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What the critics said about "Slices"...."Be warned....If there was ever a reason for encouraging children to work much harder at school, then this is it"....National e-Book Review"Full marks for knowing where the letters are on the keyboard!"....Website Weekly"It burnt a treat!"....Chilly pensioner"Totally under-whelming!"....Under-whelmed of Bromley"Brilliant! Top of our list!"....50 Worst Books Ever Written Magazine"Just when you think things can't get any worse!"....Lou Spalls, penniless suicidal manic-depressive alcoholic"You just don't expect this sort of thing in your own village do you?"....Nosey woman across the road"We should bring back the birch!"....Old Git in Sketchleys"I suggest you take two of these every four hours until the rash disappears!"....My GP"Please be my friend!"....Lonely, of Chippenham
"Well, I suppose it's ok, but you use far too many exclamation marks for my liking!!!!!!!"....My beloved son
SLICESA Sort of Story
I've tried over and over again to write a separate chapter about Ellie, but failed miserably each and every time. Yet, without any mention of her at all, a great deal of what follows (post 1976 chapters at any rate) would make very little sense to the casual reader. The best that I can achieve therefore, is a page or two of emotionally sanitized, outline-type notes.
Faye, my partner at the time, gave birth to Ellie, bonny and strong despite being three weeks premature, on a cold, wet, rain-sodden day in December 1974. I held that wonderful, fragile little spark of life, whose eyes were as blue as a kingfisher's wing, close in my arms and the thin, grey winter light turned to warm, summer sunshine as I breathed in the smell of her new-born baby-ness. I was overcome with feelings that I had never had before. Nothing had ever been more precious to me.
For a year, our baby grew as babies do and, by the magical Christmas of 1975, she had taken her first few steps.
Ellie had her first fit in January 1976 ("petit mals" my mum called them). The GP referred her to a specialist and he gave her tests....lots of tests....all negative....We carried on.
There were lots more fits though (seizures really) in the following months, each preceded by a frightening moment or two when Ellie would suddenly run, mindlessly, uncontrollably, a few steps before collapsing! She would soon come-to and be fine again....No other symptoms presented, but she would be "out" for a little longer each time and a new kind of fear began to gnaw away at our insides. There were no more tests.
I hated the reigns, but they were always necessary. They kept her close to us and prevented her running into the road or maybe falling and hurting herself when she passed out. I hated what seemed to be happening to her....To all of us!
One day, in 1976, during the hottest July on record, Ellie, 19 months and 4 days old, collapsed and failed to wake up! I remember, through the crimson fog of abject fear that had enveloped me, how I held her cold little hand so tightly in the ambulance and how the crewman called to his partner to speed up because he couldn't find a pulse! I remember how, at the hospital, we waited and waited until they came and said that she was dead. The consultant dealing with her case was at a very important meeting and so it was a distraught and very emotional young junior doctor (younger that me I thought) who confirmed what we had already guessed. He, by all accounts, had been heroic in his efforts to save Ellie. He was a good man whose name I don't remember, though I've never forgotten his face. My partner wept....and wept....and I remember nothing else that day.
I plummeted then, into a bottomless pit of despair, assailed on all sides by every nightmare horror my shattered soul could summon up. I had not been able to say goodbye to her one last time....It had all been so sudden and this ripped and tore at me more than anything.
To say our world collapsed doesn't even begin to describe those events that summer....Everything fell apart. Within a week after the funeral, my partner left and I never saw her again. My mind was finally tipped by ferocious grief into the further oblivion of temporary madness and, after completely destroying (in a blind fit of rage and frustration) all the toys, clothes, photographs and anything else belonging to Ellie or that simply reminded me of her that I could find, I returned to my parent's home. I was inconsolable and, without their support during those first few awful weeks, I don't think I'd have made it at all.
On Ellie's second birthday, I stood by her grave and explained to her that I had made a decision....A cowards decision really. I couldn't cope in my home town any more. I needed to leave....To run away. So I paid a visit to the local armed forces recruitment office and enquired about joining the Royal Navy. I found myself in Swindon a few days later to sit a basic Navy Entry Initiative Test. It was simple enough....a "name all the counties that border Gloucestershire" sort of thing....and, afterwards, the very nice man in the smart uniform said that I'd done well and that, because I'd managed to spell my name correctly, stand up straight and finish a sentence he didn't now have to refer me to the army instead! He also asked if I'd ever considered a career in Her Majesty's Royal Marines Commando. As it happened, my best (and only) friend from school, Tony Southham, had joined the marines a couple of years previously and it was probably his presence and support at the funeral that had planted the idea of my joining the forces in my mind in the first place, though I had often toyed with the idea over the years and actually came close to enlisting when I finished my zoo-keeping apprenticeship in 1969. There had always been a certain "calling" I think. I said to the very considerate man that I'd "give it a try" and so I filled out the forms and signed on the dotted line right there and then. It was that easy and it was done!
