UK Alone
At the age, of twenty-two, I arrived in London with 100£. Deduct from that 30£ for a second-hand push bike, and my costs of existing for close to a week in London, and what was left would have to do until my first pay cheque from I knew not where.
I spent five days sharing a flat with a group of other young kiwis, none of whom I had met before, but one was the sister of one of my flatmates when I was at Massey University. Five days was plenty long enough to be bludging off people for whom I had next to no connection.
The constraints of a big city like London literally drove me crazy, and after five days, I had to get out.
Very early one morning, I set off to ride north. I quickly learnt that this was dicing with death. My provincial town logic told me that if I got on the road early, I could be out of town before the traffic became ridiculous. The reality was, that although there may have been fewer cars before dawn, there were trucks galour, and if someone was silly enough to be out there on a push bike, they didn’t deserve road space.
Oh dear, had I continued, Eyebright never would have been. Shaken, I retreated to the nearest train station and booked a ticket for Kings Lynn, one hundred and sixty kilometers to the north. There, I found inexpensive accommodation, and slept for twenty hours.
The next day I rode west, bound for Wales, the land of my fore fathers. I had a notion that doing so would be an emotive experience.
I crossed into Wales via the Abergwesyn Mountain Road. In fact, due to failing light, I camped near the summit. If you’ve seen the ‘One NZ’ advertisement with the young Kiwi seeking out his mother in the bleak Scottish highlands, that is the sort of landscape I was in. Fortunately the weather was kind. When it became light again, I packed up and mostly coasted fifty kilometers to the coastal town of Aberystwyth.
Early in the twentieth century, my grandfather emigrated to Canada from Beaumaris, on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales.
Down at the sea-side, the village of Beaumaris had a benign climate, but the uplands of Anglesey are wind swept and bracing. That is where I headed, looking for farm work. Not surprisingly I came across a letterbox with the name Owen on it. In Wales, the name Owen isn’t as common as Jones or Evans, but it’s well up there.
Beaumaris
I rode down the long driveway, and at the end of it, met Richard Owen. He was quite interested that I was from New Zealand, and that there was a possibility that we were related, but he didn’t need any help on his dairy farm, so sent me on my way.
Before I reached the road, he drove up and said that I could stay on the farm with his family.
I had a freshly minted degree in horticulture, and a horticultural tutoring job came up at the university in Bangor, just across the straits. I went to see the department head, and got on famously well with him, because he and I were both scout leaders. I left believing the job was mine, and constructed a vision in my mind of what my life would be like, living the next two or three years in Wales, or possibly longer.
University of Wales, Bangor
There was to be another interview, but I regarded this as a formality.
On the day of the interview, I wore shorts, rode over the bridge to the mainland and to the university. I saw there was another applicant, a man ten or fifteen years older than me, but thought nothing of it.
In the interview, I remember saying that I thought it was important to be physically fit, and no doubt said other things that would have reinforced the impression that I was a naive boy. I left the interview, still in no doubt that I would be chosen.
The role would have entailed more than potting up petunias, and trimming geraniums. It would entail motivating people, who might only be their because they would otherwise lose their benefit. As a fresh-faced boy, I would have been right out of my depth. Not with-standing, I believed that with my university degree, I was something special.
When the department head rang me up to tell me that I hadn’t got the job, charitably he said “it had to do with my age”.
I was completely crushed. My fantasy was demolished. My welcome mat at the farm had remained in place only because Richard believed me when I said that my job at the university was virtually certain, and of-course would find a place in Bangor.
I needed to process what appeared to be a black void in front of me. Yet again I got on my bike and rode and rode, clear 150 kms around the Isle of Anglesey. Then the next day, thanked the Owen’s for their kindness, and rode down the road, over the bridge and north-east to Conwy.
I turned up at the right place at the right time, a nursery short of staff, and in the thick of propagating ornamentals.
Duxie Cunningham had a caravan parked in a paddock, and a workmate suggested that I ask her about accommodation.
Duxie was recently widowed. Her husband had been the local GP. She had a lovely home, and an MG Midget, which, within days of my meeting her, she gave me the keys to go downtown and pick up something. I clearly remember the sensation. It was like driving on rails.
Duxie took me to meet some of her friends and she suggested that I should move up to the house. She had taken to calling me Pet.
Wanting to justify my keep, on a Sunday, while she was away, I worked the morning windrowing the meadow hay in her paddock, then wrote a note, saying that my staying didn’t seem right, and rode back into the void.