The Old Gaffer

Road Engineers, a breed apart, are single minded and possessed. They learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that is their philosophy - straight to the point. They don’t go round things like sites of special interest, but do go through Granny’s 400 year old cottage - so be it. However they take stuff for granted that we Plebs need to know. It’s understandable, they are involved in stresses and drains, centrifugal forces, and strains, so simple stuff is unimportant. Have you ever wanted to get from A to B in a hurry and found you arrive, half an hour late, when the cakes and the coffee are all gone, and people are down to the nitty gritty, all because of one missing sign post. You start at A and know you get to B on the motorway, there are signposts at regular intervals saying, in effect -’You’re on the right track.’ Then one tells you to get on an ‘A’ road, you do - more signs to B. Then you arrive at a Six Road Ends, any one could lead to B, but the Road Engineers knew the area so well themselves they saw no need to tell you. Then you were on a bet of 5 to 1 against,.

Computer Periferals operate in the same way - those faceless people who send you death messages, like ‘Error, protocol XYZ, 000779, not available,,,’ and then on for another 6 lines of gobbledegook. I’m just a bloke who makes pictures, writes, enjoys simple things like any other Pleb, and I just haven’t a clue. The damn thing waits until I am in a hurry, on my way to bed, need to go to the lav, have 7 or 8 screens running, and then pounces -, without a word from me, he starts to install some huge piece of kit I have no need of, which fouls up my email system so I can’t post to my blog. There is also a salesman who tells you your ‘Free’ antivirus programme will be out of date in a couple of months, goes into great detail in how you can sign for X Dollars for something you don’t need, - even my bank wouldn’t need it. But finding how to renew the free one is worse than the Hampton Court Maze. Having got it you are instructed to register, but then your problems start again and registration is impossible because of a glitch you haven’t a clue bout.

Then there is another salesman offering you something you would really like. It is within the budget, just right, but how in hell do you get hold of it? Suddenly there are more than one version and I have said yes and got it wrong and lost money. Actually I have only bought 4 things off the internet - 3 were wrong and I couldn’t get my money back, the 4th my daughter bought for me, it never arrived and she had to get her money back by some other means. When you go to a shop it is simple - mostly. You know what and how much! Why in heaven can’t downloads be as simple?

IT Debacles I am surprised it has taken so long for the Mandarins of Whitehall to discover there’s a limit to centralisation, but not that their failed attempts to make it work would cost billions. It is so obvious that vast, integrated computers, by their very nature, must become so complex that they inevitably become unwieldy and prone to error. The long history of departments of the Civil Service with computer problems, has been ignored for too long. Many are so impenetrable the Public is losing services and money in unbelievable quantities. Now the DHSS proposals as well as those of the Police are foundering. In the end the police woke up to the fact and gave up, not so the DHSS, an even more complex problem.

Recent reports show that delays in the new DHSS computer were partly due to the problems of converting hand written notes on to the computer. Surprise! Surprise! Even Banks have problems with centralised systems, and the numbers of accounts, staff and operations is miniscule compared with the DHSS. With a population of 60 million, doctor’s records from birth to death, references in more than one hospital, specialists, physiotherapists and also a plethora of other out-providers, such as opticians, all to be interlinked, the memory needed must be unbelievably colossal. About two years ago a very august charity was persuaded to update its operation by importing two computer systems, split into its subscriber function, and its charity one - they are now suffering as others similarly, with malfunction and record loss The proposal of such a system defeats common sense. Medical staff has managed with local systems; why not improve them at less cost and, more to the point, less risk of failure?.

Pay-by-the-mile Road Charges. Implementing without general approval produced gridlock throughout the country when applied to oil. The government leaders should bear this in mind currently, as at grass-root level there might be murmurings.

Floss was a handyman at Ramsgate’s huge funfair called Wonderland. He worked on the Big Dipper. Early every morning he sent two cars round the track loaded with sand bags, watching the reaction of the wooden structure as the car went round, to gauge any weaknesses. Next it was my turn for a free, if solitary ride, as a third check. Can you imagine what Health & Safety would make of that today?

