120. Number 10

This is becoming silly.  I keep meeting strange women.  Nutter (click to see) & Brief Encounter (click to see) .  I met another two weeks ago but it wasn’t the first time I’ve seen her and on my scale of relationships she is a 2. 

Incidentally, I am a little surprised and disappointed that Wilton's Scale of Relationships, (click to see)  the system I devised for describing the level and intensity of the relationships that we have with each other, hasn’t caught on as I had expected.  I posted it in February 2010 and I anticipated that by now it would have fallen into common vernacular. 

I thought that people would be saying things like,

“Oh him?  He’s a Wilton six to me.  I’ve known him since I moved here and he’s really nice,” or,

“I don’t really know her.  She’s just a three on the Wilton scale.” 

I thought that people would know of me in the same way they know about Beaufort, Richter and Mohs, but they don’t.  I can't understand it because my scale has everyday function.  Theirs don't.  It's not windy every day; earthquakes are very rare and when did you last need to know the relative hardness of a mineral?

What is wrong with people?

I met this strange woman two weeks ago.  I was sitting on a bench at the edge of the lake in the grounds of the estate where we live.  The huge carp in the lake had seen me and six of them were at the surface, close to the edge with their huge mouths gaping open waiting for some fish food.  Unfortunately for them, I hadn’t brought any. 

I heard the noise of a snuffling dog and became aware that somebody was standing behind me.  I turned my head and said, “Hello.” 

It was a neighbour and over the past three years I have seen her several times but I had never spoken to her before.  She is probably in her sixties and, holding the lead of a black Labrador, she was looking out over the lake.

“Have you got a computer at home?” she asked, still staring past me.

“Yes,” I answered, thinking that it was a strange way to start a conversation with a stranger.

“Look at the Internet,” she said.  “I think you’ll find it interesting” and having said that and only that, she turned and walked away.

“What?” I shouted after her.  “What should I look for?”

She didn’t stop or turn her head but carried on walking towards the apartment-block some 70 yards away.  I called after her again but she didn't hear me or more likely, she ignored me.

“Another nutter,” I thought to myself.  “What is it about me?”

As I was driving home on Easter Monday morning, I saw her again.  She was walking with her dog on the long drive from the main road to the houses.  I pulled up alongside her and wound down the window.

“Hello again,” I said.

She stopped walking and looked blankly at me for a few seconds.  I realised that she didn’t remember or recognise me.

“We met by the lake last week,” I reminded her.  “I was sitting on the bench.  Remember?”

“Oh, yes,” she said vacantly, gazing over the roof of the car at the adjacent field where there were about fifty ewes, all of them with lambs prancing about in the bright spring sunshine.

“You told me that I should look on the Internet but you didn’t tell me what I should be looking for.  Do you remember what it was?”

She thought for a couple of seconds.  “No.  I don’t.”

“Are you sure?  It seemed very important to you at the time.”

She didn’t say anything but lifted her head and looked up at the trees for several seconds.

“Was it about potatoes?” she asked.

“I don't know.  All you said was that if I looked at the Internet, I'd find something interesting.”

A lamb had come close to the fence at the side of the drive and it bleated loudly.  The woman turned to look at it and smiled.  I waited patiently while she said the sort of things to the lamb that women of her age usually only say to small babies.

“Oh yes, I remember now,” she said at last, nodding her head and tugging on the dog’s lead to pull it up from the ‘sit’ position it had assumed.

I waited for her to tell me what it was she remembered but she said nothing.  She started to walk on down the drive towards the houses.   I caught her up but she didn't stop and just carried on walking.

“Aren’t you going to tell me?” I asked in exasperation as I drove slowly alongside her.

She seemed to be thinking about whether to tell me or not.  “Yes, it’s number ten,” she said eventually, pointing towards the Coach Houses.

“Do you mean house number ten?” I asked, trying not to sound irritable but probably failing.

“Yes.”

“What about house number ten?” I asked, staying very calm.

"Didn't you look on the Internet?"

"No, of course I didn't.  I didn't know what to look for."

“It’s for sale,” she said.

“Really? Is that all?”

“Yes.  They must be moving.”

