Buying bread from a man in Brussels
Six foot four, full of muscle
I said, “Hey, do you speak-a my language, buck?”
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich…
The Twiglets arrived today and tomorrow the Marmite is due. I have been toying with ordering some Vegemite.
If you are British, you will understand the Marmite thing, either you love it or hate it. You might get drawn into the Vegemite or Marmite debate. I am bi-lingual.
For three years I had Vegemite sandwiches out in the depths of Queensland, Australia. Many years later in the UK I reverted back from Marmite to Vegemite. I have been on Marmite for over a decade now.
If you have lived pretty much your entire life in the UK, it is difficult to imagine being seared by the semi-desert outback sun and then cooked in the African bush as a child. I say that I am part desert creature and instinctively seek shade.
I’ll make a postulate.
Human beings tend to assume a whole bunch of stuff about others without ever checking if those assumptions are in anyway close to reality. They may make weighty and important decisions based on these assumptions without doing any checks and balances.
What do you reckon to this postulate?
I recently explained to someone that I probably had delayed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder {PTSD} because of events in the African bush as an 11-year-old. This hypothesis is consistent with my hyper-alert state in my early adult life and possibly lent a hand to my anxiety and depression. Nobody who was treating me ever asked if I had seen in close quarters a man being dragged under to die by a Nile crocodile. The idea of PTSD was not very trendy back then. I was in London and not Lusaka. The hypothesis is consistent with some of my risk-taking behaviours such as walking down the tube tracks into Southgate station on my way from Cockfosters to Bounds Green because I had no money for a taxi. The second time I did this I got busted by the transport Police.
Since we have been here, we have seen half-a-dozen or so snakes. When I mentioned it to the professional hunters and the mole hunter, they all reacted, they kind of shivered. Is there something about Catholicism and serpents? Who knows? I am quite relaxed; an adder, or a grass snake is not a black mamba or a brown snake.
People assume a whole bunch of stuff. There was a time when people felt that I was motivated by financial self-interest and greed. But I was seeking to raise money for a retreat centre and not a posh house, car and lifestyle.
I am going to put two questions, one of which is mildly satirical. They related to my postulate.
Have you ever assumed something about someone and been so very far off the mark that it was retrospectively toe-curlingly embarrassing?
Did you behave like a poorly spelled Danish king towards said individual?
Traou an Dour 