Evening was the best time to be there, it was vibrant, with a cacophony of sound and a kaleidoscope of coloured lights winking on and off, and I absorbed the hectic atmosphere of the constantly eddying mass of humanity, along with the excitement of it all. When I went on these protracted holidays it was my practice, even duty, to return home with a small present for each of the family. This time I had had so many incursions into the wallet I was almost totally broke. What with the cinema trips, smoking, the funfair at Ramsgate and the even more expansive funfair at Margate, called Dreamland, I had only pence left and was at my wits end - well almost, I still had the slot machines to fall back on. Families descended like locusts on the one-armed-bandits. They were impatient to win and when the pickings were poor they too, like the locusts, moved on. It was then that I moved in, with just the odd penny here and there. I would give a heavily patronised machine, the opportunity to play one or two more games. Most times it worked. On the last evening I could not waste money on bus fares and cycled to the fairground. There I set about making enough from the slot machines to give me a fighting chance to win prizes at the stalls. Buying presents was out of the question, just a matter of playing the odds and knowing when to stop. Having increased my shilling into something like five, I went in search of other games of chance where I had reasonable odds, I won a glass bottomed tea tray, plaster of Paris elephants of all sizes, coated in black mica, a milk jug, toffee, and chocolates for Val. The things were equally disparate and cheap, but I was no connoisseur, merely a boy trying to get himself out of a jam.

That night I cycled back to Pegwell Bay with the tyres birring happily along on the tarmac, a smile on my face which could not be rubbed off by the passage of the wind, no matter about the lonely days and the long hours spent touring for its own sake, the elation of that evening put it all behind and made that holiday one I never forgot.

It was at this time that I bought a packet of Will’s Goldflake cigarettes and sat in the cinema, in the afternoon, in the dark, enjoying a taste I was only once again able to enjoy. There is something about the taste of those first cigarettes one smokes which is indescribably satisfying - like the taste of real Naval rum, never to be experienced again. In fact it was many years later, when I restarted smoking after a longer than usual period of abstinence, that I savoured for a brief period that wonderful sensation and taste once again.

Parents used to make strange decisions, with the best intentions and even self- sacrifice, but with little realisation what they were condemning their children to. Single parenting is not, and never was, easy, conscience has to be weighed against pragmatism, welfare, economic resources and what is possible. My mother decided I should not be kicking my heels throughout the summer holidays in London, so twice she sent me off, for a month on my own for a Holiday. Summer jobs were rare so vocational work was the exception. In the countryside, there was fruit picking or harvesting for nothing or a pittance, On the first occasion she took me to a boarding house in Worthing, introduced me, stayed a day or so, bought me a season ticket for a seat at the bandstand and left, giving the woman my pocket money to be doled out, a shilling daily, I was bored out of my mind, lonely, made no friends, and I sat and listened to the brass bands night after night.

The experiment was dropped for a year or two; then I was sent to stay with Floss and Val at Pegwell Bay, in Kent. Val was a roly-poly, rosy faced lady, with a sense of fun and generous nature, who had a handful of guests, mostly friends of the family. Floss, was small, tough and rugged, an ex-regular soldier with service all round the world in various regiments He had laid paths round the house in concrete, with regimental badges picked out in coloured cement. He and Val amicably shared the house and one another when visitors were not in residence, but cohabitation was something only whispered. The house at Pegwell Bay was furnished with brass ornaments from India and the Middle East, colourful china, and rugs which Floss had brought home from his travels, and there were flowers everywhere, both inside and out. The hangings were of rich colours - Val herself was colourful, like a Gypsy, with red cheeks, dark hair and huge earrings always dangling to her shoulders.

