Old Gaffer

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  • Belfast 61 to 69, A Minor Divergence and the Topo

    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, it 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 of confetti 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 Sebastian from Hendaye on the Topo, a rackety 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.

  • Random Thoughts, 43, Faith Healing

    As a teenager I was sent to the Christian Science church Sunday school, and was taught that matter didn’t exist, everything that occurred, occurred in our own minds, and was a figment of our own thoughts. If you analyse that, you will realise that there is no way that you can disprove it, theoretically. Practically of course it’s a different matter. Some of this teaching has stuck with me, and I practise it when needed. If you ever go for an operation, which is going to be rather unpleasant, especially in the case of the preliminaries, the surgeon or a nurse will say to you ‘concentrate on something else,’ because they know that this will reduce the traumatic effect of what they’re about to do. I have found in my own case, if I have severe discomfort for one reason or another, that clearing the mind totally, and preventing thoughts from taking hold, can be very beneficial, to the point where the pain no longer registers. At times like that I think of my mind as a room with many doors through which thoughts can come, and as soon as a thought tries to come through a door I mentally slam the door on it. This may sound absurd, and possibly you think it is rubbish, but I can assure you, it is often a help to me with insomnia.

    For years I was very sceptical of faith healers, people who laid hands on you, gave you potions, and were looked upon by a lot of people as charlatans and quacks. There is no shadow of doubt that many of the people practising are not doing so under the control of any association or society, and the skill is not determined by anything other than being passed on by word of mouth. However, in one aspect I have had my mind changed. Some years ago I had a ganglion on the back of my hand, I went to my doctor to ask for an appointment with a specialist or have it surgically removed, but he said that this was not possible as it was on a tendon and this would be too risky. A lady I know, who is a practising healer, with people prepared to fly from one end of the United Kingdom to the other for a single consultation, offered to help me. She placed her hands some two to three inches above the ganglion and concentrated on what she was doing. As time went on, and I am talking only minutes, I felt the heat penetrating my hand, my hands tingling, and sensed that there was some form of energy literally flowing through my hand. All the time this was going on I was sceptical, I thanked the Lady, she went on her way, and then three or four days later the gangly started to diminish. Within a week it had gone completely and never returned. Once when I had a serious operation and the pain was considerable, she came and did the same for me. The surgeon who had operated and my own doctor told me that it would be very painful afterwards and that I should lay in a supply of painkillers. On the first day home their forecasts were fully justified, but the lady came and put their hands over the area once again, and within 24 hours I needed no more painkillers, even when the wound was being dressed. If you have read this blog to any extent, I believe that you will have found that I am a pragmatist, and not given to flights of fancy.

    When it comes to potions, which Sophie believes in, I am more sceptical. The faith healing prescriptions, based on herbs and natural chemicals from the earth, diluted out of all recognition, seemed to me to cure on the basis of belief rather than any effective chemical reaction in the body. The fact that there are shops all over the world selling these things, and I believe that Chinese medicine in rural areas has a similar basis, would seem to substantiate that there is something in it. As a pragmatist with a scientific background I can only put it down to self hypnosis, as the amount of the product as a percentage of the whole potion is so small, and I cannot see how it can have such dominance. The corollary of this is the poisons and other substances which have an effect on the body, should be damaging us quite considerably as we come across them in our daily lives in much greater quantities. I personally cannot align these two concepts.

    Over my long life I have seen the effects both good and bad of religion. I have seen people whose lives have been enriched because of their strong religious beliefs, and there have been those including my mother, who suffered for them. So it is not up to me to criticise what I don’t understand. We must work on the principle that if you think it does you good it probably will.

