Category: General

Shortly after we came back from Africa my mother and father had a legal separation with the result that my mother, brother and I were what is today called a single-parent family something rarely heard of in the 30s, when religion and probity were highly respected, and people did not air their problems in the way we do today. Everything was kept under wraps. As things progressed they got worse from my own perspective, and ultimately I became what is known today as a latch key child. During the 30s in Britain, the scarcities that we suffered as a result of the First World War were being reduced year on year, and I feel it is safe to say that by 1935 we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I have always felt that 1935, the year of all the royal celebrations, was a year that was really relaxed, enjoyable and noteworthy for that reason. It will become evident if you read through the next portion of this autobiography, that the changes to life in Britain since 1930 have been monumental

I write this to draw conclusions about psychological reactions in children, they and their adults are not aware of, but which have damaging long term consequences; not making a criminal, but disadvantaging and imprinting a permanent lack of self-respect on the child. The final paragraphs are extracts from a previous, general comment on my African experiences. I am not whinging, I’ve had a wonderful life, but those two years altered my outlook and potential, permanently. In retrospect, I can see the experience damaged my outlook, especially regarding my personal assessment of my intellectual standing, until I was 28 yeas old. This is not psycho-babble, it’s an awakening in old age of an experience which should not be repeated on anyone. I was dropped into a totally strange and false environment.
It was false, it was play-acting, totally unreal, and unrelated to my previous six years. Some of the Civil Servants came from the landed gentry, with Oxbridge degrees and they set the tone. The rest, like my father were educated, but making their way, not backed by old money. With cheap labour; the housing, local schooling and welfare, all included in the contract, they lived miles above that required with a ‘Home’ posting. In consequence, from observation as a mere child, added to later analysis based upon Imperial Civil Service experience, I realised that those on the lower rungs of the ladder were aping, or having to fall in with, the protocols of their richer masters. This was inevitable as the number of whites in Livingstone in 1928 was pitifully small, and this was borne out by so few who met together socially.
School, in Livingstone started very early and finished around midday to permit all to enjoy a peaceful siesta when the sun was at its zenith. I personally found it irksome to have to rest for at least an hour and often more. I have since discovered to my cost that those educational standards were very low, and this was probably the reason children were sent to the Cape – Capetown – or Bulawayo to be educated from about the age of eight until they were old enough to be sent even further afield, to boarding school in England. The poor wretches might not have returned home for years as the journey took so long and commercial flying was not the norm. I spent only two years in Livingstone. By the time I had returned to England, I had lost at least one year’s education and probably more, and this, above all else affected me for the rest of my life.
My loss of education resulted in my appearing retarded. My self-appraisal was coloured by the comments of others and seemed, by test results to be irrefutable. When I came home and was judged by those doing the assessing in England, my capabilities were related to my age and size rather than to my intellectual ability. I was deemed backward and placed in a class accordingly and, indeed, I was 21 years old before I reached my full potential, and sixty before Sophie brought the logic of this train of events to my attention. It’s easy to believe you’re stupid when enough people indicate you are, either outright or by all the subtle implications which offer themselves in an academic career, starting from the beatings for not being able to attain certain standards, to being left behind when all your friends move on up the school, leaving you to lick your wounds and adjust yet again.
I sincerely believe that often the signs are there if only people will take the time to read them, and that misinterpretation is the scourge of doctrinal preaching and half-baked philosophy. For example if less attention was paid to the fact that a teacher gave a cuff round the ear and more to why it was needed in the first place, we might progress. I should know, I’ve been thrashed more than most for less than most. Bad behaviour within adolescents can often be due to reasonable frustration, or anger at one’s own deficiencies, which again is frustration

