Natalie

There are sometimes moments when you do not know what to do with what you have just seen or been part of.

Recently we met Natalie and her live-in care-giver Michael on a Thames ferry. Natalie suffers from very limited vision, among many other things, and was captivated when Valari showed her images from an iPad which were big enough for Natalie to actually see and enjoy.

We talked with Natalie and Michael for some time and were honored with their openness and trust of people they didn’t know. They were on a day trip up and down the river — something that Natalie can manage and enjoy from her wheelchair. She has degenerative arthritis, and several other conditions, including a skin disease which has the arresting quality of making her face seem ageless. Natalie says her mother describes her as “looking like I’m 13”. The depth of her nearly sightless eyes was, for me,  the only clue that Natalie is 35.

Her chair was comfortably placed at the front of the boat were Michael could sit close by and they could talk and she would not be bumped into, which is very painful.

After taking a few pictures, I sat down and talked with Natalie — bringing myself (for me) uncomfortably close to her face so she could see me and so we could hear each other over the boat noise.

We spoke about our lives and where we were going and what we had seen that day. Then she began talking about mobility as a big problem. I was somewhat surprised at this because in the UK it is much more common to see “disabled” people on public transport, or in the markets or along the streets. Natalie stunned me by saying that sometimes she is threatened or forced off buses by “kids” who resent her in some way and express it by making her expendable. She and Michael live in a lower income east London suburb and last week were taken off a bus when some one said: “We’ve got three buggies trying to get on but there’s no room! Get the fuckin’ chair off the bus, get the fuckin’ chair off so the mums can get on…!!!”

So, how do you respond to a sudden plunge into the dark side of the life of someone obviously challenged every minute of every day?

Why did I talk to her to begin with — curiosity? the photographer’s reflex? guilt at my own good fortune,? not wanting to ignore her like everyone else was?

It’s clear that many of us avoid engaging  with “disabled”  people because we immediately sense a host of these uncomfortable questions.

The best answer I have is that I probably sought out Natalie because of my own selfish human wish to make contact with another and guessed that she might be, by virtue of daily practice, more at ease than most of us with quickly getting to answering and asking the essential question: “who are you”?

In any case, it has me thinking about:  why am I much more reticent to talk about real life with so many “normal” people?

I hope Natalie and Michael took something good away from our short time together — I am sure about that. I know she and the questions will stay with me.

Walking With Chris

Yesterday we, at last, managed to get together with our friend Chris whose taxi service has become our regular means of getting from Heathrow to the boat. After riding with him for a short while last year, we knew he was a special one and that we were happily moving into friendship beyond business.

Chris bought the taxi company about 10 years ago and has turned it into a thriving enterprise with nine driver’s. That said, it does not appear to be making him a fortune because each driver keeps all his fares and pays all his expenses. The former company was primarily a luxury chauffeur service, outfitted primarily with Rolls Royces. Chris now has just one Rolls which they keep for weddings,  while most driving is done my modern cars like Skoda or a large 8 passenger Vauxhall van. Chris’s clients are primarily executives visiting the UK and boaters needing rides to his friend’s Wyvern Shipping Company, a canal hireboat service in Leighton Buzzard, which is how we met last October. He does also serve as de facto chauffeur for a duke  as Chris says, “it’s “Your Grace” when he has others with him, but, when were alone, I bloody well call him Peter and he calls me Chris”).

Chris (our age) is married to Pamela (probably 10 years older than Chris and native of Zimbabwe , formerly Rhodesia). They met in the early 1980’s when she was on holiday in London and have two gorgeous daughters and two equally stunning granddaughters.

Chris and Pamela live in a modest and relatively recent (1980’s) part of the Milton Keynes in Buckinghameshire. They picked us up in his beloved Skoda sedan at the Nag’s Head Pub, near our mooring beside the church in Great Linford.

After lunch, Chris and I took their dog “Pickles” for a long circuitous walk through their neighbourhood — which, surprisingly, contained a large verdant park area and a small river winding through two small lakes constructed as part of the development, but now looking quite natural. Vestiges of the past are somehow seamlessly integrated into the modern. For example, below a primary school , the path over the river crosses a short bridge of huge flat stones dating back to Roman times.

Pickles is a Jack Russell terrier of approximately 16 years and a “rescue dog”, as I think every dog I’ve met here has been. Age notwithstanding, Pickles strained against her lead until we were safely across the road and into a nearby park where Chris unsnapped her lead and let her bound ahead, sniffing at mysterious scents and proving herself an indefatigable pisser equal to any male; anointing reed and bush and path and flower with quick intensity. I think, on our way back home. she was actually discovering and remaking her own “spots…”

Soon after we crossed the stones, Chris and Pickles and I met a young mahogany-skinned man and his shy pixy-like three year old daughter. Something clicked in Chris (later he said it was the man’s accent) and after the usual greetings Chris asked where the man was from. He replied “Zimbabwe, sir!” It turns out he was born in the same town as Pamela (although years apart — Pamela is in her 70’s). The man “Lukka” immediately began talking about how he longed to return to Zimbabwe and “fight for my land” saying: “the British came along and said “here’s how you can fix your problem (the end of Rhodesia and rise of Robert Mugabe): change your country — become a South African!”. So, Lukka did this and, also using the fact that his grandfather was Scottish, he and his Lithuanian wife move to the UK in 2002, where their daughter was later born.

