It was 1996 and I had taken part in a nocturnal, deep undercover, animal rescue event and, to cover my participation, I had swapped vehicles with my friend. I had parked her vehicle in a back street of a town I did not know and had been picked up for the rest of the journey by fellow activists.
My friend and I were similar to look at, from a distance.
We both had very long natural and uncut hair. We never wore shoes and we wore only natural fibres.
We did a lot of stuff together.
She had a rock solid alibi with witnesses, so I thought we were both safe from being connected to the daring and dangerous action I had taken.
About a week later, her hand converted living vehicle, an ex army Dodge truck, was stolen from outside her ramshackle pied-de-terre and we put a call out to the network of New Age travelers for clues.
She got a phone call to say that the Dodge had been spotted on a remote farm in Yorkshire and without letting any of us know, she took off hitching to go and retrieve it.
Not a word was heard of her for 3 weeks.
Then at 7am one morning I got a reversed-charge phone call and it was my friend asking me to come and pick her up. "Where are you?" I asked.
"Durham" she croaked down the phone and gave me the address of the phone box.
I phoned the office where I worked and left a message on the answer machine that an emergency had come up and I would not be at work that day. I drove to Durham in the company car, knowing that I was putting over a thousand miles on the clock and would have to hide it somehow.... it did not matter, I could sort that.
When I reached Durham I found my friend in a shocking state.
She was bald-headed and not dressed in her own clothes.
She was transparent and had lost a lot of weight.
She was crazy and wild-eyed one minute, then dozy and incoherent the next.
As I drove us back to Essex she managed, with great difficulty, to tell me her story.
When she had arrived at the Yorkshire farm in the early hours of the morning, she had identified her Dodge instantly and had beaten on the farmhouse door but received no answer.
She found an axe in a woodpile and started axing the door until the police arrived and despite her efforts to explain, they arrested her and kept her in custody. She was subjected to a lot of interrogation and did not know exactly where she was. She remembered little of the questions that had been asked but I could guess.
She was sectioned.
Next they accused her of being flea and lice ridden.
Her beautiful waist length hair was shaved off.
She was given injections and chemically coshed so badly that she remembered little else.
For weeks I tried to keep her at my home or at least keep track of her movements, but she refused to stay put and was drinking rum like water. She rarely ate.
Then suddenly, I got a call from a mutual friend saying that she had been found under a hedge and was dead.
She was wearing the clothes I had given her and her last words to me had been "Don't worry Fran, I am a hedge-witch!"
They had murdered her. I know it and now.... so do you.
I have grieved the loss of two of my closest activist friends for 20 years now.
In this case I blamed myself because I felt sure that she had been set up.
I will never know for definite, but I think that the authorities believed that she was involved with the action I took.
The other friend died within a few months of that terrible event.
She was one with whom I did some of the most daring swimming activism I have ever done (nothing I can put into writing)....
After a very suspect drug dealing case, she was robbed of her child by social services - which drove her to completely lose interest in her life and to drown her sorrows in drink and drugs.
She died sleep vomiting in her own bed and her mother asked me to clear her flat - because I was her closest friend and happened to have a big hi-top LDV truck at the time.
It took me a week to transport the most precious things and share them out to various friends and relatives.
To make sure that her son had all the photos and essential paperwork that I could find.
To find room in my own home for the things I could not bear to see dumped or sold, such as her artwork, homemade costume jewelery and some of her precious books.
I still wear one of her tie-dyed over sized tee-shirts, even though it is faded and very threadbare.
At her funeral, her mother shocked me rigid by referring to her daughter as a waster, a ne'er-do-well and a drug addict.
I was sitting right at the very back of the church with many of our mutual friends.
My gasp of horror echoed around the church and then, to make matters totally unbearable, they buried her.
She had always been very specific that she wished to be cremated and her ashes taken out to sea, where we had trained for months together. Burying her was a final act of dominance for which I could not forgive her mother.
I was invited back to the family home and only went for the express purpose of telling the mother the truth about her wonderful, self sacrificing, dedicated daughter...... which I did and I did not mince my words.
Her father, also my family doctor, hugged and kissed me for doing so.
I don't think that any of my words sank into the mother.
She was pissed out of her tiny mind.
Ever since I lost these two precious friends, I have often been asked why I am so passionate about living off grid, eco-activism and the traveling lifestyle.
It is simple really.
I live for the 3 of us.
I knew them so well that I know what they would do, if they were alive now and apart from consuming too much drink and drugs, which I was always physically intolerant of, I have continued with their passions.
We shared a lot of interests between us.... things like eastern religions, dancing, tarot, palmistry, art and crafts.
We were the archetypal hippy chics of the 70s & 80s. We partied hard, sang our souls out at Greenham Common and swam like the fish, whales and dolphins we tried to save.
I don't think I will ever stop missing those two wild women.
Wonderfully written and so sad. At least you have the knowledge they left this earth having tried to make it better, no consolation of their murder I know.
We live in a society where people don't not think for themselves and do not see the massive issue here are even the possibility this goes on. Thankfully the paradigm is changing and your friends has contributed to this. Its stories like this that inspire the next generations to keep making the changes that will see this world change... Thank you for sharing 💯🐒
What a beautiful, wonderful remembrance of two dear spirits. Thank you for sharing it.