The house below, on the road leading to the beach, was occupied by an AA man I found interesting, who covered the district on his yellow motor bike and sidecar. He had small children I played with, although I think I preferred to play with Val’s goat which I milked, and was tethered beside the house in a small pasture. The goat, knew me so well it would baa even when I was a quarter of a mile away. It always wanted to play butting games and its forehead of solid bone often caught me unawares in the thigh. The goat’s milk I accepted with tentative caution as I did the vegetable salads which contained fruit, more colourful than Mother’s - Val liked colour. I liked the salad no more than I did the milk but the outdoor life gave me an almost insatiable appetite.

Feeding birds, cats, the goat and a tortoise which hibernated in the cupboard over the cooker through the winter, together with Floss’s influence taught me much about the wider aspects of life - full justification for the working holiday experience, but much of it solitary. There was wonderful hay making, the hay transported in horse-drawn wains and stooked. The fun of building ricks with horseplay among the youngsters, the lunches brought to the field and the smell of the hay itself. I liked guiding the horses by the bridle when on roads, but was always fearful of their huge hooves. I also got jobs as a way of filling in the day, plum picking up tall rickety ladders, with a sort of apron bag in which to put the plums and filling wicker baskets, we were allowed to eat all we liked while we worked, and were paid on the number of baskets we filled. I didn’t get rich, but I did lose time with diarrhoea on the second day. I cycled to some of the Cinq Ports, Sandwich and Canterbury,. and wandered through the remnants of the invasion defences left from the First World War and to Manston and watched the RAF planes taking off and landing

Down the road beside the bungalow I found another road running parallel with the beach and when I was cycling along there I was assailed with the marvellous scent of fresh lavender. I went into the lavender fields, which, like those in Grasse, in France, stretched in rows to fill the huge field. On the middle of one edge of the field was a gloomy wooden barn-like building which was store and shop and in there one could buy sachets to sweeten sheets in drawers, bottles of essence, hair grease in boot-polish-like tins, solid perfume blocks and sprays of all kinds and above everything was the concentrated smell of lavender. I was allowed to pick lavender and received sachets and hair grease for my trouble.

If you are a conscience ridden single parent, worried if your child should have a holiday, please make certain it is accompanied, or else forget it!

The latter was posted in August ‘06 `

TV Shenanigans, essentially TV is a theatre in the home, hence one must expect poetic licence, deceit, and for things not to be what they appear. As a cynic I am prepared to accept much of what I see because it is entertainment, and consequently it is for the audience to evaluate. I am not dealing with the fraudulent cases currently in the press, nor detailing another programme I enjoyed until I discovered that it was totally stage-managed, for the reasons I give above; it would spoil the enjoyment of others as revelation spoiled mine.. However, as this programme is now over I feel free to comment. I can’t help feeling that the latest version of Master Chef, which has been portrayed totally as extreme entertainment, with all the behind-the-scenes drama and pressures, one would anticipate, is not what it seems.. I do not believe a quarter of what we were shown. I think that no matter how clever these young people were, they could not have achieved the heights so expertly, in such a short time, without a good deal of covert assistance, and I would be surprised if their own, un-doctored, or even doctored products, ever reached a commercial table, and from my own experience of making meals and serving them, I suspect, with all those machinations of filming, they were mostly cold anyway. Today, ratings and therefore money, is the key, not honesty. Success at any cost is the aim. All that shouting and extolling at force 10 was definitely over the top, the gentleman who was the produce expert missed his vocation, he should have been a ‘Sar’nt Mahar’ in the Guards, I should know!

The Change Of The Watch For four days the stunted little warship had writhed and hammered her way through the green bowels of the storm until the most hardened member found himself praying. In their selfish agony a few prayed for death, little caring its cause or how many would die in its accomplishment. Men of sterner stuff prayed for respite and peace.

