Monthly Archives: December 2006

A Boy’s Introduction To Killing

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Home from school at midday in Livingstone, most likely with no homework, I had a long afternoon to put in. On several occasions a few friends and I would go outside the limits placed by our parents, out through the tall grasses of the Veldt, along the wide deep drainage ditches waiting in their dusty state for the next onslaught of the monsoon rains. It was exciting creeping down these excavations, knowing full well there were snakes there, because our parents had told us that was the reason we were not to trespass outside the town boundary. Across this arid pasture we went until we neared the abattoir, another no-go area. It was here we spied on the Africans slaughtering the pigs. The act certainly didn’t conform to Government regulations; it was more a tribal game. They would release a pig. give it a stab to urge it on its way, then some of the men would run with it until they managed to kill it with a knife. We seem to have been unaffected by this brutal barbarism. I was horrified for the sake of the pigs, while I was left with a mental snapshot, it did not affect me otherwise, no nightmares and no aversion to blood, This was not the only killing I was to observe. In retrospect I realise that the Africans’ values were unsurprisingly different from those of the whites. On one occasion, shortly after I arrived, one of the servants asked me if I would like to see the chicken being killed, the one destined for the table that day. The family reared chickens for eggs and meat in the compound at the back of the house. I assume I acquiesced because I became party to a demonstration of decapitation and the sight of a headless chicken running round the compound until it fell, already dead. This I still see in graphic 3D.

Until I started thinking more deeply concerning those days, I had not realised how much death was taken for granted in that environment. On one occasion I saw from a distance the witch doctor who was brought in for the ritual killing of several people and would ultimately be hanged, himself. I saw a snake killed on the step of the bungalow merely because it was poisonous. I went to the Zambezi to see my father bring in the bodies of several crocodiles, which had been killed because they were thought to be lying in wait for Africans watering their cattle. Both oxen and herders had become the reptile’s prey, swept off their feet by a swipe of a tail and then drowned. These huge creatures lived on an island in the river and took their kills there to bury them for eating later. The white men were rowed out on the river in small boats to shoot the crocs in the water and then, when they were sure the reptiles were dead they would be tied on to the boat and towed ashore. My father and his friends would then stand around while their servants skinned the beasts. I remembered that the smell of raw crocodile was one of the foulest smells I had ever encountered.

All this took place at what was referred to as ‘the bathing place’. An area of cleared River Zambezi riverbank with two rectangular huts in the style of native dwellings, used as changing rooms for the whites – by the men and ladies. In Africa, at that time, white women were all ladies, irrespective of their antecedents or proclivities. As far as I could see, the whole aspect of life as a member of the Raj was like being a member of a select, upper class British club. There were rules, which one only broke on penalty of being black-balled, so one conformed – how one conformed. The actual bathing was done in the Zambezi itself. I assume that an inlet in the bank reduced the velocity of the river to nearly nothing at that point. I have no recollection of currents being a problem. The main river was only about two miles from the Victoria Falls at that point so the velocity in the main stream must have been quite high. To protect the bathers from the ever present threat of crocodiles, wire netting on poles formed the perimeter of the pool, held to the bottom by stones, a crude system which later proved fatal for a friend of mine. At Madeira, on our way home we read of the death by drowning of a school friend who had been lost in the swimming pool. Apparently he had not been seen for a while and when the men went to look for him fearing him drowned, his body was not within the enclosure, but they did find the wire netting had been breached very badly. The assumption was that a crocodile had entered, drowned the boy and left with him. From an age when I could reason cause and effect, I had been astounded that the whites would have permitted the Africans to water their oxen and cattle beside the bathing place, it was tantamount to training the crocodiles, and the death of the school boy had not been a unique case. We later heard that that was the end of bathing in the Zambezi. Incidentally, no one ever called crocodiles anything but crocs

Leydene On The First Occasion

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From the IOM we were sent to Petersfield, in Hampshire, to the Naval Signal school called Leydene. We were only to be in Leydene for about ten days and in that time we had to learn the workings of some ten transmitters and receivers together with all the ancillary equipment, so it is unsurprising that I remember nothing of that first trip, except the way we were taught. To a young man who had led a sheltered life and had been tutored mainly by Oxbridge graduates, the spiel of the three-badge Petty Officer or Chief Petty Officer, needed to be experienced and still couldn’t be believed. The three badges denoted a minimum of thirteen years service, but many of these instructors had been brought back from retirement. The classrooms were converted Nissan huts containing the replicas of the radio transmitters we would find on the ships we were destined for. Some were small, not much bigger than today’s work-top washing machine, others occupied the area of the average kitchen and were contained within an earthed steel cage, with access through a door which cut off the power to the high voltage areas when the door was opened. Almost the first thing we were taught was how to circumvent this safety measure so we could test the beast while under full power, from within its bowels, so to speak.