Later chapters in this "book" (when I get round to putting them on my site) will reveal that I actually have two birth certificates....One from when I was born, but not christened and another from when I was adopted (aged 5) and completely re-named at what was my eventual christening. This was not an uncommon occurrence with adopted children in the fifties apparently. Most significantly, I enlisted in January 1977, using my original, birth name (not a false one as some recruits were known to do) and not the one given to me after my adoption and which I reverted to after being invalided out six years later. Even now, I receive my military pension in that name, paid into an old building society account opened up in Arbroath nearly 30 years ago!
I did all this, I believe, to "hide" myself away from the world as effectively as possible. My mental faculties in those days were far from what they should have been, but I don't regret using my birth name or even the endless confusion resulting from it when I finally left the Regiment. What I do regret however, is not telling my parents that I was enlisting! I told no-one, in fact. It was over a month after joining up that I finally revealed to mum and dad by letter (still the coward) that yes, I was living in Devon, but not in a Paignton bedsit as I'd told them, and that I wasn't actually working as a keeper at the local zoo. I was instead, writing from the sterile and unforgiving surroundings of barrack-quarters, HM RMC Lymstone!
It certainly wasn't fair on them....They missed Ellie too....so very much....and they weren't able to run away like their cowardly son. They must have worried endlessly about my state of mind and not hearing from me for weeks on end must have been very hard to bear. Suddenly, on top of everything else, they now had my physical safety to worry about as they imagined me pounding the riot-torn streets of Belfast, embroiled in the desperate events emerging from their TV screen every evening during the worst years of the "Troubles" in the latter half of the 1970s and early 80s.
Deception and secrecy have persisted with regard to my military "career" right up until just three or four years ago. Over ten years of therapy (from 1992) have finally resulted in my "revealing" some of the less painful details of my past to "anyone who will stand still long enough to listen"....Doctor's orders. Unfortunately however, few, if any, choose to believe my ramblings and I must be branded a liar by some I think. I have been informed of at least two individuals who have been making "enquiries" about my military past, not realizing that I used a different name back then and even the good old British Legion have been approached. Their children too have quizzed my daughter, asking if her dad had ever been in the army....She said no, of course, because I was never, or ever would be, a "brown job"! Some people will never grasp the difference between Marines and Army!
Just a few weeks (by then 1977) after the test in Swindon, during the coldest January for 15 years, I found myself on a train, en route to Devon, heading for 32 weeks of the most physically gruelling and miserable basic training for entry into any armed forces regiment in the world.
At that time, however, nothing that the military could throw at me, had much, if any, effect. I was never more detatched or emotionally unassailable than during that initial period following Ellie's death. Basic training turned out to be a welcome distraction from the constant aching inside and I embraced it. Ellie was never out of my mind and rarely is, even today, but all that physical and mental duress (which gradually increased in ferocity as the NCOs began to suspect that I might actually go the whole nine yards) went some distance, at least, towards anaesthetising the emotional anguish that festered in my soul both day and night!
The NCOs were right....I did make it....along with only three other poor sods out of an original intake of 54! In those days, the idea was to devise any means possible (often within the law) to actively "encourage" recruits ("nods") to catch the next train home and back to the loving arms of their girlfriends and mothers and not, as appears to be the case these days, to devise any means possible to encourage them to stay, including (dare I say it) councilling!
Whichever way you look at it, I believe that Ellie got me through it all. She always carried my thoughts away from the pressures and pain of countless beastings, drills, inspections and the blood and blisters of 30 mile yomps in 70lb full kit order!
I was never running away from her you see....just everything else and, most of all, myself. Ellie was always there, in my mind and my heart and by my side. She gave me the greatest strength when I needed it most and when I was at my lowest ebb.
Nothing could touch me emotionally for a long time after her death. Not until my second tour in Northern Ireland in fact. It was there that I started to care again. The "Troubles" did that for me at least!
