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Gerbie on tour 31
Apr. 8th, 2001 06:07 pmAs not much is happening around here at the moment, this time a travel story, of which I try to write as many as possible during this journey. This is about a chance encounter I had in New Zealand.
Dumb
Halfway through my walk I bumped into him. He was staring at the sea, in the shade of a small tree. "It's nice and cool over here", he said, "a little bit of a breeze and the shade as well." I stopped and enjoyed the shade as well, the sun was very strong today. He wasn't the youngest one around, had a stick with him, not a real walking stick, like so many wanderers have, more a big branch, broken of a tree, as big as he was himself.
We started talking about the country and about travelling around it. He loved to talk, that was evident soon enough. Retired he was, it turned out. Originally from England, but he lived on the isle of Man since a while. "I love motorcycles you know, so the Isle of Man is an ideal place for me. The locals don't like the races, the TT and the Grand Prix, but I love them. The island fills up completely, though the locals all leave on a holiday. They take advantage of all the cheap offers that are around, plenty of planes to chose from."
"On the other side of the bay you can see some beautiful houses. I walked over there a couple of days back. I'm sure it will be lovely to live there. But they wouldn't have me here in New Zealand, I'm too old. So I am hoping my son will come over here, if he gets his residency, it will be easier for me. He'll soon be graduating and they're bound to admit him." Living on this bay seemed boring to me, a couple of days was the maximum I could cope with. The view might be brilliant, but it's a hell of a long way to the civilized world. I turned it into a joke. "You need to have a decent library to live over there." His answer took me by surprise.
"I can't read," he said. "I've never been very good with words. A bit stunned I look at him. He sees my face and adds "I have all the signs of what they call dyslexic nowadays, though in my days that didn't exist yet. I was just plain dumb. But I couldn't really help it. If we were tought a new word at school, I nodded like all others and try to remember it, but when I was asked two minutes later, I'd probably forgotten all about it. The teacher got really mad at me and started shouting that I had been sleeping again, but I just couldn't remember anymore."
I asked him how he'd survived. "The missus, I am divorced nowadays though, even though we still see each other and are on good terms with each other and the children, she used to complete all forms for me and I survived. I have done several different jobs, can do anything with my hands and the bosses always liked having me around."
I kept finding it hard to believe that he travelled on his own, that he was able to find his way on airports and in strange countries. "I haven even been a lorry driver for a while", he laughed, "and always arrived at my destination eventually. Not always the best way, and quite often in my own time, but i got there. Sometimes my boss came up to me and told me 'this is easy, you've been there before' and I ended up making the same mistakes as before. I recognized a certain street, drove into it and by the end of it realised that I had to turn around there, like I had done the previous time. Time and time again things like that happened to me."
Something like a pattern in his life it seems. Another similar example: "I was in the army, they decided to send me over to Egypt and I had to write a letter home. I was the youngest at home, but the first one to join the army. The letters they send me back from England, always had lists of words I had misspelled in my previous letter. And when I put that list next to the list they had send me earlier, a lot of the words were the same every time." He was laughing about his own handicap.
I remarked that English isn't an easy language to write. You spell things completely different from the way it is pronounced. He disagreed. "I am lucky that I speak English, the whole world speaks my language these days. I think it was a good thing that we tought the Americans our language. Can you imagine if you're dyslexic and come from a Scandinavian country. Nobody knows your language. I used to be really bad at languages at school. We had French and Latin I remember and at some point German as well, but I just wrote the first word that came to mind, whichever language that was in. It was the best I could do."
His schooldays can't stand out as a happy memory nowadays I guessed. "Inside the school it was a nightmare sometimes. I couldn't read, therefore I couldn't learn anything and then you're automatically an outsider. The teachers had no sympathy for me whatsoever so I was always suffering. But I liked going to school. Before and after the school were my times. My mother took me the very first day, after that I told her that she didn't need to bring me anymore. Some others had their mums take them for ages, those were the wimps. But outside the schoolbuilding there weren't any differences anymore. I had the biggest catapult, I told you I could do anything with my hands, I always won at playing marbles. I ended up giving them away all the time, I won enough of them anyway. No I didn't dislike going to school."
