Not seeing the wood for the trees

I thought I understood this so familiar, so well known, everyday expression, first learned in childhood, in Primary school in fact. We used to have tests, questions to answer, in our English exercise books. “What does 'A stitch in time saves nine' mean?” or “What does 'A rolling stone gathers no moss' mean?” Proverbs and sayings that were so much part of the currency of everyday speech, or at least what was regarded as part of correct, polite, “nice” speech in those days – oh how my teachers hated the word “nice”. “It does not mean 'pleasant' it means 'exact'!” they would parrot. Well, exactly what it meant in our mouths was 'pleasing' and we were sticking to it resolutely, come what may. 

And our speech was not always 'polite' or 'correct' and contained, from time to time, when we dared, when we were very, very sure that we were not being listened to, when we could risk using some of those words we heard on the lips of SOME adults; adults who did hard jobs; adults who came out of the pub drunk; adults who spiced what they said with lots of words beginning with F or B and who we were told not to listen to; adults who were 'hushed” at and from whose words our ears were covered. Adults like I'll, so called because on pay night he would come reeling up the road, staggering and shouting “I'll …” followed by lots of threats of what he would do to his poor wife, although we never quite knew what he would do as all the threats were in Welsh. Repute had it that she would greet him at the front door with a rolling pin, or a frying pan, and made very sure that he did not do what ever it was he was so threatening to do. The only words of I'll's that we knew were those very English words starting with F or B with which his tirade was peppered. The Welsh we did not know, but, Welsh having no swear words, he made great use of those English words that did as well; and we knew these were very bad words. Words that were so bad that instant punishment would follow if you were ever heard uttering them, even at a whisper. I was too scared ever to use them. Well, almost. I did once say “ruddy” which gained me instant retribution, and once I did say “bloody” which almost caused the sky to fall on me – well my mother's instant ire at any rate. Never again did I risk those words.

But to the subject. “Not seeing the wood for the trees”. I had always, at least since I first began to understand it, took it to mean 'Not seeing the woodland for the trees', that is taking the word 'wood' to refer to woodlands, coppices, stands of trees, forests; understanding the expression to mean not seeing the wider picture because of being so fixed on seeing the particular, the individual, the “trees”. I was a little taken aback when someone began taking about that so familiar expression, but meaning 'wood' to refer to the material from which the trees were made.

I was disorientated. How could this be? Had I spent an lifetime misunderstanding the words? Had my answer, given with such confidence at the age of ten as to what it meant had been quite wrong, quite focussed in an incorrect direction? How typical of me not to have quite got it right, not to have heard or understood it properly. No wonder I was sat at the back of the class with the other dimmies, those of us who were never going to be destined for the great heights of passing the Eleven-plus. Those elevated souls, the ones who were worth investing the time in on the part of our school, they sat at the front, those ones who might be destined for Grammar school and for an elevated life ever after. Our job was to be still, to be quiet and to be docile so as not to impede the progress of those elect. If we were lucky we might be able to read by the time we left school, or to count correctly, at least enough to measure and weigh, as our lot in life would be in workshop or field, or behind a counter or under-stairs. The understanding of the complex ideas embodied in 'seeing the wood from the trees' was, after all, beyond us, as my complete misunderstanding of the expression clearly demonstrated.

So – not seeing what something is made out of because of being too focussed on what it is. Now I have it, but a lifetime too late.

Crying over spilt milk

Title Tile floors are hard, unforgiving, there is no give in them, no chance for anything falling to bounce, to somehow not shatter. A truth learned early. 

 

The house in Malvern, Elbury, was Victorian, grandly, even grossly, Victorian. Its rooms were cavernous, its ceilings high and its tile floor in the hall and in the porch hard, very hard.

The porch was a proper Victorian glass porch on the front of the house protecting the grand front door. It had greenhouse type slatted shelving all along the outer wall, its own door to the front path and lots of glass, three sides of glass, so that it completely enclosed the front door. The door to the porch lay to the left of the front door as you looked out. The porch functioned as a small greenhouse as well as protecting the front door from the weather.

When we first moved into Elbury my bedroom was in the attic. It had bars on the windows. Just as well for a boy who was rising five years old. The window were sash windows and opened upwards. A small boy could put one arm though the gap between the bars and the window frame and reach out. A small boy could pop his head out and look down. He could not quite get his shoulders through or get both of his arms out. They were very wise keeping small boys behind bars.