In any conflict, politics count for nothing to the average bootneck or squaddie. In the blood-soaked thick-of-it-all, the only thing that really matters is the man marching, running or cowering next to you. Your "oppos" count for everything!
During those military years, punctuated at times with moments of sheer terror and utter disbelief, I really did become convinced that Ellie was with me again....Looking after me. I just wish that she could have done the same for some of my friends.
I'm sure, thinking back, that my mindset had become purely irrational and, although my decision-making ability remained largely unaffected, my perception of the world was seriously distorted in several ways. Chief amongst these was my growing belief that Ellie's "Spirit" would take the form of a bird to be nearer to me! Laughable now, I know....Product of an unbalanced mind....probably, but a whole succession of weird events involving various birds in places thousands of miles apart combined to convince me absolutely that she was there. It can all be explained rationally I'm sure....Mostly coincidence and an over-active imagination I expect. Nevertheless, I still feel, sometimes, that Ellie's right there, watching over me, as I do my ranger stuff in the woods or as I trek across the fields and around the lakes and reservoirs!
My dad died in 1985 and my mum in 2002. In going through their things after my mum had passed away, I came across a single photograph of Ellie and myself. It had been taken by my mum in the park on the day that Ellie died. Mum had taken her scissors however and cut away the half of the picture showing my partner so that only Ellie and I remained. I'm shirtless in the summer heat, holding Ellie on the reigns and we're both happy....Laughing.
Two hours later she was dead!
It's the only picture I have of her. I destroyed all of my mum's as well back in those dark days. She must have hidden this one away where I wouldn't find it. Now I'm never without it!
A Birthday Surprise and a Very Special Smile(June 1954)
Stay there. Ill be back soon. Look at all the toys.
My mother had disappeared round the corner.
Going to the toilet shed said.
I didnt mind being left on my own. Id never seen so many toys! My fifth birthday would be in two days time and there I was in Cheltenhams (possibly the worlds) biggest toy department in the towns poshest shop, Cavendish House!
An announcement had been made at home the previous evening...No school tomorrow. You and me are going on the bus to Cheltenham. Rachel, youll be going to school as usual.
My half-sister and I glanced at each other. She looked cross!
My mothers boyfriend of some years, my father, looked on from his favourite armchair. He was in the US Air Force serving a long-term posting in the UK. Hed done brave things,apparently, in bombers during the War. My mother said it was why he drank a lot of whiskey and hit me sometimes. I didnt like him at all, but at least he didnt live with us all the time and I was glad.
Rachel was nine years old and more of a mother to me than my real mother had ever been. It was she who dragged me out of bed in the mornings, got me washed, dressed, breakfasted (sometimes) and ready for school while my mother lay in bed, usually until lunchtime.
I never saw my father touch Rachel, except when he kicked out at her one time. He missed, but I got angry and screamed at him that Id stab him with a knife the next time he was drunk if he ever hurt her. I got slapped in the face for my trouble, but I would have done it for certain!
Rachel always walked with me the mile and a half to school, her hand pressed reassuringly into mine. Shed already taught me to read a bit and do some basic sums, as well as loads of other stuff, such as identifying edible mushrooms and how to skin, gut and cook a rabbit. Those are the things I remember most about her....and her gentle smile. Sometimes she stuck up for me and she read stories to me at night in the bed we shared. Ive never felt safer at any time in my life than when I was with her.
Hello little man, wheres your mummy? The lady smelt of strong perfume. The same perfume I thought, as the one worn by Mrs Jarrott my teacher at school, but definitely not the same as my mothers which always smelt like bathrooms! She seemed very old (probably at least thirty) and looked as though shed applied her make-up with a trowel! I could read the name badge she wore on the lapel of her navy-blue jacket....Mrs Bond.
Shes a long time in the toilet Mrs Bond was obviously concerned. Id told her where I thought my mother was, but hadnt actually noticed how much time had passed. My mother and I had already spent ages shopping all over town for clothes and things for her. Shed had what seemed like lots of money. I didnt know where from. She only had an afternoon job at a small box-making factory in town and money was something we saw precious little of at the best of times. Eventually, Id been rescued by the visit to the toy department and her apparent need to go to the toilet. Meanwhile, Id spent the time productively, choosing something for my birthday. After all, thats what I assumed Id been kept out of school for in the first place.
Mrs Bond and I must have talked for a while, but I dont really remember how long. Other people came,but my mother didnt.