The watch-keeper descended the steep steel ladder, his glistening black oilskins stiffly standing out from his body as if shunning contact, while his smooth-heeled sea-boots skidded in the shallow, dirty water that was sloshing back and forth in the passageway, in time with the rhythm of the ship. His face, beneath four day’s growth of beard, was weathered to rawness and his fingers were pallid and stiff where they protruded from the over-long sleeves of his coat. He steadied his lurching body before the sliding door of the steel compartment that thrummed like a biscuit tin under the pounding of irritant fingers, braced himself against the fetid smell that he knew would heap nausea upon nausea and pushed back the door. A bucket hung stiffly on a rope from the deck-head, arcing to and fro like a stuttering pendulum in tempo with the buffeting hull, while an excess of heavily laden hammocks, suspended above like strung corn on the cob, mimicked the jerking pail.

Entering this sordid home of his to waken his relief, and then to try to sleep, he cursed as he always cursed his existence, where privacy and freshness were highlights shining from the past, or beacons of the future, where the present was dull, grey and featureless, and where it could be conceivable that the stale, greasy smell of sailors’ hot cocoa could herald warmth, comfort and a change of mood.

He shook the hammock above him and waited for the familiar wakening pattern to unfold. The grunt, the stretch, the short staccato oath and then the appearance of the grey sea-boot socks as the long legs bestraddled the hammock to be bumped alternately by the swing of the exhausted bundles on either side. While he waited for the next phase, he looked down and absentmindedly watched the articles on the Mess table skate back and forth, and with senses long since deadened felt neither surprise nor criticism as one of the stockinged feet descended to squash flat the wedge of margarine as it too tobogganed on its saucer across the table top beneath the hammocks. The face that looked down at him was bruised with exhaustion and sucked dry with fatigue.

“God save me from looking like that!” he thought.

By the time you have read this you will appreciate that there is more than one meaning to ‘passing out’ and the one in a military sense is not intended. We had suffered more than our fair share of bad weather and our convoy duty had not been so much dangerous as stressful as well as extended, with the result we were ‘chocker’, lower deck slang for disgruntled and fed to the teeth, and when chocker is said with venom, and is preceded by an epithet, it can hold considerably more emphasis, as it did then.

For some reason we dropped anchor at Southend, the only time we ever did, and those off Watch could not wait to belly up to the nearest bar, yours truly included. To get from the ship to the pier we were ferried in small boats we called ‘trot boats’, manned by locals. We then had to take a train, the one mile length of the pier and no sooner had we arrived on the promenade than we surged into the first pub we reached. Because the trot boat’s capacity was small, the number disembarking at any one time was also small, hence, when we reached the pub we found a crowd had already beaten us to it, and this was the story of the whole afternoon. At that time there was a distinct lack of booze available of all descriptions and the landlords of the inns and pubs liked to keep most of it back for their regulars. It was not unheard of for a publican to aver that he had run out of beer or spirits or whatever, which often proved to be a lie, but who could blame him, we were there for a round or two, his regulars were there for life. The first pub where we achieved success said they had no beer, only a limited supply of gin, in the next it was only beer, in some it was even only port, with the result we had a brew swilling about in our stomachs which represented everything in the vintners list, consumed in the shortest possible time because we only had a few hours ashore; this was topped off with a greasy mix of fish and chips; but the real trouble was, we were still all as sober as the moment we had stepped from the train on arrival, and fed up about it, to boot - chocker!

There we were in the rain, waiting for the next train, apparently sober, chocker to the ‘n’th degree, after a shocking time at sea and the worst run ashore imaginable. The grumbling was vicious and the mood bad. If the Skipper had thought to release some of the tension by letting the Off-Watch ashore, it had misfired. In due course the train arrived and we boarded and sat silent through its long slow run to the end of the pier, at which point in the story I have to rely on reports as my memory of what took place is not so much vague as non-existent. Apparently I stepped from the train stone cold sober and then, without a sound, measured my length on the deck of the pier , out for the count, the alcohol fumes and the witches’ brew had caught up with me.