Indecent Exposure And The Rest I was in receipt of or witnessed discipline in the severest sense. The business of the witch doctor being arraigned for ritual killing could have been a case in point, but the first instance and the most frightful was to do with ‘indecent exposure’ and, if I had known of the trauma to follow, I would never have opened my mouth. It was mid afternoon and I was standing among the fruit trees on our patch, talking to one of the African servants, when suddenly he opened his trousers exposed himself for me to admire. Whether he had other proposals I don’t know, I was too taken aback to think and even if I had I was too inexperienced to know what they might have been. I had never seen anything quite like it before and its size and colour were a culture shock of the first order. I told my mother who told my father who was a strap man, that is, someone who takes off his belt to administer discipline. I remember hearing the young black man screaming and later crying, or more like howling, long into the night. I had not realised the enormity of what had happened and so the punishment seemed, to me unbelievably barbarous.
Some time later, I was to receive the same treatment for what I would have considered a breach of etiquette – I had been rude as a seven year old will, from time to time, but little more. For this, with the help of the goading of Johnny Walker, I was stripped, held down on a bed with a hand across the back of my throat and whaled with the self-same belt. I’m sure I howled too. What harm did it do to me? Not much I think. I was never to receive worse, but I was destined to receive much more but rarely for even less.
When children living in Livingstone reached a certain age they were generally sent to Bulawayo or Capetown to boarding school, and then later they were sent to the UK to finish their education, so most were in boarding school from an early age. We, who were too young, were left behind and only saw the older boys at irregular and long intervals so we were a prey rather than playmates, objects to be teased and worse, harried, and bullying was our permanent lot.
The family-life which existed then, now seems pointless. At eight years or thereabouts, the children would be sent off and, to all intents and purposes, never be seen again except for very short periods. It reminds me of a tea-room in Newcastle, County Down, circa 1950+. Ted, my brother-in-law and I had been spending a few days walking in the Mourne Mountains and had descended into Newcastle, tired but happy. We found a tearoom to pass the time until we would board the train home. Seated opposite me was a familiar cameo in which the father, a stranger to the boy in the uniform of the local boarding school, was vainly trying to break the ice. Both would leave with a mixture of frustration, disappointment and the knowledge that they knew nothing of one another.

SMOKING & WHISKEY I took up smoking on an experimental basis somewhere between the ages of six and seven. Smoking was the norm and the non-smoker was not so much a rarity as someone with a deficiency. My smoking started with reeds. All the Africans’ huts were roofed and often walled with bundles of reeds taken from the river. They stood about six or seven feet high, were about half an inch in diameter and were hollow. If, while hiding behind the huts in the kraal at the bottom of the garden, one lighted the end of a short length, the reed would glow and give off an acrid smoke which we would draw into our mouths if not our lungs,. It was only a small step then to steal the odd few cigarettes which were kept in silver boxes for visitors. There was not much check kept on them as they were very inexpensive, unlike the whiskey which had a habit of disappearing. We would take turns in supplying the cigarettes until the whole thing became a bore and then it was dropped. Tangerine scrumping was much more fun and mildly more dangerous, because the best tangerines were not ours, they were grown by an irascible old codger who liked tangerines a lot more than he liked little boys.
I mentioned the whisky which disappeared from the locked Tantalus and bottles at an alarming rate. I found my mother holding a bottle of drink upside down and marking the label. It must have seemed odd to me because she explained that whiskey had been disappearing and she blamed our African servants. She added that if the bottle was marked upside down, the level of the liquid when the bottle was righted, would bear no relationship to the mark on the label – crafty! At the time I believed her, but with the experience of time I suspect the thief was a good deal closer to home.