Other details are sketchy. I sat for what seemed like ages in an office or something. I was given squash and biscuits. Several people came in to speak to me. I didnt really worry at first, even after the police arrived. I especially remember the nice WPC. I was eventually taken home in a police car (exciting), but there was no-one there. I must have mentioned Rachel and we went to the school. My mother had collected her earlier and theyd gone off with a man, my father, in a car. I never saw any of them again!
Many years later, I learned that they had flown to the US in a military transport from Fairford in Gloucestershire and had begun a new married life together over there. Apparently, at the time, both the US Government immigration authorities and the USAF actively frowned upon any child born out of wedlock to US servicemen posted abroad and were known to be particularly difficult with regard to issuing the appropriate and necessary immigration documents for allowing such offspring permanent entry into the United States. Therefore, I can only guess that gaining admission into the US would have been next to impossible for my mother with me in tow (this was the 1950s after all), but it all seems very ironic given the history of American immigration policy and the fact that 99%of all Americans are descended from immigrants from all over the world and that many of them, such as the Irish and the Italians are incredibly proud of both their roots and their former national heritage.
Basically, my mother must have been offered the prospect of a brand-new and relatively exciting married life in an altogether different environment with my father, the man she obviously loved and whose tour in the UK may well have been coming to an end.However, it meant that she was forced to choose between him and me....and I guess she made her choice!
Anyway, that same night, Islept a bit (but not much) in a police cell of all places! I dont know why I was placed in a police cell. It smelt of vomit and disinfectant and the mattress reeked of beer! Maybe thats a major reason why Ive never ever drunk alcohol. I remember crying a lot at the time, but mostly I was angry....and worried about Rachel being with him and me not being there to protect her! Its always bothered me and still does to this day!
A man and a lady came to collect me in the morning, but things are a blur after that and I remember very little else. I know they took me to a large house that smelt like a hospital and that there were other children there. I remember being very unhappy and afraid!
I dont recall having a birthday present after all that year, but even now, I can still see Rachels gentle smile....sometimes....when I shut my eyes and everything is still and very quiet.
Most of all, I wonder what became of her and whether she missed me as much as I missed her. Decades later, I named my second daughter after her who, from her earliest days, has always possessed that same special smile!
Time flies like an arrow Kellys whisper was just loud enough for us to hear above the constant howl of the wind.
Does it? I muttered a reply.
Yeah, but fruit-flies like a banana!
I rolled my eyes, but couldnt suppress the merest flicker of a smile. All four of us were miserably cold, wet and tired beyond reason. Four long weeks in this God-forsaken winter-wonderland.... Non-stop wind, rain and sleet! Hiding up all day in corrugated sheep pens, shallow ditches or boulder-strewn gullies. Sitting up to our necks in mud and sheep sh*t. One or two hours sleep at a time, snatched whenever possible. Yomping God knows how far every night.Never knowing which bits of the terrain might be mined and usually too miserable to care!
Seventy pounds of damp kit in a sodden Bergen on our backs, a nine pound SUIT-sighted L1A1SLR with no sling held in half-frozen hands. We'd been inserted to monitor enemy troop and vehicle movements. Trying desperately not to be seen and, most importantly (but without much success), to stay as dry as possible!
Kelly (real name Paul) was a Bootnecks godsend. His type usually are....50% irritation and 50% inspiration. They never let you forget that there are other things in the universe apart from your own little world of pain and misery....namely theirs! He was convinced he looked like Clint Eastwood (I must admit he did a bit) and his favourite film was always and will forever be Kellys Heroes!
Shut it Kelly! I hissed and heard the edge in my own voice. Kelly and Jammy-Dodger (aka Jamie Rogers) were always capable of descending into fits of girly giggles no matter what the circumstances, but at that precise moment four enemy soldiers were less than 100 yards away!
Theyd rolled up out of nowhere in a French Citroen off-roader and chosen to pull over far too close to our meagre position for comfort. The bleak, grey light of the half-dawn had caught us far too out in the open, but fortunately the wind had brought us the sound of their vehicles engine well before they appeared around a bend in the so-called road. Yet the best cover we could find at such short notice was minimal to say the least (three boulders, four tufts of psychotic razor-grass and the rotting carcass of a dead sheep)! We were praying that our improvised ghillie suits would be enough to blend us into our surroundings until the soldiers moved on.
Two of them couldnt have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old and they looked even wetter and more miserable than us. I doubted ifthey had a wise-cracking Kelly of their own and, as I glanced over my shoulder at my own two Belles of St Trinians, I considered giving them ours!