Most of us, who were used to radio receivers which were only one stage advanced from the crystal set, were amazed to see a valve the size of a large vase and resistors almost a foot long. The instructors had little to worry about with respect to discipline, we were so continuously bombarded with facts and so overawed with both the equipment and the prospect that we would, within a few weeks be in sole charge of its welfare, that there was neither the time nor the energy left to mess around. It was cramming taken to a fine art. Each morning we would be marched off to a classroom where we would discover yet another set with its own peculiarities. We carried a huge loose-leaf book containing all the circuitry and hints on repair, together with our class notes and a folder of a few pages of duplicated information supplied by the instructors. This library went everywhere, even to bed, because all spare moments were filled with catching up what we’d missed or mugging up what we had forgotten. I remember one of our class was married and had permission to sleep ashore with his wife. She complained that he spent most of the night sitting up studying this huge tome.

In class we were perched on rows of long, heavy, oak benches, with no desk and no support for the back, like starlings on telephone wires. The keen ones sat in the front row and those who were in the class purely as an alternative to sailing on the Atlantic convoys, were generally either dozing or craftily smoking on the back bench. While what I was being taught was in itself a totally remarkable experience, the method of imparting that knowledge was even more extraordinary. Inside these sets were valves, resistors, coils and condensers in the main, with a few other bits and bobs to make the whole thing work, but our elderly instructors, when pointing to a component on a circuit diagram did not refer to it by its name but merely said “Now this li ‘l f….r ‘ere is connected to that li ‘l bastard there….” and so on. In fact it became such a routine that some of us were caught more than once anticipating and saying which epithet would be applied to what item of electronic hardware and were then promptly, in our turn, referred to by yet another and even more expressive phrase.

Indeed there was the occasion when one of the instructors was inside a transmitter ‘putting on faults’ for an exercise in fault-finding. He was mostly only breaking connections, but sometimes he would insert a faulty component. The thing was that as one became more experienced the sounds of resistors being pulled from their anchorage or valves being released were so distinctive that most of us knew which piece was being tampered with. On this occasion there was a distinctive sound and someone on the front bench named the article in a stage whisper. Suddenly a face, surmounted by a battered cap, peered over the top of the fence round the transmitter and it said “Oh no ‘e F…..in’ ain’t” and disappeared to replace the part and pull out another which was equally recognisable. For me this incident epitomised the teaching in those first months of the war.

Smoke Tests

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Smoke Test No 1. Today inspection and testing has become remote, highly technical, and mostly computer driven. In my Dark Ages every thing was hands on, mucky and tediously prolonged. Pipes are now checked with robots and cameras. I have always found it strange that smoke really does issue from a sewer up through the earth and travels quite long distances through cracks in pipes and the ground. In those days this feature of smoke was used to assess whether a sewer pipe had been breached or was leaking. Theoretically every pipe leading to a sewer is trapped with a water trap, so there should be no risk of smoke entering a house. To carry out the test the operator closes one end of the pipe, or puts a temporary block at some point. At the other end he attaches a box, which is really only a source of smoke, and the bellows will force it through the pipe. He puts a rag, heavily impregnated with oil, inside the box, lights it, and then, using the bellows, pumps the smoke into the pipe until it is seen issuing out through a small hole in the block at the far end. If it issues from nowhere else it is assumed that the pipe is tight and has no leaks.

