Cat’s mind is meandering while she deliberates over the pros and cons of a rucksack versus a suitcase for three weeks in France.
It’s not so much an ‘if I meet Hunter or Travis’ as ‘when’ – because I know that they’re happy to talk to any journalist who expresses an interest in their ride. So, when I meet Travis and Hunter, what shall I ask them? Dare I tap into their feminine sides and ask about the importance of their girlfriends to their performance? Would that be acceptable? Maybe I could find the girlfriends and ask for their stories – that would be a great idea. I could branch out, perhaps pitch an article to a women’s magazine.
Cat decides on the rucksack and proceeds to lay out the contents of her entire wardrobe on her bed, sectioning the clothing into don’t-take, might-take and must-take.
Mistake? Is He thinking of me preparing? Is He impressed? Untouched? Is He ever coming back? Please let France enable me to let go, to move on. Please let the physical distance mean that I won’t have to think of Him as much as I do now, when we still share the same city and my home houses His ghost.
Alongside shorts, cotton T-shirts and cotton short skirts, Cat chooses a couple of frocks but then wonders if she is being a little too hopeful. She knows there are dinners hosted by the teams, and parties on the Sunday evening of the Champs-Elysées finale. She should be ambitious.
What the hell, they don’t take up much space and they won’t crumple.
Yes, but you’ll need a suitable pair of shoes – trainers and pumps are certainly practical, but somewhat spoil the line of a nice little slip dress. And remember, the Alps and Pyrenees are prone to suddenly clouding over and becoming very wet and cold. You’ll need a fleece or two, and something highly waterproof. You’d better pack your Timberland boots.
I hope Luca has a good Tour – he’s a great rider and so colourful. The Brits are as sceptical of him taking our nationality as they are about Greg Rusedski, but I think Luca could be a useful sidekick to Chris Boardman as a publicist for the sport in my country. Chris is the consummate champ – he is to cycling what Gary Lineker was to soccer. So Luca, with his trendy haircut and his haphazard speech and flamboyant losses and crashes and triumphs, could play a different role entirely. He’d be as useful to the profile of cycling in Britain, especially awareness amongst women, as the Hollioake brothers are to cricket. I want my girlfriends to say to me, ‘Cat, when’s the Vuelta? Will Luca be racing? He’s such a spunk – that photo Marie Claire published of him alongside your article – well!’
You and me, Luca my boy, we can do something good for cycling – and, of course, for ourselves.
Cat props the packed rucksack upright on her bed and shuffles herself within its straps. She meanders around her flat and kids herself that the pack on her back is really rather comfortable and not nearly as heavy as, well, as it is.
It’s loaded – and yes, all symbolism absolutely intended.
My God, France tomorrow. I hate ferries. I can’t believe I’m almost there, that I’m going, period, that I will indeed be there. Cat McCabe and the Tour de France. Please let it last for ever.
SETTING THE WHEELS IN MOTION
Wednesday. The English Channel. 10 a.m.
How strange. On the ferry’s deck, Cat McCabe, who has fantasized about following the Tour for years, who has recently acknowledged that a change of country – if only for three weeks – would be a sensible and constructive option, has found that she is wishing she’d stayed put, that she could be back at home. She is very nervous, convinced she’s bitten off more than she can chew and fears she might choke. Oughtn’t she just to watch the Tour on Channel 4, in privacy at home as she always has? She could be on her settee, with a nice cup of tea, proclaiming aloud that the presenters, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, should have their own TV series. Or run for Parliament. Or come over to her flat for coffee and a chat.
Maybe it would just be better if I had no interest in cycling at all.
Cat experiences lurches of homesickness when the white cliffs start to shrink. Wafts of the panicky emotion gust through her more strongly than the buffets of sea air which, she kids herself, are the sole cause for her smarting eyes. Having enjoyed umpteen imaginary conversations with real or fictitious characters in the months leading up to this day of departure, Cat suddenly realizes she has no idea where she’ll find the confidence to approach such people in the flesh.
I haven’t the balls. Quite literally. They’ll take the piss, surely. Me – British and female – amongst all of them.
Furthermore, she’s had her hair cut yesterday and, though merely a variation on her common theme of shoulder length plus fringe, she doesn’t like it and feels self-conscious. The blasts from the sea breeze seem alternately to blow and suck her hair into configurations she cannot see but is convinced are queer and most certainly unattractive. She gazes at the white cliffs for as long as she knows she can really see them, trying very hard to ignore the fact that she now feels seasick as well as homesick, attempting to focus instead on France France Tour de Bloody France and all it is going to do for her sanity, her career and her future.
When does the English Channel become La Manche? Soon? Already?
Only a good few moments after Dover has unarguably disappeared can Cat finally turn her attention from inward and England, forward to France and, for the time being, her immediate surroundings. She turns her back on all she is leaving and faces the direction of travel, France, forwards, ever onwards. She glances around the deck, simultaneously keen for someone to recognize her yet desperate that no one will.
It’s strange. I suppose I presumed the entire ferry would be peopled by those going to the Tour – that we’d all be recognizable as a club of sorts and, of course, that there would be this wonderful familial feeling amongst everyone. And yet now I’m here, I have no idea who is who. Most of the passengers look like standard holidaymakers. But what specifically distinguishes cycling followers? I don’t even see any of the stalwart, anoraked, club cycling crowd that spend their Sundays traipsing the Trough of Bowland or struggling in Snowdonia. I mean, there’s a small group over there in tracksuit bottoms who look young and sporty – but they’re just as likely to have hired a villa in Brittany.
Though Cat half wants to be recognized – as a cycling aficionado of the non-anorak genus if not as the sports journalist she is hoping to become – the other half of her is quite content to be invisible. She ventures inside the ferry and queues for rubber sandwiches and plastic coffee, trying not to scan the tables too obviously for that elusive quiet spot, a hiding place. She spies one that might suffice and heads for it, looking at no one and trying to look nonchalant herself despite her bulky rucksack and wobbling tray.
‘The Prologue will definitely be Boardman.’
The sentence causes Cat to slow up instinctively.
Brilliant! I think it’ll be Boardman too!
‘I’d say Jawlensky,’ comments another voice.
No, I think your colleague and I have it with Boardman. And it’s Yav-lensky.
‘Yav,’ says the first voice.
‘Hey?’
‘Yavlensky.’
See!
‘I hardly think my pronunciation will make much difference to the outcome. Jawlensky is going to take the Prologue from Boardman, thus ending his reign.’
‘Bollocks.’
Yeah – bollocks!
Cat aborts her journey for