In my bedroom was my bed along one wall and boxes with my toys in along the other. In one of the boxes were lots of toy bricks, wooden bricks. Red, green, blue, yellow. All sorts of sizes. And I found a really good game. I could just reach out of the window and drop a wooden brick, which would bounce on the glass roof of the conservatory below, and then go skittering off on to the grass on the small lawn in front of the conservatory. When I had dropped a few bricks I would run along the top landing, down the narrow stairs from the attics, along the landing of the next floor, down the big stairs – or, if I wanted extra fun – sliding down the banisters, or sliding bump, bump, bump down the stairs themselves on the slippy slidey carpet – and along the hall, pull open the big front door, jump down the step into the porch, pull open the porch door and out on to the front path, skittering around towards the front gate, and then up on to the small lawn to find where the bricks had bounced to. Sometimes the bricks were not there as they had caught in the guttering on the front of the conservatory, but if they had bounced well enough then they would be there on the grass.

Some of the bricks were bigger than others. One of the big bricks went sailing down, down out of my hand, down past the window of the toilet on the floor below, down past the brickwork, down past the stone mullions, down and down on to the glass of the conservatory roof and, crash, splinter tinkle, tinkle, onto the tile floor below.

Mother was not pleased. Mother heard the smash, tinkle, tinkle and discovered my game. I did try to say it was not me, but the big green brick was there on the tile floor surrounded by all the shards of glass. She told me to stay in my room. She cleared up all of the glass. She had the windows of my room screwed shut.

My brother kept very quiet. His game was climbing out of his attic window by holding on to the stonework of the mullions and then into the valley of the roof. He and his two friends who used to come to stay, the Baldwin boys, used to think that was great fun. They could climb right up on to the ridges of the roof and sit there, feeling like conquering heroes, imagining themselves climbers of the Eiger, or of Everest itself. From the top of the roof you could see clear forty miles all the way to the Licky Hills near Birmingham, or, if you looked to their side, past the Clent Hills, you could just see the Wrekin poking its head up from the Shropshire plain.

My mother had become friends with the Baldwin’s father when she served on an RAF base during the war and he had been one of the pilots. The boys used to come and stay during their summer holidays when we lived at Bank Farm, to give them a change from town living. They lived in Sutton Coldfield, to the north of Birmingham.  They stopped coming to stay a year or two after the divorce.

I know how hard that tile floor was, how cold it was, how unforgiving and merciless it was from that day when we had just moved in to Elbury. We were just going out, my mother, my brother, my cousin Ann and I. My mother had just put my coat on me and was trying to do it up and I asked where my dog Waife was, and where Ginger the three legged cat was. My mother said they were staying at Bank Farm and were not going to live with us, but were going to live with the new people who had moved in there.

I flung myself down on those hard, cold, unforgiving, merciless tiles and the tears were torn from me. I howled. I wept. My forehead went bang down onto those tiles and I grappled their hardness. I shook and I dragged my nails across their cold, unyielding.

My father came in through the front door and shouted at me and at my mother. Their words burned fury and deep anger. The hard tiles were a safer place. My face pressed into them. My sobs let warm tears drop all over them until they were wet. I hurt with a pain that felt as if my chest were being wrenched open. Cousin Ann tried picking me up. I clung to the floor. She carried me to the bottom of the stairs and held me whilst the anger and word lashes of my father and mother filled the hall.

Then my father was gone and my mother came to Ann and I. My mother was ashen faced and stiff. She look at me with despair and spoke to Ann. Ann handed me over. My mother made me stand up and made me stop crying because “boys do not cry”. She looked bewildered. My brother was stone faced and silent. My mother shook me until I was completely silent and still. Then she said she would ask if we could have Waife and Ginger back, and sent me upstairs with Cousin Ann to go to my room.

Ann tried to get me to be interested in my toys. I just sat on the floor inert. Eventually my mother came up and told Ann to leave me and they both when down stairs.

I don't think I moved until my mother came up to take me down for a bath and got me ready for bed.

I know that she put me into bed and read a bedtime story, but the words did not go in. She drew the curtains and shut the bedroom door. I did not move. I was an empty shell.

A few days later my father drew up in the car just outside the garden gate. Waife was in the car and Ginger was in a box that he carried in. I sank my face into Waife's coat and wound my fingers into his fur. That evening I sat on the tiles of the hall by Ginger stroking him. I could not have minded how hard or cold those tiles were.