I suddenly became aware that my bladder was full. I hadnt had a p*ss for more than five hours. Jammy nodded towards the distant group.
One of the boy troopers appeared to be looking our way. He suddenly took half a dozen steps towards us and, although his weapon was still slung on his shoulder, he continued to stare in our general direction. Could he see us? Had he heard us? What the f*** were they doing anyway? Why stop there, practically in the middle of nowhere, of all places?
Wye-aye man, dont do it! Tex Mick (aka Alan Mann), the token Geordie of our brotherly band, growled the words almost inaudibly, his eyes riveted on the young soldier. The passionate Newcastle United disciple and all-round b*stard always talked to himself when the adrenalin bubbled....usually before nutting some poor sod in a backstreet bar for being an even bigger b*stard than him! I saw his finger move to the trigger of his SLR out of the corner of my eye.
Cold sweat mixed with the rain and sleet on my forehead while all the time half-frozen, armour-piercing water projectiles cunningly disguised as sleety rain continued to pass through both my ghillie and tunic only marginally slower than the ice-wind from Hell sought out and froze my vital parts as we lay motionless in the soaking wet mud and heather. It didnt improve my already fragile emotional disposition!
If we engage now, Ill be sure to p*ss myself I mumbled, but at least Ill die with a warm crotch!
None of us moved, too apprehensive to even shiver, despite the mud, the wet and the now driving sleet!
We darent so much as breathe.
Then the wind and the cold suddenly didnt matter as time stretched out into infinity.
Kelly farted! Nerves probably!
The young soldier turned to his oppos....shouted something that we couldnt make out above the wind....He un-slung his weapon....Two of his friends stepped forward while the third edged back towards the vehicle....All were looking our way....Weapons in their hands....Anxiety and fear etched into their faces!
My eyes were fixed on the youngster....Three seconds seemed like thirty. He raised his weapon in slow-motion....Then something seemed to give way inside my head, like a dam bursting and time rushed back into the world at light-speed....I saw the barrel of the boys weapon kick....something zipped just inches over my head....I heard a crack!
I p*ssed myself....and shouted something....I cant remember what....
Then the world became an uglier place and another part of me changed forever!
There was no intel worth sh*t to a pig on any of the bodies or in the vehicle itself to make the whole nasty incident even remotely justifiable. We lifted them into the back of the Citroen and covered them with their own tarpaulin. We drove it out of sight and hid it as best we could, but not before Kelly and Tex noted down their names, ranks and probable unit. I saw the boys name on his tags....I should never have looked!
SixSowing Seeds...or Not(August 1954)
Footnote to Chapter Six....
My new Dad is pictured here (3rd from left) with all of his tank crew somewhere in France two or three weeks after the Normandy landings in 1944. All five men were members of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlander Regiment (note the tamishanter-style berets). I do not know who the boy in the uniform is, but the boy with the stick was wearing protective goggles having been blinded by flash-burns during an allied air raid on his village. Note also, the re-building work already taking place on the houses in the background with the Germans still just a few miles down the road! The tank was undergoing minor repairs. The camouflage netting seems minimal, possibly because of the near total domination of the air by allied aircraft. However, this was still a front-line position and the enemy were, potentially, always just around the corner!
The tank, an "M10 Achilles Tank Destroyer" was designed around an American chassis and utilized almost entirely as a tank destroyer. It had the unenviable task of hunting down and destroying German Panzer and Tiger tanks, being just about the only allied tank remotely capable of taking them on successfully with its 17 pounder gun! A second tank can be seen, partially obscured by tarpaulin, about 30 yards further back.
There has always been a degree of American interest in the exploits of my father's tank due to the fact that it was actually re-deployed on D-Day from Sword to Omaha beach with two other British tanks after American mechanized units (M10 Wolverines and skirted Shermans) failed to reach the beach-head. it was used with limited success to bombard the German defences. The first Brit tank to leave the landing craft apparently sank in 15 feet of water without trace and with complete loss of the crew, while the second was blown apart by a direct hit from what was probably a German 88mm. Dad's tank was "dug in" further up the beach by American GIs using entrenching spades, some of them were killed or injured in the attempt and this was one of the enduring nightmare images of the War for my father...He never really forgave himself (rather unfairly) for not being able to lay down adequate suppressive fire to protect them! After all, The entire US invasion contingent on Omaha were unable to suppress German gunfire for most of that day!
