I’m not really sure how to come at this. I always get sidetracked and go way down paths which aren’t directly what I’m trying to say. But as Scoutsam would say, which I disregarded at the time, but have thought more about in the recent years…

 

‘words are only approximations. Sometimes they are good approximations. Sometimes they are bad approximations. Thus, they are never to be trusted absolutely.’

 

‘The best we can do is allow our words to show some approximations, from different perspectives, and the interpreter will interpolate in their own particular way.’

 

And on, as was generally the case …

 

‘If they extrapolate then you aren’t to blame!’.

 

I still think he was either a genius or mental. But I will, or rather he will, get to this, later. He also added ‘Where the approximation is better than average, that is called a ‘truth’. He said ‘basically a truth is harder to interpret in your own way.

 

But don’t let this dissuade you.’ I think he said this to show off, but he would have said he added it for ‘completeness’. When we were young. Which is me kind of young, sixteen. Scoutsam, definitely young, eight. Lucy very young, four. Every morning up up in his chair Scoutsam would sit.

 

Rugged up with a scarf, goggles, his jacket and then my jacket over the top. Greeting the day as the earth rolled around. ‘It rolls like a bowling ball on a perfectly polished lane, but going nowhere.’ he would say. We - Lucy, me and Mum - would be down below, fast asleep. For it was not yet daybreak. Despite this Scoutsam was sitting in the sun. Planning, scheming and no doubt carrying on. Doing all of this from his perch far above the houses.

 

He said ‘from up in my chair, our house, our garden and Mr Glonheim’s vegetable patch are all as big as my shoe’. It was pretty high. I’ll concede that. Every year he’d add a new shaft to his chair. All he ever got for Christmas and birthdays was componentry. Components for his telescoping chair. Mum would always get him his extra shaft. Lucy and I, well I, since she was too young, would get him something useful. Like a stable table so he could write things down while he was up there, an etch-a-sketch so he could draw his ideas down.

 

Mr Glonheim though, gave him amazing additions. Like the tea thermos which was fully equipped with a cup holder and sugar dispenser. All you had to do was fill the tank on the back of the seat and by the time the telescoping shafts were at full extension, the chair and Scoutsam way up in the sky, the tea would be perfectly steeped. Then the tea had, as Scoutsam would say, ‘that nice little bit of bitterness that can just be overcome by sugar, I like to taste the battle’.

 

One afternoon as he and Mr Glonheim were raking for potatoes, Scoutsam aired his concerns over the tea becoming overly bitter once his next shaft was installed, next year. As steeping time would be increased. Mr Glonheim suggested more sugar to counter this problem. They settled on a delay timer. However, it was decided more sugar would suffice until it was installed and tested. It seemed that their more serious discussions were convened in the vegetable patch.

 

Scoutsam said ducks flew below him. He was always worried they would hit his pole. We told him he thought to much. He said ‘what else is there to do?’. To which we fell silent. Each day for Scoutsam started in exactly the same way, up in his chair, the first and last person in the sun (in our town) and he took them all somewhere different.

 

'Good morning Sun. I've been expecting you.' Scoutsam would say. Sharing a conspiratorial look with the sun. He considered the sun as it began to peak it's face around the corner of the horizon, never hesitating, neither Scoutsam nor the sun. He inspected the sun as a mother would a child who just got home. Checking to see everything is in order, with a look of ‘where have you been?’. The words weren't necessary. They were a politeness. The way they had come to interact. But he knew the sun. He needed no response, he could tell.

 

He peeled back the plastic from three cheese sticks and put them all into his mouth at once, then sipped his first cup of tea. He would drink three from cups from his mini-mug. He preferred to have the experience of the first sip of a freshly poured cup of tea three times but only drink one mug worth of tea. The first time he tried this he had three large mugs of tea. He had to come back down before sunrise and by the time he had gone to the toilet and returned, in his chair, to what he called ‘cruising altitude’, the sun was already up.

 

Afterwards, at breakfast that morning he said ‘Performance, Feedback, Revision, pass the milk.’ The mini-mug arrived shortly thereafter. Ever since he was four, which is now four years ago. When he became Scoutsam of his own volition. He has been extracting… ‘an extra 20 minutes in the morning and 16 minutes in the evening, on average’ he tells us. He makes these gains by use of his pneumatic chair. ‘This 36 minutes a day over 4 years is not insubstantial.’ he continued ‘It's more than 36 extra days in the sun, it's 9 days a year!’ he would tell us earnestly.