This test took place on a Saturday morning when I was working for the contractor. The sewer we were laying was in running sand, a very unstable and dangerous material and we did not want the trench lying open over the weekend as the results of a possible slip could have been hazardous to the Public and expensive, added to which if a smoke test failed then we might have had to carry out a water test which can take hours. We were dealing with a very fussy Clerk of Works who liked his authority and enjoyed wielding it. He knew as well as we did that there was nothing wrong with the pipe, he had seen every joint made, he had nothing else to do, but the book said smoke test before passing the work, so smoke test we did. We set it up, put in the disk at the end of the pipe with the one-inch hole to show the smoke had gone the whole way through the pipe, and then tea was up. Well it was up for the Clerk of Works, it was up for the men, but not for the foreman and not for me. We had connected the crude smoke box with its bellows to the upstream end of the pipe, inserted an oily rag, lit it and were pumping the smoke for all we were worth and it was not reaching the other end. The Foreman said to me, “You go and join the Clerk of Works and I’ll have it fixed in the mean time, no sense both of us being here.” I followed his advice.

About ten minutes later he stuck his head into the hut and said all was ready for testing and when the Clerk of Works and I went to the other end, there, sure enough, was the smoke puffing out in spurts in time with the pumping of the man at the other end. Honour had been satisfied and come twelve o’clock we would all be going home. When I was out of earshot of the Clerk of Works I said to the foreman that I was surprised at the amount of smoke issuing. Considering the length of the pipe, usually there is dilution by the air within the pipe for some time, and it seemed to me the smoke was denser than I would have expected. He smiled. “I helped it on a bit,” he said. “I thought it could do with another smoking rag so I put it in the other end, I knew he’d never guess, he’s all talk and no experience.” This accounted for what I had seen. The foreman, unknown to me and the Clerk of Works had inserted a piece of burning rag at the other end of the pipe from the bellows and the air within the pipe was being pushed by the bellows to make the smoke from the second rag issue from the small hole. Instead of the pipe being full of smoke as it seemed, it was probably partly full of air. For all of ten seconds I wondered what to do, and then for another ten seconds I suppressed my conscience with the thought that I saw the Clerk of Works from time to time, I saw the foreman daily.

SMOKE TEST No 2 There had been a complaint of rats in the lower part of the Ormeau Road area in Belfast and it was laid squarely at the door of the Sewerage Section. Sam was sent to investigate and decided that he needed a smoke test. He had it set up with the smoke box in one manhole and the round timber block with the smoke hole in it at the next manhole In Sam’s case the usual results were amplified. In the first instance someone shouted that smoke was issuing from the lamp standards, and as these were gas lamps, panic ensued until he managed to explain what was happening. Next he heard screams coming from the back-yard of one of the houses. The sewer in question ran between the backs of two rows of houses and at that time, those houses only had outside toilets in the yard. Apparently a householder had been in one when she found smoke, firstly coming up round her feet, and then all round her; her plight was understandable. Finally he had to pacify the fire brigade who had been called with a 999 call from someone further afield who had found smoke coming up through the floor boards. The theory that the sewer was at fault, seemed to have been thoroughly confirmed.

A Minor Diversion and the TOPO

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During the 50′s we owned a series of cars but the most idiosyncratic was, without doubt, the Morris Minor 1000. Sitting with the driving seat fully back I found my knees were somewhere near my chin, so the matter of using the clutch caused my knee to make the little signal arm come out and indicate I was turning right, an embarrassment at any time. Sometimes that same little arm stuck and when I got out of the car I would break it off.If nothing else it gave me confidence in doing small repairs. Then there was the shape of the boot. Clearly, at the speeds that thing achieved, streamlining and hence the drag factor were obviously an issue the designer had spent hours on. I never did discover why it was so small and of a shape that no more than one suitcase could be accommodated in the boot at a time.

We proposed taking a month and going to Igls in Austria, via Brussels and Cologne. We had learned that to save money one took as much tinned food as one could and due to the shape of the Minor’s boot the tins had to be packed round the spare wheel and within its dished rim. Just one suitcase, a Revelation, expanded to its maximum, everything else was in plastic bags – apart, that is, from a doll in a carry-cot. My younger daughter refused to go unless the wretched doll went too and in its carry cot. Every inch was catered for, under the seats, the sun brolley was between the seats, the back shelf was loaded until the rear view was almost obscured, every spare space was taken up – except one – behind my heels – that triangle of valuable space immediately in front of the driver’s seat. That was where the unmentionable dolly in its equally descriptive cot rested when we were on the move.