  • Random thoughts 41, Crazy Priorities

    If you are of a queasy nature, I suggest you move on to the next paragraph as I am giving some lurid descriptions. I have previously mentioned that I have had skin cancer on my ear, and that it will be 30 weeks between the time I first reported and the time of my operation. I have now had the operation and what has come out of it is that it should have been attended to long ago. If this had happened, it would not have become infected, my wife would not have had to patch it every night for all those 30 weeks, to avoid staining the pillow, and I would have been saved considerable discomfort in consequence. But the greatest concern turned out to be the amount of ear I lost during the operation. Instead of a short incision and a small amount of flesh cut away, they had to take out a large piece of my ear, shaped like a portion of pie, and the rest of the ear stitched up so the loss was not noticed.

    Now the operation is over, I can say that the end result is probably no worse than it might have been anyway, the quality of the work by the surgeon was unbelievably clever and excellent. Strangely, I look back on the experience with interest. I discovered an approach to the work that I would not personally have ever imagined. But this does not excuse the nightly torture and the considerable discomfort, brought about by the delay. I have since discovered that the delay was caused by the fact that the Northern Ireland health service is short of skin grafters, and the surgeon who operated on me was just one of the few.

    I mentioned this condition to a doctor and he said that there existed a much more chronic problem which was not being addressed and this was back pain. He said that if a back pain was attended to by physiotherapists within days of it having been discovered, it could be relieved and quite possibly cured, but a protracted delay could cause the condition to become a permanency. This is something to be catered for immediately, as it would probably save money in the long run, and would certainly be beneficial to the patients, overall.

    One other matter which did come to light was the stifling effect of the legal profession, its advertising and its insidious influence on the way the health service is run. The day after the operation, the district nurse came to me to carry out the first change of dressing. She was kind, careful, gentle and extremely professional. It took her 10 minutes to clean up and then rewrap the ear. It took a further 10 minutes to fill in three forms; on one she circled a series of items, on another she filled in a series of boxes, and on the third form she wrote what seemed to me to be a small essay. I suggested to her, and to the doctor that I mentioned in the above paragraph, that this was due to the advertisements that encourage people to take legal action on the basis of no return, no fee. She agreed with me, but the doctor enlarged the scope by saying that this was required because of the legal implications when it came to the DHSS audit. We are too short of the quality of nursing that this lady provided, to waste her time as a clerk. It struck me as being totally counter-productive and therefore a waste of money. I know it won’t happen, but I believe we do have to trust somebody, and I prefer to trust the medical profession, than I would trust either civil servants controlling the health service, or these lawyers who to my mind are ambulance chasers. If the proposition’ is taken to the next stage it seemed reasonable, that in order to curtail the activities of the lawyers, we sign a waiver which basically states that we understand the risks we are taking and that we will not under any circumstances go to law as a result, but have the right in unreasonable circumstances, to refer to an arbitration Board set up by the DHSS.  A lot of people will say we are giving up our civil rights, but better that on a percentage basis, than the 100% waste of time of valuable skills.

  • Random Thoughts, 40, Odds and Ends.

    Filling leisure time in retirement.This is not the first time I have written concerning the aged. I have been very fortunate, I have a number of interests, I still have most of my health, and I still have Sophie. So many of my friends are no longer here, or in homes, and so I have seen what can happen to those of us whose resources have been seriously reduced. In consequence I want to stress to those in their 50s and 60s, that before they retire they should expand their interests, if they haven’t already got a number. I have seen the effect on people who were so wrapped up in their work, so dependent upon those people they worked with for company, and I mean in a general sense not necessarily within a company, that when they retired they were lost, no idea what to do, with all that free time twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

    Some of us, myself included are not totally gregarious, we like the company of others, but we like time to ourselves and so it is necessary for the individual to take this into account, to decide whether he is a good club man, is a joiner, prefers his own company more than being in a group. This type of man will need to find interests that are fully individual, or those that don’t require constant association. Sports clubs are great, or should be, providing one doesn’t become too involved. Some charities, like taped newspapers for Blind people, are both interesting, and useful, and bring one in touch with other like-minded people. Individuals must make their own choices, within their own opportunities, and it is a chance to test maybe unsuspected interests and talent. Some outdoor pursuits are essential, even if is only walking; one’s health, and by the same token mental stimulation are needed to keep the brain alive and inquisitive

