Personal

Some years ago I stayed a night as a paying guest in a house on the San Blas Islands.

The San Blas Islands are a group of semi-autonomous islands off the coast of Panama.

So, I had part of a room and it was curtained off from another part where one of the members of the family slept.

The owner of the house took me through the rules of the house and pointed out to me a very small key that was hanging on a nail on the wall. He explained that it was the key to the toilet.

Then he took me outside and pointed to the toilet in question.

It was on a jetty – a rickety wooden jetty that stretched out into the sea and ended at a little sentry box way above the sea at the far end of the jetty.

The light was fading quickly and I didn’t want to make my way out over to the toilet in the dark, so I set out with the key in my hand and walked along the jetty, conscious of how quickly night was falling.

I fumbled with the lock and put the key carefully in my shorts.

I am not sure what I was expecting when I opened the door, but the toilet was just a hole in the floor.

That was fine with me, but I was conscious of the little key in my pocket as I crouched down.

I crouched there for a while, all the time conscious of the key. I didn’t want to lose it, so I stood up carefully – making sure that there was no chance the key would fall out of the pocket of my shorts.

I closed the lock and then started laughing quietly to myself and continued laughing all the way back to the room.

I left the next morning and I didn’t ask the owner of the house the question that was on my mind.

I didn’t because I didn’t want to risk insulting him. He obviously thought the key was important.

But the toilet was just a hole in the floor, so why the key and the lock?

It seemed hard to believe that someone would claim exclusivity over a hole in the floor high over the sea.

What was he guarding? Did his neighbours go out in the small hours and use his toilet and deny him the opportunity to use it when he wanted?

These are questions to which I will never know the answer, but I can enjoy the memory.

With three others that I met in Santa Marta we set out to the lost city and hiked for ten days. We went on our own, without a guide.

The hillsides were covered in mud. At every stream I took off my T shirt and ran it in the water to rinse off the sweat. We all looked unkempt, sweaty, legs caked in mud.

I remember seeing an Arawak Indian coming down the trail. He was dressed in white and looked like he was out for a casual stroll, and immaculate.

I fell in love with the light filtering through the huge trees. I can picture a stream broken into several streams and trees spread out around and sunlight piercing it all.

I bought a hammock for the trip. And at the end of the trip I had a hammock that I no longer needed.

I had a thing about keeping weight to a minimum, so I decided to give the hammock away to someone who had some ‘get up and go’ about him or her.

There were plenty of kids without any get up and go. You could see them any time you looked – curled up asleep on the streets with empty plastic bags clutched in their hands from where they had been sniffing glue.

So I decided to give my hammock away and I walked down the street in Santa Marta and I saw a young boy, maybe ten or eleven.

He finished shining shoes and started walking on purposefully to wherever he was going.

He was coming towards me and when he got near I mimed to him that I wanted to give him the hammock.

We exchanged looks and he held out one arm to scoop the hammock. He nodded a thank you as he kept on walking, not stopping to break his stride.

Maybe people gave him things every day. Maybe he was completely used to accepting gifts. Maybe.

If not, then he was very quick witted to size everything up in a second and accept my gift without hesitation.

And I felt like I had made good use of the opportunity to give something away.

How do you manage?
How many times must I tell you?
How do you know when it’s over?

What’s the point?
What’s he doing here?

When are you going to face up to it?
When are you going to make a decision?
When are you going?

Why do you put up with it?
Why does he do it?

Where’s the sense in it?
Where did it all go?
Where were we?
Where do I start?

[Inspired by snatches of conversation overheard or read]

I used to have a lurcher. He was a tall dog, slim and intelligent and could run like the wind.

That was in the days when I lived in the countryside, and he and I would go out in the fields together.

One day I was standing on the Common – a large section of communal grassy land facing the cottage where we lived.

We must have lived in the smallest village in England because there were only about five cottages.

It was a beautiful setting and ideal for long walks in the fields.

So on this particular day I was standing on the Common looking at the cottage, and the woman next door came out of her cottage. She came across to talk to me and to tell me some news. She told me her old dog had started eating again. She had been so worried about him.

Her dog was a heavy-set dog, old and slow moving. I would see him dragging himself around. And with the news that she told me, in my mind’s eye I imagined her dog back in the cottage, having roused himself to eat breakfast.

And that’s when I saw my super-sneaky dog coming out of her cottage. He held his head low like he did when he was doing something sneaky. And his tongue was tongue lolling in his mouth, back and forth as he licked his lips.

Of course, he had stolen the breakfast and the dog next door was not eating. But I couldn’t tell her that. I just kept nodding and agreeing and smiling.

My dog, in true lurcher fashion, was too wise to come up to me. He knew he’d be spotted for a breakfast-stealing rogue. So he hung back and eyed me and I looked at my neighbour and willed her not to turn around to see him.