In order to show to Joni Mitchell my new work alongside the model of the book that I projected, all I had to do was to jump into my car with all the artwork that I had done since 1983, stored in the car’s back seats and in the boot. And in the front space too -well, actually everywhere : there was only a meager space left in the driver’s seat, from which hardly emerged a steering wheel, and me stuck against it. Driving from Paris via the Northern Motorway, I took a ferry in Calais and finally reached the British soil in Dover.
After a stressful transit though British Customs, I stayed at some night accommodation that I had reserved, and the next morning I headed North West up to the South London area, in order to join the British M4 motorway near Reading. A true nightmare, which makes me still shiver today when thinking of it. I shall never forget my excruciating trip on the British motorways, and it is a sheer miracle that I could eventually reach Bath, at a late night arrival, and managed to painfully locate the hotel that I had booked (the Ladbroke Beaufort Hotel, today a Hilton). Consequently, I was able to show up the next day at Ashcombe House, near the village of Box, the very evening when the meeting that had been granted to me was scheduled to take place.

Of course, while driving to Ashcombe House at night, I lost myself ten times in a labyrinth of small roads through the woods plunged into total darkness (with no GPS or any smartphone, at the time! ...), being contrived to stop every five minutes to try to locate myself in the light of my torch pointed at the road map previously bought in a gas station. I totally panicked at the idea of ​​being permanently lost and not being able to honor the appointment’s time that had been fixed for me, 8 p.m. precisely at Peter Gabriel’s recording studio…
When I finally reached Ashcombe House's portal, I entered into a courtyard. My car's headlights revealed a yard flanked by buildings that seemed to be some old freestone former farmhouse or a sort of a manor, with a dimly lit gate porch. I parked where I could near it.