Books for Blokes

I attended the launch of this year's Book for Blokes on Sunday. It is always a moving and enjoyable experience.

I was lucky enough to be brought up in a house full of books and was always encouraged to read. Now it's just part of my life, not something I even think much about.

Adult Learning Support works with people who didn't necessarily have that luck or the advantage of a good education or who for other reasons (such as our education system's appalling response to dyslexia) haven't had a chance to learn to read or write or work with numbers.

Tutors at the service noticed a lack of easy to access books that are of interest to men. So they held a competition for short stories and published their own book. The first was a roaring success. At the launch of the second yesterday we heard tales of men taking it to work in their truck so they could read it at lunch time. The first book they had ever read. One of the winners of the competition was a student of the service. Students were also part of the judging process. You can see what I mean about moving.

I was motivated to write a story for the competition myself. It is the first story I've ever completed and so - even though it didn't make the cut - I was pretty proud to be shortlisted. Having read the book I see now that my pitch was a bit off. But I thought I'd share it. Proud father and all that.

The Ukes of Hazard played the launch. We both read a lot. Terry is always finding classics at the second hand bookshop many of which I have never read. Playing the launch was a way of contributing a bit to a great organisation and supporting a fantastic, creative idea.

Snow White

Snow White was an unlucky bugger. He really was. Not that he had a bad life. He lived out at Appleby in his little cottage. He worked on the orchards and farms. His work place would change as the seasons changed. He’d been around so long that he didn’t need to ask for the work. Each season he would just turn up at his next job. He drove tractors, milked cows, pruned trees. The thing is he’d do it all with half an eye.

“I’ll keep half an eye on it” he’d say. Snow was born with one good eye and one eye that wasn’t very good. Then, when he was a kid, he took a tumble head first into a barbed wire fence and poked out his good eye. So he was down to the bad eye. He used to wear glasses with one lens covered in bits of tape and a really thick lens in the other. Kids used to have dares about who could catch him without his glasses and see the hole where the eye used to be. If their parents went around to Snow’s place the kids would tag along and rudely rush into his house hoping to see his face before he put his glasses on.

Snow was unlucky in other ways. He’d lost his family in the war and to sickness over the years. He missed them. But he quietly got on with things. As he got older and the sight in his one eye faded, his life became more limited. He couldn’t do much or go far. He got by at work by knowing where everything was and putting things really close to his face to see them. But getting from place to place was a problem. Well, it was a problem until Snow got Socks.

Now, this all happened a while ago. There would have been half a dozen cars around Appleby back then. Most people got around in their farm truck or walked or rode a horse. Socks was one of those horses. Socks had been owned by all sorts of people over the years. Once old McGregor had owned him. Old McGregor would go to the pub and get so drunk he couldn’t find his way home. The pub owner would just put McGregor on Socks and the horse would see that he got home. People still remember seeing Socks slowly making his way across the Appleby River, his drunken owner snoozing on his back.

Socks was loyal and strong. When he worked the dairy farm he used to pull the hay cart and baler. Once, one of the big tractors got stuck in a ditch. They hitched Socks up to the tractor.

“He’ll never pull that out” said the neighbour.

“Just you watch him” said the farmer and he gave Socks a little pat and clucked his tongue. Socks took half a step forward and felt the weight of his task. He leaned into his traces and dropped his body so low that he looked like he was kneeling on the road. He planted his hooves on the gravel and without any yelling from the farmer, without any whip, he slowly, silently pulled the three tonne tractor out of the ditch.

“That’s a good horse” said the neighbour.

“Yup” said the farmer, “That’s a good horse.”

Eventually Socks ended up with Snow White. Socks was a godsend for Snow. Until then Snow was stuck at home and had to rely on his mates to get around. Snow taught Socks the way to the places he had to go. After the first year Socks knew where he had to take Snow each day and would just take his owner there. Snow got a cart and he’d just sit in it and let Socks decide the best way to get where they were going.

This was all very well around Appleby. Nothing was very far from anywhere and Snow didn’t go many places anyway. But Snow had to rely on his mates to get him to places further away. So when Snow said he was taking Socks to the Takaka A&P Show his mates laughed. Takaka was over the hill. It’s a big hill with a tricky road. In those days it took over three hours to drive over the hill. People thought Snow was crazy.

“You’re a bloody idiot, Snow” they said at the pub. “You’ll end up down one of those banks.”

“She’ll be right” said Snow. “Socks is a bloody good horse.”

“Not that good” they said.

But they couldn’t talk him out of it. Snow wanted to take Socks over the Takaka hill to the A&P show and no one was going to tell him he couldn’t..

“Fergus O’Connor takes his whole team of horses over” he said.

“”Fergus O’Connor can see!” they cried.

Snow got his mate to help him fill out the entry form for the horse drawn cart section of the A&P Show. He knocked off early on the Saturday and stopped at the store for some bread and stopped at the pub for a rigger. He made some mutton sandwiches and filled an old leather bag with his lunch, his drink and a couple of spare bits and pieces. He went to bed early.

The next morning, bright and early, his mate, Roddy, turned up with a horse trailer and a truck for the cart. He was going to give Snow a lift whether he liked it or not but Snow was gone. So was Socks. They had already hit the road.

In the dark, long before dawn, Snow turned Socks on to the road to Takaka and said “Just pop us over the hill will you, mate?” Even though he had never been on this road Socks seemed to know what Snow wanted and quietly made his way up the twisting road. Every time a truck or car came groaning and moaning up behind them Socks just stopped and waited for them to pass. Roddy drove past at about six o’clock. He couldn’t stop because he would never have got the truck going again on the hill. He just yelled out his window as he crawled by, “You’ll get yourself killed, you silly bugger!”

Snow could tell by the sounds and the light that they were at the top of the hill. “Whoa” he said. Socks pulled over and stopped by some grass and started to eat. Snow reached into his bag and took out a mutton sandwich and his rigger. He took a bite and a swig and felt the breeze on his face. He sat and listened to the birds. He smiled. “I don’t know about you, mate, but this will do me” he said.

He finished his sandwich and washed it down with another swig. “Come on, son let’s take a gander at this show. We might even get there in time to take a ribbon off old Fergus O’Connor.”

Socks moved back on to the road and they headed for Takaka. Snow didn’t win any ribbons but after that Socks took him over the hill every year to the show. Every year Snow and Socks would stop at the top for a breather and a feed. And every year Snow would say “I don’t know about you, mate, but this will do me.”