Once off the beach, but totally cut-off from other British units, they remained with elements of the US forces for many days in a close infantry support capacity, frequently being called upon to (as the Yanks put it) "neutralize" German armour. Dad always held a special affection for the US infantry, claiming that they were the bravest (and the craziest) troops he ever saw in action. He wrote in his diary some years later, "Thank God they were on our side! I saw those men attempt things and achieve things that any sane man would blanch at the mere thought of. They were quick-tempered, foul-mouthed, abusive and abrasive, but they would stand by you and die for you to a man!".
Oddly, this story has been both confirmed and denied by British and US elements involved in the D-Day landings (depending on who you talk to) as well as by those attempting to research and record the details for posterity shortly afterwards. However, the simple fact is that with so few first-hand witnesses still alive today, the exact details of what really happened at Omaha can never be entirely substantiated and will, therefore, never be fully understood. All I know is that it's the people who were actually there and directly involved in the landings who always seemed to recall my father's tank being on the beach (and some say one other tank as well....possibly the one shown in the background of the photograph above) and that it's the academics of today who argue that it was not!
Dad's best friend Don (who I was renamed after following my adoption), was killed in a "friendly fire" incident only days after the black and white photo above this one was taken (Don is on the extreme left of the group). His death was officially recorded in a single sentence as "KIA by enemy sniper fire"! A British Fatality in a modern war merits a report with an average of 5000 words (quite rightly) and this is issued to a host of military and government departments who each perpetrate their own enquiries into the circumstances surrounding the incident. Two more of Dad's crew were killed later in the campaign when the M10 was disabled by a German infantryman with a Panzerfaust. Dad was hospitalized and, despite the loss of a finger and most of his hearing, he was returned to active service less than two weeks later, this time as the gunner in a "Valentine/Archer" (strangely, on secondment to the Royal Artillery).
Dad died of lung and throat cancer in 1985, but shortly after learning that his illness was terminal, he made the pilgramage, in great pain, to the French military cemetery pictured above, to pay his last respects to Don who was honoured there. He stood in front of the grave for half an hour, alone with his memories and his tears. They were good mates and I know that a big part of my Old Man never really recovered from that awful day back in 1944.
I've added this footnote simply because I want at least some of my father's war-time exploits to be made public. I want the people who read this to know that I care about him and his friends and that I'm eternally grateful for the sacrifices they made to make the world a better place for me and my kids! My Dad was a tall man of slim build and quiet demeanour. He spent the rest of his life as a semi-skilled machinist working long hours in a noisy factory to provide a decent life for his family and rarely complained when times were hard, as they often were.
He was thankful that he had survived a conflict that took the lives of tens of millions worldwide, but he had lost all faith in religion somewhere back there, on the crimson battlefields of Normandy and the corpse be-strewn road to Berlin! Like many others though, he learned to bury his experiences deep inside his stricken soul and fought a constant, sometimes desperate battle to hide his true feelings from the rest of the world for the remainder of his life. There were all too frequent occasions however, while I still lived at home, that I would find myself lying awake in the early hours, listening to the sound of my Dad's gentle sobbing and Mum's whispered words of consolation....For thousands of men and women the War didn't end in 1945, nor would it until they themselves were laid to rest!
Meanwhile, God or no God, if there's a place in the afterlife for a decent, honest family man, then there must surely be one for my Dad!
This photo of my Dad was taken in 1945 after the end of the war and, incredibly, he's just 21 years old....Like so many others desperate to do their bit for King and Country at the start of it all, he lied about his age when he joined up!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch....
No....this definitely isn't Shirley McClaine and Clint Eastwood....After I left home in the late 1960s, Dad and Mum set off to explore some of the more "interesting" places around the world. I guess they were the original "extreme adventure" enthusiasts, but modern outdoor-types please note, just because you're miles from civilization in some God forsaken location, astride a a mean-spirited mule with nothing more than a flea-ridden pillow tied on with string for a saddle and old rope for reigns, it doesn't mean that you can't turn out in a crisply ironed and spotlessly clean white shirt and immaculately pressed beige slacks....After all, who really needs gortex waterproofs, three breathable layers or £200 hiking boots? Armand and Mikala Dennis could always manage a pristine turn-out, so why not everyone else?
Uncle Chris(April 1958)
Uncle Chris was a gamekeeper....The old-fashioned kind....The type whose heart beat to the rhythm of the Land....A sort of Jack Hargreaves with attitude and an over-fondness for the juice of the apple....and I dont mean apple juice!