 

‘Excuse me, I would like to offer you nine additional days in the sun this year.

Are you interested?

It will only cost you nine less days in the dark.’

 

He always does that. Asks these questions out into the ether. To no one. Almost as if he’s trying to sell it. Who wants a chair like that? I ask. He says ‘Jimmy. It’s not a chair. It’s nine days a year in the sun.’ Sometimes I forget he’s half my age, but not when he says things like that though.

 

Scoutsam was not always Scoutsam. He used to be Samuel Parkin, well Sam Parkin at least. He used to be, well I guess he still is, my brother. Sometimes it felt like he was an alien though. Mum, my little sister, the dog and I often stare blankly at Scoutsam. We didn't want to stop him. We just didn't understand him. Normally his 'tricks' as Mum called them, worked out. Somehow. Eventually. Not always. ‘It just depends which timeframe you are working within’ he would say. Anyway, he made things interesting.

 

Old Mr Glonheim over the back fence has always let him tinker with his things. Building all sorts of contraptions. When he was really little, Scoutsam would help him build his automatic watering system. His perimeter closure guarantee system, with double reversible fail-safes. I wanted one of those until Scoutsam informed me I had no perimeter, and in any case the best I could afford would be single reversible fail-safes. I left it at that.

 

What I was getting to was the fact that ol' Glonheim seemed more and more interested in pitching in on Scoutsam's works rather than his own. He normally made one of whatever it was for himself too. It started with that chair. Mum called it the 'Chair in the Air'. She used to write poems before we were born.

 

Scoutsam was sitting on top of Mount Angbile, up the street, with me shortly after his third birthday. It wasn’t much of a Mount, it took us three minutes to get to the top. Anyway, we had just watched the sun go down and the chill was released for the evening. Scoutsam had said his usual goodbyes to the sun, which we no longer thought unusual, and lay down. We had a few of Mrs. Glonheim's little royal Gala apples with us, they were always so sweet.

 

I'd finished mine already, never one to savour. I wanted another one though. Scoutsam was just staring at his, the last one left. Shivering. Staring at his apple. He started throwing it up above himself into the rays of the sun. The rays that were still available, but higher up. A look came across his face. A look I've since seen many times. I always know that once I've seen that look things will get interesting. Very quickly.

 

I've also learnt that Scoutsam will disappear soon after the look. But we stopped looking for him. He always came back. So then we lost him. This time we looked. More out of keeping up appearances than anything. If anyone would get lost it would be the rest of us. Scoutsam had some sort of in-built compass. That, or he didn't mind where he was. It's hard to tell. But in either case it's impossible to be lost.

 

Anyway the look. The apple. I sprang up and just as Scoutsam tossed the apple into the air. It went from shadow to sunlight. Just as it hit the sun, he smiled that smile. Just as it hit the sun, I grabbed it and started eating it directly. We we're both happy. The thing about Scoutsam is I've never seen him angry. I've seen him confused, momentarily. Never angry. I think he's wired wrong.

 

It seems that when there is something he can't understand, he looks confused for a while and then he works it out. But, this is the weird part, when something happens, like when Lucy, bent his Ornithopter wings. An ornithopter is some sort of flying machine. Well, first he looks at Lucy, then the Ornithopter, then looks confused for a while. I would have gone berserk. He just looked confused.

 

It's weird to see. He's missing a mode. Later that day though, he would be flying his Ornithopter higher than I've ever seen it go. It was almost halfway up the extended chair pole. Normally we wouldn't know how far up that is, as Scoutsam is usually the only who goes up in the chair. But sometimes he says to us. ‘I think you should go up in the chair’. I'm not sure why, and I can never tell when.

 

That morning, at breakfast he'd said to Mum to go up in the chair. He buckled her in that afternoon. Filled up the tea-tank. Put in some chamomile and chrysanthemum tea and pulled the lever. The compressor hissed as our mother embarked on her ‘very low earth orbit’. So there she was, up in the sun. She’d been up there for two hours and the sun was setting, for us at least. She still had 20 minutes.