    Thinking about this, I researched the trends over the period between 1991 and 2002 of lending by public libraries which included audio and visual. The borrowing of audio and visual, was the only category to increase, and that by 100%. The trends all followed a similar pattern for children’s books, adult non-fiction and adult fiction, by the fact that the first five-year period was diminished by a lot less than the second period, and adult fiction had dropped, overall, by 41%. I under took this research because I have found that among my friends and relatives, while a lot of them surf the Net, and watch documentaries on television, a lot fewer of them read as much as I and Sophie do, and most used to do 40 years ago. Clearly the electronic age is partly to blame, plus the fact that a lot of families have two wage earners, so life moves faster and there is less urge for relaxing pursuits like reading and board-games as there was years ago. The corollary of this of course, is that retirees might have fewer interests outside the computer and television, with which to occupy their time. Whether this matters or not, may not be discovered until too late. Perhaps those soon retiring, while they are still employed, might wish to make a concerted effort to at least try interesting pastimes that they might take up once they do retire.. Evening classes, short day or weekend courses, and other forms of adult education were a great source of interest years ago for adults wanting to broaden their horizons and to meet people.

  • Belfast 1951 to 60 in order, Swimming

    I become an arm-waver. You know the sort of thing, ‘put this,’ pointing to the right, ‘over there,’ waving at the left, ‘put that ‘ and so on. On the day in question I wanted work done on an outlet, which had become useless through the installation of the wretched cattle-walk, over which, as far as I knew, only a few, if any, animals ever walked or ever would walk.

    It so happened that on that day the route to the valve was obstructed by a deep wide trench in the grounds of the sewage works, where a pipe had corroded and was being replaced. The alternative approach was across a temporary bridge, in fact a plank, spanning some ten feet across a channel carrying raw sewage. I am built like a toffee apple on a stick, with my centre of gravity just below my chin – in effect I’m permanently in a state of unstable equilibrium – never at my best crossing planks over voids or sewage. My instinct in this case was to adopt a sort of slithering, one-foot-at-a-time method, drawing the toe of the dragging foot up to the heel of the front one – undignified but trusted and true. At six foot two and thirteen and a half stone, I was about as confident as a cripple on a clothes-line. My guide, the Fitter-In-Charge, a man of no mean girth, at least six feet tall and weighing about four stone more than myself, cantered over the swaying, bouncing plank with total aplomb and a delicacy of step large people often exhibit on the dance floor. I had to follow in my version of like manner, dignity demanded it, I was being watched,. The plank seemed to bounce more for me than for him, and to say I was in a blue funk at the thought of imminent immersion, hits the mark.

    We arrived on the other side unscathed and I did my arm waving bit, a little more theatrically than usual in my relief at being spared. True we had to return but by now my confidence had returned. Again the Fitter-In-Charge preceded me. If I was not mistaken his crossing of the plank was even more of a virtuoso performance. He made the plank sway and spring with a rhythm of his footsteps, as if to some calypso in his head. There was no way I could emulate that, but my poor best was a sort of running step with narrow paces – they, the men, were still watching. Unfortunately the F-I-C with his mad caper must have weakened the plank and with a resounding crack it snapped and I was in the unmentionables, one hand grasping a wall-edge, one leg caught on the coping, the rest of me well immersed.

    The face which accompanied the helping hand was far too smiling for my peace of mind and the way figures emerged from buildings and from hiding generally, indicated that none were to be denied the sight of the dignity of authority uncloaked.

    I stripped, showered, borrowed a set of overalls to a barrage of phrases like, ‘it has happened to us all at some time’, which I knew to be a lie as I had never witnessed it happening to anyone else. I drove home, soaked myself for ages in disinfectant and returned to the office only to discover my shame had preceded me. The phrase going the rounds was, ‘Is it true John can’t swim, he only goes through the motions?’