Nowadays, so-called gamekeepers with their college diplomas and modern ways are little more than land-owner lackeys bowing to the pressures of modern farming methods and the demands of conglomerate supermarket chains!
Uncle Chris wouldnt have fitted in with todays ruralscene!
Bloody hunt, I hate the bloody hunt! Those b*stards give me nuthin but work! Ive got better things to be doin Donald than to be fixin fences and roundin up bloody sheep first thing of a Monday mornin!
His vitriolic feelings towards hunting with hounds wasnt based solely upon the amount of extra work it gave him following one of the local Hunts rampages across his beloved countryside, but on the pomp and circumstance of the entire process and the festival/carnival atmosphere encouraged in what was, for him, an unsavoury and regrettable necessity....The culling of Foxes in order to ensure a healthier rural fox population overall.It was also one that he felt should be left to countrymen like himself, who would do the job more efficiently, selectively and humanely with a rifle than any bunch of liquored-up Hooray-Henrys on horseback desperately trying to keep up with a bunch of salivating hounds could ever hope to achieve!
I liked Uncle Chris a lot, except that he usually insisted upon calling me Pimple Legs for reasons best known to himself! Today though, he was angry and so I was Donald.
Lift that end up more Donald I did as I was told and raised the hefty fence rail as high as my puny nine year-old frame would permit.
He drove home a wooden securing peg with a sizeable rock and grunted with a grudging satisfaction. Thats it. Well done!
It was the Easter holidays and, as usual during any holiday, Id been up before first light to be out and about with Uncle Chris and his devoted Spaniel dogs Wet and Windy.
Mum said could I bring back a couple of rabbits for tea? We were making our way towards Bennett's Wood. My own dog, Slipper, trotted happily by my side. His ears suddenly pricked up at the mention of rabbits.
Well see what we can manage, but first theres another bloody fence down over there!
The day wore on and we talked little, but for me, the pleasure lay in simply being with this gentle man. So knowledgeable in the ways of the countryside and only too happy to pass on splinters of his vast experience to me, like master to apprentice. His skills were, at times, almost mystical....For him, catching a rabbit wasnt a thing to be done with trap, snare or gun....
Stay there Pimple Legs Wed spent several minutes advancing downwind on a grazing buck rabbit in an adjacent field and now I was to remain out of sight with the dogs behind a substantial Hawthorn hedge. My uncle meanwhile, entered the field through a gap in the hedge further along. His left hand securing his hat to his head in the stiff spring-time breeze and his right hidden behind his back clutching his trusty oaken Nobbler carved for use as a weapon from a piece of Belgian Oak by my Grandfather, a cavalryman during the First World War and whose exploits are honoured on the Cross memorial in Tewkesbury High Street in Gloucestershire.
My uncle edged forward, eyes fixed squarely on the rabbit.
It took him the best part of ten minutes to cover the twenty or so yards between himself and the luckless animal. His movements were slow, uncomplicated and deliberate. His eyes never left those of his prey. The rabbit was mesmerized, watching my uncle every step of the way and seemingly incapable of trying to flee!
Finally, as he stepped within a yard or two of his intended victim, he simply removed his hat and dropped it gently over the rabbit which, even then, failed to react. With a sudden explosive motion, the awesome Nobbler descended with mighty force upon the hat and, beneath it, the head of the hypnotized creature!
This process was repeated two more times that day. Mum was pleased with our efforts and enough stew was made for Uncle Chris to be able to join us later that evening for dinner which he was overly fond of doing because he preferred my Mums cooking to my Aunty Daisys!
His outdoor abilities made him legend in the Severn Valley and surrounding countryside, but only I was ever welcomed as his companion. The archetypal loner, he lived until he was 83....Dying, without fuss, from heart failure while sitting on the banks of the River Severn one sunny autumn day, a dog at his feet and owing nothing to the world.
I walked to Bennett's Wood down by the river the day after hisf uneral with my Aunt Daisy and his two surviving sons, Christopher and David to scatter his ashes. It was his favourite place....and mine too. Now its a small, though select, housing estate with tidy lawns and good access to the M5.
