Emma talks sex-crazed midgets, near-death experiences and post-Uni trips to celebrate the release of her new book, 'I Left My Tent in San Francisco'
After the success of her first non-fiction book, The Tent the Bucket and Me, Emma Kennedy concluded a sequel was needed. I Left My Tent in San Francisco is the story of two best friends, escaping to America post-University to avoid getting a job and, after losing their tent, facing one disaster after another.
What originally inspired your trip to the US?
It was just a big wheeze to avoid getting a proper job, that was the main thrust behind it and I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do when I left University. The trip acted as a major segway between childhood and being an adult.
There’s no doubt about it: that summer made me the person who I am today. My travel companion’s future was very clear, she had everything mapped out in terms of her job and career, we were very different and I did not know what I wanted to do.
One thing she’s said to me, which I'll always remember and is why I am a writer today was, 'Don’t panic, just take your time, have a few jobs."
It's fantastic advice: you won’t enjoy those jobs, but you do them for the money and just keep saying to yourself what is your passion. Everyone’s got one, it's that thing where you think, ‘If only I gave that a go...’ It took me a while to work out what mine was, but I got there in the end.
Would you recommend taking a big trip at the end of University?
Absolutely, I did terrible, awful jobs which I hated doing until I was 28, and then I packed everything in and decided I was going to write because I couldn’t bear the thought of not giving it a go any longer. I’m firmly of the belief that there is a job out there for everyone and you don’t have to spend your life doing a job you hate. You get one twirl of the planet and what’s the point of rocking up at an office that you don’t like; everyone has a hobby, everyone has got an interest and every single interest or hobby has loads of jobs attached to it or surrounding it. Instantly, your quality of life is better because you’re enjoying your work.
Was the US trip your first major travel experience?
Oh no I had many travel experiences as a child. All of my family holidays during my childhood were just a list of travel catastrophes. I was very used to going on holiday and dreadful things happening. I think we’re cursed as a family, it's difficult finding someone to go on holiday with now-a-days – they just don’t want to come with me.
In the book you’re faced with one disaster after another, was it really this way?
Oh yes, it genuinely, genuinely was. I think that if you put anyone in circumstances where they’ve got no money and you’re surrounded by strangers then bad things are inevitably going to happen, but its part of character building. It’s like doing national service. I always think camping holidays are like doing national service for children and our trip was our equivalent of doing national service.
Do the disasters you come up against put you off travelling? Or does it spurn you on to keep going?
Not really, since this trip to the US I’ve continued going on holidays and travelling. I've found that the better you do in life, the nicer the holiday you go on. I’ve had loads of great holidays in America, Italy and Europe, where I've stay in lovely villas and had a great time, but do I remember one single thing about them? No. Do I have one single anecdote to bring back? No, because nothing happens.
The rougher and the readier you’re prepared to be, the more fun you’ll have when you’re travelling – there’s no doubt about that. That risk taking is fun – and I think that’s something you lose the older you get because you don’t want to take a risk. The older you get the more you think to yourself ‘I’ve worked so hard, I just want a nice holiday’.
In the book, you come across a fortune cookie that stated ‘Bad luck and misfortune will haunt you for all eternity’ do you think this still stays with you?
Well it certainly came true in America. I think since, I must have done something good to counter the evil of it. I’ve still got that fortune cookie in our travelling diary... It's an odd piece of memorabilia.
Have you been back to the US since?
Yes, although I haven’t been back to San Francisco. I’ve been to LA and New York a couple of times, but it would be great to go back and revisit some of the places from the book. It would be amazing full stop, to go back to America with some money in my pocket and a credit card. That would be an extraordinary experience.
Some of our readers feel slightly intimidated by the idea of travelling to the US, what was your overall impression?
My overall experience, especially as I was coming home, I couldn’t get over how kind people had been to us. They really were (in the main) good Samaritans. We only had a few, and very few, bad experiences with individuals, and I think that really blew the both of us away. When we realised that I’d left my tent in San Francisco we really were in trouble, as we didn’t have enough money to stay in hotels and we were at the mercy of strangers.
