N ~ Our extravagant philosopher

I was laying low in the H0 kitchen, which I seem to spend far too
long doing when Si?n and Manley have fled the scene, when James, our
very extravagant philosopher, interrupted my private s?ance. Noticing
that my permanent frown was present and correct, he enquired, "What's
wrong, Bruce?"

"Nothing," I replied, perhaps untruthfully. "I was just
thinking."

"So that's what's wrong. I'm off riding."

And he disappeared into the corridor again, presumably to fetch his
BMX bike, Lucille, that which he keeps in his bedroom. I remember well
his initial concern over keeping Lucile indoors, as it is generally not
allowed by the staff, and he had thought to hide her under his bed in
order to avoid confiscation.

"Thing is," he said, his general prelude to reasoning, "if I left her
outside some kids would try and nick her."

His concerns were all too justified - by then I'd already walked past
the bent, skeletal remains of bicycles left chained outside Nelson
Court several times. And only recently Lianne's bike disappeared for
good from just two blocks along from us. This was mildly surprising, as
it had previously had a wheel or something snatched from it, causing
Lianne to casually remark as we passed it, "Is that my bike? It is!
Someone's stolen a wheel. Ah, well."

Even more recently, my good ally Cole had told me of the theft of a
bike he had purchased just the previous day for the sum of five pounds.
He wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or amused, and seemed to elect for
both alternately.

So our extravagant philosopher from Essex, who had soon established
himself as the loudest and most boisterous member of the floor, was
quite right in housing his beloved Lucile, and it turned out, I
presume, that the cleaners did not take exception to her presence. She
lies in his room, back to the floor, wheels in the air.

One might be led, by all my talk of this bike, to correctly assume
that James was a passionate BMX rider. That he was, should it need be
said. To prove it, he has the scars zigzagged across his forearms, the
build of a man who regularly exercises all the muscles of his torso,
and has until recently spent a good deal of time wobbling around on
crutches, his ankle royal blue and swollen like a zeppelin. These are
matters he brushes aside with short, modest explanations. The same
cannot be said, however, of the final, ultimate proof: his seemingly
endless collection of BMX videos, and knowledge of biker jargon. Many
of us here fondly remember sitting with fixated interest on our faces
as he tried to explain his day's activities in this bizarre and complex
language. I can't even begin to repeat what oddities he came out with,
though I don't doubt that once you get to grips with the basics of the
tongue, his accounts are as breath-taking as the gestures and
enthusiasm with which he accompanies them.

But why, I might ask myself, have I labelled him the Extravagant
Philosopher? Aha, I answer, that is due to a trait of his that first
became exposed on our very first night at Waveney. In heading off to
the evening Icebreaker session, James and I became separated from the
rest of the group, and while I tried to remain calm and follow him
trustingly to wherever it was we were meant to be going, he expressed
mild panic.

"Where's everyone gone, Bruce?" he asked me. "Don't tell me they've
left us behind. Where's the way out?"

We eventually found the way out (of Waveney,) and went along with a
trail of people who seemed to be heading in the right direction. When
we arrived at the LCR and joined the queue, who should spring upon us
but the veteran and vegan, Paolo. This made us a trio, and we remained
that for a good portion of the subsequent night out, during which I
became a bystander to an interesting exchange between the two of them.
I forget completely almost every line of that conversation, and can
only remember that Buddha became involved, and that I went away feeling
that I was in very good company, and that both my new allies were
brilliant philosophers.

Over the next week or so, Paolo's philosophies became a small but
crucial part of his very wise, dedicated and religious nature, while
James' came, to my mind, to define what was so unusual and endearing
about this most industrious and lively monkey.

The casual reader may have noted that he has addressed me as 'Bruce'
twice in my account, and this is not in any way unusual. To the
philosopher, everyone is Bruce, and a collection of people are Bruces.
Occasionally someone is Batman, but generally, we are all Bruce. This
strikes me as a very profound stance to take on the matter of people.
James has explained how it arose from his times back home amid his BMX
crew.

"Thing is, a BMXer off his bike was Bruce Wayne, and a BMXer on his
bike was Batman."

He is not unaware of what the name has grown into, however, and has
remarked with much pleasure on how there are those who have started to
imitate him.

"Bruce," he says, "is my way of taking over the world. I know people
all over the place who're starting to use it. I've got a mate who I
passed it on to and who then went over to America and had everyone
saying it. Bruce is going to be a big thing, I reckon."

I don't see that it's at all impossible. My one concern is that it
takes off before anyone reads my account of its humble beginnings, and
when they do come to read these lines, imagine that I have made up the
entire character of James. My argument against this is that I don't
think I could possibly do that. I doubt that anyone could.

The philosopher's philosophies don't stop at Bruce, however. After I
had spent a good deal of time muttering about how the myth of vampires
had arisen from a skin disease that rendered its victim sensitive to
sunlight and that every other part of the myth had emerged from similar
misunderstandings, he adequately summed it up in a few simple
words.

"People like to put strange things together so that they can be
frightened of them all at once."

By far his most brilliant strain of philosophy, however, in my opinion
comes from his justification for atheism, which beats all other
religious theories I have thus far encountered. After furiously reading
through the Bible, he protested at the apparently brutal instructions
to followers of the one God.

"Thing is, if God is meant to be all-knowing and all-seeing and that,
right. How come he didn't know that people would be taking all these
metaphors seriously or wrongly down through the ages, and going on
crusades killing people? So when he wrote the Bible, why didn't he add
in brackets after saying something strange, 'This is a metaphor'? Then
people would have gone, 'Ah, I get you. He doesn't really me I take
someone's eye and let them take my eye, but that if someone does me
wrong, then I should not do them any more wrong than they've done me.'
Would've solved a lot of problems, wouldn't it, if he'd just used
brackets? So I say, if he didn't think of that, then he can't really be
an all-knowing, all-powerful God, which is what the Bible keeps asking
us to believe in. See what I mean?"

Quite frankly, I'd love to see what he's like when the Jehovah's
witnesses come round. Good people, the Jehovah's witnesses - I hastily
emphasise - but what a show it would make to see them sparring with our
philosopher.