"Growing up in those days, the days of the wae, was something different though. We were happy to get anything at christmas. We just knew there wasn't anything at all, so a christmas present, made by my dad, was something extremely special. I remember getting a kite once, and a model boat in another year. The times are different nowadays." He starts the usual rant of older people about the youth. Though coming from his mouth, it doesn't come as an accusation, he's not bitter it seems. "Nowadays the youth has everything, wants more and more and the things they say. I wouldn't consider treating my mom without respect in my days. If I had done something, I was a bit naughty sometimes, not a bad child, just naughty, I could end up in trouble sometimes. I was embarrased if my mom had to shame herself for me. You'd made sure that that wouldn't happen. Nowadays they all want to stand out, be different, screaming for attention. We were happy not to get any attention at all, sneak away and then go around town, getting into trouble, but we were afraid of the police."
What he couldn't do with words, he could with his hands. "Never in my life have I had anybody around in my house to do anything for me. Everything I have always done myself. I even changed the roof of the house at some point. I had bumped into some cheap iron sticks, they were standing against the side of the house for at least half a year, the missus was always complaining about them. But then I took of the whole roof and replaced it myself with a new one. If there is anything mechanic I can do it myself. Nowadays with a lot of the new machines, there are some things I can't do anymore, but in the old days, there was no limit for me. Perhaps I was born in the wrong era. I would have been very usefull on one of them big ships on the oceans."
This brings us automatically back on travelling. "I have plenty of time now I'm retired, I can travel about 20 weeks every year. Apparently I have invested my money wisely. I always set aside something, not much, be it the price of a packet of cigarettes, so you wouldn't notice, but always something. And over all the years those bits together with interest on interest end up being quite a bit. And that's even after the divorce, which wasn't cheap I can tell you. She has at least taken a hundred grant of me. But I have a comfortable life of what is left. I love this country. I bought a campervan, a mountainbike and a canoe, I am really enjoying the things I see around here, there is so much to see. I have almost gained back that canoe, I have written down every hour in my journal, something only I can read, for everybody else it would be indecipherable, and have used the thing for 110 hours now. If I have to rent the thing for 5 dollar an hour, I only need a couple of hours to earn it back completely. But it's worth much more to me, as I do arrive at lakes sometimes where you can't even rent one. That's where I am peddling on my own like a prince, beautiful. When you are very quiet, you can see all kinds of lovely fish, the water is very clear here most of the time. Sometimes I miss things, but I don't mind, it gives me something to do on my next journey. There is so 's incredibly much to see and do here, you can always come back."
He keeps surprising me. "In Queenstown I have done two bungy jumps. The first one was a platform at least 400 meter over the village, a cliff like the one we stand at over here, only steeper, you could only see the town. They push you on this little platform and there you go into the depth. And after you have done that one, you could do the other one, at that famous bridge, for only 25% percent of the price. What's that bridge called again?" He couldn't remember the name and I can see on his face that he's trying very hard. He seems ashamed that this had to happen to him here and now. As if this is the final proof that his teachers were right when they called him dumb. "The A.J. Hackett bridge", I help him. "That's the one", he accepts, though still with an somewhat shamefull look in his eyes. "At least the second time I knew how to go down, not just fall, but really jump forward. I have got it on video now as well. Good to show the kids when I'm back home." His face is beaming with pride now.
His children are very important to him, it shows clearly. "My son is still in university, he hopes to finish soon. The daughter is a bit older, she will get married soon. I am already getting nervous, as it is tradition that the father of the bride does a speech. I am afraid that I'll stand there and nothing will come out, speechcards in my hand and no word from my mouth. Everybody will stare at me in expectation and I can't read what it says on my cards. When that happends I'm afraid I can't control myself. The easiest way out is shouting or swearing. 'what are you looking at?' That would be the most logical thing to do, but I can't do that, can I. While swearing you lose your anger, your energy. From my days in Egypt, the swearwords are the only words I remember in Arabic." He laughs again, but it is clear that this speech had occupied him for a while now. I try to comfort him and tell him that it might be a good idea not to prepare anything at all. " Just stand there at the moment and say whatever sprngs to mind about your daughter. She is your little girl, you can always say something about her, and it's not really important what exactly you say, more the way you say it, the intention is there, it doesn't matter if it is short."