It had to happen – of course. It would have been unthinkable for it not to have. When we travelled in other vehicles, where things were secreted in suitcases, it never happened, but because we were travelling like gypsies, it happened – we had a puncture on a motorway, the German Autobahn outside Cologne. There I had to take out the case, the plastic bags, and the individual tins of food, before I could change the wheel. That was not the end of our embarrassment. We were staying in hotels where the staff in green aprons came out to take the elegant, matched suitcases from people driving limousines. In our case this was not quite a fair description. They came out all right, but I made them hold out their arms and piled them up with the transparent plastic balloons containing our necessities, all on display. I suppose seeing the repeated looks of surprise, followed by disgust was compensation for what I really felt. No matched luggage meant no big tip; what plastic bags portended, they had no previous experience, but they guessed correctly.

Igls was not a success after our previous holidays at Hendaye in the Basque country. For a start, the latter was on the Atlantic, the beach was wonderful, the huge waves came straight in and when it wasn’t raining the weather was perfect. Then there were the myriad of things to do. On Bastille Day there was the great celebration with the confetti battles, where one never opened one’s mouth to say a word in case a complete stranger threw a handful ofconfetti in. Towards evening, when the street dancing started, the ground was littered to a depth of more than an inch with all colours of confetti one bought in huge paper bags. Sophie lost her watch in all this mele, It is impossible to believe, but after a lot of searching, under the confetti, in the middle of the cavorting feet, I found the watch still going. Those celebrations kicked of with the Toro Del Fuego, a papier-m?ch? calf, festooned with Catherine Wheels, bangers and Roman Candles, carried on the head and shoulders of a man, weaving in and out of the crowd, sputtering its fireworks to the screeches of the dancers. There was that beautiful city of San Sebastian, with its posh shops, fine restaurants, statues on high towering pillars of rock round the harbour and a small funfair at the top of one of them.

We visited San Sebastion from Hendaye on the Topo, a ackety train in which all the locals crossed themselves before it started, and with reason. It journeyed through a tunnel in the Pyrenees, which was not well lighted. The way it rocked about was certainly unlikely to imbue anyone with the confidence they would survive. In San Sebastian we bought the cheap liqueurs, which we shared with the other guests, all French, back at Madame Ader’s and this made the evening meals most congenial. The only problem was no one spoke English. After about three weeks of continuous fractured French I came down to breakfast swearing I would speak no French that day, it was such a strain. I had to renege, there was no chance of getting through a day, with only English.

The 6,000 Volt Shock

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To put this occurrence in context I have to write some technical information. I have discovered that any mention of physics and peoples eyes start to glaze, so I will be brief and as simple as possible. Voltage is what gives electricity impetus to move along wires, across the ether, or, as in my case through the body from the hands to the nearest contact with earth. Current is the measure of the electricity passing, and mostly it is current which kills not voltage, A few years ago Sophie, my wife, who never studied physics, accidentally filled the works of her mixer with tomato soup. She cleaned up the mess, absentmindedly held an aluminium saucepan on the steel drainer and started the mixer again. The mains ran up one arm, down the other, through the pan and the drainer and to earth via the cold water pipe. She was lucky she only had a severe shock. She was receiving somewhere around 230 volts and all the current the mains could supply

It was on my second convoy when I received a rude awakening, a real shock to the system. I was brought from a deep sleep to a set that was as dead as a doornail, not a flicker, not a peep. It was housed right at the bottom of the ship in a small office about ten feet long and six wide. At action stations we were battened down, down there, as part of the system which cut the ship up into watertight compartments to avoid general flooding in the event of being hit. In time you got so used to it, it seemed normal. The set operated mainly at sea level, while we had another in an officer’s cabin mostly used to seek out aircraft. The ship was so crowded even the officers were not immune from their space being shared with some gadgetry and maybe operators on rota.