Once more I was to cry tears onto those tiles.

The milkmen delivered milk every morning. They would open the porch door and put the bottles on the tile floor. I liked helping my mother to collect the milk from there. Each day there would be the big bottles of milk and a special small bottle of milk for me. Every pre-school child had a free small bottle of milk every day to help them grow, sent by the government. I think this had started in the war and continued afterwards as part of rationing. Rationing continued for almost ten years after the war ended.

One day I was too enthusiastic to help. I grabbed at the small bottle. I grabbed it up. I fell out of my hand. Tiles are hard and unforgiving. It smashed and the milk went everywhere. My mother shouted at me to stand still. I burst into tears. I cried over spilt milk.

My mother bent down and held me until I stopped crying, and then told me that there was no point in crying over spilt milk. She took me upstairs to our kitchen and gave me a glass of milk from one of the other bottles. 

That is how I learned not to cry over spilt milk.

Henry

I think I may have been about three when Henry came to stay. Only I could see Henry; only I could know how naughty he was; only I could hear his laughter when he had wild fun and things flew around the room. I think it was winter when Henry first came. He was somewhere in the shadows of the play room, in the gathering half light before my mother lit the lamps. We had lamps, paraffin lamps, not electricity. They sputtered and smelt. Their light threw shadows, big shadows, across the rooms. There would be only one in a room, standing on a table. My mother would pick it up and carry it with us when it was time for me to go up to bed. Paraffin lamps light rooms softly and leave dark shadow filled corners, places where the imagination could lurk and things could be half seen. 

 

The play room was at the back of the house, off the great hall where the big inglenook fireplace was; the very fireplace in which I had stood the day the sky fell down – but that is another story. The play room had a fireplace too, one with a big fire-guard that was at least as high as I was – well, almost as high. It had a wide shiny brass rim at the top that my mother used to make gleam until it glowed in the fire light. I could see over that rim, see the flames of the fire reflected in its shiny top. I could stand on my tiptoes and, if I tried hard, I could throw things into the fire and watch as the flames licked them, wrapped round them, and then danced with delight as they ate them. 

 

It was fun when Henry came out of the shadows behind the big chair, out from the dark corner where he hid when anyone else was around, out and started passing things to me to throw into the fire. First one thing, then two. Flump, they would land in the fire. Sputter, flicker, foosh would go the flames as they grew around them and danced higher making the shadows frolic and flicker in the room. 

 

Henry was such a naughty boy. 

 

Henry liked teasing the terrier. Henry liked waving the ends of my sleeves in front of the terrier’s face. Henry kept doing this even when I knew the terrier would get cross and would bite the sleeve and go growly, growly, tug, tug until the threads of my jumper unwound and would hang all ragged down. 

Naughty Henry.

Naughty Henry would make me do this even when I knew the terrier would bite my fingers and hang on to them and make me cry. The excitement was worth it. It hurt. The pain seared. The pain was almost crazy fun, but it hurt too much, so much I had to do it again.

My mother told me how cruel it was to tease the poor dog like that. She told me not to make him cross. She told me not to make him bite my sleeve. She told me not to make him hang on to it until it unravelled, not to make him pull the thread after him as he dashed under the chair whilst Henry and I danced and laughed. I told her the truth. It was Henry who had waggled the sleeve in front of the terrier. It was Henry who had danced and skipped and pulled ever so hard as the dog shook and shook the end of the sleeve until the threads pulled out and it unravelled. 

Naughty Henry.

Mother did not find out about Henry giving me things to throw into the fire. Not then. I did not want Henry to get into trouble.

In the corner of the play room furthest from the fire, the corner opposite the door, there was a big toy garage where all of my brother’s toy cars were kept. It had an upstairs and a downstairs, big opening doors, and a ramp down which the cars would whoosh if you pushed them. But the real secret was their rubber tyres. If you picked the toy cars up and put them next to your face, you could get your teeth around the tyres, and, with a big bite and pull, you could get them to come off. They did go whoof and make big flames when you threw them into the fire. 

Naughty Henry. 

 

One day my mother sat me down and made me listen very carefully to her. She told me that the fire was very dangerous and that I must never, never throw things into it. I looked at her and I told her “Don't me cross mumma - I just be good”. 

 

I was. 

 

Henry wasn't. 

 

Naughty Henry.

When we were alone in the play room, when my mother had to leave us in the warm when it was getting dark because she had to go and feed the chickens, and the ducks, and the guinea fowl, and the white pheasants, and the geese and the pigs and she would not be long, but it was too cold and wet for me to be out, so I must promise to be good. 