The house we occupied was at the corner of a roadway leading North into the bush. Across the road on the opposite side was the residence of my inseparable friend, Mike. For the two of us, every activity took on the drama of an ‘adventure’. Who was the instigator didn’t matter, the ‘adventure’ was important; and this was the ‘Run of the tank’. The tank had come from my house. It was a galvanised iron water tank, serving a number of houses and had been replaced. It had lain at the edge of the garden for some time and had served us as a hideaway, as a fort and any number of other guises, but on this day it became a tank, not a water tank but an army vehicle of destruction.
In the First World War my father had not been a conscientious objector exactly, because he had voluntarily joined the army with his friends from the Surrey Walking Club, rather he wished to be categorised as a non-combatant because he objected to killing; with the result he had been enrolled as a stretcher bearer. Ironically, if it was at all possible, it was an even more hazardous category than the infantry to which he was attached. He had been wounded at least twice and severely gassed and in consequence he abhorred war and never allowed me to play with soldiers nor as a soldier; indeed one Christmas my Grandmother sent me a box of soldiers and these were confiscated as soon as I opened them, and I never played with them at all until I returned to England.
Because the bungalows were generally used only for relatively short tours of duty, when one moved in one might find a small accumulation of other peoples goods, things they had no room for when travelling or were just left. We found a trunk left by someone who had served from subaltern to major at least, in a number of regiments. There were buttons, shoulder badges, regimental names in brass, cap badges and other insignia in mint condition and by the handful. My mother and I never told my father, it was our secret and while I never played with them then, I fondled them and dreamed. When I returned to England I had enough to outfit several of my pals and made my own army, using drainpipes as howitzers and stones for ammunition. We, all officers, were dressed to kill, in every sense of the phrase.
While I was in Africa there was no hint of rebellion in my readiness to play at soldiers, it would have taken a more mature mind to have done so. It was just that playing soldiers offered more excitement and breadth for imagination, hence the ‘tank’. The tank was circular and shallow, but with a fair diameter. The bottom was sealed, in the top was a manhole which had lost its lid; this had given ingress when it had served its many other functions. Firstly Mike and I raised the tank on edge, then, one at a time, we climbed through the hatch and were able to stand, side by side in the dim interior. The tank had been constructed of long sheets of corrugated steel so our feet were precariously supported along the corrugations. We started to walk up the inside of the tank, steadying ourselves against the sides and one another. The tank began to roll and with confidence it rolled ever faster. We were totally unaware of where we were going until a stone got in the way of one edge and the whole thing collapsed on its side. Unhurt we climbed out and started over again, the idea was marvellous – just a few snags to be ironed out.
After several abortive attempts, it dawned on us to roll it to the road outside where the system took on an entirely new aspect and from then on it was a breeze. We could not steer and we could not see, but we were totally confident it would travel in a straight line, seeing no problems we concentrated on rolling as fast as our legs could climb the side like two blind gerbils in a rotating cage. At some point we must have been aware we had left the track and were ploughing through the tall grasses of the veldt, because I still vaguely remember the sense of elation when we felt the grasses being rolled flat like a real tank.. Finally it fell on its side, fortunately the right side up, but when we climbed out of the steel oven, heated by the afternoon sun, we found we were out of sight of civilisation, surrounded by the bush, apparently miles from anywhere. I was convinced we had travelled miles, but two small boys working in that heat could not have gone far. My mother was made aware of the escapade only years later.

Our house was on a corner at the junction of two dirt roads and when we were going on trips my father would take the car and set it on the edge of the road, facing downhill, towards the River and the Falls. The servants would then load the car, my parents would get in, the servants would climb onto the mudguards and then we’d be off. When I actually joined in the proceedings is not clear except on THE Day. On that occasion, probably 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.
To this day 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. If my memory is correct it started to track from one side of the road to the other at a narrow angle, 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.

