Gentlemens of the Road...

"Hector's back," H informed me this morning. "He appears to have survived as ever."

The news of Hector's return to our midst is always to be welcomed, both as a thing in itself as he is an interesting fellow and also as a sure sign of returning Spring.

Quite where Hector goes to sit out the cold winter months remains a mystery. There has been talk of an aunt in N., though I have only ever heard him remark that family and he have not been close for some many long years. He will merely talk of 'going South', as if a migrating bird which in some ways he is.

Actually getting 'close' to Hector can be a significant trial I am told, though one as a heavy smoker with minimal sense of smell I am largely spared. Clothes do vary seasonally as offers are made by the good people of the parish; but one strongly suspects from the anecdotal evidence of others with more keener nostrils than my own that no form of bathing ever interposes these changes of apparel.

On, however, the level of person-to-person contact there are no such concerns. Hector's conversation is both interesting and entertaining. There is generally some hint - from odd lapses in concentration or abrupt changes of subject matter - that the cerebral processes within Hector's mind can fall outside of the generally accepted norm for such things; but setting that aside - and does not H not infrequently berate me for similar failings? - time spent with Hector is never time wasted.

There are some - there always will be - who metaphorically 'draw in their skirts' when speaking of the man. They question rather unseemingly, indeed unfeelingly, why socks are not pulled up, residences sought from the authorities or gainful employment undertaken at a decent day rate. They may have a point regarding certain feckless folk who seem content to spend their lives taking not giving. But Hector is not one such.

He is a good and a gentle soul - a true gentleman - whose life as a free-wheeling mendicant was not one he was born to but one thrust upon him by force of many circumstances. That he has both accepted and adapted to that difficult life with charm and grace is a tribute to him and a shame on any who scorn it or him.

The occasional homily on the 'There but for the Grace of God...' theme is sometimes called for when too much harrumphing is heard about the place; and when called for is delivered with a certain steely voice, as if the parson were - as he is - fully aware of just how close to certain financial and domestic winds some people are sailing that might just tip any one of them out of soft furnishings and onto hard roads.