M'Aider

My wife asked me about may day yesterday, what it meant.

The international distress signal. Not the day of celebration around the world. 

I don’t know much about the ancient celebration. I do have a very vivid and personal memory of the meaning of the distress signal though.

May day.

I was sitting in one of the lecture rooms atop North Head with Auckland harbour spread out beneath the tall timber windows, the tide and the sun seeping away as the day wound down to the time the Navy bus would come up the circular road, pick us up and deliver us back to Tamaki base.

We were hopeless when we weren’t half asleep, according to the ‘Leaders’, the trainers who taught us how to be Navy communicators.

We were half asleep.

Leader had asked something about may day. The distress signal.

He got nothing in return.

He said something like ‘come on, think, it’s got something to do with the French’.

Waenga said, ‘did the French make it up?’

Leader said, ‘get out there idiot, and run around the hill.

Waenga ran round the hill. We sat stony silent, waiting his return.

He got back, puffed. Sat down. Said, ‘beau speaks French’.

They called me beau because it was half my surname and we were all just surnames.

Leader said, ‘oh yeah?’ What does it mean then, beau, may day?

I looked at him, looked at Waenga, I didn’t have a freaking clue what may day meant, despite my two years of high school French.

‘Well, mais, that’s but. And dais, that’s of the.’ I sat for a while in the silence.

‘So you reckon it’s but, of the, beau. That’s what you’re telling me. But, of the. Leader leaned forward on the little lecturn his enormous frame threatened to swallow every day.

Get out there idiot, run round the hill. And you put a rubbish bin on your head, and shout ‘But, of the’ as you go around. Mr, but, of the.

So I ran round in the beauty of that sun setting over North Head on a late Friday afternoon, just inside the high chain link fence, with all the north side dog walkers on the other side watching a body with a bin for a head shout ‘But, of the’.

Got back. Sat down. Silence.

M’aider. Help me. Leader wrote in big, deliberate letters across the blackboard.