When I started to test, there were a number of simply translated signs and I soon discovered that a number of resistors had exploded, a feature new tome. These components, part of a circuit which transformed the ship’s voltage to one of six thousand volts, to operate the cathode ray tube and other sensitive bits of the Radar I switched off the power and set about removing the exploded remnants, but I did not get too far. Standing on a steel deck, in ordinary shoes, I touched the wrong end of one of the damaged resistances, and came to at the other end of the office, sitting dazed on the floor, being spoken to as if I was a hospital case in need of assurance. In the instant before I momentarily passed out I remember that every joint, from neck to ankle, felt as if each had been brutally pulled apart at the same time and twanged together again, as if made of elastic like a child’s doll. I was so dazed, I went back to the set and committed the same act all over again with the same result, except, this time, I had the shakes added to the blinding headache and pains in my joints from the second encounter. I sat there and took stock. It was then I realised that some of the components, the huge smoothing-condensers, sort of electrical storage tanks, still held their charge which the resistances were supposd to dissipate. I am sure I had received 6000 volts at least on the first occasion and nearly that the second time, but the current was small enough merely to teach me circumspection, not the rudiments of the harp – I should be so lucky!!.

My Views, Do You Agree?

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Political Absurdities, especially about us leading the world, are becoming the norm. A man on television was proposing we – in Britain – should give an open apology for Slavery, and implied a responsibility for restitution. Where does this sort of lunacy stop, we, as a nation were not unique. We all know it was cruel and wrong, but therefore, should the French and the Danes have to apologise and make restitution, also? If we should be apologising at all, it should be for allowing Israel to settle in Palestine in the first place, that was mainly the British; later, not to have allowed building in the occupied areas, and to have led the world then.

Margaret Beckett, in a cleared field in the Middle East was proclaiming that we should ‘LEAD THE WORLD’ in ridding it of Cluster Bombs. They are a stupid, random and hideous weapon aimed at the non combatants, like napalm, but I wasn’t aware we ever intended using Cluster Bombs. If we don’t, we can’t really say we are going to get rid of them now – presumably, we already have in essence if not in fact. Just a sound-bite, maybe? Our PM wants to spend Billions on atomic subs and bombs. Why? – when we haven’t enough to money to equip our forces currently in battle. Like Iraq, and Afghanistan, he wants to LEAD THE WORLD, while our infrastructure is crumbling. If a nuclear deterrent is required, and many authorities think it is outmoded, Europe should be footing the bill. In this day and age, international aggression is taking a more personal form, and there are easier and cheaper ways of creating havoc than loosing off rockets which will be retaliated. They are fiscal, and strategically hand-placed bombs, and with our economy on a knife edge, and our security stretched, it doesn’t take the mind of an Einstein to think of how these atrocities could be achieved.

A Long Route to Order out of Chaos- I write as a professional who covered most facets of his work and have also been a civil servant and a Local Government employee. The word ‘professional’ in this context includes all who have served their time and know their job inside out. Local and civil services used to employ professionals at all levels of their professions, allowing in-house training and promotion. Now work of any significance is farmed out to consultancy companies, and contractors, Promotion is less in-house because the experience to make valid professional judgements is no longer on the strength. Civil servants move from department to department, as do politicians, and while they may have managerial experience, most are not experienced in the professions and regimes they are managing. Hence, policy is an abstract, based upon second-hand information, prescribed by government, controlled by targets, spin and aims, the latter not always intrinsic. The professionals juggle to meet the criteria posted, by managers without the background or training in the field they are managing. Greed, self-interest at many levels, together with vested-interest pressures are the causes of mis-management, as is sweeping implementation of untried policies without adequate localised test – the poll Tax, and many, many others.

Putting the clock back is appealing, but impracticable. Putting the management back in the hands of the professionals, should be our aim? Brainstorming, favoured by No 10, has a pecking order favouring the bully. Instead, if a small network was built of real, select professionals, working individually, and communicating using the internet, posing questions and supplying solutions if available; this information could be channelled to central logistical correlators, who would evaluate, circulate it for selective comment. Then one might arrive at a workable and professional solution which could be implemented. The merit of this idea puts the decision making process in the hands of people who have nothing to lose or gain. Small, general problems can quickly be identified and possibly solved as quickly – many errors now, must be through mismanagement rather than resources. A pilot scheme, highlighting universal faults in a small area of activity might just prove the theory. Invention starts with an idea, then a prototype to iron out logistical problems, and sometimes at this stage another idea is envisaged which dwarfs the original.

The level of expertise in government is being steadily diluted; those with real ability profit more from seeking other paths. Fewer faces become known on TV and seem to change almost weekly in all parties, so how can they become expert? It seems sensible for outsiders to come up with watertight, irrefutable solutions to problems. Currently those in charge tinker regularly in every sphere, causing confusion to those expected to implement the changes, wasting money promulgating the changes and rescinding them, and spreading Public frustration and discontent.