 

I did promise, I really did.

 

Henry, naughty Henry, did not. 

 

He hid behind the big leather chair and he peeped out. Mother did not see him. She did not know he was there - he was so hidden in the shadows. When we were alone, that is when Henry came out from behind the big leather chair, the one with big lion's paw feet, the chair the terrier would hide under when Henry gave me toy cars to throw at him.

Henry made me pull the cat's tail. The cat had only three legs. One of his rear legs had been cut off by the gang-mower as it mowed between the trees. The men had come running into the house holding the poor cat with its leg hanging off. They were so sorry. My mother had grabbed me and had got Mr Fox to drive us to the vet's where the vet had cut off the leg to save the cat. The cat, Ginger, was cousin Ann's cat and my mother did not want Ann to come home from work and find her cat was dead, so she brought the poor bandaged thing home. It lived for many years after, happily stumping around on three legs and still laying waste to all the mice, rats and rabbits it could find. When Henry made me pull the ginger cat's tail it swung its front paw around so fast that its claw tore my arm and there were long bleeding scratches all across the back of my hand. Henry thought that was fun. He made me rub the blood on to the wall. Then he made me find my bothers wax crayons and scribble all through the blood and on over the wall to make scribble birds. 

 

I sat and watched them fly.

Naughty Henry. 

 

Henry thought it was such good fun when my brother’s toy cars went flying around the room. My brother got cross because they had missing tyres. I never told him what Henry had made me do with them. 

 

Henry was barefoot. Henry dressed in rags. Henry was a wild boy and Henry lived in the stinging nettles at the bottom of the larch wood. He was lonely and cold there, and he was afraid of the wolves that came at night. That is why he sneaked into the house and came and played with me - it was warm and we had fun. 

 

One day, when I had told my mother that Henry had made me throw things all over the room again - naughty Henry - she decided to go and find him. I told her where he lived and what he looked like. She got us ready to go out for a walk. I had my red Wellington boots on, the one that would get stuck in the mud and come off, making me fall over and get covered in the sticky mud. It must have been in the late spring because the stinging nettles had grown back. 

 

My mother walked me all the way down the hill to the bottom of the drive where the larch wood was. It was in the stinging nettles at its edge that Henry lived. It was in between the dark trees that the wolves would come peeping out, so softly tiptoeing on the spongy floor where the needles fell. In places the fallen cones stuck out. I was scared of the dark of the wood. I was scared of the wolves that might come out. Mother kept walking further and further in and calling “Henry” “Come out Henry”. I knew the wolves would hear her. I knew they would come sniffing with their ears pricked up. I knew their sharp eyes would come watching. I knew mother was not safe. I knew I had to get her out of the wood, so I told her a lie. I told her Henry had gone. He had run off with the gypsies. We went home and had tea. 

 

Funnily, Henry really had gone. He was not hiding in the shadows behind the big leather chair with the lion's paw shaped feet. He was not waiting for me in the attic. He was not under my cot. He was not in any of the cupboards. He was not hiding in the larder. He was not hiding in the doughskiels* along with my toys. He had gone. I hope he liked his life with the gypsies. 

--- 

*For those who do not know, doughskiels – that is the name my mother used for them – were four legged chests used in old farms in the Marcher Country for bread making. The dough was kneaded on the top and then placed inside the chest with the lid down so that it might rise overnight ready for baking in the morning. My mother had found one at an auction. It was made of elm. It had bits of old dried dough sticking to its insides. She polished up the outside and then we used it to keep toys in.

Two True Stories

Sometimes you hear stories of those years of war that scared the first half of the twentieth century that you cannot let pass because they stick with you, they say too much, paint too strong a picture. In this last year I have heard two such stories, one from the Ukraine, one from China.

First a story from the Ukraine. This was told by a lecturer at the university in L’viv who had been a little more than a child herself at the time of the German occupation. She included this in one of the lectures she gave.

After the first shock wave of the German conquest the two sides, the occupiers and their subjected peoples, had to set about living together. The occupiers gave themselves full licence to demonstrate their superiority in all sorts of ways, in this case over the two carriage trams that ran in the city. The Ukrainians had to travel in the rear carriage of the trams leaving the front carriage for Germans. Perhaps there might be only one or two Germans in the front - the rear one would be crammed to overflowing. Sometimes one of the Germans might call a child forward into the front to come and sit with them as a treat. If you were called you dare not refuse but went and sat dutifully as you were told. No one dared to interfere.

