He once told me that he used to mug new students while we were both mature students studying at university. I asked him why because he was already getting as many benefits as he could, including his wife’s single-parent benefit, even though he was living there at the time. He just said he did it because it was easy and he could get away with it without any consequences.
One morning, the whole PE teacher training class was on a field trip to Wales, we were kayaking. It was February and the water was freezing cold. I was following the instructor’s advice, but for some reason, my kayak suddenly overturned. I had only been taught to do a half ‘eskimo roll’, meaning I was unable to roll back upright again, but I did manage to get out of my kayak and come to the surface.
The current was very strong that day however and as I’d always been told to stay with my kayak, that’s exactly what I did. One of the instructors stayed with me while I drifted over to the other side of the river (which was about half a mile). When we got there, he helped me out of the water but said that I was hyperthermic. So he gave me his dry suit to wear and put on my wetsuit.
My lecturer at the time later told me that if I’d drowned, they would never return there again.
Guess who told me, years later, why my kayak had overturned – my partner! He said that he had deliberately tipped my kayak over He thought it was hilarious but he’d risked my life, so I never got the joke because it just wasn’t funny.
Just like the mugging, this was another example of him getting away with nefarious actions and never having to face the consequences.
Drag Me Down Blog 