Gawky Benevolence – Part 3 – Germany

The request came in the form of a letter. That’s to be expected that’s how we communicated on the whole although we had had the odd telephone call from time to time. Odd in both senses of the word.

Max was a Professor of physics and as part of that he supervised PHD students. He’d got on particularly well with one of them who was a young German man from Heidelberg. On more than one occasion the student and invited Max to visit him ad his parents but Max couldn’t quite pluck up the courage to go. It turned out that as he progressed through life he didn’t do international travel that much and was slightly anxious about it and about meeting the students parents. For some reason he thought that this would all be better if I went with him……and that’s what the letter asked me to do. He said he would pay for all the travel etc and do all the driving but he just wanted company for the trip.

I looked in my diary and bizarrely for me I had the time free. So I thought about it and thought. He has done so much for me over the years (by this time he’d also bought me a bass clarinet mostly because he wanted to see me play one. The one I own is the ‘son of’ that one as the one he originally bought for me was stolen from an instrument lock up at a festival – but that’s another story) that I thought Ok I can do this for him why not.

He had it all planned out, where we would stop on route, how long it would take us to get there and back, how long we would actually stay with the family etc. All I had to do was pack and wait for collection.

One thing I have forgotten to do up to this point was mention a couple of Max’s little quirks. You remember the old style computer paper that was slightly lined, quite wide and had little holes all down the sides, well when I first met him he used to cover his non occupied car seats in computer paper to stop them being damaged by the sun. He also used to get in his car with his coat, hat and gloves on and rarely put on the car heating. Not a problem in summer but in winter…brrrrr.  I used to tease him about that a lot

So arrive he did. Te car was less covered in computer paper because of the various things he’d packed for the trip including copious amounts of sandwiches. I wasn’t sure whether this was because he didn’t trust food abroad or whether he didn’t see any reason to pay for it when you could provide it yourself.

I mention the computer paper because as the trip unfolded and there were things to be paid for  like fuel etc and I became more and more aware that Max was OCD. All the coins he had with him were in plastic bank bags in the glove compartment. This was a cleanliness issue. That’s how he explained it to me. It kept them cleaner. His hands had been so scrubbed on so many occasions that his skin looked very dry, red and about to crack but he washed them obsessively.

We managed the trip Ok and we arrived in Heidelberg. The family were welcoming although a little stiff. I got the impression that they were quite conservative and certainly didn’t appear to drink. A bit of a shame as I could have murdered a beer on arrival but most of all, of course, they had no idea what to make of me! The relationship between us was not really explained or explainable. I was 20 years younger than Max, not an academic and not his girl friend? We were friends in their eyes but an odd pairing especially as Max liked, when out ,to have his photo taken with me, with his arm around my shoulders. he sang my praises constantly and had even given them some of my music. They probably thought I was a kind of gold digger . who knows.

I don’t remember much about the trip itself. I remember that we did a tour a round Heidelberg, up various towers , looking at the views etc. it was a very pretty place. I even think I remember eating ice-cream.’.ice spaghettiI’ I remember the awkwardness of being in their house as their guest when I had never met any of them before, not even the student, and most of all I remember that my increasing awareness of Max and his OCD made me like him more. It seems a strange thing to say but it actually endeared me to him more. Some how over those four or five days I felt like I knew and understood him better and that made me more relaxed.

I always felt an increased fondness for him from that time.

One time, on his return from Sidmouth, he had a near death experience caused by a pasty. I kid you not. He told me he’d bought the pasty before leaving Sidmouth and ate it at some point on the journey home…a hell of  journey…Sidmouth to Lancaster. Then shortly after he felt unwell and vomiting ensued etc. This apparently was so violent that he passed out and on coming round realised there was blood in his vomit. He could barely move and banged on his wall until his neighbour came. He was then rushed to hospital. It turns out that in order to calm the griping pain caused , presumably, by food poisoning he’d taken an aspirin. A whole one! This was my first realisation that there were different types of intelligence in the world and that even though he had a massive brain and was a highly respected physicist there were some things he simply didn’t know. He’d heard on a radio program that aspirin thinned your blood and therefore was a good way of preventing blood clots. i said Max…or more like “””MAAAAX -HOW MANY HAVE YOU BEEN TAKING? “””He’d been taking a full aspirin a day for a long time weakening the lining of his stomach and the dose he took on Pasty day caused internal bleeding. i did point out to him that the recommended dose, if you actually need them at all, is only a quarter to half a tablet, not a whole one. Anyway, I was so worried I thoroughly told him off. It did make me realise that he was quite vulnerable as an individual. So innocent in may ways. He really didn’t have a social life. His whole life was bound up in the university, his work and his students and when he was home he was home alone. rarely asked out to dinner and only going to the odd concert every now and then.

I became increasingly worried about this aspect of his life  feeling, after 30 years a sense of responsibility for his well being…….and then a miracle happened. He met someone. But was it the blessing it seemed to be?

The next blog will be the final instalment .