We were staying with people that didn’t know us, who we had absolutely no connection to and it could have been awful, but they opened up their homes to us. I think that’s something that I’ll never ever forget: the kindness that we were shown and the fact that people were willing and able to do us a good turn when we were absolute strangers to them.
In the book you have a run in with a sex crazed midget. What happened there?
It was quite something, we were in dire circumstances when we met him. We’d got the wrong bus and we’d really got ourselves into a pickle because we were supposed to go to Washington, but the next bus to Washington wasn’t for another three days. The journey wasn’t covered by our Ameri-Pass because we’d gone off the route so we in effect lost half of our remaining travel funds overnight because we had to buy our tickets to Washington. There was no public transport and so we walked for ten miles in temperatures upwards of 100 degrees with no water.
We were beside ourselves. I was slightly hallucinating, my friend was too. To the point where I thought I could actually see a waffle in the sky and I told my friend and she said, ‘I’m really glad you said that because so can I.’
It was a moment where we both thought, 'Is heaven made from batter?'
No, there really was a waffle in the sky. It was on the top of a waffle house, which was hidden by the intense heat waves coming from the ground. We got in there gasping for water and the waitress took pity on us and so she put out a call and said, 'Can anyone give these girls a lift?'
We had wanted to go to Fort Pickens, which is a nature reserve and we thought we could find another tent there or something.
This guy at the back shouted ‘Yeah I’ll give them a lift’. He got up and sort of vanished from view, he was this little dwarf with a red Ferrari which had been specially designed so he could drive it. We thought we were in clover, we couldn’t believe we were getting a lift in a red Ferrari, it was the exact opposite of what we had just been experiencing, trudging up the highway with our rucksacks, it was just bliss.
We were chatting with him and we told him about what we’d been doing and we asked him what he did for a living. He told us he worked in the porn industry and at that point, he propositioned us. I didn’t say anything for a long while and we were in such a desperate, dire and awful state, we weren’t sure what to do!
Luckily, we got out of it...
Why do you think the book has taken so long to write?
I wanted to write The Tent, The Bucket and Me first. I was having Sunday lunch with my parents, we started talking about our family holidays and were literally crying at how bad they were.
So that was my first non-fiction book and because it did so well, the natural progression or follow-up would be this I Left My Tent in San Fransisco. My parents featured heavily in The Tent, The Bucket and Me and they do reappear again in this book, so it’s meant to be a perfect sequel to my first book.
It’s the same sort of theme: a journey where terrible things happen. With The Tent, The Bucket and Me, although it was meant to be about family holidays it was also about the relationship I have with my parents and how close we were and how we got through thick and thin. This is similar with I Left My Tent in San Francisco, it’s actually about platonic love and the amazing relationship you have with your best friend, that can only exist in a certain place and time. You could say, it’s just one big long love letter to my friend, Dee, who I travelled with.
You've had a very varied career (working as a lawyer, scriptwriter, illustrator)but which has been your favourite part?
This bit that I’m doing now. When I left the law, I left with intention of being a writer and what I am most passionate about is writing, which is why I am just concentrating now on books, especially children’s books. That really brings me so much joy.
There isn’t a day I don’t wake up and say ‘Thank God, thank God I am no longer a lawyer!’
What’s next, are there more travel books planned?
My fourth children’s book (another in the Wilma Tenderfoot series) is out in July. In terms of grown-up books I’m going to write a fiction book; that’s where I want to go next... I think.
Mountain, ocean, jungle, desert, which are you and why?
Mountain. I love that feeling of being high up and I just love a good view.
What was your first great travel experience?
Standing on a hillside in the Garra peninsula watching our caravan falling off the cliff, that was our first family holiday.
What has been your favourite journey?
I really liked the bits on the American journey when we were on the old Route 66, it’s called the historic Route 66 now, and I really wish I could go back and do that properly.
What are your top five places worldwide?
In terms of cities: Vienna, San Francisco, Leningrad (or St Petersburg), Paris and Hamburg.
Or for the countryside these are my top three: Cornwall, California and the Alps.
Which passport stamp are you proudest of?
Russia because I went in 1984 before the Berlin Wall cam down.
Which passport stamp would you most like to have?
Australia – I’d really love to go.
Where or what is your guilty travel pleasure?
A good Cornish pasty.
