Helen Pitt - The Erstwhile Buddhist

The Erstwhile Buddhist

A year in Darwin

Helen Pitt

APS BOOKS Stourbridge

APS Books,

4 Oakleigh Road,

Stourbridge,

West Midlands,

DY8 2JX

APS Books is a subsidiary of

the APS Publications imprint

www.andrewsparke.com

Copyright 2020 Helen Pitt

All rights reserved.

Helen Pitt has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published worldwide by APS Books in 2020

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the publisher except that brief selections may be quoted or copied without permission, provided that full credit is given.

These memories are dedicated with all my love to my children

Jesse and Rebecca Inman who managed without me for a while.

Also by Helen Pitt

The Strange Free-Fall Of Fred Ryland

Beating The Banana: Breast Cancer and Me

Tales From Pinfold Farm

PROLOGUE

H e imagined the scene at the gates of heaven to be not unlike that at the finish line of a long and gruelling marathon: everyone high-fiving, hugging, collapsing, elated that its over, yes, its finally over, pouring cups of water over one anothers heads and saying, Holy shit, dude, that was fucking brutal. I am never doing that again.

Shalom Auslander, Hope: A Tragedy

The morning I received that first email, I read it out to my husband. It surprised him as much as it had me. We were sitting in the kitchen at home and as it happened, we had been talking about our childhood and all of our old school friends and had been enjoying reminiscing for a while.

I recall it like it was yesterday because my husband was pottering in the kitchen when I started to scroll down my computer screen to reveal a photograph. There he was in black and white, the subject of this writing. He was standing, arms folded, outside his workplace. I quietly said to myself, Oh my God, because the facial similarity between him and my husband was unmistakeable. Now in his fifties, the photograph showed a handsome man with a grey beard and lovely eyes. Hearing my sigh, my husband called out from the kitchen, What is it?

I said, It`s a photograph of *******, he`s just sent one to me.

There was a slight pause and then my husband said in a voice full of sadness,

Oh Hel, please don`t fall in love with him.

But it was too late. I already had.

1

Y ou know when you fill out a job application and at the end the monitoring form asks you what religion you are? Well I`ve always ticked the other box, having for many years defined myself as a bit of a Christian and a bit of a Buddhist.

I was pushed and pulled all ways as a child. My mother was agnostic, my father a devout Christian and my brother Al`, a Zen Buddhist so in a spiritual sense I was driven in several directions. Politically, mum was a true blue while my dad was a raging socialist so it`s no wonder I grew up somewhat confused. I`m no longer confused; I am a socialist and will never vote Tory until my dying day and I am also a bit of a Buddhist. Buddhism really speaks to me.

My name is Helen, most of my friends call me Hel. It is 1967 and my other brother Martin`s sixteenth birthday.

I adored my brother Martin. He is two years older than me. He and I were extremely close as children in fact you could say we were joined at the hip as we went everywhere together until our late teens when various boyfriends and girlfriends became much more interesting.

As children we loved to play super - hero games. Tying a bath towel around our necks which magically transformed into a cape, we would zoom around the large flat we lived in, he as Superman and me of course as Supergirl. Martin was a terrible tease and couldnt let me walk past him without doing something to me. He would trip me up or pinch my arm or anything annoying so that I would retaliate. Then we`d have a full-blown wrestling match on the hall floor which generally ended up with me shouting Submit! Submit!, when my bro` got me into a figure four.

Martin took me roof hopping in our village as a child which involved us climbing up fire escapes and drainpipes to breath-taking heights on top of Woolworth`s roof. From there we would jump across a humungous gap to land on the roof of the bingo hall next door and so on until we couldnt get any further and then we`d have to go all the way back. I can only imagine my parents were busy in their greengrocers shop facing the Warwick Road. Their hearts would have stopped if they`d had any idea what we were up to.

We loved to hang around the back of the bingo hall on a hot summers day because they would leave the doors open to let in some air and Martin and I would shout out random numbers as loudly as we could up to the hall to try and confuse the players. So yes, we were extremely close.

That day, he and I had walked around Acocks Green where we lived and left fliers in a couple of cafes and pubs, advertising his party to be held that evening. My parents were off out and leaving us to our own devices which was probably not a great idea. They were generous parents.

At 7pm Martin and I trooped across the road to meet our guests at the place we had arranged, the grass island in the middle of the village. To our horror we found around one hundred teenagers squashed up together on the central island asking, Where`s the party?

I don`t know what we were expecting; we didn`t know most of them. We showed them the route to our parents` large and rambling five bedroomed flat which was situated above what was then The Midland Bank. Iron steps led up to the front door from the garden to the flat. On our way to the flat we stopped at Victoria Wines and bought several flagons of scrumpy cider. At ninepence a heady, cloudy pint it really did the trick and the party was soon underway, the latest singles from Long John Baldry, Cat Stevens and The Beatles blasting out from my mother`s prized, new Grundig stereo record player of which she was inordinately proud.