  • Belfast 1951 to 60 in order,Art

    I have dabbled in crafts all my life and at one time was prepared to accept the opinion of experts as gospel, in spite of knowing that artistic criticism is inevitably subjective, but that is all a thing of the past and came to an end in the YMCA Camera Club one evening when I gave one of my master-pieces to an alleged expert for his views. I sure got them.

    About a month earlier I had come home late to find a bunch of daffodils and a decorated Spanish basket on the kitchen table, it was one of those baskets made from thin plates of wood, thonged together and painted with Flamenco dancers. The whole collection gave me an idea which I proceeded to put into effect. I pulled a hearth rug up against the fireplace to provide a neutral base and background and then, with some flowers in the basket and others on the floor, I made an elliptical composition completing the shape by tossing a pair of scissors on the rug so they fell casually. The idea was to give the impression that the back-lit flowers had just been cut, brought in casually in the basket, some had spilled and were all yet to be arranged. I was delighted with the final enlargements and Sophie gave her Good Housekeeping Stamp as well.

    I showed it to a professional who was part of the leadership of the Club, and a rep for one of the two big photographic manufacturers at that time, but naturally it was a mere coincidence that he should be associated with a club. He looked at it casually and then handed it back with only one comment, ‘I would not give that many marks, I’m right handed and I couldn’t pick up the scissors, they are the wrong way round.’

    A few weeks later I was at a meeting where we all submitted two mounted half-plate photos for criticism. One of the beginners who was terribly new fangled with his little daughter of about two years, had put in a photo such as nearly all parents take at some time, his little girl was hunkered down among the flowers she was picking, in the way all small children do. I have some of our own girls in that pose. The genius picked it up to talk about it and I could see the look of expectancy on the beginner’s face, which suddenly turned to horror. It was not the criticism of the picture, all beginners are used to that and might crumple a bit from time to time if the comments are a bit harsh, but they can generally take it on the chin. No! The bastard had said that the picture looked as though the child was having a pee. I could not believe that one could be so crass, I had looked at my photos of my daughter in exactly that pose, smelling the flowers, and that interpretation had never crossed my mind. Even if it had, so what, he should not have put it in the mind of the beginner.

    From years of rejection and acceptance in a number of different artistic skills, I believe acceptance in art is certainly subjective but can be more a matter of fashion, than a reflection of taste or ability. Having been to art galleries and art exhibitions since the 50s, I am convinced of a number of things. If you take the works of the great masters, I believe it is impossible to compete, on the basis of their work. If this is the case then people who wish to make a name for themselves in any artistic field, either as artists or critics, have to find a new approach, something not done previously, and in this way we have arrived at all the isms, Cubism and so forth. The problem I find is that others in striving to be original are generally failing lamentably, but for some reason what they produce is upheld by some critics as genius.

  • Belfast 1951 to ’60 in order, The Runway Job and other Memories

    On the runway job I learned of the problems of labour relations. We had to build up a big workforce and as we were a Government Department, and in Northern Ireland, we were walking on eggs all the time. Politicians were looking over our collective shoulder and, to our complete amazement, asking questions in Westminster – no less. In one case we had inadvertently taken on a Free State (Eire) worker while there were men still on the dole in Northern Ireland. This was brought up on the Floor of the House with predictable consequences. Theory, it seems is more important than practice but our General Foreman had other ideas.

    It was his practice to telephone the Labour Exchange to send us a batch of hopefuls – most were hopeful they wouldn’t suit – and then line them up in a hangar. He would address them along these lines; “This is pick and shovel, the hours are so and so, the pay is so much and those who don’t want to work step forward and we’ll sign the form.” The majority stepped forward, proving our point. Signing the form was the easy way out for us, it said that as far as we were concerned the man was unfit for the work in question. The problem was that if we had played it by the book, signed all of them on, we would have had a mountain of paperwork within days with malingerers, wasters and the downright bloody minded who would then have to be sacked, with reasons given, and we would still be back to the handful who wanted to work. We were risking the wroth and penalties of Authority, but it was expedient.