My father, severely gassed in WW1, had to take up a post with the Colonial Service to be able live in a dry climate. He was sent to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. My mother had returned in 1922 and I was born and lived for 6 years in South London. In 1928 my mother and I went out to Africa to join my father. It was an unforgettable and totally strange experience, what with the eccentric British Raj, meeting Africans in their own environment, and a foreign one to them, wild animals and scenery that is still marvelled at today.
The Journey Out In ’28, we, my mother and I, joined the Balmoral Castle. On board were the cricketing greats of the day, the English Test Team. At six brought up by women, the occasion was totally lost on me, so when .Jardine actually gave me a ball, I didn’t even know enough to get it autographed. Every day nets were erected on one part of the deck for practice. As the only child in First and Second Class, I was taken under the wing of a kindly deck hand. I suspect he was sorry for my solitary existence. The journey of several weeks was like prison. Phrases starting with ‘Don’t..’ took the place of conversation; I fed alone in the Second Class Dining Salon with the same pomp adults had, which only stressed the isolation. Much of the food, unsurprisingly, was new to me. The three classes were not allowed to mix, nor stray out of their territory, but I went everywhere as assistant to the Deck Hand – thank heaven. I can still see the rounded timber rail with its highly polished brass fittings, which allowed access from mid-ships – Second Class – into the other two classes and how empty the First and Second Class decks were compared with crowded steerage. I rose early, found the Deck hand, and helped set up the games paraphernalia for the day. The quoits were made of thick rope, smelled of tar and were as hard as stone when they rattled the knuckles. Apart from setting out the steamer chairs and the shuffle boards, that was my work done till evening when we put it all away again. The smell those ships, the older cross channel ferries, and the old navy ships had, has all gone long ago – it imparted a memory of a different and pleasurable sort, a mixture of hot engine oil and tarred rope. At night there was some form of amusement but I would have been asleep by then.

When we reached Madeira three things stood out for me. On each occasion, even before the ship had dropped anchor, there was a host of small boats laden with fruit and trifles made by the locals, which we could buy. There were also children who would dive off the boats for money thrown from the ship. At the time I thought it marvellous that they could catch the money before it disappeared from sight and it was many years before I discovered that the coins planed back and forth in the water and so descended slowly. Another take-on! The other vague impression I still retain is the wealth of colour of the Madeira I have been told we went on one of the famous dry sledge rides, but I don’t remember that,. Leaving Madeira, going South to the Equator, the whole ship came together for the Line Crossing Ceremony. You can imagine the welter of mixed emotions of a small boy who couldn’t swim, who was being taken on deck to watch a sailor dressed in a fierce beard, a paper crown, outlandish clothes and brandishing a trident, sitting on a throne set up above a tiny canvas swimming pot, about the size of a waste-skip, surrounded by his shouting henchmen lathering the faces of the passengers before they were chucked unceremoniously into the pot. I stood there, waiting my awful turn, petrified but went through it nonetheless. Later there were fancy dress parties. The categories for prizes were ‘Brought onboard’, ‘Bought onboard’, and ‘Made onboard’, mine was the latter. I was a Candelabra, swathed in some form of copper-coloured material, with a headdress of a copper-coloured candleholder with candle and a candleholder in each outstretched hand. I won second prize to a Red Indian. We went down to the shop somewhere in the bowels of the ship and I received my first camera, a leather-cased Box Brownie On the return journey on the Edinburgh Castle, I was dressed as what we Rhodesians thought of as mealy-corn, – maize to Europeans. I was strapped in a shaped, elliptical tube of green crepe paper, which rose above head level encasing most of me, but revealing bobbles of yellow paper corn on my chest. I believe it was very fetching, but as one can’t defend oneself with encased arms I entered the competition in tatters, having had a fight with, I believe, yet another Red Indian. Mother was not pleased. From Capetown we had a tedious journey for days, cooped up in a railway compartment.

I can understand, but don’t necessarily approve of young children having a piece of blanket that they carry to give themselves security. In my early days I don’t remember children having bits of cloth, rather a heavily damaged soft toy, often a gollywog. The learning curve for a very young child is exceptionally steep. We all know that to all intents and purposes, their brain is like a very clean, pristine piece of paper, and every day, information is printed on it, which the child has to assimilate, understand and try to apply. To me, the piece of blanket serves a purpose, but it doesn’t add anything to the sheet of paper. I believe it would be much better if the piece of cloth were periodically, and gently changed, so that the child would become accustomed to these changes and at the same time, discover subconsciously, things of beauty.

