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Cadwell NOT Caldwell

Helper or Hinderer?

[7 minute read ] 

A stitch in time saves nine

I just cannot work people, or life, out sometimes.

I lost my keys yesterday. Fortunately, I live in a village and there are not many people using the same lane as me; I know most of them anyway. Oh Dear! I keep forgetting that I need to make things clear. I mean, I am lucky that because there are only a few people walking dogs during the day, and most people using the lane know each other, we can just randomly ask anyone we come across if they have found any keys, and they are keen to do what they can to assist; by looking out for any keys that were lying on the road but are now on a low brick wall.

       'Have you come across any keys, recently?' I asked a young couple.

       'No. Where did you come from? Are you on a bike ride?’

       'No,'  I gave my home address and mentioned how far I had got towards cycling to the Co-op.’

       'We have come from near the church, We will keep an eye out.'

      'Thanks, I can't get in without the keys.’

In the shop:

       'Have any keys been handed in?’

        'No.' He looked on the floor, at where I had been standing earlier.

        'The trouble is', I said, 'if someone finds them, they might take them home and then write on a post card that they have found them, and get you to pin it up on your noticeboard. If they just left them where they fell out of my pocket, I would have found them by now. It is only about five minutes since I locked my front door. I can't go home, because I can't get in.

Outside the pub, a chap offered to put an appeal on FaceBook. I told him that since I have nothing to do with FaceBook, he is saying nothing different to me than,  'Let's ask the squirrels and badgers if they have picked them up.' Appealing on FaceBook is one idea, but I didn't have a phone with me and I couldn't get in my home to use the laptops, so I could never be able to access any replies. Bit of a dead-end really. On top of that, I don't have a FaceBook account. That means I would have to include my home address for the finder of the keys to deliver them to, and wait outside my front door to make sure the kind person didn’t push my keys through my letter-box. Let's face it, most people would think just leaving house keys outside the front door to which they fit, is not the best thing to do. He offered to buy me a beer. I declined; I had money, and drinking beer wouldn't find the keys.

In the pub:

       'Have any keys been handed in.' I asked the bartender.

He didn't answer; he just went to the back and fetched my keys. 'A woman just handed them in. They were over there. He pointed to the road junction I had come out of on my way to the Co-op. I didn’t hear them drop because a tractor was turning into the lane just as they fell out of my pocket. Well, that is what I thought.

       'She is the garden.’

       'How many people are in her party?'  I asked. 'Will this be enough? I showed him a tenner.

       'Well, it will get them a couple of drinks.’

Relieved to have my keys back and grateful that the day was getting back to normal, I set off to the Co-op again. But then I had a thought; I had past a group of four people and an infant on a balance bike that were heading in the direction of the pub. I recognised them and stopped for a few words and pretended to race the little boy on his bike. The older couple live just down the road from me; the younger pair and child I had never seen before. Perhaps, it is fortunate that I did slow to briefly chat because something in that conversation pricked at me. It started me thinking about the chain of events in the same way as in the film, Sliding Doors' with two alternative plot-lines. Gwyneth Paltrow plays a woman who misses an underground train in one plot, and gets on the underground train in the alternative plot. It is a film that relies heavily on, and portrays  'cause and effect'. You know,  'The Butterfly Effect', which is also the name of another film.

If you can accurately trace your movements, cause and effect can appear to be fantastic. Indeed, I am inclined to lean towards believing that there is an outside influence to much of what we do; an invisible influence that many would regard as supernatural.

There is something in me that means that if I have an idea and can find ways to justify it, I will have a strong need to act on it. I had left my house to buy a few packets of Dioralyte, the powder that helps to restore electrolyte levels in dehydrated people. Before I got my bike outside, I put my house keys in my back pocket. The pocket where the frequent positioning of keys had worn a hole. I remembered that there was a hole and out the keys in a different pocket. After getting my bike outside I discovered that I couldn’t lock the front door because there was another key still in the lock inside. After removing that key, I took the bunch of keys from my pocket and, through habit, put them in the back pocket with a hole in it.

A minute later, I came across my neighbours, in the lane.

       'The Met office said it will be 37 degrees on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.' I offered.

      'Oh, it will rain then,'  the older woman cynically called back. 'It is my birthday on Tuesday!' The distance grew between us.

I sometimes mistake cynicism for skepticism; skepticism that is aimed at the veracity of my comments. I mentally shrugged, and put her words to one side, Ahead, was the little boy on his balance bike and his dad trotting alongside him. Running is what had prompted me to mention the forthcoming weather. I pretended to race the little boy, before I cycled on.

After I had visited the local shop to see if they had Dioralyte, and headed towards the Co-op, I checked for my keys, I often do that at random times. They weren’t there. After about twenty minutes of cycling back and forth to my home and back twice. That is when I started asking anyone strolling about. Well, two times. I stopped at the pub to ask, got offered the beer, asked inside, and got my keys back.

Ten quid lighter, and keys in a safe pocket, I stopped cycling to the Co-op. I remembered who was in the lane and realised they must have been going to the pub. Back I went, and went straight into the pub garden. Sure enough, there they were seated at a bench. I showed them the keys.

       'Do you recognise these?' I asked the whole group, yet somehow directed it at the older woman. Now here is where the weird stuck its tongue out at me and made itself known. If we look hard enough, we will see it.

       'No,' she said, ‘Did you get them from behind the bar?'  Instantly, I knew she had handed them in. I thanked her and told the group that I had put ten pounds behind the bar for them. Nobody acknowledged it and no-one thanked me back. 'I didn't hear them drop', she added.

