery even to those it has invited on the journey. But how many men can say they fell in love with their barber? It was something beyond my knowledge but not beyond my grasp, I hope. One dreams of such women and, wherever I go now, it is towards her I always travel.

Is there a happy ending to this? One mustn't talk of such things.

All we can do is ride the train and hope it never stops.