Dialogue: Steep learning curve to telling it straight

By JOE BENNETT

It rose in front of us, sheer, gaunt and majestic. I gasped. Pete gulped.

Side by side, we stood to gasp and gulp in wonder. Much had we travelled in the realms of cliche but never had we seen so steep a learning curve.

In comparison with this awesome steepness, every other peak that Pete and I had climbed seemed little more than a level playing field.

We knew immediately that we had no choice. Before us stood the ultimate challenge, our new mission statement. We would tackle this learning curve head on. We would put our noses to the grindstone till they bled. Nothing would stand in the way of our ascent.

"Enjoy," said Pete with a wry grim smile.

"Enjoy what?" I asked, but he was already away.

Up we plodded, step after laborious step, pausing occasionally to look around us. We knew what we were looking for. We sought a window of opportunity, just a small one which would grant a view of the knowledge economy from the top of the learning curve. But windows of opportunity are few and far between and the going was tough. Obstacles abounded. We waded through income streams and held each other back from cunningly concealed poverty traps.

After 24 hours we were on the point of calling it a day when Pete clasped my shoulder.

"Look," he said.

I looked. On the slope ahead of us, miraculously it seemed, stood a small city - square, immaculate with cafes and bars and colonnades. We sank gratefully down at a cafe table, ordered refreshments from the waitperson and applied ourselves to the problems that faced us. But hard though we thought, no ideas came. Then silently Pete rose and went to stand beyond the furthest building, his chin cupped in his hand. Almost immediately he yelped with delight.

I ran to join him.

"I've got it," he exclaimed.

"Ah," I said as the truth dawned on me, "of course, thinking outside the square. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Never mind that," said Pete, "Look."

I looked and beheld a sight I shall never forget as long as I remember it.

There stood the window that we sought and, oh, what light through yonder window broke. It was the light of opportunity. Without another word Pete and I ran to it, fumbled frantically with the catch, threw open the window and beheld spread out before us ... but the story is almost too sad to tell. Our hopes were dashed. They lay in tatters round our ankles. There seemed no point in hauling them back up.

For where we had expected to see the verdant fields of a knowledge economy, or at least the pleasant pastures of a win-win situation, we beheld nothing more and nothing less than the smoking rubble of a worst-case scenario. It was almost too much to bear.

I looked at Pete. Pete looked at me. It would not be stretching a point to say we looked at each other.

Despair was etched on our faces. Horror was tattooed on our chests. Hopelessness was scribbled on our thighs. There was nothing for it. We had only one card left to play and we played it.

Pete reinvented the wheel. Instantly I put my shoulder to it, but Pete pulled me roughly away, reinvented another wheel, attached the two of them to a bicycle frame that he had also reinvented and together we pedalled back down the learning curve as if the devil were after us. I looked over my shoulder. The devil was after us.

"Faster," I screamed.

Downwards we flew, past the lowest common denominators who backed away in fear, past the level playing field where someone was moving the goalposts, back towards the sanctuary of the old economy when without warning a vehicle appeared in front of us with flashing lights and blaring siren.

We were going too fast to stop and we crashed slap bang into the ambulance at the foot of the cliff.

Pete was thrown from the bike, performed a double somersault and a single dead-cat bounce then lay as still as stone.

"A health professional, a health professional," I screamed, "my kingdom for a health professional." I rushed to Pete's side and cradled his head in my hands.

"Pete, Pete," I whispered urgently, "use your communication skills to me."

But it was no good. Pete's window of opportunity had closed for ever. He had reached his bottom line.