Neither did people dare to be in the front carriages even if they were completely empty, even if there were no signs of any Germans being about - it was just never safe.

Such a simple story, but one telling so much about power and fear, about oppression and the oppressed, about division and separation. One no doubt duplicated in a thousand subtle ways across the world - in segregated America, in racially divided South Africa, or by division of wealth and class in Britain, or by caste as in India - repeated in so many place, in so many ways. in so many times.

The second story is from China, from Shanghai just at the point when it had been occupied by the Japanese in November 1937. Many, if not most, of the Europeans left the city on whatever ships they could find as soon as the fighting subsided . My friends mother was working as a governess to one such European family. She had done well for a village girl from the South to have a job like that. For whatever reason the family decided to take her with them when they left. Who knows, perhaps the children she cared for were too attached to her to make leaving her easy? Getting her out through the Japanese check points would be a very risky thing to do. Europeans were given passes so that they could go to the harbour and board whatever ships they could find passage on. Chinese were forbidden. The Japanese expected absolute obedience. If they even considered that a Chinese had not bowed quickly enough or low enough they were executed there and then.

The family put my friend’s mother into the middle between them all and there she sat petrified in case she was spotted. For trying to escape the city she would have been beheaded immediately. Somehow, and my friend has no idea how, the family were not challenged at the check points. At each one their papers were meticulously inspected, but other than a cursory glance, no check was made on exactly who was in the car. They were crowded and perhaps a small Chinese woman somewhere in the middle of many faces was simply not noticed.

They left on the last boat out of the harbour.

Nothing

“Nothing – for the person who has everything” it proudly announced “The gift of nothing is yours to discover...” it added.
“Congratulations! You have received the gift of nothing. Absolutely nothing. This is the ultimate in minimalism. Less is more, more is less”
“Nothing is precious. Nothing is simple. Nothing is sacred.
“Open the pack and be enthralled when nothing happens. Allow nothing to flow through your mind and calm your soul. Savour the moment. Soon you will discover that nothing is so much better than something.”
“Instructions: step 1: Carefully open the pack.Step 2: Experience nothing.”
“Contents: The sound of one hand clapping: the hole in the doughnut; the thing that goes bump in the night; the sound of a tree falling in the forest when no one is there to hear; the incident that no-one talks about; the bashful achievement.”
“Warranty: This product is guaranteed to do absolutely nothing. If something happens return for a full refund.”
“Warning: Nothing ventured nothing gained. If any of this is swallowed, please consult a psychiatrist immediately.” 
Nothing? Rather a lot of something with a conveniently shaped hole at the top for its packaging to slide onto display in some trying-hard to be upbeat “retails outlet” (as shops now have to be called).

Nothing? Something given by someone who cares, or cares at least enough to spend some time and money purchasing and sending this item of amusement.

Nothing? The concept child of a designer, or worse, a “creative team”, whose livelihoods rests on generating such off-the-shelf send-in-the-post give-as-an-“ungift” amusements that function as tokens in the games of social-bonding that we play.

Nothing? A vehicle for cultural references and a play of ideas that may, for a moment, amuse; a product of a civilisation and of the cross-fertilisation of civilisations.

Nothing? A commodification of social desires and cultural meanings packaged and delivered as part of the functioning of the wealth creating economic machines that deliver profits and drive up share-holder value.

Nothing? The yield of years of education and leaning on the part of those who conceived it, who designed and created it, who engineered and marketed it.

Nothing? The result of investment and financing, of banks and investors, of insurance and underwriters, of cash-flows and reporting, of contracts and logistics, of orders and deliveries, of fixed capital and working capital, of loans and overdrafts, of statements and invoices, of debits and credits, and all of the management and accounting that goes into the getting it there in stock and ready for the consumer to buy so that it might be sent and received, and perhaps enjoyed.

Nothing? The result of all of the physical work it took to shape and form it, to pack and transport it, to order and display it, and ultimately to post and receive it.

Nothing? Something that could not have been conceived, or even technically made, at almost any-time in history until the last half century; and which would have been meaningless to most humans that have ever lived; its meaning lying not in what it is, but in the few lines of words printed on its packaging – this nothing that is not nothing to those who can read its legend.

