I was at Hereford ;)

Yes, I can post his picture, and yes, I can give his name, but mustn't mention who he worked for in 1979. He is happy for us to know he was in special forces (though not which), and that he was based in Hereford, but I mustn't say which wall he abseiled down, in what operation.

Lance is the security guard who began my education in Alice's attitude to Aboriginies. Have you noticed a smell and the flies around here? Those fellas never wash. The government gives them houses and they trash them, and they have a nicer car than me, but all they do is get drunk and bother people.

For all that, Lance is likeable. He is sincere. And I didn't detect any hate in him, nor even prejudice, surprisingly. Lance is a man in the front line. They are from a different culture, he says, you can't give them houses and just expect them to want to be like us. You don't go into someone else's house and tell them how to behave.

This morning on  the terrace at breakfast I had the deeply unpleasant experience of being accused of being a racist by a very earnest young man, who got up and refused to sit with me any longer, because I had attempted to get inside the head of someone like Lance. It is probably wise not to attempt to come to Australia with European views and attempt to suggest that there might be a grey area in what is a very highly charged subject, here.

Leith and June

Leith and June were obviously together. I asked; I am very direct. But why should anyone be offended, anyway. You are obviously not gay, said Leith (pink), later. Why not? I asked.

Because you would have said. But then flattered me by saying that when she had first felt she could approach me, she'd thought I probably was.

I was on a path through woods, parallel to the beach, when she asked if it was a public walkway. I thought it was. But it went through the grounds of a High school. She taught there 35 years ago.

(I told her, I am going to get the details wrong! She asked if she could check the copy. She was an English teacher, she said. No, it is better if the piece records my impressions. If the facts are wrong, it really doesn't matter.)

My first impression was of a mature couple, who love each other and are as devoted as Angie and H. I told them about Aunt Leila and Isobel who were teachers before the war and thought to be two spinsters sharing expenses - and may yet have been no more than that, though I hope I am wrong. We talked about Beth and about her friends here in Darwin. And we talked about education and politics and about how teaching isn't what it was, either here or in the UK.

Leith and June have a boat and pick up. June is a great 4-wheel driver and Leith is the owner-skipper of their 23' yacht, which they have invited me to join them on. Leith owns it jointly with her ex-husband. They have three grown up children. I said about Beth coming out when she was married, too. For Leith it was something like 30 years ago. Her children were cool about it (if anyone calls you a poof, mum, I will beat them up )

Apparently, I am going to be marrying Leith's daughter, though she is currently serving divorce papers and involved with a cultist. She'd like me, Leith says. She needs an uncomplicated relationship with an open man. 

Like someone who lives across the world, I say.

Coco and the cow in the tree

On the way to the Williamstown ferry, I stopped to get a five dollar pie at Dinkum pies and was greeted by two women with the very cheeriest of smiles. Williamstown?....My parents were married in Williamstown, in a cafe, said the younger of the two, who I correctly took for a trainee. Coco, 19 (well actually, twenty in a  month) was born in Melbourne to an Australian dad and a South American mum. She worked last year as an au pair for a French/Belgian family in London, staying with them in Greenwich, a place she loved. She will shortly be starting a training in nursing/ midwifery. But for now she says she loves the pie shop.

Coco's boss is Natasha, 31, who says she likes to give customers the kind of welcome she'd like to receive. She told me that Australians are friendly. This was not national pride boasting , for Natasha is from New Zealand. She has been here a year and a day. I was particularly intrigued by a tattoo of  an all-black airliner on her upper arm, pointing down towards her elbow - and almost like an Aboriginal bird image? As Coco talked, Natasha kept a tactful but supervising distance, moving stacks of chairs in off the street; casting occasional smiles, especially when Coco gets most passionate.

Coco made conversation as she tidied the cafe up for the 3p.m. closing, which is normal with the company (I didn't ask why). Have you seen the cow in the tree?  I wished Natsha would show me it, but knew she was closing to go to an appointment.