My comrades manhandled me into the trot boat and from the trot boat into the ship and down into our Mess where I was stretched out on a bunk, non compis, but my Samaritans had a problem. Immediately prior to the anchor being raised, it was part of my duty to examine the radar and radio gear and report to the Captain on the bridge. I was in no state to stand up, let alone look intelligent or talk sensibly. They drowned me in black coffee and salt water alternately until I surfaced, at which point it was ‘Show time’, I was due on the bridge. I remember saluting and mumbling something, but my condition must have been patent. The Skipper gave me one chance by asking was everything in order. My reply of “I’m —–ed if I know”, helped my case not one jot and I was dismissed. The fact that I then proceeded to trip over him, he was only about five foot in height, was the last straw. “Get off my bridge,” he shouted. “Clap that man in irons”, he roared, and they did. That is to say, I was not handcuffed, instead I was unceremoniously dropped through the hatch of the tiller flat on to a greasy steel deck where the chains leading to the tiller were connected to the gearing, and I was left there, in the dark, in the stink of oil and in my best suit - my ‘Tiddly Suit’, my pride and joy, made to measure of the best doeskin and embellished with badges picked out in gold braid and gold wire, while the ship set off on convoy once more.

I have to admit, I slept like a baby and next day appeared before the Officer of The Watch charged with being ‘drunk and incapable, ship under sailing orders’. I received a bit of a rollicking but I suspect the true circumstances had reached the ears of the Wardroom because I was awarded a loss of privileges for a period which meant I would lose one run ashore. I later found that the incident was not recorded on my papers, another sign of leniency.

I believe that the Service was suspended in the aspic of time, almost ever since the days of Nelson - until the war, with the sudden alterations in thought and deed which that emergency and the introduction of civilians forced upon it. In turn the Nelson syndrome was thrust upon us at every opportunity by those who had served, man and boy, for more than ten years before we, the HO’s, joined, ‘What was good enough for Nelson is good enough for me’, was the formula and radical though it may be, I have learned through experience, and therefore can appreciate, that change for the sake of change, and precipitate change in particular, not through attrition or detailed experiment, can be very detrimental. ‘Defaulters’ was a case in point The word ‘defaulter’ applied to anyone brought up on a charge, irrespective of how innocuous or severe. It was a presentation by the charging Officer or Petty Officer of a crime to the Officer of the Watch in the presence of the accused and had been played, probably unchanged since the days of Nelson, hilarious to the outside eye, dear to the heart of authority but not to us at that time.

The ceremony went something like this. Someone in authority put a man on a charge and the latter was duty bound to appear before the First Lieutenant at an appointed place at an appointed time. On that day the Master-at-Arms, the Regulating Petty Officer, the Writer, the Escort consisting of two sailors decked out in webbing belt and gaiters, and the criminals would gather, along with whoever was making the charge. The defaulters would stand in a line in order of appearance, some trying to have a crafty drag on the stub-end of a cigarette without being discovered, which would only add to the charge if caught. It was at this point that the whole thing, in my eyes, became sheer theatre. “Prisoner, or prisoners, fall in,” shouted the Regulating Petty Officer, only inches from the ear of the man selected, and the defaulter would stand between the two members of the escort. “Quick march,” roared the PO and the prisoner and escort would shuffle through the door and into the office for the hearing, being goaded on with shouts of ” Left, right, left, right…….” continuously until the word ‘Halt’ was emitted in high crescendo. With the lack of space on ships there was no way they could actually march but there had to be a semblance of the real thing and the interpretation ended up as an undignified shuffle, roughly in time to the shouting. At the word ‘Halt’, everybody stamped their feet resoundingly, the RPO then roared “Off caps” although there was only one cap to come off, and, if the man was in seaman’s rig, he would be very careful how he took it off, because many were watching, not least the Master at Arms. Apparently there was only one way, and it seemed to take ages to learn.

From that stage on, things became quieter. The RPO was silent, thank God, the Master At Arms read the charge, ‘Jimmy’, as the First Lieutenant was universally known, asked the man who had brought the charge for details, the criminal was asked for his version and excuses, although the latter were never expressed openly; if it was in his province Jimmy gave sentence, if a higher sentence was demanded or the crime was outside his remit, the defaulter was bound over for Captain’s Defaulters and for very serious crimes, even he, had to pass the hearing on to a higher authority. At the end of the proceedings it was time for the RPO to come into his own again, all that noise and stamping was repeated once again. Fortunately on our little tub, through lack of space, we enjoyed a quieter version, we had no Master, no RPO in the true sense, and no room for the enactment, in fact it was all very civilised as I found out to my cost. See ‘Passing Out Parade’ to be posted later.