    Lunchtimes – The Long Wait It was always my practice on jobs that were big, to go round the whole site during lunch time, when the men were clear and the machines were silent. I took my time, looked slowly and carefully, with the over all picture viewed from a different perspective to that of my assistants, who were too close, and too familiar with their section. I could also view the future areas of work for possible problems. Belfast was built on alluvial mud called sleech, which, dried out has a hard crust over successive layers of mud progressively becoming softer, so it is totally unpredictable and supports very little weight, unless paved piled or treated. This day, on my wander, I went where work would soon be started.

    To give an idea of what this silt, or sleech was like, one day in summer, when the ground had dried out and the sleech had a hard crust I set out during the lunch hour to look at the site where we would be working next, suddenly I found my feet sinking. I knew better than to struggle, I just sat on my widest part, giving minimal loading to the ground and waited for lunch time to end in the hope I would be missed and rescued. There was one case while I was working there of a man stranded, sinking off the shore at Holywood, and people had to rescue him in the way one does with quicksand, with the weight spread over wood or sometimes metal ladders lying flat, and possibly throwing the man ropes.

    A warning based upon experience On one of my lunchtime wanderings I was within inches of being impaled on a forest of 40mm steel reinforcing bars, forming a retaining wall. Fifteen feet above the steel, walking along timber scaffolding planks, one slid and tipped and my leg went through the hole opening at my feet. Don’t ask me how, but I grabbed a rail before the other followed. Stupidly I was wearing bifocal glasses, and had not seen the bad footing as it was obscured by the division in the lenses.

  • Random Thoughts 39, Treasuring Leisure Pleasures.

    I will be posting one or two essays about the changes Ireland has gone through since I first came to live here, and want here to drew attention to the tremendous changes that have happened to our holidays, be they just a day out, or six weeks on the continent. My daughter’s experience makes the point. At one time I had a motor home, we could get up and go off whenever we wished, stop in a lay-by and spend the night – certainly not the world, but Europe was our oyster. Last summer my daughter travelled no more than 40 miles, they parked in a public car park, went for a meal, and her partner who wasn’t feeling well, went to bed while she took the dog for a walk. It was late in evening but being summer, still daylight. Something awakened him to find that young men were not only trying to smash the motor home, they were proposing to set light to it, with him inside. Fortunately someone came at that time and he had no need to face the thugs on his own, they ran off. We are told we live in a free country, but parents fear for their children, adults have to be on the qui vive, even young children are stabbed, and the elderly are beaten in their own homes.

    We live a couple of miles from the seashore, and we find now that people no longer seem to regularly take their children to the beach to make sand castles, and play as we did, and my children did after me. I’m not sure if it’s because they worry about the quality of the water, or because they spend holidays doing those things in the hot, sunny climes abroad. I was a married student, our holidays consisted of days spent on beaches, using public transport and returning home every night. There were times when the holiday beaches in Ireland were packed, the seaside towns full of holidaymakers, and people enjoying simple pleasures and contented to do so. We didn’t look for haut cuisine, we had never heard of it, the food in the boarding houses and small hotels that most of us frequented, was akin to what we had at home. There is no shadow of doubt that with grants, the quality of the bed and breakfast sector has improved out of all recognition, and is generally value for money, in my day it was Hobson’s choice. I think one of the reasons the people no longer go to places like Hastings, the old Victorian resort, is partly to do with public transport. When it was plentiful, and relatively cheap, it was nice and relaxing to climb into a train with a suitcase or rucksack and head for a seaside resort. That was basically the choice, we went where the transport dictated. In the 60s and after, when the aristocracy were opening their houses and offering entertainment as well, the car came into its own

    Now there is another influence, which is yet to be evaluated. That is the effect of security, and the possible increase in air flight taxation, the cancellations, the lack of refunds and all the other ills and frustrations that could well bring the holidaymaker back to Britain. If climate change also has an effect that could well be the case. The one thing is certain, in my day you had to find out that the water was clean or not, which it generally was. Now Big Brother is putting out flags to frighten us off, because our water usage, both in quantity and method, has outstripped the infrastructure. Advertising, TV and the tourist boards tend to give emphasis to the obvious resorts, like the Lake District, or Killarney. Thus as a result in the high season they are so crowded that you often can’t find a place to park within walking distance of one of the renowned views. Not all of us though are able to go off-season. This phenomenon of pockets of crowds is another which the car has introduced since about the 70s.