He's laughing now at a memory. "I can talk for ages here, so it shouldn't be a problem. I was best man at my cousin's wdding once, I still don't know why the hell he chose me for that task. I had my speech prepared on little cards, to be used in the afternoon at the reception. These were the days when drink-driving wasn't forbidden yet. Well, it was, but they didn't have those little breathing machines I mean. The day started at ten in the morning, we had one then, one before the ceremony and so on. By the time I had to do my speech, I was farily drunk already. I got up, took my cue-cards and saw everybody stare at me, awaiting my speech and I couldn't read a word anymore. There was a huge silence until the bridesmaid who set next to me, got up and started reading from my cards. Everybody was laughing. The next thing I remember is waking up in a strange bed." Remembering the disaster, still laughing about his own stupoidity he draws an important and logical conclusion. "I shan't drink at my daughter's wedding, at least not until later in the evening."
he still ends up in situations where his handicap is bothering him. "Sometimes I need to complete a form, for a bank or something. So I get some help to do that at home and arrive there and they ask me to do one more line with my address or something. And that's when I shut down completely. I just can't do it. I have to grab my passport or driver's licence to copy it from. I can't even see letters then, I just copy the signs and lines I see in there. I notice that people look at me then, but there is nothing I can do about it. Over here I had some problems with a campsite. I arrived and they told me in reception to go to number 14 or 15. And then they change their mind and tell me to go to 23. I walk away and repeat '23, 23, 23', but by the time I come to the door, I have forgotten. I turn around and ask. '23', and then I drive on the campsite, come close to 14 and 15 and can't remember where I am supposed to go.
It is one of the examples of small, normal things, who become major obstacles for him sometimes. Things we wouldn't think twice about, for him are real problems. He starts a story about his brothers. "There were four of us, the three of them were all intelligent, I was the dumb one. They all graduated from universities, in the days that it was important to know a lot of things, knowledge was very important in those days..." Here he loses his point, doesn't know anymore what he wants to say. He tries to remember what the story was about, mumbles a few words and I can see that he is trying hard again. I can't help him here, he's lot the plot of this story. Doesn't get it either.
Still there is no need to feel sorry for him, no need for pity. " I have managed to survive all my life. Sometimes I get friends or relatives telling me to go and see a psychiatrist, but I don't feel the need for that. I have gotten to 66, don't need any help, live on the Isle of Man, where I sometimes drive a 150 km/h on my bike, just done bungy jumping in New Zealand. Can you imagine that they found something that caused it, that there is a switch and it is solved. Doesn't appeal to me at all, it's fine with me this way. I have enough dosh to survive, though I am not rich (the divorce and the financial disaster it was for him gets another mention here) but I've got enough to have a good life. I still pay for my son's studies. He's living in London in the house of my stepson and his wife. We never got on actually, he was a major reason for the divorce (again he laughs at himself, not sour, just ridiculing himself), he now lives the way I told him back then. But he wouldn't listen in those days. When it's not your own blood, you never understand each other as well. Though now he is lodging my son and doesn't even want any money for it. But I like to pay. He is my son and I don't need presents from others. So I pay."
We have stood for quite a while at this point now, the cliff looks nice, the shade has gone though, the sun has moved on. Several people have walked passed, in both directions and since a couple of minutes a German backpacker I met nearly a forthnight earlier has joined us. The thing is, I like to hear him talk too much, to pay any attention to her now.
"Now I still don't know how long this walk was", he tells me, 'we've been talking for such a long time. But I guess it's more than the two and a half hour they have signposted at the beginning. Was my mountainbike still there when you walked past?" he asks me now. I confirm this and he looks chuffed. "What a beautiful day today, only son, no cloud as far as you can see, it's a lot drier out here than at home." I can't stop myself from telling about the nine metres of rain the westcoast over here gets annualy. "That's quite a lot, I always thought the 24 inches in west Anglia were a lot. On Man we get 48 inches, that's double already. 9 metres is a lot. But I could live here comfortably. Who knows what'll happen in the future." It sounds as a nice closing statement. I would have liked to ask him so much more, but for the first time a pause breaks up the waterfall of words he's thrown over me previously. I decide to continue the walk to the viewpoint where he's already been. He will return to his mountainbike. I am English enough by now to conclude with a "it's been nice talking to you", but he's obviously much more English than I am. "My pleasure. I love to talk." That answer didn't come as a surprise.