And that was it.  She walked on and I doubt I will ever speak to her again.  I’ve mentioned before the differences between living here and living in London.  I realise now that there is another:

The level of gossip here is appallingly low.

3. Georgina and the mountain

I taught for 36 years.  For the first thirty of those years I taught geography and then I taught maths.  Incidentally, I hate the way Americans call it, ‘math.’  The word is mathematics and so the short word for it is, “maths!”  

I suppose that ‘math’ is preferable to the way a very highly placed official in a school district in Florida spelt the word.  He was responding to a discussion paper that Caroline had circulated to do with the Maths Strategy in Cayman schools.  No abbreviations or shortened words for him, the pompous oaf.  Five times he referred to the “Mathermatics Strategy.”

I taught maths because when I began the job of examinations co-ordinator, my frequent absences from class meant that I couldn’t really teach ‘A’ level geography anymore.

The new, dynamic Head of Maths suggested to me that as I was numerate and got on well with the weaker students, I might enjoy teaching bottom set maths groups.  What a perceptive woman she is.  I loved it.

One of the problems I had with teaching geography was that I was expected to organise and lead field trips.  I had had enough of the buggers after seven hours a day at school and I certainly didn’t want to be stuck with them for five days, 24 hours a day.  

I was 26 years old and therefore only seven or eight years older than the students.  The biggest problem with organising a field trip was that as there would be female students present, I had to be accompanied by a woman.  Although I was quite friendly with a few female teachers, I found it a bit awkward asking one to come away with me for a few days.

My fear was that I would book accommodation, hire a coach, plan the activities, arrange insurance etc and then have the "statutory woman" pull out.  I made a few approaches but got nowhere.  

A month before the scheduled start of the trip, with financial deadlines looming and with a very real prospect of enforced cancellation, I swallowed my pride and one morning I put up a notice on the staff board pleading for a female teacher to accompany me on a trip to Barmouth, North Wales. 

I was amazed that an hour after the message appeared, Georgina came to see me and offered her services.  I was surprised because I hardly knew her.  I could only remember speaking to her once when I had called her George, and that annoyed her greatly. 

“Haven’t you ever read The Famous Five?” I asked.  No, she had not, she told me icily and so I wrote her off as not my kind of person.  She also had a PhD and insisted that everyone called her “Doctor Peto”.  She had seemed distant and unapproachable.

She never came to the pub after work and she never joined in any of the silly distractions that I organised for the amusement of the staff.  Once, I had been standing near to her in the staffroom when she had scalded her hand with boiling water from the urn.  I and everyone else I knew, would have screamed a series of obscenities.  Georgina said, “Poo!”  

I knew that she wouldn’t be fun to be with, but I had no choice. “Thanks very much,” I said and two weeks later, very early on a Monday morning, we set off.

Barmouth is a lovely town.  The area has everything a geographer could want: coastal features, glacial features, mountains, arable and hill farms and a climate so mild in December that London kids actually listened when you explained why.

On Tuesday evening, we had written up our notes on the day’s work.  I had given them a scintillating talk all about corry formation, roches moutonnées, rock striations, moraines and the U shaped valleys that we would see the following day when we climbed Cadair Idris to see the splendour and the beauty that is Llyn Cau.  

Llyn Cau is an almost perfectly circular lake that is found in a corry some 800 feet below the summit of Cadair Idris.  A corry is a deep depression in the high flanks of a mountain where ice collected and a glacier began to flow hundreds of thousands of years ago.

After I had finished the evening talk, the students had a couple of hours of free time and they went off to play table tennis or whatever. I didn’t care.  I’d act in loco parentis, but I wasn’t going to be a security guard too. 

I’d told them on Monday evening that as only two of them were eighteen, none of them should go to a pub and that girls should stay in the girl’s rooms and the boys in theirs but that was as far as I went.  If they got pissed or pregnant, it was out of my control. I felt I had done all that I could.

Georgina and I were left in the lounge alone. She read a book and I watched television.  “Will you turn that down please?” were the only words she said to me.  At about 9:30 she closed her book and looked at me expectantly.  “What does she want?” I thought.  “Does she expect me to entertain her?”

We started to talk.  It wasn’t easy.  She didn’t know me and I certainly didn’t know her.  I don’t think that she had mixed anyone like me at Oxford where she had been until two years earlier.  In desperation, I made some flippant comment about short-term hopes and long-term fears.  I got no response and silence returned and lasted for several minutes.  