Nothing? A dome shaped blister pack with air in - air that was trapped when the blister was formed in what-ever strip-light lit factory in who knows where that exists for the purpose of making blister packs; air that was thus enclosed by the button pressing supervision of a shift worker whose economic contribution to the human population of this planet was to spend time pressing the buttons that ran the machine that formed the blister.

Nothing? A blister formed of clear plastic extruded to conform to the designed shape; plastic that was itself a product of chemical engineering that started with oil as a raw material; oil that had lain for more millions of years than you can think of deep under the ground in a far off county; oil that was piped, shipped, refined and then transformed into the shape it now has – a blister pack containing a space with air inside.

Nothing? The resultant of all of the energy expended and carbon-dioxide generated in creating the materials from which it is made, in forming it, in packing and shipping it, in transporting it to and collecting it from the shop where it was purchased, in wrapping and posting it, in delivering it; and in part in all of the energy expended and carbon-dioxide generated in creating and maintaining all of those systems that enabled that to happen.

Nothing? A non-biodegradable product that will last far longer than either the person who sent it or the person who received it, or perhaps even longer than the species to which they belong: an unintelligible enigma to whatever or whoever may come after.

Some nothing.

Where Borders are Real Borders

Where borders are real borders, borders that remember that they are there to control people, to prevent people, to dominate and diminish them. “The state”, the border says, “is all. You are nothing”.  The suspicion is all enveloping. “You are but a supplicant who may, if we feel inclined - may, let me stress - may, with our permission, be allowed to pass – but it is doubtful, very doubtful”. 

There is a knowing with absolute clarity that you are unfit, untrustworthy, suspect, someone who should not be tolerated. You are a danger. Your very presence will contaminate, will corrupt. You should be barred, turned back, driven off. You are like an unwanted virus, a contaminant, a disease. The border is here to prevent such infections spreading.

It is dark, night, a chill has settled and this is my first experience of the border. The bus slows. There is a jolt where the smooth road surface ends and the concrete blocking starts. The bus makes a right angle turn and then another. The first stop light and the wire towers over, looming in the glow of the arc lights.  Everything is seen in stark contrast. The glare of lights or deep shadow. Colours are drained as if they are illegal migrants. This is a place of wire, concrete, dark and suspicions. 

A long wait and then a green light. The bus bumps forwards, following the right angle turns in the road. No chance for speed or for turning back. The road is only just the width of the vehicle. The wire has it trapped. And when the wire passes the dark spaces of grit and gravel that fill between - barren places that plants dare not grow in. This is not a place of one, but of many fences. The bus halts in a queue. Long times elapse. There is a silence that is not friendly - it is the middle of the night and no-one on the bus wants to talk in this place. We are awake because we know that it is the border; that we have to be awake; that not to be awake is to commit an offence. 

After a while of edging forward one vehicle’s length at a time, followed by a long wait after each move, the bus finally reaches the next fence and its control post where another red light holds us until we are allowed to pass into the next compound. Eventually the light changes and we bump and jolt across that space towards a distant yawning shed. We get nearer and it grows larger, its harshly lit interior a chasm opening between concrete buildings. The bus slowly makes a last sharp turn and lines up with the entrance. It stops and waits once more. 

It is signalled forward and comes to a halt inside the shed. The driver opens the doors and sits and waits. He and the other crew know that that is all they can do. The border guard will come when they are ready. When they choose. If they choose. May be now. May be in an hour. Whenever. You know the bus is being watched, carefully watched. The bus is not to be trusted. We are warned to have our passports ready. 

A guard enters the bus. Takes each passport in turn, looking long and hard at each and then at its owner. There is not a flicker on his face. The passport is then added to the growing stack that he holds, open at the photo page. Not a word is spoken. We all know our parts. Sit very still. Do not talk. Look past, not at, the guard. There will be no questions here. They may come later. 

Eventually all of the passports are collected. The guard gets off the bus taking one of the crew with him - the one to be held responsible. The waiting begins again. The time is slow. It is ponderous. It knows not to take risks.

Eventually the driver returns. He looks heavy with worry. He hands back each passport to its owner and returns to the front, attentive, waiting for the next instruction. 

The bus moves forward once more, out of the shed into another darker wasteland  between more fences. Stops. Moves. Stops again. We wait. Another shed. More bleak buildings ahead of us. Once more we are summoned forward. The bus stops in the lane it has been directed to. The same sinister ballet is taking place in the parallel lanes under the arching roof of the border control shed – the stopping, the waiting, the silence. The driver gets off and opens the hatches under the bus where all the baggage is. In other lanes vehicles stand with all their doors and hatches open; stand waiting as if in some strange ballet of exposure. 