    I don’t call myself an old gaffer for nothing, I yap on about the past mainly because today is so stressful for the young people growing up with their young families. We had time to potter, put on hiking boots, take a rucksack, take a train and go and stay in a glorified hovel for a long weekend and climb mountains, or walk along the coast, without a care in the world. No parking problems, inexpensive and no pressure. So it wasn’t too hygienic, I’m no worse for it! People today can afford so much more than we could have, at the same time in our lives, but I just wonder if the things that they are spending money on are making them any happier or is it giving added pressures, through decisions, increased financial worries, and even socially.

  • Belfast 1951 to ’60 in order, Hendaye, France.

    I was employed once again and Sophie was teaching so we decided we would have a holiday on the Continent. We would fly to Paris and let the train take the strain to a place called Hendaye, in the Basque country, on the Spanish Border. Sophie was helped in her teaching by a French assistante who suggested that we should stay with someone she knew in Hendaye under a system known in France as ‘en famille’. The system was that Madame Ader who ran the place with Poppa Ader, supplied a room for the whole family, French style, although we chose not to share with the children and were singular in that we took two rooms. There were something like six families in the house, and each morning Madame would go to each table, and take orders for lunch and dinner, she would then instruct each family what ingredients they needed and they would do the shopping on their own behalf. Each had one of those old fashioned safes in a shaded part of the garden and this was where we kept the provisions. Madame would help herself as need be. So twice a day Madame was preparing different meals for six families. It was incredible how smoothly the system worked. Unlike the rest of the guests, we had no car so had to take the bus to the beach with the result it did not pay us to return to the house for a full midday meal and, in any case, our way of life was different, I don’t think we could have stood the pace if we had.

    We were required to make the bed,s and as I have said, do the shopping, otherwise we were free. There were times when the beach was impossible due to heavy rain and as we were away for a month, the number of alternatives soon palled and we would sometimes go back to the house and play board games with the girls. In the next bedroom to them was a couple we would have referred to, and for that matter still do, as ‘deuxieme fois’, meaning that we suspected they were having it away. In this case they were hilarious in both senses. In the evenings and sometimes in the wet weather, they could be heard chasing one another round their bedroom and our girls brought to our attention that they could hear the slap of the hand on naked flesh. As Gilly was twelve years old and Noreen eight, this took some explaining, especially as the combatants were probably in their first flush of old age.

    In Hendaye we met some charming French people including a family . The father was an hydraulics engineer and I soon discovered I could get into quite technical detail with him merely by using an English word, giving it a French pronunciation and a French ending. We became very friendly with them and kept up a relationship until ultimately they divorced which was a great pity. Perhaps it was an interest in the foreigner, perhaps the inability of strangers to communicate when they don’t speak the language, but we found that the French children very soon took the girls under their wing and they were playing French games, including snail races on the concrete coping to the garden steps. The girls for their part were there long enough to pick up enough French to enable them to go shopping on their own.

    On the second trip to Hendaye, my younger daughter was not in favour of the fare and one day, in Hendaye, as she was going into the sea for a swim, I suddenly realised she was little more than a skeleton. This put the fear of God into us and we rushed off for the only remedy we knew, tube upon tube of sweetened condensed milk. Once again we made friends with a French family. Madame was a most beautiful woman both in looks and nature and Sophie and I could never understand why her husband was more in tune with his car than the beautiful Jaquis. Every day when we all went to the beach, he would stay at the house and clean the engine of his car until it was gleaming and then having got it to a state where it was immaculate he would start all over again.