Dumb
Halfway through my walk I bumped into him. He was staring at the sea, in the shade of a small tree. "It's nice and cool over here", he said, "a little bit of a breeze and the shade as well." I stopped and enjoyed the shade as well, the sun was very strong today. He wasn't the youngest one around, had a stick with him, not a real walking stick, like so many wanderers have, more a big branch, broken of a tree, as big as he was himself.
We started talking about the country and about travelling around it. He loved to talk, that was evident soon enough. Retired he was, it turned out. Originally from England, but he lived on the isle of Man since a while. "I love motorcycles you know, so the Isle of Man is an ideal place for me. The locals don't like the races, the TT and the Grand Prix, but I love them. The island fills up completely, though the locals all leave on a holiday. They take advantage of all the cheap offers that are around, plenty of planes to chose from."
"On the other side of the bay you can see some beautiful houses. I walked over there a couple of days back. I'm sure it will be lovely to live there. But they wouldn't have me here in New Zealand, I'm too old. So I am hoping my son will come over here, if he gets his residency, it will be easier for me. He'll soon be graduating and they're bound to admit him." Living on this bay seemed boring to me, a couple of days was the maximum I could cope with. The view might be brilliant, but it's a hell of a long way to the civilized world. I turned it into a joke. "You need to have a decent library to live over there." His answer took me by surprise.
"I can't read," he said. "I've never been very good with words. A bit stunned I look at him. He sees my face and adds "I have all the signs of what they call dyslexic nowadays, though in my days that didn't exist yet. I was just plain dumb. But I couldn't really help it. If we were tought a new word at school, I nodded like all others and try to remember it, but when I was asked two minutes later, I'd probably forgotten all about it. The teacher got really mad at me and started shouting that I had been sleeping again, but I just couldn't remember anymore."
I asked him how he'd survived. "The missus, I am divorced nowadays though, even though we still see each other and are on good terms with each other and the children, she used to complete all forms for me and I survived. I have done several different jobs, can do anything with my hands and the bosses always liked having me around."
I kept finding it hard to believe that he travelled on his own, that he was able to find his way on airports and in strange countries. "I haven even been a lorry driver for a while", he laughed, "and always arrived at my destination eventually. Not always the best way, and quite often in my own time, but i got there. Sometimes my boss came up to me and told me 'this is easy, you've been there before' and I ended up making the same mistakes as before. I recognized a certain street, drove into it and by the end of it realised that I had to turn around there, like I had done the previous time. Time and time again things like that happened to me."
Something like a pattern in his life it seems. Another similar example: "I was in the army, they decided to send me over to Egypt and I had to write a letter home. I was the youngest at home, but the first one to join the army. The letters they send me back from England, always had lists of words I had misspelled in my previous letter. And when I put that list next to the list they had send me earlier, a lot of the words were the same every time." He was laughing about his own handicap.
I remarked that English isn't an easy language to write. You spell things completely different from the way it is pronounced. He disagreed. "I am lucky that I speak English, the whole world speaks my language these days. I think it was a good thing that we tought the Americans our language. Can you imagine if you're dyslexic and come from a Scandinavian country. Nobody knows your language. I used to be really bad at languages at school. We had French and Latin I remember and at some point German as well, but I just wrote the first word that came to mind, whichever language that was in. It was the best I could do."
His schooldays can't stand out as a happy memory nowadays I guessed. "Inside the school it was a nightmare sometimes. I couldn't read, therefore I couldn't learn anything and then you're automatically an outsider. The teachers had no sympathy for me whatsoever so I was always suffering. But I liked going to school. Before and after the school were my times. My mother took me the very first day, after that I told her that she didn't need to bring me anymore. Some others had their mums take them for ages, those were the wimps. But outside the schoolbuilding there weren't any differences anymore. I had the biggest catapult, I told you I could do anything with my hands, I always won at playing marbles. I ended up giving them away all the time, I won enough of them anyway. No I didn't dislike going to school."