The driver return to the bus and signals to us that we must all get off. We are told to get our bags from the hold and take them to the benches that line the side of the lane. We obey. We lift out bags on to the long benches and stand behind them, waiting. It is getting cold and a steady wind is blowing chill through the shed. Nothing happens. No voices are heard. No one moves more than just to shuffle in a effort to keep warm and to keep awake. Time feels manacled. It dare not protest by moving forward. 

A guard appears and points at the bags. We are to understand that they should be open. He goes away. A delay for our impudence at not having the bags open ready? The night cold begins to get past our clothing. We wait.

The guard returns and looks into each bag. Not at us. He has a pen with which he occasionally pokes at something, or uses to hold the bags more open. He goes away. Nothing happens. Nothing happens for quite some time. Another guard climbs on to the bus. He has a torch and a dog. He takes quite a while.

The building in front of us has big halls with benches and tables under cold lights. You are aware of places where questions are asked. Questions that are asked very slowly. Questions the answers to which could lead you to smaller rooms where even more questions are asked - to rooms with bare lights and hard chairs. Rooms which are there to protect that which lies beyond. Rooms from which some people do not return. Rooms where the state sanitises itself of those of whom it does not approve: entrances to years of questions and cells. 

We are told to get back on the bus. We do up our bags and carry them to the hold. We climb back on. We sit and wait, not quite daring to rest or relax. The driver does not start the engine. We sit and wait. It is the middle of the night but no-one risks sleep. The engine starts. We lurch forward bumping our way across more concrete blocks, following the roadway between yet more fences, round more sharp twists and chicanes, the customs shed receding behind us diminishing into remoteness, a place of bright light in a growing gloom of half lit roadways and fences. 

Once more the bus stops at a red light. The final guard post in the last line of wire. The light changes and we bump through and onto a normal road. The night embraces us as we slide away from our place of trial and suspicion, many hours after first having entered it.  

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The Ukrainian Polish boarder, autumn 2011; echoes of the Soviet era and mindset still strongly present. The guard that know their importance and their power. Their boots still shine.

“Life begins where the comfort zone ends”

Eurolines Secretariat

Place Solvay 4

1030 Schaerbeek

Belgium

Dear Managers of Eurolines, Brussels.

Last September I and my partner had the privilege of travelling on your network from London to L'viv in the Ukraine. Perhaps it was due to overbooking or to some other circumstance, but we were unable to travel directly between those two cities. We were obliged to travel from London to Brussels on one of your services and then to catch another of your services from there onwards to L'viv. This involved a wait-over at your facilities in Brussels.

It can hardly be unusual for passengers to need to change from one service to another at a major city such Brussels, so it would be reasonable to expect that there might be adequate provision made for their comfort whilst they wait. Provision that might offer protection from the weather so that they might be warm and dry. Provision that might offer somewhere for them to sit in a lighted area. Provision that might offer them access to toilet facilities. Provision that might offer them at least minimal protection from the less salubrious aspects and dangers of nocturnal urban street life. Brussels is, after all, a modern, wealthy and sophisticated city very much at the heart of Europe and something of a communications hub.

When we arrived at Brussels there was indeed a well lit indoor waiting area located by your booking office. Unfortunately many of the plastic seats were broken. In some cases they were entirely missing and only the sharp protruding bolts that once held them were left in place.

There is indeed a staffed toilet facility. It is however unfortunate that the toilet seat was not effectively attached to the toilet. Worse, the toilet was damaged in such a way that the seat hung skew with once side considerably higher than the other, rendering any attempt to sit upon it a most hazardous enterprise, one that required quite a level of athletic prowess. Whilst being almost pitched on to the none too clean floor by its rocking, I held myself in place by bracing myself against the wall with my arm. This placed my face close to the graffiti covered door where I read “Life begins where the comfort zone ends”. Clearly a epitaph left by some earlier traveller who had encountered the munificence of your facilities.

This is all such a massive contrast to the facilities provided at the coach station in London, which were immaculate and all in perfect order. I am sure if the facilities in one capital city can be like that so can the facilities in others.

