It's amazing who you meet, see and hear on a simple bike ride!

by Tim Veater.

So whilst Sainsbury's was suffering an armed robbery by a six foot youth on a motor bike, I was pedalling to Morrison's for an all-day breakfast. (Well not precisely but never mind) The breakfast arrived in super-fast time and was up to par.

Meanwhile an elderly man with his son (there was a facial likeness) or carer sat adjacent singing "All things bright and beautiful" - although it was only just recognisable. He appeared otherwise non-communicative and oblivious of all around him. He was in a world of his own, whether 'bright and beautiful' is hard to discern. He departed the store still singing a familiar hymn. I joined in!

I headed for town along the beach cycle path, the sea to my left blue and calm, gently lapping the yellow sand. In town I sat on a bench and was joined by two very different individuals.

The first was an elegant lady of about my age. (She took her 11-Plus in 1960 and her father bought her a bike when she passed it) She had been an art teacher in Sheffield and Nottingham Universities and now spent half the year in Newlyn. She said she wasn't allowed in shops!

It turned out she had recently been diagnosed with a form of Leukaemia - cancer of the white cells in the blood - after a stay in hospital with a lung infection. She was banned from shops not because she was infectious but to protect her from others, as her body was now biologically 'unprotected'. Rather amazingly, following the who-ha over obligatory masks, she hadn't been advised to wear one. Say no more!

In answer to my enquiry she said she had had the Covid jab and two 'boosters' before she had been admitted to hospital with a chest infection and another after leaving. She was subsequently dignosed with the leukaemia.

When I asked if she thought any of this might be related to the Covid jab, she replied, "I just follow the medical advice." If it was, it certainly won't be recorded anywhere as such, in common with much other illness and premature death nationally and internationally.

Experimental injections are not listed as one of the causes of leukemia but with unfolding evidence, perhaps it soon will be!

(Watch: Cancer types post mRNA vaccines  'We review a preprint that introduces a case of lymphoma immediately post vaccination and summarizes all currently scientifically published cases of cancer post mRNA vaccines and what might be the causes of such events'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MPH0QD74Yw )

Only a short time elapsed before a tall, slim, foreign-looking man joined me on the bench. We struck up a conversation. In imperfect but nevertheless impressive English he explained he was from Kazakhstan on a six-month visa, picking cauliflowersa and cabbages on local farms. He said he was twenty-nine.

He was impressed with England and British people, which he thought was less threatening and corrupt than his home state. He admired the shop buildings opposite where we sat. As with the previous stranger we mused over the contrast with the vibrant nature of the street in the past, in common with virtually all the nation's towns.

He was but one of hundreds, if not thousands from eastern Europe and further afield, who work in agriculture, an industry that has changed out of all recognition from what it was. As with small shops, small farmers have been replaced by large conglomerates, for which foreign workers prepared to work on poorer pay and conditions are a requisite.

We exchanged names - his was Rishi! - and shook hands, before he set off for Boots for something to treat his cough. Was there a hint of seduction around those lips as his handshake lingered? Amusingly he walked up the road to cross at the zebra crossing, rather than directly, as a local person would do, obviously unaware it was optional. A foreign national anxious not to break any local rules obviously.

I hope he enjoys his time here and comes to no harm now or on his return to notorious Kazakhstan - a land of three languages, all of which he could speak! According to Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI), in 2022 Kazakhstan scored 36, out of a possible 100 (0 = most corrupt; 100 = least corrupt)

With little breeze and full sun, it was hot as I made my way to the Prom where lots of people were dutifully 'promenading' as the name suggests. Walking, sitting, bathing, roller-skating, eating fish and chips - as you do, however something stopped me in my tracks.

The railings at one point were festooned with flowers, messages and photographs of a bearded and smiling young man. I spoke to the male standing there, doleful, obviously connected, watchful, paying his respects. His twenty-nine year old friend - the same age as the man I had just left - had only days before died at the spot.

I asked respectfully if he had drowned? No he replied, he hanged himself from the railings over the sea wall!

He had been hospitalized but let out too early he asserted. He was well known locally and "had a heart of gold."

I can find no report of it in local news outlets and a google search has revealed nothing, despite the unusual and tragic circumstances. However his passing has been marked by his friends with a wall of flowers overlooking the sea.

I returned home with these four meetings on my mind, encounters that seemed emblematic of wider issues; this as the nation yet again dives into an election to determine ostensibly who will govern us, deciding what and how national resources are spent.

The dementia-suffering man; the elderly woman suffering from a potentially fatal disease, possibly caused by a claimed epidemic or its novel treatment; the economic migrant from a distant despotic land, to which he may or may not return; a local Cornishman of only 29, so desperate and despondent he takes his own life, in the most public and dramatic of fashion.

Arguably all four instances, the human manifestations of government policies and decisions. A government deeply embroiled in wars abroad, whilst unable or unwilling to meet the needs of those at home.

As to the bike ride, as my father-in-law used to say, "It's amazing what you see, when you ain't got your gun!" END.

RIP: hps://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/heartttbreaking-tributes-kainan-kernow-dayus-9366169

2.7.2024: Last Wednesday we drove back to Cornwall from Bristol. Of course as we approached Shepton Mallet, traffic was a complete stand-still because of the Festival. So after a while I decided to try to skirt around the town. This also proved futile, so back towards Glastonbury I go. Another blockage so turn right towards Wells. (Why didn't I choose to go that way first of all?) It was five miles along not much more than a lane, but this did not stop crazy drivers coming the other way. First a young girl of a thing, then a boy racer. In the case of both if I had been just a few more inches into the road it would have been a head-on collision, and the topic of converation would have been what happened to those two dead bodies and the aftermath. However when we got to Well and turned left to Glastonbury all was clear and delightful all the way to Taunton. The road to Glastonbury always brings back memories from over fifty years ago. Every Saturday I would journey there in my little light blue Fiat 500 to visit John Thew who had sustained head injuries and resultant disabilities in an horific accident in Peru, when he worked there as a VSOS helper and long since passed on. I wonder where all his photos of those colourful Incas went? And indeed the Incas too.