Travelling Tania

fer audio readin

Tania was a traveller, ay.

Tania went everywhere with an oversized backpack filled with stones from different beaches and work sites she had visited. And those stones were protected by some socks and some undies too. Tania wore the same clothes every day. She showered in them clothes and slept naked while they dried.

This was never a problem.

Tania had grown some dreadies which she was super stoked about. She’d pierced her nipples and her nose all by herself but she had to remove her nose piercing due to complications which were both disgusting and related closely to pus and to blood. She’d gone weeks without showering before, she’d eaten nothing but noodles and toast for months, she’d slept in public areas and she’d drank from several bottles of alcohol containing worms and other creepy crawlies. Tania was an A grade, certified, if-there-was-a-license-for-such-things-fully-licensed Traveller.

For a time, Tania lived in a house in London. That house was something stuck between a hostel and a hard place. It was dirty and smelly and everything was just a little bit broken. Tania loved it there. And, sometimes, Tania loved living in her little slumbum hostel so much that her heart felt like a jumping bean bouncing on a trampoline in her chest cavity and she became sincerely worried that it might get stuck in the springs and give her some sort of long term permanent damage. But, her jumping bean heart was safe and so was her home, in the ‘choice’ way of saying ‘safe,’ like ‘saaafe.’ Everything was swell. Innit bruv.

Tania couldn’t exactly put her fingertip on why she loved the shithole so much. It was like, it was almost like Christmas, Kwanzaa and Chanukka rolled into one big, breakfast burrito waiting, daily, for her to wake up and eat from it’s delicious and tasty familiarity.

There were 50 people living in the slumbum house, and they were all Travellers. They travelled at different speeds and between different countries and with varying levels of order and with varying levels of commitment to things like budgets and schedules. They were all idiots in one way or the other. And this made Tania feel really good.

Some were idiots because they were so nice, they must have been stupid. Tania liked these idiots. Some were idiots because they were so smart they should have known better. Some were idiots because they got drunk and high instead of eating and paying rent. Tania liked these idiots a lot. Some were idiots because they didn’t have very high levels of intelligence. Tania liked these idiots the best. Tania loved all of her travelling housemates passionately.

There were three couches in the hostel home where Tania the Traveller lived. People who lived there could eat and drink and sit on the couches all day in a friendly, snuggly way. They cuddled in together, nestled around the stains in the upholstery, just like family. And sometimes just like something a little more perverse than family. Those couches would surely have some stories to tell and some sicknesses to share if they were put in the position to do either of those things.

One day, Tania sat around watching Family Guy with her idiotic friends from the travellers hostel. Another day, Tania drank a bottle of whisky with a splash of coca cola to pass the time in the travellers hostel. Another time- a very exciting thing happened. But no one can remember what it was.

On Sunday the 23^rd of July, a windy and grey day, the inhabitants of the house had a small fright. The boys gasped loudly and the girls screamed a little when they saw black smoke billowing up the stairs to where they sat on their three stained couches. It was evident immediately that something was not quite right. It was a fire in their home. A raging fire! A billowing, burning, terrorizing, annihalating everything fire!

But Tania had left for Ibiza with her oversized backpack so she didn’t know about it.