"Growing up in those days, the days of the wae, was something different though. We were happy to get anything at christmas. We just knew there wasn't anything at all, so a christmas present, made by my dad, was something extremely special. I remember getting a kite once, and a model boat in another year. The times are different nowadays." He starts the usual rant of older people about the youth. Though coming from his mouth, it doesn't come as an accusation, he's not bitter it seems. "Nowadays the youth has everything, wants more and more and the things they say. I wouldn't consider treating my mom without respect in my days. If I had done something, I was a bit naughty sometimes, not a bad child, just naughty, I could end up in trouble sometimes. I was embarrased if my mom had to shame herself for me. You'd made sure that that wouldn't happen. Nowadays they all want to stand out, be different, screaming for attention. We were happy not to get any attention at all, sneak away and then go around town, getting into trouble, but we were afraid of the police."
What he couldn't do with words, he could with his hands. "Never in my life have I had anybody around in my house to do anything for me. Everything I have always done myself. I even changed the roof of the house at some point. I had bumped into some cheap iron sticks, they were standing against the side of the house for at least half a year, the missus was always complaining about them. But then I took of the whole roof and replaced it myself with a new one. If there is anything mechanic I can do it myself. Nowadays with a lot of the new machines, there are some things I can't do anymore, but in the old days, there was no limit for me. Perhaps I was born in the wrong era. I would have been very usefull on one of them big ships on the oceans."
This brings us automatically back on travelling. "I have plenty of time now I'm retired, I can travel about 20 weeks every year. Apparently I have invested my money wisely. I always set aside something, not much, be it the price of a packet of cigarettes, so you wouldn't notice, but always something. And over all the years those bits together with interest on interest end up being quite a bit. And that's even after the divorce, which wasn't cheap I can tell you. She has at least taken a hundred grant of me. But I have a comfortable life of what is left. I love this country. I bought a campervan, a mountainbike and a canoe, I am really enjoying the things I see around here, there is so much to see. I have almost gained back that canoe, I have written down every hour in my journal, something only I can read, for everybody else it would be indecipherable, and have used the thing for 110 hours now. If I have to rent the thing for 5 dollar an hour, I only need a couple of hours to earn it back completely. But it's worth much more to me, as I do arrive at lakes sometimes where you can't even rent one. That's where I am peddling on my own like a prince, beautiful. When you are very quiet, you can see all kinds of lovely fish, the water is very clear here most of the time. Sometimes I miss things, but I don't mind, it gives me something to do on my next journey. There is so 's incredibly much to see and do here, you can always come back."
He keeps surprising me. "In Queenstown I have done two bungy jumps. The first one was a platform at least 400 meter over the village, a cliff like the one we stand at over here, only steeper, you could only see the town. They push you on this little platform and there you go into the depth. And after you have done that one, you could do the other one, at that famous bridge, for only 25% percent of the price. What's that bridge called again?" He couldn't remember the name and I can see on his face that he's trying very hard. He seems ashamed that this had to happen to him here and now. As if this is the final proof that his teachers were right when they called him dumb. "The A.J. Hackett bridge", I help him. "That's the one", he accepts, though still with an somewhat shamefull look in his eyes. "At least the second time I knew how to go down, not just fall, but really jump forward. I have got it on video now as well. Good to show the kids when I'm back home." His face is beaming with pride now.
His children are very important to him, it shows clearly. "My son is still in university, he hopes to finish soon. The daughter is a bit older, she will get married soon. I am already getting nervous, as it is tradition that the father of the bride does a speech. I am afraid that I'll stand there and nothing will come out, speechcards in my hand and no word from my mouth. Everybody will stare at me in expectation and I can't read what it says on my cards. When that happends I'm afraid I can't control myself. The easiest way out is shouting or swearing. 'what are you looking at?' That would be the most logical thing to do, but I can't do that, can I. While swearing you lose your anger, your energy. From my days in Egypt, the swearwords are the only words I remember in Arabic." He laughs again, but it is clear that this speech had occupied him for a while now. I try to comfort him and tell him that it might be a good idea not to prepare anything at all. " Just stand there at the moment and say whatever sprngs to mind about your daughter. She is your little girl, you can always say something about her, and it's not really important what exactly you say, more the way you say it, the intention is there, it doesn't matter if it is short."