Unthinking, I replied, 'Neither did I. There was a tractor.’

Just as I was retreating and was about thirty or forty feet away, the older man loudly cried,

       'Martin, I keep thinking your name is Paul.' His name is Paul. I went back to their table and said,    'Martin, you seem to like the name Paul, and plainly because Martin is in my head as your name, we should swap, and you can be Paul and I will be Martin. Convoluted, I realise, but my disjointed spoken bullet-points with no explanation, is how I am most often misunderstood.

       'He can't remember anyone's name except the dog's,' his wife, the older woman, said.

I felt she was publicly humiliating him by maligning him, so I tried to rescue him.

       'This will cheer you up then'; meaning what I am about to say should make you think he is not so bad.

       'Oh here we go', she said, rolling her eyes. She looked around the table.

Her exasperated comment somehow stymied any further explanation of how my story is not indicative of my own attitude. I just wanted to finish the conversation and go, but I had to politely finish what I had started. 'A while ago, I said, 'I don't know if it is still true; a Greek man would mourn his donkey's death by wearing a black arm-band for a whole year, but would wear a black arm-band to mourn his wife for only a month.' Paul recognising my blunder, just said the first thing that came into his head. 'I like donkeys.' I noticed a wry smile on the incredulous young woman, in the group, looking up at me from her seat. I didn't look at her husband.

There was silence at the table as I left. I felt I knew who would be the first to speak. I will never know for sure, though.

I didn't explain that the observation I had handed to them was probably more indicative of Greek life decades ago in the countryside, and even more so, two or three thousand years ago. I really didn’t want to. I was smarting from the older woman's relentless jaded comments, and just how acerbic she could be. A thousand or more years ago, a man without a donkey would have had no prospects. He would certainly not find a wife with no hope of maintaining an income. His donkey, to his mind, would probably be considered to be the difference between life and death. He likely would acknowledge its hard work, work that had allowed him to present himself as a good prospect for marriage. Without ever having a donkey he could never have married his love. 'Oh, here we go!' to me, had meant, 'He is about to go off on a wild story that he thinks is relevant, but it really isn't! I had no compunction to elaborate on the story.

Here is the list of actions, in chronological order, that ultimately means that I presented as a raging misogynist and during the impending heatwave, infants and elderly people in my neighbourhood potentially have a greater chance of being hospitalised with severe dehydration and the attendant effects of dehydration.

I unlocked my front door with a spare key and left it in the lock on the inside.

I put a thermometer outside my house with a sign that warned passers-by that the Meteorological Office for the UK is forecasting 37 degrees Centigrade for three consecutive days. 

I made the decision to buy five packets of five or six 'Dioralyte' sachets, an over-the-counter product that helps to restore electrolyte levels in dehydrated people.

I took put the bunch of keys in the pocket with a hole in it, remembered the hole and put them in a different pocket.

I put my bike outside and tried to lock the door with the bunch of keys but discovered that there was still the spare key in the lock, inside, so I removed the key and hung it up.

Now my focus had been redirected and I forgot about the hole in my pocket so, after locking the door with the bunch of keys, habitually put them in the back pocket with the hole in it.

I cycled towards the Co-op intending to stop at the local shop on the way. By the time I got to the local shop, the keys were on the road.

My near neighbour picked the bunch of keys up and took them to the pub.

Kindness flowed from everyone I met.

I retrieved my keys.

There is something missing though. A particular spoken sentence that repeats in my head gives me reason to think that someone made a decision that corrupted a smooth path of empathy and the evolution of, perhaps, life-saving action.  'I didn't hear them drop.' (the bunch of keys) My floundering response of,  'Neither did I, there was a tractor ' came from my memory of being out of the group's sight, further along the lane.

Why would you hear them drop if I was out of your sight? Being within hearing distance of a bunch of keys falling onto a road from three or four feet means that you are also within seeing distance. Did she, the older woman, my near-neighbour, see the keys drop and her attitude towards me, or the world in general, was such that instead of calling me back, she decided to hand them into the pub, and I would, maybe, go there to retrieve them.

Desperation from not finding my keys increased the value, in my mind, of being in possession of them. If I had been called back, I would have just thanked the woman. After half an hour or so of considering my options to regain entry into my home, I felt a reward should be given. Relief that someone had not thrown them into a ditch, or pocketed them with bad intentions, impacted heavily on me; hence I put  £10 behind the bar for the finder's group; the same £10 that was earmarked for the Dioralyte.

Was my kindness thwarted by someone’s long-term jaded attitude? Granted, my near-neighbour had the goodwill to hand the bunch of keys in, and I am relieved that she didn’t return from the pub and put them through my letterbox. But, something went wrong.

In economics, the utility of the £10 that moved from me to her, in my view, is less than the utility it would have had if it had bought Dioralyte. Unless….I shouldn't buy Dioralyte. There is no Dioralyte in my village shops. This means I need to go to a chemist in the city. I can't help but feel it is all a bit spooky. I am not going to compound the weird issue by buying any Dioralyte. Somehow, the only way to stop me buying Dioralyte was to reduce my financial capability by £10.

Sometimes, I have had to stop to tie my shoelaces, or had to mend a puncture before I can continue. Perhaps the delay in my progress meant that I did not get hit by a road-raged driver in a car that day.

However, all that pondering is just being 'off with the fairies'. If I had spent twenty minuted sewing a patch on my back pocket, or not washed all my other pairs of shorts at the same time, which were still not dried, I would not have lost my keys.

A stitch in time, saves nine [stitches], £10, some anxiety, and  a whole load of misunderstanding.

'It is not you, it is me!'