Stealing

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Shoplifting I have great sympathy for those who have absentmindedly taken something and walked out of the shop, only to be nailed. I have walked into the street many times with a book, a birthday card, you name it, unpaid for. The interest in other products I didn’t buy in the end, distracted me and it was only when I was outside I found I still had the book or whatever, in my other hand. I had a friend who suffered from Alzheimer’s and would lift things in shops and casually walk out with them. His wife had circulated his photo, plus a reference from his doctor to the neighbouring shops with her telephone number and an explanation – it saved everyone stress and inconvenience.

Burglary We lived for 42 years in a corner, detached house, were burgled six times and had my car stolen four. The burglaries started almost as soon as we moved in and were still a chance when we left. The first one had an amusing side, if being burgled can ever be called amusing. It was Saturday, 6 am, when Spicer, our Golden Retriever barked. It woke me and I told him to ‘Shut up!’. At eight o’clock I went to make the tea and found little piles of goodies, silver, cut glass etc in all the downstairs rooms, drawers ransacked and electrical goods missing. My wife joined me and you can guess the pantomime which followed, but the most interesting part, of which, was her attitude when she had almost recovered. She went from room to room, looking at the piles and exclaiming that a lot of her prized articles had not been selected by the burglar, obviously not to his taste. She was affronted.

Car Stealing I have driven off in someone else’s car on three occasions. Same make, same colour, the key worked, and it was only when I found different contents that I discovered my mistake. In one case I thought my mates had played a practical joke by gluing a Madonna and Child to the dash My car was stolen, four times, during the period of the ‘Troubles’, a common occurrence. After a couple of instances I had a secret ignition switch fitted so that if it was hot-wired it still wouldn’t start. The lads who were stealing invariably broke into the car, pushed it down the path, out the gate into the road before starting it. On the third occasion it was found by the police half across the road. I was dragged from my bed, shown the car and asked to drive it back into the drive. My job at that time was sensitive and I would check my car for bombs, when I remembered or not in a hurry.. There were three policemen there with their Landrover. I asked if they had checked it for a bomb, they all nodded, so I got into the car and searched for the secret switch. While I was searching I noticed they all retreated to a safe distance – the liars. I guessed it was joy-riders not the IRA, they would have left the car in the drive. I smiled, thanked the police, drove in and went back to bed.

The Theft Of A Grandfather Clock The most awful event of stealing, was perpetrated when I was at sea, well, not exactly at sea, rather on it, at anchor. The whole ship’s company was embarrassed. We had taken a convoy out into the Atlantic and there was a delay in picking up the one coming back. Our Skipper, a Scott, was basically a kind man and took the ship to a bay in the north of Scotland where, in peacetime he had fished. When we arrived and dropped anchor all hell broke loose ashore, because the residents thought we were the advance guard of a defence force and Scotland was about to be invaded. The Home Guard was called out, phoning and all else took place, with the result that when they discovered we were just visiting, the relief had a profound effect. It was Sunday and the pubs didn’t open on Sunday in Scotland but this one did – and how. They had cases of fishing flies and some of the men were given these as souvenirs, drink was on tap, we ate and by the time we went back to the ship we had had an extraordinary day. It was late at night when we were woken and the ship was searched from end to end. Someone – I assume, obviously drunk – had stolen the grandfather clock from the hotel hall, wrapped it in a rug and smuggled it on board. Every mess was searched – nothing. Hammocks were examined, those slung, those still in the hammock rack – nothing. Then the ship rolled as it did, invariably, and a loud ‘Dong’ was heard. The clock was well concealed but it could still chime. The Skipper and the crew were fit to be tied. The miscreant was sent back to the hotel, with the clock and the rug, in the whaler, under guard, to apologise, before being courts marshalled.

The First day Afloat

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Travelling since early morning, provided with food vouchers, eating on the run was difficult. The trains were full, and one spent the journey uncomfortably seated on a suitcase, while guarding a small case and kit bag, with a hammock in the guard’s van, At big junctions there were barrows selling sandwiches and tea and there were always the canteens run by the Salvation Army ( God Bless ‘em ), but the problem was that, if you were alone, you risked having everything stolen, or had to take it with you to make a purchase, and risk missing the train. One tended to buy food at termini and not on the way. When I arrived at the ship, it was late afternoon, she was about to leave harbour to pick up a convoy in the North Atlantic. My first impression was of how small it was, two hundred and fifty feet odd in length and only twenty odd in the beam was not what I had expected, but as I was hurried aboard and sent straight down below, I saw little in that first glance.