He's laughing now at a memory. "I can talk for ages here, so it shouldn't be a problem. I was best man at my cousin's wdding once, I still don't know why the hell he chose me for that task. I had my speech prepared on little cards, to be used in the afternoon at the reception. These were the days when drink-driving wasn't forbidden yet. Well, it was, but they didn't have those little breathing machines I mean. The day started at ten in the morning, we had one then, one before the ceremony and so on. By the time I had to do my speech, I was farily drunk already. I got up, took my cue-cards and saw everybody stare at me, awaiting my speech and I couldn't read a word anymore. There was a huge silence until the bridesmaid who set next to me, got up and started reading from my cards. Everybody was laughing. The next thing I remember is waking up in a strange bed." Remembering the disaster, still laughing about his own stupoidity he draws an important and logical conclusion. "I shan't drink at my daughter's wedding, at least not until later in the evening."
he still ends up in situations where his handicap is bothering him. "Sometimes I need to complete a form, for a bank or something. So I get some help to do that at home and arrive there and they ask me to do one more line with my address or something. And that's when I shut down completely. I just can't do it. I have to grab my passport or driver's licence to copy it from. I can't even see letters then, I just copy the signs and lines I see in there. I notice that people look at me then, but there is nothing I can do about it. Over here I had some problems with a campsite. I arrived and they told me in reception to go to number 14 or 15. And then they change their mind and tell me to go to 23. I walk away and repeat '23, 23, 23', but by the time I come to the door, I have forgotten. I turn around and ask. '23', and then I drive on the campsite, come close to 14 and 15 and can't remember where I am supposed to go.
It is one of the examples of small, normal things, who become major obstacles for him sometimes. Things we wouldn't think twice about, for him are real problems. He starts a story about his brothers. "There were four of us, the three of them were all intelligent, I was the dumb one. They all graduated from universities, in the days that it was important to know a lot of things, knowledge was very important in those days..." Here he loses his point, doesn't know anymore what he wants to say. He tries to remember what the story was about, mumbles a few words and I can see that he is trying hard again. I can't help him here, he's lot the plot of this story. Doesn't get it either.
Still there is no need to feel sorry for him, no need for pity. " I have managed to survive all my life. Sometimes I get friends or relatives telling me to go and see a psychiatrist, but I don't feel the need for that. I have gotten to 66, don't need any help, live on the Isle of Man, where I sometimes drive a 150 km/h on my bike, just done bungy jumping in New Zealand. Can you imagine that they found something that caused it, that there is a switch and it is solved. Doesn't appeal to me at all, it's fine with me this way. I have enough dosh to survive, though I am not rich (the divorce and the financial disaster it was for him gets another mention here) but I've got enough to have a good life. I still pay for my son's studies. He's living in London in the house of my stepson and his wife. We never got on actually, he was a major reason for the divorce (again he laughs at himself, not sour, just ridiculing himself), he now lives the way I told him back then. But he wouldn't listen in those days. When it's not your own blood, you never understand each other as well. Though now he is lodging my son and doesn't even want any money for it. But I like to pay. He is my son and I don't need presents from others. So I pay."
We have stood for quite a while at this point now, the cliff looks nice, the shade has gone though, the sun has moved on. Several people have walked passed, in both directions and since a couple of minutes a German backpacker I met nearly a forthnight earlier has joined us. The thing is, I like to hear him talk too much, to pay any attention to her now.
"Now I still don't know how long this walk was", he tells me, 'we've been talking for such a long time. But I guess it's more than the two and a half hour they have signposted at the beginning. Was my mountainbike still there when you walked past?" he asks me now. I confirm this and he looks chuffed. "What a beautiful day today, only son, no cloud as far as you can see, it's a lot drier out here than at home." I can't stop myself from telling about the nine metres of rain the westcoast over here gets annualy. "That's quite a lot, I always thought the 24 inches in west Anglia were a lot. On Man we get 48 inches, that's double already. 9 metres is a lot. But I could live here comfortably. Who knows what'll happen in the future." It sounds as a nice closing statement. I would have liked to ask him so much more, but for the first time a pause breaks up the waterfall of words he's thrown over me previously. I decide to continue the walk to the viewpoint where he's already been. He will return to his mountainbike. I am English enough by now to conclude with a "it's been nice talking to you", but he's obviously much more English than I am. "My pleasure. I love to talk." That answer didn't come as a surprise.