A child is accepting what is put before it, uncritically, because it has no comparison, and consequently, no choice. Choice has to be given by the adults with care and attention. When I was young, the books we were given were beautifully illustrated, and the characters had a gentleness about them that appealed to the children, and in fact still does. But what I’m finding on television programs, with children’s toys and children’s books, is a level of aesthetic that is based on economy rather than beauty. To draw a face with almost no features is quick and easy, as it is to make soft toys of the same ilk, but to my old mind, what should be offered to these children, is either things of beauty, or things that have a purpose, such as the difference between good and bad. I find it incredible that not only the children are being battered with these ugly representations, but adults are now being offered them in advertisements, because they’re so cheap in comparison to using a film crew. I have said before, that I find it crazy that people are swayed, to make serious and expensive decisions in their lives, by some drawn puppet.

American aesthetic has come into our lives via Skye, and the films that are being offered have nothing like the quality of those that were made 30 years ago, when actors spoke clearly, and the story was told more by the action than it was by speech, again this is a cutback for economy. The crime and action films now seem to be heralded at a level of mayhem, murder and gunfire that is totally beyond any possible level of occurrence. To find anything up to 10 dead bodies in the first five minutes of a film, is a gross, and giving the wrong impression to those young people who are easily impressed. Somehow, excess in every aspect seems to have risen to an unacceptable level. People are portrayed on film as being totally irrational in their behaviour, both in action and comedy films. They shout, gesticulate, slap one another on the back, and I believe that this is not scripted, but they’re given a rough scenario and left to get on with it, come what may, yet another economy. We shouldn’t be surprised to find youngsters with a Kalashnikov are cutting down kids and teachers in a school, it is, after all, their daily diet.

Over the years I have wasted a considerable amount of sauce, because the jars contain enough sauce for four people, and in those days we were only two. Now I’m living on my own I have had to take steps to save this happening to a greater extent, and as a result I believe the manufactures would actually be doing themselves a favour if they followed my example. The problem with the system they have is that once the jar is opened it has to be used within three days, or frozen. The solution which I have adopted, is to buy small plastic containers and fill these with one helping for one meal, or the helping for two meals. These I freeze.

Living alone is now far more common than it has ever been in the past, with fewer marriages, broken homes, single mothers, and widows and widowers. For those who are handicapped, the meals that you make are small, have to be made easily, cheaply, and quickly. One other requirement is that, as you require to have fresh vegetables in the diet, meals such as spaghetti Bolognese, sweet-and-sour pork, and similar dishes, cannot be an everyday event which then means that the sauces have to be stored in the freezer. It seems to me that if the manufacturers package their sauces in two forms, one as now with four helpings, and the second system using two plastic containers, each holding two portions, this would have considerable appeal, because the purchaser would not only be able to freeze as and when they required to, they would be gaining small containers which they could use for other purposes, such as leftovers, splitting plastic packaged gravy, and similar items. My problem is that probably sauce manufacturers don’t read my blog.

Natural development.
Please understand, I’m not trying to educate you, I am just trying to draw attention to the way that nature has developed systems, which I believe are far from the ability of man. I came in possession of a government pamphlet that describes the working of the ear and the diseases that can injure it. Over my lifetime I have worked with electronics, been a technical designer and an inventor, and frankly I cannot see any human being able to design such a complex, clever and minuscule serious of parts, which together allow us to hear and balance ourselves. I’m not going into detail, merely giving the 5p tour.

The ear has three parts the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. Sounds enter the external ear canal, travel down the ear canal finally reaching the ear-drum. There the sounds vibrate, and are passed into the middle ear. The middle ear is an inflated cavity that links the outer ear to the inner ear, and is also connected to the back of the throat. Which I interpret as the reason why we swallow when an aircraft goes from one pressure to another.

Within the middle ear there are three tiny bones stretching from the eardrum to our hearing organ within the ear, known as the cochlea. It is these three bones that mechanically conduct the sound waves through the middle ear to the inner ear. The inner ear has two parts, the cochlea, responsible for hearing; and the vestibules system, responsible for balance. The cochlea is a fluid filled chamber that looks a bit like a snail shell. When the sound vibrations enter the cochlea, the fluid moves and hair-like sensory cells trigger an electrical impulse in the auditory nerve. Different hair cells pick up different frequencies of sound depending on where they are positioned in the cochlea. The auditory nerve passes electrical impulses to the brain which recognizes them as sound.

