TUESDAY WITH PETER

Less than ideal circumstances have seen me spending a fair bit of time at an old folks' home lately. On a recent particularly full-on visit, I wandered into the communal lounge area for distraction via a change in scenery, where a number of elderly dears were dotted around the room either chatting amongst themselves or staring vacantly into the distance - sanity levels dependent. The dulcet tones of 1950s ballads lent an eerie melancholy to the scene; the jubilant rhythms misplaced in so lifeless an atmosphere.

As I sat back into an obliging floral armchair as aged as its most frequent inhabitants, my gaze fell to a man on my right. He had the aura of someone still with his wits about him, and was intently poring over a book on the history of freemasonry. Yearning to engage with this fascinating specimen, I found myself waltzing over. "May I enquire about the book you're reading?" I started mischievously, flopping into a neighbouring seat. "Hello, darling!" he replied, promptly landing it on my lap. Thus began an hour of one of the most fascinating conversations of my life. Peter had been a musician. A fact confirmed when he would later serenade me, loudly, and in German, to the indifference of a less than captive senile audience. "Ich liebe dich, my dear.." he bellowed operatically, simultaneously backing his earlier claim to German fluency. His voice still rang as clear as crystal through the foggy tunnel of age. I could tell he had been quite the talent. "When I was 19, I was left a small fortune," he explained. "I never had to work! So I built a boat and sailed around Europe for most of my twenties, crossing from one concert, one music festival to the next."

He had no family now, he said, and only one friend. One friend whose nine-year-old daughter he walked into a bank with just weeks ago and signed over his entire inheritance to. "It's important to set up future generations, to give them a chance to succeed." he said by way of explanation. We talked of life, of education, of love, of regret. "What do you think people live to regret?" I mused to him, half rhetorically. His face turned sober. "I was so selfish. I regret being selfish. You know, I never married. I had mistresses, sure, all very intelligent, passionate, fiery women. But I lived for myself." as I was taking in the gravity of this disclosure, he affixed me with his penetrating stare. "Look at you. You're young and beautiful, and you've got that against you. Men are going to come in and out of your life... in and out. And they're going to hold you up." Seemingly a fragment, I waited for the rest of his discourse. It never came. We sat in comfortable silence.

We talked on; of land, of ownership, the importance of education, of travel. By the end of it, he'd convinced me to call to fruition my buried dream of learning German myself. I'd always wanted to, if only to one day pronounce my surname in a way that didn't cause my Deutsch-dwelling friends to fall about themselves in laughter. "Never stop learning. Never stop reading." he stressed to me. The nurse came round to administer his medicine, at which point he grinned and barked "you'd better set an extra place for dinner!" cocking his head in my direction. "No, Peter!" the nurse countered jokingly, "you'll have to take this young lady to a nice restaurant." "You know, I don't think I even know anywhere good around here..." he replied apologetically, as if the proposition held actual merit. He turned to me, "In my younger years I would've made an adventure of going off to find one, but these days I just don't have the energy!" It was roughly around this time I decided I loved him.

"Well," I said brightly, as our conversation eventually reached a natural end. "This has been a wonderful afternoon." "You've read a good book!" Peter said, pointing to the still-open volume of his I'd absconded. "I think I've read two." I said softly, smiling into that gracious man's watery blue eyes. With that, I gave him a shy kiss on the cheek and scampered off. Back to real life.

I'll always remember that afternoon with Peter. He reminded me of the importance of people; end of story. I learned that dreams and cities and possessions make for a skeleton of a life when you've no one to share them with.

And of 'story' in general?

His sentiments provided the impetus I needed to remember to live a good one.