Coco's dad would know what this is all about and who designed it, as he is an urban designer, she told me. As I drank my coffee I asked if she'd mind being my blog subject for the day, and then she jumped on to the stool opposite me and told me what makes her tick.

Coco is a Dr Who fan. She really knows her stuff. It wasn't that Matt Smith was a bad Dr, it is that Steven Moffatt's writing wasn't very good that series. She loves the Weeping Angels, and she tells me that fans believe that when Dr Who eventually dies he will become one of those angels. It isn't an official back-story, she explains. She starts to lose me at this point. It is something she called Head story, or it isn't the Head story; I am not quite sure what that is all about. Coco clearly does, though. And she likes fan fiction, but doesn't write it. Are you my mummy? - we say in sync - Jinx! (and Coco is now scared of gasmasks - and Natasha says it all scares her; she doesn't watch).  And Coco is mad about Daleks.

aaaaaand we're back! Only, now I am in Australia. People are far friendlier here, so there really is no excuse for not getting into lots of conversations.

I missed out on skateboards and BMX

I missed out on skateboards and . . . what do you call those small bikes with handlebars that go all the way round? BMX?, I suggest. Yes, BMX bikes, he says. I'd have liked to have tried those, and skateboards. Pat, who now goes into Camelford on the bus each Friday and propels himself through the park on sticks, while carrying his rucksack, used to be a canoeing instructor. I mentioned that I have started kayaking.

Having grown up on a farm during the war, Pat was very confident driving articulated vehicles, so in the RAF he drove Queen Marys (huge transporter trailers which could move a Lancaster). In civilian life he would become a lorry driving instructor. In the airforce he was an air gunnery instructor. He'd first learnt about trajectories from his dad. If a bomber is overhead, you are safe, he'd been told, as he watched the skies filled with German aeroplanes. You only have to worry if it hasn't got to you yet.

I mentioned that my dad lived with his mum and siblings on a farm during the war too...in Wales. Sort of evacuees. Not necessarily an ideal place to evacuate to, Pat said. Living 12 miles from Cardiff he'd seen the devastating effects of bombing raids.

After the airforce he flew...just small stuff, PPL. "I fly", I said. Pat was particularly impressed when I added that I fly microlights. He is sorry to have missed out on those too. He flew Austers. He was never good enough to instruct, but he has always been a teacher, one way or another. He was a driving instructor and was always into cars. He lists them, "I had a Jaguar" but never had sports cars as they are impractical for bringing up a family. His daughter is in Australia now. Where? I ask. Melbourne, he says. With my sister, I say! Pat saw Australia in the old days; and the Far East too...but doesn't elaborate.

When he was 16 he drove an Austin 7 from Worcester to Mevagissey with a friend for a wedding. They broke down on the way, left the car behind and hitched the rest of the way, still wearing their suits, as they hadn't wanted to carry luggage. When they arrived in the middle of the night they were black all over, having got a ride on the back of a coal lorry. The lady they were staying with stripped them off and scrubbed them "behind the ears with a toothbrush" and washed their clothes, getting them ready, just in time, for the wedding. "Women, then, could really rise to the occasion". I ask what happened to the car. I don't know, he says, that was 65 years ago!

"The old people had it right. They need to bring back capital punishment. We can't say we are too civilised. Look how we keep bombing other countries...Iraq, Afghanistan..."  Well, I am with you at least on the second part of your argument, I say. He smiles, clearly sensing that he should back off on this one, though those old people get several more mentions.

My dad smoked a pipe, I say. I made him a pipe rack at school in woodwork. Pat said he didn't mind me taking some photos and while I did so, told me that people often tell him their dads smoked pipes. "Ladies lean in towards me at the bus stop, they are practically in my lap" breathing in the rich aroma connecting them to the past. "I rather enjoy it" he says with a cheeky grin.

making horses fly

After coffee with a friend, I popped into the foyer of the university where someone was working on a horse made of lolly sticks; I was intrigued and had to find out what was going on. Reuben and Lawrence, his boss, were hanging the lolly horse from the ceiling for an event tomorrow, when they are pitching to 6th formers from round the county. Reuben and Lawrence are technicians at the uni.

