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Tuesday, October 17, 2006

A Smile

When I was 18 I did a bit of travelling round Europe for 5 weeks. At the end of the 5 weeks I wasn't ready to back home again so I stayed in Holland for a further 6 weeks and worked in a tulip bulb factory. The work was tedious and for 5 of those weeks we had to endure 12 hour shifts. The village campsite where we stayed at was in the arse end of no where and a trip to the big city or nearest town was something that could only been achieved at the weekend.

A lot of people left. It wasn't quite the 'Holland Experience' they'd been hoping for. Nor was it for the rest of us who stayed but it was an experience all the same. I don't think I could've survived the gruelling work schedule , sleeping in a tent and the lack of contact from the real world, if it hadn't been for the people who I worked with and one girl in particular, wee Sarah Jane. She was working in Holland to save up a bit of money before going back to uni. She'd just taken a gap year off to travel round Asia and Australia. She was my kind of girl. Open to everything. Expecting nothing. She had an old school tent! A triangular one. You never see these anymore. She was a hippy but without the cliches.

We kept in contact when we came back from Holland. I made her tapes of all the music I was missing when we were there. She sent me an email which she had written to her parents before she came home from travelling. It was thanking them for letting her live her dream. She told them of all her wonderful experiences. She told them of what she had learned.

'A smile can cross all political, economical, racial and sexual divides, it can speak more than a thousand words, it can bring joy and peace and it's presence, or lack of it, can make a traveller's day, or ruin it.'

Sarah Jane helped me survive Holland. She helped me with smiles and laughs and listening open-mindedly. At the same time I can't ignore the other people who worked there because they also helped me survive. The English couple who were just normal, the mad Scottish man who thought us Irish were crazy for liasing with the English people, Damien for lending me his walkman and Beatles tapes, Johnny for letting me fight with him and playing guitar in the evenings, the Ballymena man who reminded me that no matter what obscure part of the world you might be in, home is never far away, familiarity is always there.

I'd never seen a shooting star til I was away that summer. I thought they were make-believe. But now I know that they exist and wherever you go, if you open your eyes and look, you'll see them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gosh, you never saw a shooting star until then? (the rest of the story is ace, but I amn't going to mention it. Except there.)

And you a country lass, as well. Now, this is probably going to say a lot about me, sad as it may sound, but when I were young (I had a proper 5" reflector telescope from when I was 10 or so, and I still have it) and a-woo-ing the young ladies, I used to set up the telescope in the back field and sit in the pitch black with them, watching the stars pinwheel above us, look into the craters of the moon and wait for shooting stars. Then when I uni, with the mad big telescope, show them (different girls) Andromeda in all its glory.

Perhaps you should do a class in astronomy, you might like that. Or I could send you my 'how to build a telescope' book, and you could build one of those with your joinery skills. That would rock.

hootchinhannah said...

I really never saw a shooting star until I was in Holland aged 18, except for Shooting Stars on the telly.

Bert would be more of a star gazer than me. Maybe I should do a course. Send me down that book and I'll make a wooden telescope.