Chance Encounters

(Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven . . .

(Matthew 24:36)

We cannot know how much time we have left. I met Jack the other day, an old man struggling at his garden gate to bring in a freshly emptied rubbish bin, while holding on to his walking-frame. He gracefully refused my help, it being more important to prove he didn’t need it; but was glad to talk, and tell me his life-story.

Such are the chance encounters which have characterized my life. In a comment on my last, Natalie had a suggestion:

Wouldn’t it be interesting to draw an imaginary map of the trajectory your life has taken until now? Not necessarily including real geography but maybe symbols for states of mind/body/soul?

A Savonius wind turbine on an elderly neighbour’s shed

I was unready at that point to consider what she meant by it. I couldn’t imagine how the trajectory of my life could be drawn at all, couldn’t see a pattern. Furthermore, I didn’t want to go back there, exhuming my years. Yet a curiosity remains, to try and see what has shaped me, why I’ve ended up here, in a place “including real geography” which I’m totally happy with. By my reckoning, it has all been the result of chance encounters, as with the mystery of this whole universe, which includes us and the consciousness we’ve evolved which lets us perceive it.

From there on, within a framework of laws of physics and so forth, chance still rules, down to the particular mystery of how I, Vincent, came to be born. Some facts I may never know, but an outer layer of the mystery was unshrouded when I discovered my true paternity. For the next two years I avoided confronting my mother, but this knowledge leaked out anyhow, and as I’d suspected, she was upset. For the sake of self-respect she had to put together another story, parts of which sounded unlikely and can’t be verified—though it’s just possible they are true. It makes no difference now, for like every child born, here I am!—the result of two lineages combined into a single DNA fingerprint. From there on, the sequence of events in my childhood followed no ordered pattern or plan.

And when, as a new-fledged adult, I tried to take the helm on my own voyage, I still had no plan, no ambition, no vision—none, that is, which fitted anything I saw in this world. Thus I became a vagabond pilgrim with no sense of direction. When I was mired in a slough of despond, I’d grasp at the first hand which reached out. When I learned how to stay on terra firma, I followed joy, especially the kind which seems to come from nowhere. Thus uncouthly I taught myself a way to be in this world. For when you have been without stable home, family, mentors and role models, you may have no basis to frame a view of who you are, how to be or which way to go. This is no complaint; from where I stand now, there are no regrets, nothing but gratitude for Fate’s operation. I may write more about this, find a way to express it without disturbing the dust of what is past and done. But first I must discover what it is that I need to say further.

In the meantime, I’ve been meeting old men at their garden gates and sheds. Every wayfaring expedition in any case is a string of chance encounters, if it is only the inbreath of fresh air, the sight of the sky, the birdsong or a canopy of inky darkness. These things and myriad others always hit like a reminder of my ancient heritage. Within my DNA there surely lies encoded the mind and soul of a hunter-gatherer. If it’s in my DNA, it’s surely in yours too. Anyhow, one of these old men lives two streets away, in his late eighties, with a wife of similar age. Apart from its corner position, his house isn’t much different from mine. Passing by, I was initially intrigued by the strange tower, and stood trying to work out what it was, till his wife came out to empty some garbage and I asked her. “I’ll call my husband,” she said. “He’ll be able to tell you.” And so he did.

It’s a vertical-axis wind-turbine. He built it himself. He made the sheds from some special hardwood he was given by a factory owner, and which he’s used to make strong fences for himself and several neighbours. He uses the turbine to power his radio transceivers and make contact with the world, that is to say, his fellow radio hams in various continents. As he stands outside in the cold, it’s hard to tell if he’s robust or frail; and I feel it’s up to me to say something or we’d be there all afternoon, at risk to his health. So I move on. We’ve not even exchanged names, but I’ll go back when the weather is warmer and hope to bump into him again, for he has a lifetime of stories, and an eagerness to tell them. As do I, from this box of tricks, all bought off the shelf, which can publish uncensored and unmediated to the world. I don’t have a physical shed to invent and make and potter about in, only a folding workbench and a few tools and ideas which take weeks to germinate. The making takes longer, especially as without a shed I spend longer taking things out and putting them away afterwards than the work itself. The writing is a bit like that too.

I met another old man in Downley Common, off the public road system, a retired upholsterer who’s lived in the same cottage all his life. I’ve often passed that large shed, standing in a derelict orchard in an enclave I like to think of as the Independent Republic of Shedland. It’s patched with enamelled tobacco adverts of the kind common in the Fifties, especially at railway stations (click to enlarge). One day I met him there there making an exquisite piano stool, which he said was a gift for his next-door neighbour. About forty years ago his mother had given her several yards of a fine plain fabric. She had used a little of it and just recently she had given the remains back to him.

I was charmed by this slow-motion neighbourliness, in this enclave so near to my own home, where they still remember the first Queen Elizabeth’s passing through, 450 years ago. (See this post). His stories were about furniture factories long defunct, their owners, famous customers & legendary artefacts. His eyes are going now and he has arthritis in his fingers. Otherwise I don’t think he’d be retired yet. I don’t have space for his tales, but one of them involves a piece of marquetry which he remembered from the back wall of the railway station booking office: a fine piece of precision woodwork. It then found its way to the furniture factory opposite my house (which I’ve written about several times), where it was used to cover a hole in partition. He now keeps it proudly at home. It makes you see what a mass of interlocking stories, intricate in detail, stretches back across the centuries, hidden by the surfaces we see today, and in danger of being forgotten by a younger generation mesmerized by every electronic gizmo and fad. Just to be old, and ready to talk to the passing stranger, can be a service to humanity. Or so I sometimes fondly think when publishing these posts.

Battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood 1922 – 1941

I began by mentioning Jack, struggling with the bin at his gate. He’s ninety-four, living on his own for the last three years since his wife of 67 years died in hospital after a short descent into dementia. I’m not sure how I’d cope. I’ve never lived alone for more than a few weeks at a time. He too worked all his life in the furniture trade; but that wasn’t what he chose to talk about. His tale began in 1938 when at the age of seventeen, he joined the Royal Marines, “the amphibious troops of the Royal Navy”, training in Plymouth before being assigned to the battlecruiser Hood, built in 1922 but still then pride of the Royal Navy. It wasn’t long before he was assigned to war service in the Norwegian Sea, where in May 1941 the Hood was sunk in three minutes, hit by the German battleship Bismarck. There were only three survivors, the last of whom died thirty years ago. Had Jack not been called into hospital just before the Hood set sail, we wouldn’t have had this chance encounter 74 years later. As he tells his tale, a sense of annoyance at being thus left behind by his comrades is still vivid: an annoyance which has frozen forever, from the moment when still in hospital he heard someone casually reading about their fate from a newspaper. Now his wife has left too,

for such is the way of all flesh. He’s apologetic about dwelling in the past, as if it’s something he ought to overcome. I went back to see him yesterday with some profiles of his lost comrades from a website. His daughter & family were there, ready to take him on a trip to the Isle of Wight, where he plans to visit his wife’s grave. Setting aside his failing eyes and joints, Jack is a robust fellow, healthy in body and mind. I’d be proud to be as fit in twenty years’ time, if I’m spared that long.

In these old men, I see as in a mirror how the male psyche strives to stay afloat in spite of encroaching enfeeblement. Mirrors are what we need to see who we are, how to be, how to reconcile ourselves with the inevitable end, in which the Universe takes back what it gave in the first place. If we want to offer something in thanks, something more more than an urnful of compost at the end of our journey, we must do it day by day in life, not in striving but an unforced presentation of what we are, what we have learned. I saw it in the old men. When we reach the end there is nothing left to do but give and receive.