Chapter 13 – Pete’s story
Danny discovered Pete was a student. If Danny had to guess he would have plumped for engineering, electronics, physics, woodwork or music. That was what Pete’s room seemed to shriek of with its woodwork tools, soldering iron, assorted bits of wood, wiring and home-made instruments and machines. But Pete was studying biology, though you wouldn’t know it.
When Pete wasn’t making or inventing something, which he did quite often, he and Danny would hang out together. They’d end up in one another’s rooms either playing music, Pete invariably picking at a guitar or one of his own inventions along to the music, or reading Sci-fi books. They had that easy-going relationship where there was no need to talk. You just slipped into each other’s company. Not that they didn’t talk. Many were the nights when they’d sit up through the night talking passionately about life, love, infinity, reality, the environment and music. The world was in a mess. They knew how to put it right. If only………..
Pete had come from Suffolk. He’d been brought up on a farm. He lived in an ancient farmhouse with a moat, secret rooms and enough freedom to last a life-time. He regaled Danny with his tales of building rafts to race along the moat, climbing trees, scrumping and collecting wild animals. He’d always learnt to solve problems. Out in the sticks there were no shops. If something needing fixing you fixed it. He’d always built things. That came in good use when he got his first motorbike – an old BSA Bantam – and rampaged around the farm.
Pete had gone to the little village school where he’d not excelled. His head was always out there in the fields and wide open spaces. But he’d done enough. He’d taken his A Levels. Then he’d dropped out. He’d taken what is now known as a gap year and headed out to Africa on VSO. He’d soon got fed-up with that and jumped ship, ending up out in the bush as an eighteen year old teaching and running a clinic, the only white man around. He reminisced about his experiences, dealing with malaria, syphilis and tropical ulcers with nothing more than a jar of aspirin and some sulphur powder. In a matter of fact way he told the story of how he had discovered a young boy unconscious under a bush and taken his back to the clinic. He had malarial fever and a temperature well over a hundred. Pete nursed him back from the brink.
When he was better the boy disappeared. Weeks went past and then the boy reappeared with his father. His father was a weaver. He had listened to his son telling him about the white man who had saved his life. His father had weaved a length of kente cloth, the traditional weave, and trekked the tens of miles through the wilderness to present it to Pete. Pete showed it to Danny.
Straight from the outback in Ghana, with its witch-doctors, mud huts, lack of facilities and wilderness with real wild animals, Pete had gone into London and a course in Biology. He was suffering from culture shock. None of it seemed to equate.
Danny seemed to intuitively understand this. That’s probably why they got on so well. None of the way society worked made much sense to him either. They were both outsiders looking in.
These are my six books of poetry. They are available as paperback or on Kindle from Amazon – all for under £5 for a paperback. You could buy the whole lot for just £27.62!!
They are not conventional poetry books. They are like you find on my blog with a page of explanatory prose followed by the poem. The prose is as important as the poem to me.
Codas, Cadence and Clues – £4.97
Stanzas and Stances – £5.59
Poems and Peons – £4.33
Rhymes and Reasons – £3.98
Prose, Cons and Poetry – £4.60
Vice and Verse – £4.15
Science Fiction books:
Ebola in the Garden of Eden – paperback £6.95 Kindle £2.56 (or free on unlimited)
Green – paperback £9.98 Kindle £2.56 (or free on unlimited)
Rock Music books
In Search of Captain Beefheart – paperback £6.91 Kindle £1.99 (or free on unlimited)
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Other selected books and novels:
Anecdotes-Weird-Science-Writing-Ramblings – a book of anecdotes mainly from the sixties and other writing.
More Anecdotes – following the immense popularity of the first volume I produced a second
Goofin’ with the cosmic freaks – a kind of On the Road for the sixties
The book of Ginny – a novel
In Britain :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1461306850&sr=1-2-ent
In America:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=opher+goodwin
In all other countries around the world check out your regional Amazon site and Opher Goodwin books.