Driving felt liberating to Andy. He had spent months feeling stuck, after all: in that house, inside himself. Now he would have really loved to just drive around in a convertible and feel the wind in his hair, but convertibles were crazy expensive and he suspected he was too old for a midlife crisis. The boxy white car would do.

As a still-counting-days alcoholic, he had devised a few rules to make his life a little easier. First, no stopping in any kind of bar or hostel with a bar or anything like that. He was allowed instead to treat himself to stupidly expensive smoothies. It appealed to the stingy old man inside him: ‘You ain’t gonna buy no alcohol! You already drank your money-fill!’. He also chewed on bread and stuff while driving. The way he saw it, he now was a pipe that needed to be filled with whatever he had on hand. Psychiatrists would probably have loved to talk about it. Andy wouldn’t have talked to one even if they were strapped to a chair, gagged and blindfolded. Trust issues, no one was allowed to mess with his mind. Thanks to obstinate Josh, Andy already had a therapy of sorts, anyway.

The first day he just drove until he found himself near the Mediterranean coast. Even in autumn, the land remained dry and rocky in some parts. Out of the cities, the view was a constant wonder. The temperature was still a solid seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

He would stop now and then to take a stroll on the beach and take in the wind coming from the sea, loaded with smells that made him chew on even more bread. Appetite triggered him now. Oh well.

Soon he felt a bit lonely and decided he needed something to help him connect with people. Josh wasn’t there to help with that anymore. Maybe it was time to start busking, like Josh had suggested so long ago now. How could he have gone about it? After some thought, he decided he needed a guitar. He didn’t really have the money for it, but the next morning, as he was entering the Pyrenees mountain range through a small convoluted road, he found himself in the middle of a secondhand market. Perfect opportunity to find… something. He park the car further down the road, near a steep ravine. For an Englishman like him, mountains were rare and driving through them uncanny. There was this practice of keeping the roads small enough that two cars had trouble passing each other, then honking near turns in the road. That was pure madness. What happened when people with loud music or hearing trouble were on the road? He’d rather not think about it.

He took some time to look around the market and the old stone village. From some spots you could see far enough to see the Mediterranean sea he was driving along the day before. The wind had picked up, though, and the altitude was starting to make things colder and wetter. Before leaving, Andy had grabbed a red coat from their English haul. It would come in handy now.

The market was full of old people looking around, clothes on hangers, boxes full of discarded vinyl records. Andy felt oddly young, realizing that most of the folks probably were old enough to be his parents. He wasn’t used to being the youngest anymore.

The guitar thing wasn’t new: he had tried to take it up before in his spare time but never managed to stick with it. Was there an age limit to learning new things? It was time to find out.

Rummaging through the boxes of discarded French comic books, the handmade pillow covers, the good-as-new dog toys, he managed to get a hold of a cheap ukulele that was so discolored it had probably been hanged on a wall and left there for years. It was completely out of tune, but had all its strings and the man selling it didn’t ask much for it. Andy hesitated between the ukulele and a recorder salvaged from school supplies. The recorder was probably simpler to learn, but it wouldn’t allow him to sing and badly playing “Mary had a little lamb” in the streets seemed like the most annoying way of busking imaginable. A ukulele it would be.

The man who sold it to him was a young one among the crowd: only forty-ish, he had balding hair and a rather unkempt beard. He seemed like the stay-at-home type. He spoke a broken English but with genuine enthusiasm. He attempted to tune it, then showed the ropes to Andy.

Andy soon discovered that the ukulele was not really like a guitar. You had to position your fingers differently, the strings were in a different order and the size was also different enough to throw him off. Well, he’d get it eventually. He was handed the instrument in a plastic bag for twenty Euros, a bargain, apparently. Andy couldn’t wrap his mind about that currency anyway.

That evening he stopped in Prades, the last French city before the border. He booked a cheap hostel again. Without the van and mattresses, he didn’t really have a choice. The nights were getting pretty chilly too, the temperature dropping with the altitude. He stayed in the car pretty late trying to get the ukulele to do his bidding, with little success. He tensed up to much and couldn’t get the notes out properly. But it didn’t matter! He kept at it for three hours and when he finally stopped and went to bed in the shared room he had paid for, he was feeling pretty good about himself for once.

From then on he played quite regularly, particularly when he felt thirsty or overcome with doubt. Busking or not, the instrument was doing wonders for him. In the meanwhile, he crossed over the Spanish side. The mountains gradually became redder and drier until he felt he was crossing some kind of rocky desert. Spain did nothing at first to alleviate his loneliness. He understood Spanish even less than he did French and he was shocked to discover the two languages didn’t have more in common.

The relief came later, in Madrid, where he found a young girl willing to teach him the ropes. She was a Polish traveler called Alicja and she quickly became his friend and music teacher. Was he willing to share his space with another person again, though?