There’s not much likelihood of winning, but it certainly would give some excitement to the campaign

In Morocco Ronnie was bitten by a mad dog. He found it almost impossible there to get adequate medical attention but he didn’t come home, but rather carried on to Greece. Fortunately the dog hadn’t had rabies and the wound healed. On these long jaunts, like many of the other young hitchhikers, he got jobs to keep him going in olive or almond groves or picking whatever fruit was in season.

When work was scarce he came back home to get a job to earn enough to go away again.

Next time he went off, it was to India and he came back with extraordinary tales of a different place.

“What a tremendous country it is,” he told us enthusiastically. “It’s so very different from here that there isn’t really language to describe it – the mass of people, the poverty, the dirt, the overcrowded trains we travelled in, the sunshine, the cheerfulness, people living all their lives on the streets, raw humanity exposed.

“And Nepal is something else. You have to see the landscape to believe it.”

He showed me photographs. There was something about the colours and contours that got to me. “You would like it,” he assured me.

After his first visit to India he told a story of how he and his fellow traveller had to pay in advance for airline tickets to return home.

The travel agent who took the money told them they could pick up the tickets when they came back for their flight the next day.

Gambled

When they went to do so, they were told by the same man that the tickets were not available. He had gambled their money and lost it all.

“Very sorry, come back tomorrow and I get the money and have your tickets, I promise.” They were not available the next day.

Ronnie protested: “We have no money left to stay here any longer.” He threatened to go to the British Embassy.

“Don’t do that,” pleaded the official, “I tell you what I do. I give you a thousand rupees. It’s all I’ve got. You go for three weeks up to Mussoori. It is a hill station above Delhi. You can live there cheap. Come back in three weeks. I have tickets, I promise. And that is what they did.

“Like living out of time, living in Mussoori,” Ronnie said, “in this place where once a lot of British people lived.

“None are there now but they have indelibly left their presence on the place; it is more like an English village than an Indian township.

“Walk down the quiet streets and you’ll find cottages with roses growing up the walls. The monsoon had started and it seemed at times as if we were living in a cloud which would occasionally open to show us the whole plain of India below us. It was very strange and powerful.”

“And what happened?” we asked.

“In three weeks we went back to Delhi,” Ronnie continued. “The Indian official had our tickets. We flew home. What a relief that was. I don’t know what we would have done. There are people who get stuck in India forever.”

The one thing Ronnie never seemed to think of doing was phoning home to ask for help. I would have liked him to but his father was proud that he didn’t.

Ronnie came back from India thin but fit enough. He worked at home for a while to make some money again. It was the busy season on the farm and he was still with us when the students came back to the bothy in October.

Friendly

Now that our boys were much the same age as the students they often became friendly with them, especially Ronnie. Whenever there was a party going over at the bothy he was there.

Like his dad before him, Ronnie was good at parties. He was very witty and funny and could get a heated argument going, but he could control it also. After having been at college in Carlisle he could speak the students’ language.

He was a man of his time and to them he was deliciously radical. Perhaps the students envied his lifestyle – a free man taking off where and when he liked, a free thinker.

“In tomorrow’s world there will be no characters left,” said one of the students one evening.

“Oh yes there will,” said another.

“Who? Who will be the characters of tomorrow? We are all put in such straightjackets of work and careers.”

“Well, Ronnie for a start,” was the instant answer. That particular year Lord Mackie was put up as the only candidate for Rector of Dundee University. Lord Mackie was well on in years.

He had always been a respectable citizen and had made money and enjoyed a certain amount of fame. His ideas were the opposite of radical.

“Boring,” said the students. “We must get someone to stand against him, someone nearer our own age who will at least give him a run for his money, but who?”

One of our students had a bright idea. “How about Ronnie? He’s full of ideas on changing the world, and he’s just back from India. That’s the place to be these days. And he looks radical – long straggly hair, patched jeans.”

“It’s really quite a lot of work being as scruffy as this,” Ronnie said to me one day while sewing, rather ineptly, yet another patch on to well-worn jeans which already had more patch than original material.

“Would you do it, Ronnie?” asked the students. “We’d help you do most of the slog. You’d just be the front man.”

Excitement

“Well,” said Ronnie, rather reluctantly. “Just so long as I don’t win. I don’t want to be Rector. As soon as I’ve saved up enough I’m off to Australia. I intend getting a year’s work permit. I might stay there, who knows?”

“There’s not much likelihood of winning but it certainly would give some excitement to the campaign. We’ll need to give you a high profile. The powers-that-be won’t like it. Be prepared for strong opposition.”

The whole idea didn’t appeal to me but who was I? Only Mother. My opinion was not sought.

The campaign began. Large posters appeared everywhere in the vicinity of the university, either with huge letters stating GILLIES IS GOOD FOR YOU or with pictures of a large nose with big letters underneath saying RONNIE NOSE.

Neither the students or Ronnie had much money to put into the campaign so they had to be inventive.

Recently, work had been done on the roof of an outhouse on the farm. New slates had been put on. There was a pile of the old slates stacked against the barn wall.

More tomorrow.