As the daughter skipped ahead,  Lukka began talking more and more passionately about his wish to regain his land, but “look at my daughter, being in England means food for my daughter — you see sir?” I did, I I also saw with a stab of sadness that his eyes were bleary and bloodshot and that very likely he was drunk or on drugs of some sort. “If was just me I would go fight –I would fight — a man must fight for his home!! You see, sir?” he asked me.

We parted when the daughter wanted to stay and watch a pair of nesting swans by the lake while Chris and I, it turns out, had miles to go… Soon, coming toward us on the path was a colourful threesome — a fifty-ish woman, a much older woman, probably her mother,  and a Jack Russell terrier on a lead. The older woman was walking with the aid of a pair of those canes that have extensions and arm cradles for stability. At a range of about 10 yards, Pickles (not on a lead) launched forward to engage the enemy and soon the path was a chaos of noise and maneuverings as Pickles charged at the other Jack Russell — barking but not biting — and the assembled group of dogs and people began a slow circular dance of loud hostility — with Chris shouting for Pickles to “heel” meanwhile assuring the women that Pickles would do no harm — with the rival terrier’s master shouting: “Yeah — well this one will bloody well KILL your dog”. Meanwhile mother swung into action, loosing her wrist crutches and attempting to strike Pickles as our terrible ensemble rotated slowly on the path.

It was over almost as quickly as it began with Pickles being caught by Chris and snapped back onto his lead. The women collected themselves and the groups parted quickly with downward glances — not another word being spoken. In the sudden silence it was an inexplicably British moment.

The Blacksmith

Today I met Bob Nightingale a blacksmith of forty years who runs his shop just near the entrance to the Blisworth Tunnel. Bob is an honest man with honest stories to tell — and he will tell them to you until your ears fall off….
He’s the sort of relentless raconteur that part of you wants to immediately escape — but the other part is fascinated with. I chose to listen, and an hour later was a wiser and better man.
Bob knows his place. He knows that he is one of the few carrying on an age-old tradition of personal pride in craft and excellence. He is the modern maker of all things that only a blacksmith can make. Once these things were nails, hinges, plow blades, lock plates and tolls of all variety — now they are custom arrow tips for the elite who seek to become one of “The Queen’s 100”, the finest archers in Britain who are part of HM’s personal guard( if she ever goes to war) and swords for competitors in horse mounted competitions that require striking 6 targets in 180 yards at a full gallop. Bob also makes more pedestrian gear like two-prong tips for narrowboat “boat hooks” and small scale fireplace tools for boat stoves — and coat hooks and candle stands for the tourists. He has had eight apprentices who spend a year just learning how to work the forge and the hammer — before they can move on learning to create with iron and steel.
Last week Bob went back and made a sewing needle at the forge — just to be sure that he still could do it.

Bob will tell you that his coke-fired forge will heat to 5,000 degrees and that a real blacksmith with land 7,000 blows with his hammer in an average day. He has been asked often to make Damascus steel blades. but rarely does when the customers learn that it takes three months to forge the billet from which a blade will emerge. He says that a King’s sword would take one man one year to create. Yes — think — “Game of Thrones”.

Bob has a son who is an accomplished gunsmith who makes specialised rifles for the elite of Britain’s sniper core. The son works at an undisclosed location where there are many people who do not want to be known or named go to get “fitted” for individually crafted weapons — including large-bore sniper rifles designed for a helicopter mounted prone platform. These guns are currently used by Britain in the effort against Somali pirates which requires a very heavy and accurate bullet that can penetrate the pirate boat engines.
Bob showed me a photograph that he had accidentally taken into the sun which he believes reveals the existence of our solar system’s “missing planet” that has an orbital cycle of 3,000 years, moving perpendicular to the rest of the planetary orbits.

By now I am edging toward the door with my boat hook tip in hand, and wishing him well in the continuation of his craft — and hoping that his uniquely wonderful British eccentricity will also be carried on by other fearless story tellers.

I returned just in time to arrive back at the boat and find a gaggle of primary school kids and their teachers admiring “Stardust” — so we ended up inviting them to walk through the boat, including our 19″ telly. They were exceedingly polite, fascinated with the toilets and as thrilled as a bunch of chattering birds to be on a real narrowboat! Who knew we would become a tourist attraction so soon?

Upon leaving one young girl solemnly asked: “are you sad because you have such a small TV?”