After saluting the quarter deck, giving my name to the Boatswain’s Mate, I dropped my hammock and kit bag through a hatch and followed gingerly down a steep steel ladder into a world of new noises and smells. The nickname for those ships was the ‘sardine tin’ and it was apt. Passing on the corridors, or ‘flats’ as they were called, was an intimate affair and all living a prescription for claustrophobia, even before they battened down the hatches on us at times of action. There were strict levels of social strata, unwritten rules concerning movement from one stratum to another and relationships across strata boundaries, but these rules, provided stability if not confidence. I had arrived just as the evening meal was concluding and someone asked me if I was hungry. I was starving, and was presented with a huge plate of roast meat, potatoes, and vegetables all swimming in greasy gravy. I tucked in. I have written elsewhere of my initial problems with being a Hostilities Only rating and in living in the Petty and Chief Petty Officers’ Mess.

We left the Firth of Forth even before I had finished eating and for a while I tried to get myself sorted. We sailed north and then followed a route the men referred to as ’round the North Cape’, which I took to mean through the Pentland Firth, and out into the Atlantic. That was where we really found the weather. The ship rolled and pitched for all she was worth and it was then I regretted the roast dinner; I was ill.

At some point later, one of the Radar operators came and told me that one of the sets had broken down and that I would have to fix it. Seasickness was no excuse and duty came first, so I went. I discovered that soldering was called for and that was my personal Waterloo, in more ways than one. The radar set I was working on was large enough for me to be able to fix a bucket within its confines and use it as needed while breathing in the cloying and stinking fumes of the soldering flux, which only added to my nausea as I hung on for dear life, while the ship tossed itself about. At the same time, I was trying desperately to give a good account of myself on my first trial. From that moment until we brought the convoy to harbour more than a week later I was permanently ill, I could not bear the heat of the air at hammock level and slept on the floor of my office, which was not much better as the steel floor vibrated in tune to the engines. I prayed for death and gave not a single thought to those who would accompany me. I was prostrate, in pain and almost demented. When I ultimately went ashore, the jetty appeared to be rolling and pitching as the ship had, until my brain got itself in gear. This affect is not uncommon after very bad weather. The strange thing is that after that voyage, in similar circumstances later, irrespective of the weather and not withstanding that some of the experienced men around me were sick, I was never ill again.

Victoria Falls

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In the then Northern Rhodesia. On film today it is certainly majestic, but to see the immensity, the rush of water, hear the noise and feel the constant rain of the spray in those simple, uncluttered days, is an unforgettable lifetime’s experience. We had an enormous American car, called an Overlander, with a soft, collapsible hood resting behind the back seat.. The wheels were so huge the mudguards were big enough to form a seat for our African servants. Mostly we went on picnics to The Falls or the Zambezi, We needed guards with us to guard the car and more importantly the food, from baboons, which gathered in vast numbers around the picnic sites – they could be vicious. The servants brought chairs, and set out the food. We would take two servants on the rear mudguard, hanging on to the canopy as we went over dry roads, rutted after rain by the wheels of ox carts. In the wet season, we would take two more perched on the front mudguards in case we got bogged down. Neighbours of ours in Livingstone, had, for years, been dreaming of retiring to Eastbourne. When they achieved it, they only stuck it for two years and then returned to Africa. I suspect their muscles had forgotten what housework really meant.

The descriptions of The Victoria Falls run to 11 pages on the Internet; so I will be brief and describe what it was like 76 years ago. There were few visitors then, merely the locals. Both sides of the Zambezi were Northern Rhodesia, now, when crossing the bridge, built in 1908, one leaves Zambia for Zimbabwe, and the Falls Hotel is in Zimbabwe. Only as a special treat did we eat there, mostly we picnicked in an area where the ‘rain’ – spray thrown up by the force of the fall – was absent. Also in Zimbabwe is the Rain Forest, a treed area growing on the edge of the Falls and mostly, soaking wet from the spray The Boiling Pot was where the water from the river fell via the Cateract into the Gorge and with the turbulence and the spray was all the world like a bubbling pot. From the pages of the Internet the area now seems to be highly populated.