 

He said the reason the Ornithopter was flying so high were due to Lucy's 'modifications'. Also known as senseless bending. He said Lucy’s ‘iteration’ had caused two things to happen. Both positive. The bent wingtips, made something called a winglet which is apparently useful as it makes the wing act as if it has a larger surface area. He said kind of like when girls wear high heels. They aren't actually that high. Which I knew. But they are actually that high? I found it a little confusing, I think he did too.

 

He also said the bending made the metal of the blades stronger, and more rigid, through something called 'work hardening' which he said I could learn from. Basically he said it's like a weightlifter. If he lifts weights he gets stronger. If he lifts more weights he gets even stronger. If he lifts even more weights, he snaps. Like the first four sets of Ornithopter blades he had re-made that day. They got strong and snapped.

 

He said the work hardening could also be applied to the actual process of making the blades themselves. His knowledge of the process got stronger and stronger the more he experimented with it. As he broke the wings, he learnt something. Then his next blades were better. Then they snapped. He said that's how everything works.

 

I asked ‘what about when your knowledge of the process snaps too?’. He smiled. He smiled that smile I won’t try and explain. All I know is I didn’t know how to get it but I always wanted it. He was half my age and I wanted him to smile that smile at me, somehow I felt I had to earn it each time. It was special because he saved it. I hadn’t seen it many times. Then he said ‘Jimmy, you just need to make sure you anneal before that happens, how about you go up in the chair tomorrow.’ I did.

 

Sometimes he got a bit too broad for me. I think it had something to do with those 9 extra days a year in the sun. Anyway, the Ornithopter went higher than it ever had, and Mum came down and cooked a Shepherd's Pie, our favourite, well Lucy and mine, Scoutsam seemed to enjoy everything he ate. Especially cheesesticks. He said he liked their portability, malleability and temperature tolerance. He said he wanted to create ductile cheesesticks, and he was almost there.

 

After dinner he was fiddling with his T.V. platform. Which was some other contraption of his. It's funny he never watched the T.V. itself, but he watched us watching it. And realised something about the viewing angle and such, anyway I forget what it was, but he was fixing it. I went to bed. He stayed up.

 

‘On the radio were Fools! Fools on the radio!’ said Scoutsam. He was able to be irritated it seemed. At last! But only by the radio and the Television. While he marvelled at the wonder of the devices. Often telling us about the waves passing through the air. Being received by the antennae and then turned into the appropriate signal to either fire the magnetic coils in the speakers, or to fire the electrons at the phosphorous coated screen. Or both. While this made him happy. The things he saw on the screen and heard on the radio did not.

 

He often said words were wasted. And the garbage heap that had to accommodate all these unwanted words that were needlessly generated were our minds. I said ‘what about recycling?’ he said ‘it’s not always good for the environment.’ That night he went to be before me.

 

He listened to classical music, for reasons he stated as ‘Less clutter. More compact.’ It seemed the efficiency of the music is what appealed. He said it didn’t try to make too close of an approximation. Words were by definition trying to capture something. The eagle does not look beautiful in a cage. Our words are a cage. Sounds were pure. Less limiting.

 

I changed the channel. Jeopardy.

 

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In hindsight everything is clear. So make sure you have as much hindsight as possible. To achieve this you must have done something.

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He died one day, as I guess we all do. It was the evening before my birthday, the sun had set - for us - a half an hour ago. Then there was a lot of hissing. The air jet shooting from the base of the chair actually put a hole through our fence, and ripped Mrs Glonheims nightie hanging up next door.

 

He was gone.

 

More than a year later I managed to open the card he had written for me. The left side of the card read:

 

'Happy Birthday Jimmy! I love you. Scoutsam'

 

The right side of the card read:

 

Love, that word, it doesn't even mean anything specific!

It's a scatter gun approach. It's like... I've got this big bag of things that I like. I really like seiko watches, water pistols that are compact but can shoot really far, strawberry milk (though it makes me feel funny), Mum’s hair and my turtle Toby. I've put all these things in a bag. And I give them to you. And my favourite song is in there too. I don't have a copy of it, but I sung it into the bag and made sure I closed it up real quick, real tight. So there is a great deal in this bag to make you understand that I love you.

 

Don't you agree?

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How does it make you feel to be loved?

 

Happy Birthday!’

 

I miss him.

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