Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.

In past posts, I have written about people who have had a major impact on my life through the positive influence they have offered. All these people, both men and women, have helped me in positive ways towards being a better person at family, professional, and general community level.

I have also been “helped “ by people who have done things in such a negative, senseless, and even harmful way that they have influenced me. They have taught me what to do by teaching me through their example and effort about what not to do.

In 1996 my wife and I went on long service leave to the United Kingdom. For the most part, we did our own thing, including driving, taking a week on a canal barge boat, and going on the bus tour to Ireland.

During our time away certain people influenced me because of what they were doing, where they were, what they were saying, and so on. They must’ve had an impact because I remember them to this day.

• I was walking in London from the place we were staying in Capitals Court. I went for a walk one morning and it was very early. As I walked along and took us there around it was a gentleman coming the other way. As we passed I wished him a good morning and spoke to him and jovial and happy times. His reaction was to look at me in a scared way, almost vertically, and his walk turned into a scurried sort of canter. I must’ve frightened the life out of him.

• We were on the Yorkshire Moores which is in the middle of the summer but it was a bleak day and quite windy. On the side of the road was parked a van. Upon Looking I saw the owner of the van with some crates which turned out to be filled with homing pigeons that he was about to release. I can remember the beautiful view from the Moores looking down into a very Greenvalley and him telling me just how far the birds had to go from their release point. We had a terrific conversation and I remember him and his birds to this day.

• We drove up into Scotland and pulled up outside at a public convenience that overlooked Inverness to the west. I needed to go to the toilet and went inside. There was a man, who turned out to be in the mind and carer of the facility, dressed ever so neatly. He told me I would need to pay one pound to go to the toilet. I desperately needed to go, so parted with the pound. When I came out I asked him whether the work he did at the hillside toilet with a great view, gave him job satisfaction. To this day I remember the look of disdain he reigned upon me for asking such a question.

• At John – O – Groats I happened across a man with a very portable shearing machine in a makeshift pen on the back of a towing trailer. Had an enlightening conversation.

• Met another man on the Isle of Skye who had sheep corralled into the corner of a paddock. They were included by his dog. He shore each sheep with hand-held shearing blades, placing shorn fleece next to a tree All this was taking place on a tarpaulin placed on the ground.

• There were others including a street cleaner in Dublin, a fisherman with a permanently moist nose in Penzance, and a man who reminded me of meeting the man from St Ives because he was exiting St Ives with his dog, as we drove into the town. I spun the car around, went back past him and his conveyance, stopped, jumped out of the car and took his picture – all for the sale of the nursery rhyme.

Great memories.