Fred was salt of the earth and gave it his all, but given the hit his body and mind had taken, progress on the literacy front was incremental at best, especially as his prior literacy levels had been minimal.
Fred was a smoker — a heavy roll-your-owner. Although I was only seeing him once a week at his own house, over the course of a few months it became obvious that most of Fred's invalid's benefit income was going up in smoke.
I just happened to have friends who grew their own tobacco. Certainly probably not part of the tutor manual's best professional practice, but I suggested to Fred that — health issues aside — if he too grew his own, he'd save a mint. Fred was sceptical, but agreed to give it a go, and I duly dropped off a few seedlings to him. (All perfectly legal, I may add — you can buy them from nurseries.)
Initially, Fred was a bit nonplussed by these little green things in plastic pottles. Despite his age, somehow along the way he'd never formed the connection between growing things and produce as he knew it. Food and smokes were something that came out of packets you bought at the shops. Fred's first reaction was, "What?! Do you mean, if I stick these things in the ground, they'll get ... bigger?" True! And perhaps a telling commentary on our times.
Anyway, literacy-wise, after several more months we had to concede we'd achieved all we could in the meantime and had to taper off the tuition to occasional "refresher" sessions. But each successive visit was a revelation.
Fred somehow got organised enough to plant out the seedlings. As they grew, on my visits he'd proudly show them off like prize pullets. Next, he had leaf drying on the window sills and before long was rolling up his own product and puffing away as though savouring a top-shelf Cuban cigar.
(Note: there's a false myth that tobacco has to be "cured". Certain procedures may indeed improve smoking flavour, but simple drying — and crushing — is sufficient to produce a serviceable smoke.)
Next thing, Fred was proudly also displaying a new garden out back, with ripening tomatoes, silver beet and lettuces. The tobacco seedlings had opened Fred's eyes to the wonders of gardening.
Blow me down, a few visits later I arrive to find Fred — bung leg, arm and all — had hand-dug most of his back lawn and now had thriving mounded rows of potato and kumara. This was literacy of the very best kind.
Gee, this is quite an interesting story, if I say so myself — I'd almost forgotten it. I'll have to finish it next week, where we find out how Fred kicked his tobacco habit by growing his own at no cost, the implications for dairy-raiding yobs and the entire commercial tobacco industry, and indeed, the implications for our whole wider society in light of the medicinal cannabis bills now before Parliament.
