I took my grandson, Oscar, 20 months old, down to the regatta on the bus, a double-decker, his first experience of one, and we sat upstairs at the front. The bus was far too big for the narrow country lanes and the overhanging branches of trees thrashed against the upstairs windows.
We alighted at a bus stop in the middle of the festivities, beside a funfair in full swing. The tipsy bank holiday crowd, the flags, the bunting, the lines of orange police cones, and the bright yellow fixed-penalty notice stuck on the side window of almost every visible parked car, made for a colourful scene.
We hadn’t been there more than a minute when a precise naval officer’s voice on the loudspeakers announced the arrival of a Hawker Sea Fury over the town. Presently a plane similar in shape to a Spitfire appeared and performed a series of loop the loops right above our heads. After that the chap on the loudspeaker announced a one-minute silence so we stood quietly and still for that, the rain gently pattering the stretched fabric of our borrowed umbrella. The silence was a mark of respect for the Red Arrows pilot killed earlier in the week. The Red Arrows have performed at the regatta for as long as I can remember. Not this year. The difference between a Red Arrows display and a minute’s silence was stark.
After the silence, granddad’s bladder told him it needed emptying, so we made our way, via the funfair, to the public convenience next to the river. Oscar tripped and trotted along beside me, his small hand in mine. Perhaps I should say here that the more I get to know Oscar, the more I respect him. When the Chinese sage Lao-tzu said, ‘He who possesses virtue may be compared to an infant’, he must have had someone like Oscar in mind. Lao-tzu advised adults seeking virtue to ‘manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires’. By these standards Oscar is there already. He is plain, simple, unselfish and undemanding. He is also supremely unconcerned about his own comfort. He speaks quietly and confidentially. His conversation is modest and never about himself. It consists entirely of pointing out interesting things such as cows, birds and motorbikes, either by naming them, or by parodying the noise that they make.
That other Chinese sage, Confucius, would have strongly approved of Oscar, too. The man of virtue, said Confucius, ‘makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration’. This is Oscar all over when negotiating a steep flight of steps or stairs, for example, which is his chief difficulty at the moment. In his notable lack of prejudice, Oscar also conforms to Confucius’ idea of the virtuous man not setting his mind ‘either for anything, or against anything; he will follow what is right’. In short, the kind of company Oscar offers, once you’ve tuned in to it, is exemplary.
Of course I’ve heard incredible reports from his parents that Oscar is far from being the Confucian ideal when he’s at home. That he hits his mother in the face, for example. That he whacks the baby. That he has tantrums. But I see none of it. From the moment he sees me he puts his best foot forward. It’s as though he recognises a tribal elder when he sees one and knows how to behave.
At the open door of the public convenience, Oscar and I stood aside to make way for those coming out. There was variety in the men and boys exiting the public convenience. Each had a point of interest to commend him. This one was puffing at a cigarette. That one had excessive sideways motion and smelt of beer. This one looked like he wasn’t used to crowded public conveniences and the experience had slightly traumatised him. Some offered us a mumbled apology. Oscar, too small to command attention, his small hand in mine, looked patiently up at the faces as they emerged one by one.
Finally an attractively unselfconscious, unafraid man emerged (thick gold chain necklace, tattooed hands), strenuously tugging the belt of his trousers up over his stomach with both hands. He looked me right in the eye, the first to do so, and when he looked down at Oscar his face shone with delight. He stopped in his tracks and stared in admiration. ‘Little man!’ he said in a voice steeped in phlegm and love. He said it to himself as much as to anyone else and he said it as if he couldn’t help himself. And I’m not ashamed to say that his spontaneous approbation of our male child, from one tribal elder to another, exhilarated me.
After that I took Oscar on the dodgems. He was all set to drive when the lad keeping order came over and said sorry, gents, but it was against the rules.
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