THE CAR AS A BATTERING RAM Our house was on a corner of a junction. of two dirt roads. On trips my father would set the car at the edge of the road, facing downhill.. The servants would load it, my parents would get in, the servants would climb onto the mudguards and then we’d be off. On THE day. to get me from under their feet, I was sent to sit in the car, which I did, in the driving seat. Where else? I naturally pretended to drive, who wouldn’t, aged seven. I maintain I did nothing, but then I would, wouldn’t I? It was hot. I know I was. I sat there for an age, and soon became bored with saying brmmm, brmmmmm, but what else was there to do? Start all over again? All I know is that the car suddenly started moving of its own volition and set off down the hill with an excited me on board, It started to track narrowly from one side of the road to the other, gathering speed until it reached the other verge, on a slight bend which it then mounted, knocking down some flimsy fencing, then a telegraph or electricity pole, which sheared at ground level, thanks to the attention of red ants, and which finally fell diametrically across the centre of a hut made of reeds and clay, used to house the servants working for another family. The pole demolished the hut. The car stopped short of the hut. For a short while nothing happened. Where the servants were who used the hut, I had no idea. There were no shouts or groans and death never occurred to me, I was too worried about the impending doom I could see gathering on the horizon, or more accurately at our garden gate.

I was whacked. On principle, if in doubt, whack. I explained or rather pleaded that I had touched nothing, total amnesia though is never an excuse. I found that out years later in the Navy. In fairness, my mother had lifted me from the car amidst the disaster, but she spoiled the effect by scolding. I was never believed by anyone but myself, and that’s no consolation. A totally different and more interesting story was told that evening at Sundowners – alcohol has that effect. My absence in body, if not totally in fact, had been an edict, so I only heard what was said through a crack in a half-closed door, but the story had become a saga, the nub of which was not what had happened to the hut nor to the people who might have been in the hut, not even the traumatic effects on the psyche of a quivering child, (who had never quivered in his life), it was a long and tediously detailed explanation, with many repetitions, of how the car had been extracted from the hut and that it had not sustained so much as a scratch. Everyone has his order of priorities, mine were severely changed that night.

The 30s, I write, You Compare

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Life and Standards

I have always believed that until 1939. when Hitler mucked up the world and in Britain it has never been the same, the period from ’35 to ’39, when our economy was steadily improving and we had emerged from the austerity of WW1, was the most equable and relaxed time in our history. It wasn’t Utopia, but nowhere ever will be. We had the iniquitous class structure, but as we knew nothing else – so what? From my experience of education and industry over the years, people in the 30′ were less ambitious, their goals were modest and achievable, a job was mostly for life, your pension like the job was inviolate, and promotion was dead man’s shoes. WW2 changed all that, 1946 brought back a work force which had been replaced in its jobs and there was a period of re assessment – shuffle and re-deal which lasted right into the 70′s and 80′s.

Since the 50′s standards gradually accelerated in every sphere, industry, leisure, communication, and then, in the 60′s, when we had reached a pinnacle of some sort, the wheels came off and it has been down hill ever since. Chaos seems the order of the day, standards in most spheres have dropped – education, business probity, morals, mores, thrift, and above all, trust, have all suffered. Am I right? Can we rise yet again? Do we want to?

Communication
We sat round the Christmas luncheon table on Christmas day, with the cat’s whisker adjusted, the 2 volt, lead/acid battery powering a crystal wireless set, and a pair of headphones talking to us with the King’s voice, and those memorable words – ‘London Calling !’ all from the bottom of a baking bowl in the centre of the table. We never thought that one day we would communicate instantly with pictures, words and music, in every sphere. Now, unlike then, censorship, voluntary and enforced, is more relaxed, we  are presented almost daily with scenes of alleged sexual orgasm, speech incrusted with our letter words, guns that fire unlimited bullets so inaccurately, the recipient of the onslaught walks away unscathed. We are told we can switch off if we don’t like what we see or hear, but is that not infringing our right to be entertained that we have contracted for, should the squeamish not be totally catered for as well as the unshockable? The latter, after all, have a section of the ether referred to as ‘Adult’ – a misnomer?