    Ultimately Madame found solace elsewhere and the effect on my elder daughter, when she heard they had become separated was as if they had died under tragic circumstances, which showed her fondness for them, her faith in the sanctity of the family and emphasises how uncommon divorce was in Ireland in the 50’s.

    On the way home we visited Lourdes and there we experienced two main reactions, we were appalled at the commercialisation on the periphery. Secondly, the sight of so many very ill people, and the inherent reverence of the place caused everyone to remain totally silent for at least an hour and probably nearer two hours, as we resumed our journey. I have never forgotten the suffering I saw there.

  • Random Thoughts 38, Dishonour, Removals.

    On the 21st of September, 07, the Daily Telegraph published an item which stated that The Inland Revenue, which I assume means Gordon Brown, are proposing to levy inheritance tax backdated for seven years. I am hoping that this is yet another flag being run up the mast to see who salutes it. To even propose such a scheme, shows a complete disregard for the peace of mind of the citizen, a dishonest approach to legislation, and a contempt for all things honourable. It also encourages spending while you have it in case it is ripped off you on the quiet, the opposite of current Government urging. I don’t know if the levy of taxes is comparable to legislation, in other words it requires an act of Parliament to rescind it. If it hasn’t it should have. In one breath Brown is wanting us to bolster our savings, so we thought, for our good, but in fact it would seem that in another, he feels he can make what amounts to fresh taxation retrospectively, on a whim whenever he likes. The fact that he is having to furnish a war which was achieved by sleight of hand, and at the same time back up the banking system, has presumably placed him in this situation, The nation as a whole, and pensioners in particular, have to make serious decisions about inheritance tax. If their savings are inadequate, and they require sheltered accommodation, the government can force them to sell their home to make up the difference. For those who can just about afford to meet the crippling charges of possible incarceration in nursing homes, they need what little savings they have to enable their children and grandchildren to get on to the housing ladder, which by government neglect, is making it virtually impossible. When tax is levied, long-term judgments have to be made, with something like a rolling programme, although we’re not aware that that is what it is, so that we can budget for most eventualities, and meet most of our needs. To suddenly turn round, having effectively previously given a firm decision on future taxation, to change that so radically, can only be considered despicable, deceitful, and uncaring, almost a form of theft,. It does cross my mind that it is an electioneering ploy, ‘frighten with the threat of a big stick, and when you withdraw the threats on alleged consideration, people think you’re a lovely feller.’

    Removals People even younger than I am are moving house on a regular basis, from the old family house, to a smaller house or flat that they can manage as their health and their strength diminishes. A friend of mine told me he was moving and that made me think of my own experience of moving. I don’t say this is standard, but from my own experience that is the advice that I gave to my friend , We have moved twice, and each time I have had things stolen. When we moved to 15, not only my campaign medals, but those of some relatives were stolen from a drawer. I didn’t discover this for some time. At the same time I had some quite valuable Chinese warriors in a box, about a year later I went to look at them and they had obviously been dropped and smashed. Of course I couldn’t prove this by then. In the second move the whole thing was totally bizarre, I was standing in the garage, surveying from a distance and this is what I saw. One young man came out of the house and walked in a strange, surreptitious, manner carrying something in his hand, to the drivers door, climbed inside the pantechnicon, and clearly secreted something, and then went back to unloading. Halfway through they decided to have a tea break. The whole time, the Foreman stood with his arms outstretched across the entrance door to the pantechnicon. I later discovered that some of the boxes had been opened, some of my audio equipment was missing, one of the men I heard say ‘most of this stuff is rubbish’, how did he know? I lost a special fluorescent, colour matching light, that I had especially built for doing oil paintings in the winter. The problem is that it is only later when you need something that you discover all that is missing. It is our experience that workmen and delivery men can be honest and can be thieves, it’s a risk one has to take – a toss up. In consequence of all this, if there are items that you value, I suggest you box them, tape the boxes with gaffer tape, and number the boxes and list the contents separately, and not write the contents on the box which is what I foolishly did.