I take exception to the illogicality of our Government’s Climate Change Bill,when presented with the fact that we are now using the very outlets that we are complaining of, concerning climate change, to create carbon emissions on our behalf to supply us with the goods we purchase. This is fatuous! As a nation, with only 0.6 % of the world’s population, in a physically small country, consequently reducing travel distances, with a reasonably low standard of emissions already, it beggars reason to even consider that the policies that the government is proposing are likely to make any significant difference in the rate of change, when placed against the recalcitrant attitudes inherent in the more populated and larger countries for the foreseeable future. Now is not the time.

I believe that this Bill is a purposeful distraction, because no intelligent person could put it forward with any moral logic. I fear with all the depression in stock markets throughout the world, with our immense debt, and our reliance on the stock market to stay afloat, that on top of our current tax burden, this latest proposal will not only produce hardship intrinsically, but could tip the scales to national financial ruin. In the light of our failing infrastructure, child illiteracy, overburdened penal system and other shortfalls, the money could be better spent on these deficiencies.

I believe that if ever there was a case for a referendum, this is it.

I assume there are as many characters today as there were in the 40’s, but the streets seem more crowded and they don’t stand out like they used to. There was a man with a military style to him, I used to see in front of the Belfast City Hall. Smartly dressed, wearing a trilby and carrying a walking stick, he would suddenly raise his stick like a sword, holler ‘Charge!’ and then obey his own instruction by careering down the pavement , brandishing the sword. As quickly as he started, he would resume his walk as an ordinary passer by. He was a shell-shock victim twenty or so years on. The older trams in Belfast were fitted with bench seats running the full length of the tram, downstairs. Many a night, late on, I was entertained by a small, vigorous 60 - 70 year old who would get on close to Town, and leave near Belfast Castle. When the tram started on the straight stretch, and he would be secure on his feet, he would rise, start singing and then dance up and down the aisle. The trams were almost empty, the passengers were content, so the conductors left him to his routine.

MAC In an office I was in, he was a character of the ‘Old School’ who was very clever but had lost his way some years earlier and now sought solace from a bottle. His natural politeness insisted that whatever he was taking, he could do no less than offer share. When he laced his mid-morning cup of tea he invariably offered a snifter to anyone standing near him when he opened his drawer for the miniature of Irish. This pick-me-up was to tide him over until mid-day when he would go for a serious tipple in the bar nearby. Later in the morning, the temporary shot having run its course, he would hold out a handful of phenol-barbitone, offered like a child would, with dolly-mixtures, for me to take one, yet I never saw him incapable or affected in any way, and he could always be relied upon for the mot juste or a quotation from the classics.

FREDDIE Mac had a friend who also worked with us who was an even greater character, if that were possible. Freddie was also a single man, as many of the Council staff seemed to be, which I put down to the low wages they were paid when they were of marrying age, that and the fun they were having at the time, so, by the time they were financially capable of supporting a family the choice was probably very limited and perhaps they were also more circumspect. Freddie lived with his mother who I suspect still thought of him as a boy, because she would lock him out if he were late home. He was between forty and fifty at this time. He owned a greyhound he referred to in the local vernacular as The Groo. On one occasion he returned home, found himself locked out, so for the night he shared the kennel in the yard with The Groo. On another, he came home the worse for wear, he was partial to Guinness. He looked for something to cure his hangover and when nothing seemed to be to hand he used Bob Martin’s Dog Powders, which apparently did the trick - if he was to be believed. Freddie worked beside a window overlooking Donegal Square. In summer, at lunch time, office workers would come to sit on the grass and sunbathe. Freddie had a mate called Sam and the two of them were talent watchers. One day I joined them. When I saw the age of their choice I couldn’t resist mildly pointing out that my daughter was about that age and there was no way she would look at two old reprobates like them. They aged on the spot. I was unfair, it was a harmless bit of reflection on their part, but life is unfair.