Now, I have a heck of a lot of respect for technicians, having relied upon them heavily when I was a design student. The simple fact is that students have bright ideas, but it is the technicians who make them fly, like that lolly stick horse.
 (And not a lolly-sticking student in sight, by the way). 

When I needed a double articulating hinge for my mobile phones design in 1992 at Bristol Poly, it was the technicians who brazed them for me. When I made my text-entry (pseudo-virtual reality) glove, it was a technician who wrote the code. They are the largely unsung heroes of any university, and standing there, lending a hand and talking about the project, made me realise I could do that! They start on 22K, Lawrence said (Grade 5, I think he said?). And what does it go up to, I asked. Well, then you'd have my job, he said. I wouldn't press it, I said. That'd be a good job, I thought. Days of being creative and problem solving. 

Lawrence asked my background. Product design, then primary teaching, I said, but keen to get out of teaching and do something practical. I forgot to mention that I qualified in design technology education and have been head of the subject in my primary school.

 Carol came over. I know she is an artist because my coffee friend has one of her paintings. I told her this. She looked pleased. She thought I might be the lollystick artist. I told her I wasn't. I told her about getting out of teaching and being something of a metalworker, and she told me about an associate programme at the Uni, where they have rentable workshops, and encourage networking between creative people, and I said I'd look up the website she recommended.

But Coffee Friend says technicians have paperwork to do, too, and that I shouldn't assume the grass is greener. But right now, just about every blade of the stuff is greener in other people's gardens - but I am not green with envy. I am inspired.

back from my blogging holiday

For reasons which close blog friends know about, I have had to take a brief holiday from blogging here, but I should be able to get back to it tomorrow, when I will finally have much more time and energy for it. I have missed it. I have several conversations that haven't been written up, but would like to return to the discipline of making it a daily thing.

I suspect nobody has missed it :) 
But just in case, I thought I ought to say something.

Eyes

On the way back from town today, conscious that no opportunity for conversation had presented itself, but distracted by my book, which I read as I plodded along, I glanced up to get safely across a busy junction and looked straight into a woman's eyes. She was sitting in a black saloon at the lights. She was about 40, hair pulled back, elegant.  I looked away politely, then back again and she was still looking straight at me. I smiled broadly and she smiled back. And we each turned away. And we laughed when we both caught each other looking again.

And then the lights changed.





.

The "B" Licence

“I knew her when she was young”, Ron said, pointing to a Thatcher biography in the bookshop window, or rather he didn’t know her as such, as she was older than him, but knew the family and did see Margaret in the shop. His brother, a socialist all his life (most British people are socialist by birth, Ron told me), delighted in being able to tell people that he had been at ICI when she had been turned down for a job; far too bossy he reckoned.

Ron’s brother was in Mosquitos during the war and served with Kate Middleton’s Grandfather as his observer. Ron served in the RAF too, during National Service, having been deferred until he could finish secondary school. He was at Grammar school “Don’t even get me started on the demise of the grammar school system.”

He went on to train to be an Engineer….pumps mainly…hydraulics….land drainage etc. We talked briefly about John’s train whistles and our success using a pneumatic compressor to get them going and Ron listed all the steam trains he had known and he told me that he had seen the Mallard, which had done its high speed trial just near where he lived, though that had been a bit before his time. As an engineer he had earned three times what a politician made, - “Don’t even get me started on politicians”, he said.

Then Ron told me that, uniquely, Heseltine got out of his National Service because he was one (which is near as damn it true).  We talked briefly about career politicians and the Gummers, father and son, when Ron qualified something by saying that all politicians should be locals. Footballers too, I suggested. Exactly, he said. Points of agreement like that are useful when you know a conversation is about to become uncomfortable, but gratifying though this had been – shame that I had dug myself into a sport hole! Luckily Ron seemed no more interested in football than I am. “Of course I liked rugby, not football. Three and six was all I got in my boot, but then I was an amateur.”

