P’s and Q’s

Honiton, Devon is a beautiful place. In June I was there for the wedding of my niece, Holly Eleanor Davidson to Christopher Whitmore. Having spent 5 weeks wandering and wondering aimlessly around the United Kingdom, I always reflect back to the country where I spent the first 38 years of my life. We left in 1991 not because we were unhappy in Britain but because we wanted to try something new. New to me but not to my wife, Irene, who was born and bred in Vancouver. Britain is a stream that changes yet stays the same.

It changes because the world changes. And yet its quirkiness and its sense of humour remains much the same. So as I walked up the main street of the old village, maybe town, of Honiton, I popped in for a coffee.

“Yes, my love, what can I get for you?”

“A flat white please.”

“Coming right up, sweetheart,”

“There you go, Darling.”

OK, so not all of those terms of endearment occurred in the same place at the same time, I am economical with the truth. But throughout my time I was called all of these sweet nothings. So if I used those terms in Vancouver with complete strangers I would be given short shrift. Being brought up to ‘mind my P’s and Q’s”, these were perfectly acceptable labels in my youth. But as L.P. Hartley famously said, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” Not always, Dear Reader, not always it would seem, but a smidge of zeitgeist never hurt anybody eh?

In a world where the language police are out in force, where pronouns are somehow supposed to express a feeling when previously they were merely there for an observation, I should perhaps have taken offence. After all, they maybe hinted at ageism. A suggestion that this wrinkled, limping ancient was not up to much anymore, certainly in body, and therefore it follows, his mind must be weak. (This last could well be debated effectively). What the people in the hire car shop, the café, the petrol station did not understand is that I have never cared what people call me. The people who talked to me thus were neither patronizing nor condescending. All comments were delivered with a friendly, open smile, like suddenly I was the best part of their day. That, in itself, would be pretty sad, would it not?

Leaving London to fly home I had to take the tube during rush hour. The crowds and attire of my fellow passengers suggested that they were all mostly rushing to work. So, as I bumped my two wheeled cases down the short flight of stairs at Archway Station, a young woman in an obvious hurry asked if I wanted a hand. I declined but, in some ways, I wish I hadn’t. What makes a complete stranger, her mind full of thoughts about her work day, the children she has just dropped at school, have the awareness to even pose that question? Further what makes the cheek-by-jowlers in the jam packed underground train suddenly stand up and offer me their seat? I would have liked to ask her and them what makes them offer such random acts of kindness. But, Dear Reader, there is a time simply to be content with the question and to abandon the answer curled up and asleep in the corner.

On my drive to Scotland in my hire car, I was blissfully unaware of the workings of the vehicle. I was consumed by the joy of the journey and the prospect of seeing my good friend, with the result that I ran out of gas/petrol 6 miles south of the town of Dunbar. It was early evening, the sun was shining and I had no alternative but to begin to walk. The A1 is a busy road so within half a mile, I decided to come off it and head across a field to a B road. I arrived there and discovered from a passing cyclist who jokingly offered to ‘gie me a backie’ that the road was rapidly becoming a footpath and bike lane, no longer available to motorized transport. Before it became thus, however, there was a gypsy encampment. About 15 people were setting a fire from which to cook. I knocked on a caravan door and asked for help. Bob, the grandpa, borrowed his son’s car and drove me into Dunbar. The first stop at Asda had a self serve petrol station but no place to buy a canister for gasoline, the second place did. Bob was chatty. He had lost his wife the previous year. He told me that they had just come down from Inverness. We came back to my car. We filled it up. I offered him money which he refused to take until I told him it was for his grandchildren.  We went our separate ways. It was my foolish incompetence that led to this encounter but, I believe, that I would not have missed it for the world. Similarly pulling off the motorway for a toilet stop I found the building to be crowded. I looked for a sign that said “Men”, “Gentlemen” or even “Toilet for Anybody” would have been fine but there was no script, just pictures. I was at a loss. But I did find a sign that was in some obscure way in the shape of an human being but I really wasn’t sure so I asked a guy who was leaning against the wall supping on his coffee. I pointed at the picture. “Is that a male?” He laughed. “I’ve no idea, mate.” At this point I was desperate so I went in anyway.

Dear Reader, I always believe that if you approach people the right way they are only too willing to be a good part of your life. Bob the traveler felt good, I think, in that he was able to help. I don’t think that busy woman on the tube ever thought again about what she had offered me, same with young baristas, or the older lady in Duncan Chisholm kiltmakers. (I am sorry I didn’t make her part of this story). They were happy to help. I loved the chat and banter.

Dear Friends, that is the world that cheers. The wedding feast that is more about the company than the food and the setting, although they were wonderful enough; the small talk with strangers which is somehow memorable and therefore, no longer small; the realization that actually ordinary people are not ordinary at all but are all extraordinary. Dear Friends, I have written before about my ‘Gullible’s travels”. What can be more naïve and trusting than thinking a fuel tank that registers empty is not really thus? I guess, however, that I have again realized that the little worlds of human existence are really not small at all but, indeed, a bigger picture. After all, Dear Friends, Lilliput of the little people did have the contrast of Brobdingnag, the land of the giants, but really they were one and the same. (Oh dear, getting in over my head here, Dear Friends, apologies I’ll conclude soon.)

I cannot help feeling that had Putin chanced upon Zelensky when he had run out of gas, bantered with Zelensky  when he was buying a coffee or asked him about the toilet sign when he was unsure. Then there might have been a smile, a shake of the hand, a bit of light banter and, maybe just maybe, cobwebs would have been allowed to form over the cannon’s mouth.

“There is strife in a churning world but existence will always carry with it the seeds of its own redemption.” Adam Nicolson

 Just a thought, Dear Friends, just a thought.