The Odd Day Out In the early days, skint but happy, our holidays consisted of several rides on Public Transport, to and from some local beach, with a swim and picnic between On one occasion a relative, Jim, accompanied us. He was a tall, ascetic, aesthetic, high church vicar, with an academic view of life in general. His lofty, six foot four inch viewpoint, may have been physical, but it was also part of his psyche, his unconscious conviction, that he was part of a breed which should be cherished by all with whom he came in contact - he was definitely odd. It was the twelfth of July, a public holiday when everyone who was not watching the Orange Lodges parading was rushing for the seaside and as the weather was extraordinarily Mediterranean, the beaches were crowded. It was time to go home after a wonderful day. Everyone in Helen’s Bay seemed, to have come to the same conclusion. The station platform was stacked to the wall and a very diminutive Station Master strutted back and forth in front of Jim shouting ‘Keep back from the rails’. Jim was not fond of children generally and certainly not en masse, as we were now experiencing. It was all more than he could bear and he took his frustration out on the poor official. After about a dozen exhortations to ‘Keep back’ Jim lost his cool, looked down upon the bumptious little man from his great height and said in a thin crisp tone, which carried quite some distance. ‘Cease, Pimple!’ Surprisingly, Pimple did, I think he was dumbfounded, he had never experienced anyone before like our Jim, nor any one so rude.

There is, rightly, concern for the loss of land to spec and council building. In the 30’s, in any industrial town, like |Newcastle on Tyne, the Black Country, Belfast, et al, you would have found street after street of ‘two up two down’ houses, bulging at the seams with people and children, at 75 to the acre, the legacy of the Industrial Revolution. In ‘46 people were being housed in caravan parks and prefabs.From the 50’s great swathes of older dwellings were replaced by motorways, more modern and more comfortable housing and those not accommodated in the immediate renewal were housed on green field sites, Since the 60’s housing has been mainly built at 12 to 15 to the acre and those wealthy enough have purchased second or holiday homes, having the same effect as the renewal system. With all this expansion the infrastructure has been over stretched, and the services put under pressure. I believe nothing but an inspired, overall rethink is essential if our heritage for the future is not to be totally mismanaged.

Portnoo, Caravans And Caravanning The desire to get away ‘from it all’, is, I believe, in the genes, the ancient urge to find pastures new. Round all our coasts are caravan parks great, and small, hideous and acceptable. We were persuaded to try it. We started going to Portnoo at the behest of our friends, who had been going for generations. The attraction, apart from the fabulous beach, the fishing, the golf, the security of children without tight supervision, was the free atmosphere, the way everyone mucked in. The girls made friends and Portnoo was immediately established for all time for us. At night there was drinking until nearly dawn in the pubs and it was a regular thing to give a turn, play silly games and get sozzled. Willy Long and his version of Piddling Pete, was a regular request.

The fishing in the sea, the lakes and rivers was good. I would bring both sea fish and trout for others to enjoy as I hated fish even then. Years later, fishing on Doon Fort lake above Narin, the sun setting with an extraordinary sunset, I hooked a salmon trout. Holding it in my hand in that light, in those surroundings, knowing I would never be the one to eat the fish, with the sun bringing out all sorts of colour and resonances from the fishes’ scales, I wondered why the hell I was killing something so beautiful for sport, and have never fished since.

It was during that holiday I developed Menier’s disease of the middle ear so virulently that I actually fell over just sitting on the side of the bed. When I went into the bar in a terribly unbalanced state, no one would believe I was sober. It was also on that holiday that one dentist managed to hook his doctor friend in the ear with a salmon fly, and we were entertained with some ad hoc surgery in the bar.

