Tom Michell - The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned from a Remarkable Bird

H ad I been told as a child in 1950s England that my life would one day run parallel with that of a penguinthat for a time, at least, it would be him and me against the worldI would have taken it in stride. After all, my mother had kept three alligators at the house in Esher until they grew too big and too dangerous for that genteel town and keepers from Chessington Zoo came to remove them. She hadnt intended to keep the alligators. She had lived in Singapore until the age of sixteen, and on leaving to return to England she had been given three eggs as a memento by her best friend in a tender and tearful farewell. The eggs had hatched in the cabin of her ship during the long voyage and so, naturally, she took them home with her. Years later, in wistful moments, she sometimes remarked that the imaginative present was perhaps the most effective keepsake she had ever been given.

I knew wild and domestic animals well. My rural upbringing ensured I had a realistic view of life. I knew the fate of foxes and farm stock. However, exotic animals I knew only from zoos and my imagination. I, like Walt Disney Productions later, was inspired by the genius of Rudyard Kipling. I could identify completely with The Jungle Book and Kim and his description of school days that were identical to my own more than half a century later.

Its true. I was brought up with an Edwardian view of the world. My parents had been born in different parts of the Empire, and I had grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins scattered round the globe; Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Singapore, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Nyasaland (Malawi), and so on. To me these places seemed almost familiar. Several times a year lettersand, with rather less frequency, their authorswould arrive from those countries to fire my childish imagination with stories of the jungles of Africa and the like. But I wanted to explore somewhere different, uncharted territory, a real terra incognita. South America was somewhere that nobody I knew appeared to have any experience of or connection with. So I had made up my mind while still at school that South America was where I would go when I grew up. At the age of twelve I bought a Spanish dictionary and secretly started learning Spanish phrases. When the opportunity arose, Id be ready.

It was some ten years later that opportunity arrived, in the form of an advertisement in the Times Educational Supplement. Wanted, it said, for HMC Boarding School in Argentina The position was so clearly suited to my purpose that within half an hour my application was in the postbox and ready to wing its way across the Atlantic, announcing that they need look no further. As far as I was concerned, I was on my way.

I researched the economic and political situation before leaving, of course. An uncle in the Foreign Office gave me the inside track on the fragility of the Pernist government in Argentina. There was likely to be another bloody coup by the army at some stage, our intelligence suggested. Terrorism was rife; murders and kidnappings were everyday events. Only the army could restore any order, it was thought. My bank in London, meanwhile, furnished me with economic information on Argentina: out-and-out mayhem! In short, everybody said in an avuncular sort of way, going to Argentina was an absurd notion and, under those circumstances, quite out of the question. Nobody in their right mind would dream of going. This, of course, was exactly what I wanted to hear and all the encouragement I needed.

I was offered the post of assistant master with residential responsibilities, but the terms of my contract were not terribly promising. The college would pay for one return flight, conditional on my staying for a full academic year. My UK pension contribution would be paid, and I would be remunerated in local currency. What that would be worth in terms of buying power locally the headmaster couldnt say, because of the prevailing economic shambles. However, I would be paid commensurately with the other teaching staff. While I was resident in the college, food and lodging would be provided. That was it.

I made sure I had enough money in my account to buy a return flight from Buenos Aires in the event of an emergency, and my bank arranged with the branches of Banco de Londres y Amrica del Sur in Buenos Aires that I could draw on funds in London should the need arise. But I didnt care about money. I was on my way, about to indulge that spirit of adventure I had felt as a boy, to embark on a quest to seek my destiny. That Fortune would assign me a penguin as a friend and fellow traveler who would one day provide a wealth of bedtime stories for generations then unborn was a singular twist of fate that still lay far over the western horizon.

T his book is based upon the authors memories and recollection of events. However, the names and identifying characteristics of certain individuals have been changed in order to protect their privacy, and dialogue, characters, and incidents have been reconstructed to the best of the authors recollection in order to convey his story.