Suddenly, she started to cry - proper tears - and then, she was sobbing uncontrollably.  I had never experienced anything like this before and I didn’t know what to do.

When she had calmed down a little, I led her gently towards the washbasin in the corner where I hoped she could splash her face and feel better.  We hadn’t spoken since she started to cry.  We had almost reached the basin when she started crying again.  

She turned and flung herself at me and burying her head into my shoulder, sobbed louder than ever.  After another minute or two she had stopped crying but just hung on to me and we stood there, locked together in the middle of the room.

The inevitable happened. The door burst open and in came Spiro.  “Sir, are you going to come and play ……. Oh, sorry.”  

Spiro, if by the remotest chance you are reading this, it was not what you thought and certainly not what you told your mates.  

Georgina disengaged herself from me, picked up her book and went off to her room without saying a word.  To this day I remain baffled.  I must have said something to upset her so much but I have no idea what it was as it was never mentioned again.

On Wednesday morning, the coach parked below Cadair Idris and we set off along a pretty track through woodland.  I had told everyone the previous evening that the walk would take about three hours.  We were going uphill all the time but it was a gentle climb and very pleasant.  Georgina and I walked together.  I found that she enjoyed the juicy bits of gossip I told her about some of her colleagues.  As she knew very few people very well, there was a lot to tell her.  

I had suggested to Georgina that she walk at the tail of the file to pick up stragglers but she either misunderstood my request or ignored it.

After we passed the tree line, the gradient became steeper and Georgina began to struggle.  

“You didn’t say it was going to be this steep.” 

Then I made a big mistake.  “It gets a lot steeper.”

After a few more minutes she sat on a rock.  “I need a rest.” 

I estimated that we had covered about a third of the horizontal distance and a quarter of the ascent.  I wasn’t tired and nor were the kids.  They were all having a lot of fun running around us playing with four or five Frisbees.  Eventually I coaxed Georgina to her feet and we set off again.  She was painfully slow.

“I can’t go on,” she said. “I’ll stay here. You carry on and I’ll meet you back at the coach.”

You’ve got to go on,” I said.  “Suppose one of the girls needs the sort of help that only a woman can give. Come on and try and enjoy it. Anyway, we’re nearly there.”  I knew we weren’t but I had to lie.  

As we climbed, some of the boys started to take the piss.  They knew very well why we were going so slowly and every time a false summit appeared, they’d shout, “There you are Miss, the top.”  There are a dozen false summits on that route.

Conversation between us had totally ceased.  She plodded, head down, looking neither left nor right and so completely miserable, that she missed all the wonderful views to be seen. Every ten minutes she stopped and sat on a rock, silent in abject misery but at least she wasn’t crying.  I noticed that she hadn’t got her rucksack.

“Where’s your bag?” I asked her.

“Back there.  It was too heavy.  I’ll pick it up on the way back.”

After four hours we reached Llyn Cau.  We had lunch.  Georgina didn’t have any as it was in her bag.  I offered her some of mine and she took it without saying a word and then sat 50 yards from the rest of us and ate alone.  I did my bit about corries, rock lips and glaciers etc.  We were all aware of an ‘atmosphere’.

Then, we started back.  Georgina found her bag where she had left it and walked 200 yards behind the last of the group down the mountain.  She sat on her own on the coach.  

Later that evening at about nine o’clock, after the students had left us alone once more, I spoke to her for the first time since mid-afternoon.

“You OK?”

She ignored me.

“How about this, Georgina?  Let’s say that you have just realised that your wallet fell out of your pocket while you were having lunch and it’s still up there by the lake.  How much would there have to be in it for you to go back tomorrow and get it?”

“Five hundred pounds?.......Five thousand?....... a million?” 

She gave me a look of total contempt.

“You don’t get it do you, you fucking moron?  I fucking hate fucking Wales.  I hate fucking Cader fucking Idris.  I hate fucking Llyn fucking Cau shit.  I hate fucking glaciers, corries and whatever fucking other fucking bullshit you were fucking well boring us all to fucking death with today”

“Got that, fuckface?”

I nodded.