Talking of dentists, my mate Ernie, a dentist in Belfast and an habitue of Portnoo, hated to meet his clients when he was on holiday and we did all we could to fend him from them. I have seen him almost hide when he thought he spied one on the horizon. On yet another wet day he, his son and wife, along with Sophie and I, were having coffee in the lounge. I was pushing a toy car across the floor to his young son who was likewise returning it when unfortunately it became bent through hitting a chair leg too hard. Repairs were effected, by the son straightening the car with his teeth. Sophie, witnessing the engineering feat said, ‘It’s a good thing your father’s a dentist.’, upon which a woman, who had been sitting behind us and who had mistaken me for the boy’s father approached me and said, ‘Oh! Are you a dentist?’ Without waiting for confirmation she went into a long detailed description of her daughter’s teeth, what she believed was wrong with them, and what she reckoned her dentist should have done to the child.. At suitable intervals I smiled, I dared not explain the mistake as not only would Ernie’s day be ruined, ours most probably would in consequence. However, my bluff was called when she said she wanted to bring her daughter for me to examine and I was forced to explain that the boy I was playing with was the son of a friend, unspecified, and she had made a mistake. I’m afraid she took it all very badly, but it brought home to me why so many doctors register as Mr on holiday.

Any right thinking person had to be sympathetic to the young men who were sent over here, whether they wanted to come or not, to become potential targets for hidden snipers. That was not all, their living conditions were apparently appalling and they were not permitted to mix with the Town’s people, for obvious reason - I had the impression it was as close to being in jail as one could get without committing a crime. The result was that they lived as we had in the warships, something which we accepted because times were harder in those days. The rest of the army in Britain, with the availability of more money, pressure groups, reducing recruitment, and the greater choices open to young people, made the living standards of the armed forces in general, unrecognisable to old sweats like me.

When I tried to persuade Gwen, my aunt, to come over here to Belfast for a holiday, the fuss her friends made was unbelievable and the way they described what might happen to her if she agreed brought home to me, not only the ignorance, yet again, of the English in Irish affairs, but how the parents of the soldiers must have felt and still feel. With the pressure from the job, the pressure from home and the tedium of confined living and no relief, it was surprising the men retained their humour, but they did, if perhaps in a cynical sense. I remember several instances of this, two in particular.

A mature woman, living in a corner house in one of the Republican areas in or near the Falls district, had been annoying a group of soldiers who were supposed to patrol the area by rushing out, as soon as they appeared, and banging the pavement with her bin lid, a general warning signal used to great effect in the area, in the 70’s. In the end the sergeant decided to put a stop to it.

‘Everyone bring their mug’, he said and that was all. The men duly climbed into the Land Rover armed with all their equipment plus their mugs. They arrived at the woman’s house so quickly she had no time to get the bin lid and immediately on arrival the Sergeant and Corporal went to her door and knocked. While he was waiting he told the Corporal to bring all the men who were not on guard to the garden path with their mugs. When the woman opened the door he started to talk to her, but shielded her from view in the street, he then told his Corporal to collect the mugs and pass them to him. A few moments later he passed the mugs back, one at a time and instructed the men to appear to drink. Finally he ordered the men back into the Landrover and with a salute and a loud ‘Thank you for the tea!’, they left.

Apparently, they were hardly round the corner when the woman had one of her windows broken by a neighbour. That story was going the rounds, but another along the same lines was witnessed by our Senior Tracer and can be vouched for. She was going to catch the bus to go to work when she saw a sight, which totally mystified her. She waited to see what it was all about.

A lorry full of soldiers had stopped, the men had dismounted, and some had dustbin lids in their hands, they all tiptoed down a long road in the Springfield Road district. They spread out along the centre of the road and waited. On a signal, the ones with the lids bashed the road, giving the well known signal and within seconds a number of doors burst open and men, putting on clothes, ran into the street, into the arms of those without lids but with repeating rifles pointing at where the men’s breakfast should be. A cynical sense of humour? Maybe! Devious? Definitely! Effective? Certainly!