Roy – A Sketch.

Even as a teenager I suppose I was aware that Roy was shy, unwordly in a way. He was a carpenter and so must have worked among labourers and brickies and he also had what was then called a seaman’s ticket. Now it is difficult to imagine what his working life must have been like but then it was the rest of his life which drew me.

There was no fat, skimpy clothing - he clearly didn’t feel the cold and had little of the accoutrements of an outdoorsman that even then one was led to feel were necessary to be a real youth hosteller or touring cyclist. Why he bothered with us I do not now know. He was a flightless Summer visitor working here for six months and then taking ship for New Zealand in August or September. We wouldn’t see him again until the Spring.

Summer YHA club weekends would put this singular, boney figure in amongst us, his long, slow, silent, economical lope propelling him with an ease denied to most of the rest of us. What was that ease? Weightlessness? For that was what it seemed. Was this what enabled him to walk in plimsols with no socks and with his stenciled seaman’s kitbag like nothing more than a giant duffel bag over a shoulder on its draw-cord. Shoulders of iron I then thought.

"Can you see that Rabbit?" Roy had moved his arm out and nudged mine.

"No, where?" I said, slightly discomfited as we had been walking, all 10 of us, in silence and I had drifted off into some reverie of my own.

It was a hot June Saturday and the short, dry grass on the parched soil had lost what little springiness it normally possessed. Walking had become monotonous across this flat scrubby common land but Roy never let his surroundings out of his sight. I was about to find out the extent of his surroundings. His arm was now up, pointing, not at the side of the path ahead but at the horizon! Slightly thicker brows than most shaded a gaze like a falcon seeking prey.

His check shirt hung limply from the tanned forearm like a rag over an oak handrail, "Do you see that tuft of grass?"

Where, there were none nearby and I thought the high arm must be a mannerism but no, he was pointing at that rabbit like pointer at a downed Duck

I still couldn’t see the rabbit so Roy methodically homed my line of site in like an air traffic controller talking an airliner down in fog. The fog cleared suddenly as the rabbit flicked an insect away from its ear ...... 200 yards away! I could not deny that Roy could have seen the rabbit because I could see it now: how did he spot it in the first place was the question. He spent the next half hour coaching me. Years later I saw the method described again in the section on observation of a book on training to pass the Advanced Driving Test................ but Roy never did drive.