The many careers of the entity known as Rik
Also: the introduction post. You're welcome!
"So ... what do you want to be when you grow up?"
For the first time for a while, I looked into the eyes of the stranger standing in our dining room. During most of our 'chat' I had been staring at the clank of beads circling her neck. I don't like locking gazes; eyes are dangerous. Much better to stare at mouths or, in the case of this social worker, her fingers as they constantly pinched and stroked the wooden eggs strung around her creased throat.
What did I want to be? Now there was a question!
When I was five I was convinced the only job for me was 'train driver'. Thomas the Tank Engine was my favourite book: there was no other career to consider. Though driving trains wasn't enough for my young, twisted imagination; I was going to be an 'underground train driver' because tunnels were hidden, and hidden was safe.
At the age of eight all thoughts of driving anything had left my mind. My taste in books had moved on and my favourite author was now Gerald Durrell. Gerald loved animals, like me. He had run wild in the neverending Greek summers of his youth, just as I had run wild across the Romney Marshes, investigating and learning everything I could find about my mysterious homeland. The man was a collector of animals, and had his own zoo!
It was obvious: I absolutely had to become an explorer of foreign lands because foreign was not here, and not here was safe.
Then I grew into adoring the words of James Herriot. Mr Herriot was a veterinarian, who worked and lived in a foreign land called Yorkshire with big hills and deep dales and lots of queer folks with many sick animals. I, too, with eleven years collected, was surrounded by animals - dogs, cats, rabbits, ferrets - even a mynah bird which one day died so quickly it forgot to loosen its grip on its perch, to be discovered by me hanging upside down as stiff as the wood it still clung to.
Of course I had to become a vet. For once my family approved of this idea - not that I worried about their opinions. I cared only that I'd be surrounded by animals, not people. Animals were safe!
I stared at the woman, this 'social worker' sent to 'assess' me, hard in the eye like only a fifteen year old youth can stare. Her eyes were blue, I remember, though a darker blue than those of my siblings. A dangerous shade. Not safe.
"I enjoy studying the sciences, and I'm good with words."
"So maybe a scientist?"
"Or a novelist. Maybe both. There's no need for me to decide just yet."
The woman before me narrowed her eyes just a touch, telling me silently that once again I had given her the wrong answer. She was here because decisions had to be made; my life was about to change whether I liked it or not.
I ignored her annoyance, just as I had refused to engage with her other questions such as which of my parents did I love more? Mum, or Dad? Surely I loved one more than the other?
I love them both equally, I had told her over and again. See, I knew why she was here in my dining room and I had no interest in making her job easy for her. The advice she would give to the court was irrelevant to me: my decision was already made, by me, and no judgment would change it.
Looking back now, I can smile at my juvenile certainties. As it turned out I never became a train driver or an explorer or even a vet. I did become a scientist, of sorts, and also a novelist. For a long time I was a civil servant, working through the hidden (safe!) labyrinths of Whitehall. For a much shorter time I was a soldier.
I've also been a software engineer, and I've been a poet - the two careers are not that different, given the beauty of glyphs. I've been an agricultural worker and a stockroom assistant. A dreamer and a problem solver. A carer and, sometimes, a selfish bastard.
On occassion I've even been human, though not always as house-trained as others would like me to be.
And now I am a gathering of words - my first and last passion - on this electronic marvel called Substack. Welcome to my first post! Here in this (un)safe space I shall share my words with you on anything I choose to write about. I have no particular focus for this space - I've sampled too much of life to containerize my sharings to this expertise or that political leaning. If you sign up, be prepared for anything. Or nothing.
Life is nothing if not a big bunch of unexpected adventures!