The vestibules system is also filled with fluid and has three small sections. Each of these sections detects head movement in a different direction. When you move your head, the fluid within these sections moves. In a similar way to the hair-like cells in the cochlea, they turn the mechanical movement into an electrical signal and send the information to your brain. This information is used with your vision as censors in your joints to help you maintain your balance.

The above seemed terribly long, but I wanted to demonstrate the complexity and the incredible facility that the ear has. When you consider that We are told that life started as an amoeba in a swamp, how in the world natural progression has brought us something so sophisticated is really beyond me, and I can only stand and admire.

The Banker’s handshake
On Monday of this week I glance at a headline in the Daily Telegraph, which said a banker had received a £10,000,000 pension. I had not time to read the rest, but that statement set in motion a number of thoughts, and the greatest was that I couldn’t see how he could spend 10 million intelligently. In the dark ages, when they introduced the National Lottery, I decided to set up a system whereby I did the lottery, and if I won any money I would share it among the family, so I had to decide how much I was aiming for, and I discovered, as I was near retirement age, that a £1m, even spread among the family, would go a long way to fixing their needs, after all a house only cost, at that time, about £100k. I consider that this amount is obscene. A banker is in a position to lend money personally, at high rates of interest, let us suggests 7%, that would bring him in about £700,000 before tax, which would be pretty difficult to spend year on year. I’ll also bet he is about 60, instead of being in his 70s is my children will be, If this government has its way. When I retired I found the family home was far too big for just for the two of us, and ultimately moved into a smaller accommodation. I also found that we had enough of practically everything with which to furnish the new house, and had to spend very little to make a new home as we wanted it. For the life of me I cannot see firstly, how this guy can spend all this money, and secondly, at a time when industry and shops are cut to the bone, and people are being sacked from jobs, which once upon a time were secure, there is any justification for such a handshake, especially, since my savings have been reduced by the very people handing out this money, with the government supporting them. Is there an upper echelon in this country that I don’t know about, where policies of this sort are the norm?

MPs
Like everything else in life, MPs come in good, bad, and indifferent. If like me and my neighbours, you have someone who keeps their eye on a ball, I reckon you are lucky. At the time of the last election, I wrote about some of the people who had put themselves forward, and at the time I commented that the quality was not what one would expect. When someone is elected to parliament, they don’t have to have a string of letters after their name, like some professions, they walk into parliament, literally wet behind the ears with a steep learning curve in front of them. I suggest that the people who are employed to aid them, their staff, will probably be considerably better educated, and far more experienced in the political arena than your prodigy may ever be. There is no shadow of doubt in my mind that when you write to your MP, your letter will go through a number of hands before it reaches your MP, if it ever does in some cases. A civil servant of will draft a reply, the MP may, or may not have to approve it before it is sent out. If the MP decides to write to a minister, concerning your concern, I believe the same approach will pertain. I am certain in my own mind that at times it is the civil servant who makes the decision on behalf of the MP, a system which is logical, as the questions being asked will be repetitious and in a lot of cases manly verbose complaints. The question I therefore ask, is just how many MPs are really needed to keep the ship afloat, and whether the system should be changed to enable a greater number of highly trained and experienced civil servants to not only do the research as now, but also make proposals which are then transferred to a board of MPs for ratification, modification, or rejection. We are told that they need 600 because they are all working away in committee. I have said before, that in my experience most of the people on committee contribute nothing, and the decisions are made by an elite few. In view of the committees that I suggest here, the number of MPs could be reduced considerably, say to 200. If this happened, the cream would come to the surface, and the average quality and experience will be considerably higher at a point of the decision-making process than it might be currently. At the time of the election, prospective MPs would have to come under greater examination by the parties putting them up for election.