He has family in Aldeburgh but doesn’t see the attraction. Then you should see it from the air, I suggested, and at this point of shared interest he told me he had his B licence, earned when he was called up and did his National Service, first on Tiger Moths, then Chipmunks, Oxfords (I think he said), then Meteors, which is where I started to really feel blessed that I had started this conversation, though sadly we quickly got off topic, “Don’t get me started on all this flowers and counselling stuff”. You don’t feel that by not addressing trauma in your day you bottled things up and have carried the pain of it? No, he said, and told me about the drowning of a school-friend, aged 12, who had got tangled in wartime barbed wire when swimming, and whose death was announced to the whole school. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. And that was that.

The trouble with this country now, he said, is we don’t make anything. We used to when we were an Empire. Well to be fair, I said, we have Thatcher to thank for that, which was when I started to suspect that Ron did not share his brother’s politics. “And don’t get me started on immigrants.”

I like you, Ron, I thought, don’t ruin this. And soon we got on to the subject of long division. “And don’t even get me started on teachers.”

Student Police Constable Ben Redmond

Excuse me, I said, I write a blog about my conversations with strangers. 
"And I am today's lucky winner", he said. 

When I asked if it would be ok to take photos, he couldn't have been nicer about it. "I am a member of the public, just like you. Feel free". He told me that he was waiting for a recovery truck to take away an impounded vehicle, which had been driven without insurance, and then with fluency told me the rules which govern such things. Ben Redmond is a recently qualified Student Officer, which is what they now call probationers.

Only 24, it is amazing what he has already crammed in. Public sector cuts put paid to ambitions to get into the Police in Colchester, so this Essex boy applied to Suffolk. He came to the job with 4 years' experience as a volunteer Special Constable, which he did while working as a manager of a pharmacy. The knowledge of drugs, he told me, comes in handy.

One thing that really suprised me is that police officers patrol their beats on their own these days. Ben says it can get lonely. Especially so, I imagine, when you are new to policing. Only at night time do officers patrol in pairs. I think this is an unfortunate reflection on the times we live in, that when societal problems are now so complex, respect for authority diminished and violence a constant threat, officers are put at risk by working alone. And it can't be easy to learn the job when you are not paired up.

We talked a bit about the Police tractor; I told him that I am a teacher and we'd had the tractor at the school and that the kids had clambered all over it. Yes, Ben reckoned, I bet they were far more interested in the tractor than in the Police. I think it was all lost on us what the connection was between a tractor and the police in the first place, I said, and Ben told me that it has now been replaced with a flash car. But to my mind, all kids want to see is all the black kit and a police car. I got Ben to pose in front of his.

 PC 1794 Redmond's probationary year will soon be up. I have no doubt at all that he will do very well indeed. He certainly has the public relations thing down to a tee. And as we teachers know only too well, everything is about relationships. A calm, friendly yet firm approach is what modern policing is about.

garden visitor

This is a bit of a cheat - sorry!
 I didn't go out at all today.

 But while hoeing the garden, this cat came to visit.  Ordinarily I don't encourage feline visitors because my own cat, Buntu, resents it so much, and as she is very scrappy, I fear for the safety of interlopers. But whoever this very young creature was, she was  too sweet to chase off. So I let her hang out.

Wayfarer

 

I button-holed this old chap today because, even from behind, I was pretty sure his bike was a Raleigh Wayfarer, the bike my Gran bought me in 1975 to do my Cycling Proficiency on. 
And so it was!

He bought it for £20 and even for that money it was better, he said, than the modern bikes. We waxed lyrical about the build quality of old bikes, "Not like the rubbish they build today, which fall apart soon as look at them".


(I got a ticking off, though. Apparently I shot off at a tangent to talk to this chap, when my friend was in the middle of saying something to me. Am suitably admonished!)