(Today we are pleased to welcome back Mick Bloor)

In the next seat to Alan on the plane, his fellow-passenger sighed as he replaced his plastic knife and fork in the cardboard food box, he turned to Alan and said, ‘That meal was the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.’ Four hours into the flight, they were the first words he’d spoken.

Alan felt obliged to reply. He thought about it and said, ‘I reckon that meal was only the second-worst thing I’ve ever tasted. The very worst taste was when I accidentally brushed my teeth with a tube of my wife’s hair removal cream.’

His fellow-passenger stared at Alan for a moment and let out a great belly laugh. He turned out to be a guy called Niels, a Dane who worked for Maersk, the shipping company. In turn, Alan explained that he was retired and on the Vancouver flight to visit his sister there, who hadn’t been well. Niels, like a lot of big guys, was tactful in his enquiries: he didn’t ask about the sister’s diagnosis or prognosis, merely observing that it would be a treat for her to spend some time with her brother again. Instead, Niels mentioned that he himself was planning to retire soon: how was Alan enjoying his retirement?

Alan talked about his allotment and also about some family genealogical research he’d been doing. He mentioned that he’d been fascinated by one of his mother’s ancestors, Thomas Bridges, a nineteenth-century missionary to one of the native tribes in the island of Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America. Rev. Bridges had laboured long and hard there to produce a dictionary* of the Yamana language, containing more than 30,000 Yamana words…

Niels was shocked: ‘Wow, that’s a big achievement.’ He smiled: ‘That’s some relative you’ve turned up.’

Alan was playing, distractedly, with the airline plastic fork. ‘Well, the thing is: I’m not so sure about the achievement. You see, over the years Thomas Bridges was there, the native population was decimated, almost entirely wiped out – a smallpox epidemic, a land war with incoming settlers, the local seals that the tribe depended on for food were almost all slaughtered by visiting whaler crews. The last native Yamana speaker died in 2022. The site of his old mission station is now the main departure port for Antarctic cruise ships.’

Niels nodded his understanding. But Alan wasn’t finished: ‘Did you know that in a single day, January 15th, 1965, Bob Dylan recorded the final versions of Maggie’s Farm, On the Road Again, It’s Alright Ma, Gates of Eden, Mr Tambourine Man, and It’s All Over Now Baby Blue? In a single day.’

It was a telling comparison. Niels intuited that his fellow passenger was distressed that his ancestor’s huge labours over the decades may have been utterly futile. Niels was a compassionate guy, and they still had a long way to travel together before they reached Vancouver. He spoke hesitantly:

‘Dylan’s music, like all art, is a form of play – yeah? It involves so many aspects of living – novelty, risk-taking, beauty. But your ancestor’s dictionary wasn’t art, it was a scientific endeavour. It involved concentration, judgement, rigour. Maybe it’s a mistake to compare Mr Tambourine Man and the dictionary? They were both very worthy achievements, very different aspects of living. We should celebrate them both.’

He caught the stewardess’s eye and ordered a couple of whiskies. They toasted each other and looked out the window. The plane was flying up the west coast of Greenland, and something out there was attracting other passengers – something utterly divorced from human endeavour. A Greenland glacier was calving as it edged into the ocean. Several new-launched icebergs were lying offshore. Things of strange beauty, tinged with pink from the low sun as they started their journeys of flotation and slow dissolution.

*Yahgan Dictionary Language of the Yawane people of Tierra del Fuego ms. of Rev. Thomas Bridges (later annotations by Rev. John Williams) dated 1865, text published on line by Patagonia Bookshelf 2004-2013.