Added to the delight of the facilities provided was the really unexpected pleasure of being ejected from the building by a guard accompanied by his impressively fearsome looking dog. There were, if I recall correctly, three couples and one young man, all waiting for services that were due to depart at different times during the night or early the following morning. In our case the service departed Brussels at 02.00. One other couple that we spoke to waiting for a service that was due to depart at 05.00, I believe.

From midnight to 02.00 we had no option but to wait in the street with no shelter from the weather, the building with the waiting area being firmly locked behind us by the well armed guard. I am not sure but his dog appeared to be smirking - perhaps it was the knowledge that both he and his handler would remain in the warm and dry and that we, by contrast, would now be exposed to whatever inclemencies the weather threw at us or whatever dangers or inconveniences the vagrant night-life of the city might visit on us. The only benches were occupied by a young man who may have been homeless and was sleeping on them. I can say that we did not either feel safe or welcome.

We most certainly did not feel valued as passengers by Eurolines.

Although one does expect some degree of discomfort when travelling I do need to tell you that your facilities in Brussels do Eurolines no credit. They are, quite frankly, abysmal, as are the absence of any arrangements for passengers waiting for overnight connecting services.

Yours sincerely

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Text of a letter sent to Eurolines, with the part left in [in strikeout lettering] that was omitted from the final version sent to Eurolines and copied to their UK associates.

Waife

It was dark and from inside the warmth of the covers over me as I lay in my cot, kept all safe and secured against escape by the bars of its sides - like most two year olds, I was not a voluntary inmate of a bed but needed to be imprisoned there – thus it was from inside that cocooned warmth that I heard a kerfuffle of voices outside and the clicking of the front gate. There were few sounds at night where I lay, 'cept those of the countryside, each clear and sharp for the lack of the background hums and roars that so drown out distinct noises in towns; mostly the hoots and screeches of owls, or calls of foxes, the sudden sounds of wings, or the moans of the wind in the trees. The house had its own distinct creaks and groans as the old timber frame of which it was made settled, but these were all familiar for I had known them since my first days. 
 

Voices, footsteps on the path: my father's voice, my mother's voice. Then the closing of the heavy front door, creaking as it swung its studded oak on its old hinges and the resounding whoomp as it married back into its frame and the clunk as heavy latch dropped into place.

Some more voices downstairs. My brother, so much older than I and still up on this dark night, but still only a child. My cousin Anne, grown and a working girl in an office, a typing pool, whatever that was. She did look surprisingly dry each evening so I suppose the pool cannot have been that deep – even her shoes seemed dry. Not, so not like me when I went outside. My boots got so wet and muddy that they stuck and my feet came out of them. The the mud went all squidgy up between my toes making my socks all wet and sticky and I would fall over head first into the tractor ruts and get up all covered. That is what happened to people who went outside. If I went near the duck pond it got even muddier and even more slippy and I would get even more covered. How she could keep so dry in her pool, which must be something so much deeper than the duck pond, which I was not supposed to go near, and which I promised not to go near, even when the ducks ran off there when I chased them, which I did because it was what the boy on the salt did – if you don't believe me look at the picture on the box of Cerebos salt and believe me that ducks run much faster than two year old boys – how she did keep so dry and clean in her pool I had no idea. It must have been something to do with the ty ping. Perhaps it was a bit like a very big version of the tie-pin that my father wore. Perhaps it was some sort of pin that you stood on over the pool that meant that even your feet were dry. 
 

It was her voice down stairs with the other voices, all excited and high. 
 

Then the voices went quiet.

In a while the latch of my bedroom door clicked and softly it opened revealing the halo of light that came from the candle that my mother held in one hand to light her way. Her other arm was cradled around something. Softly she came over to my cot holding whatever it was quite close to her. 
 

“David” she said, “Look what I have got here. Some boys just dropped it over the gate. They said they had found it trying to keep warm in the ashes of a fire in the woods and that I would know how to look after it.”

It did smell of wood smoke.

It did look very small and fluffy.

It made a faint whimpering sound.

My mother lowered it into my cot so that I could see it.

It wriggled.

I touched it and it was soft.

Its little mouth closed over my fingers and there were needle like little teeth. 
It snuffled.

“We shall call it Waife” said my mother “Because it is a little waif and stray that has come to us. When it is bigger and stronger you can play with it, but for now I must keep it warm and feed it with a dropper.”

“Feed it what?” I asked

“Condensed milk” she said.

It was Christmas Eve and Waife was the best Christmas present ever. Not planned, but soon to be my playmate as we both grew strong and bigger that following spring and summer.