For me, the fist day at Tewkesbury Secondary Modern School for Boys was something to dread. Brand new school uniform (three sizes too big), my cousin Davids old shoes (slightly too small) and a new brown leather satchel large enough to fit me inside, but containing just a pen,pencil, rule and one of my own recipe doorstop sandwiches.I stood at the edge of the top playground trying to blend in with a brick wall and not be noticed by any of the older boys....Older boys did things to the new ones....Horrible things....Things like stick your head down the toilet and pull the chain or remove your trousers and underpants and leave you tied up in the middle of the school playing field! It was all true because George Gardner had said it was at primary school last term and hed already got an older brother at big school who went to great lengths to tell George all the scary details!I noticed that quite a few of the other new kids were looking fairly anxious as well.Youre the weird bird-boy ent yuh? Startled, I dropped my satchel inadvertently and spun to face the voice. It was a surprise as people werent usually able to sneak up on me quite so easily.In fact, the voice turned out to belong to a fairly tall youth with dark hair and one brown eye....the other was a milky-blue colour. Wall-eyed! I knew thats what it was called because my Grans dog, Porridge had the same condition and it didnt seem to bother him because he was a really good rabbiter!I like birds if thats what you mean! I replied defensively. I was prepared to defend my hobby against all-comers. I was also aware that my ornithological interests and my propensity to keep myself to myself often set me apart from other children at school who tended to view me as slightly different and, therefore, made me a potential target for bullies. Only my well-earned reputation for striking back with savage intent and significant cowardice when they least expected it or when their backs were turned ensured that I was generally left well alone!Do you like rabbits? I enquired in all innocence.The boy stared at me for a moment or two and blinked Im Tony Southam he finally announced.Im DonYeah, I know. Bricker Smith sez youre a nutter....He said you whacked Phil Danter on the knee with a rounders bat really ard and e ad to go ome from schoolDanter is an idiot! To me, this was a simple statement of fact. Only an idiot throws stones at birds!Why dyou like birds so much?Why d'you like rabbits?Eh? I dont. What makes you think I like rabbits?Oh, no reasonYou are a bit weird arent you?Im not the one with wall-eyes I thought to myself.The simple fact was, I quite liked this Tony Southam. He exuded a certain easy confidence and, despite all his questioning, I didnt feel that I was being judged.The whistle suddenly blew for the start of the new school day and we both went to join our respective lines.See ya Bird-Boy Southam strode off to join the rest of his class.See ya Rabbit-Boy. I hoped he would never find out why I called him that as I scurried away to try and locate my own class and find out exactly where I was meant to be.Tony was in the third form, two years above me. He was a very popular,soft-spoken lad who was never brash or big-headed....Didnt need to be. He had an inner quality and indefinable mental strength that others, including me, always seemed to pick up on and he gave of his time freely to the most unlikely of people. That he had true leadership abilities was without doubt, but they seemed to manifest mostly through the fact that people simply liked to please him. Almost everyone wanted to be his friend, including the teachers.Somehow, Im not sure how, we became friends....Good friends and though to him I was always Bird-Boy, I just called him Tony.The head down the toilet and ceremonial de-baggings never came to pass for any of us of course, but there were plenty of uncomfortable moments during that first year as far as I was concerned. One notable occasion was when a scavenging pack of fourth-formers led by the impuniousFatty Fletcher stole my copy of John Hollands Bird-Spotting (first edition 1960, subsequently withdrawn, second edition 1963) that I had recently won in a competition organised by the Junior Bird Recorders Club (junior branch of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds....annual membership 2/6d) and tried to flush it down one of the loos in the outside toilet block! I retrieved the book by completely and utterly losing my temper (perhaps even my sanity temporarily) and then, apparently (I dont really remember) grabbing hold of Fletchers head in both my hands and attempting to literally bite off his nose,making it bleed profusely!A ridiculously bandaged Fatty Fletcher and his mates waited for me after school that day, but, like everyone else, Tony had heard all about it and hung around for me as well. He told me to stay at the gate while he walked over to Fletcher and his cronies and spoke to them all very quietly. He would never tell me what hed said, but none of those morons ever really bothered me again.Unfortunately, the matter also came to the attention of the headmaster, Mr Bert Weedon. I was summoned to his office the following day and a full explanation was demanded of me. I refused to speak to him and received three of the best from Mr Whippy, his favourite cane, across each hand and a months detention spent cutting the main school lawn with nail scissors! Fletcher meanwhile, got off with just a warning because he apologised.Tony took me to the science lab after Id had the cane on that occasion and poured white spirit on my smarting palms. It stung like a nettle sandwich for a few seconds, but then suddenly felt a whole lot better! It was a difficult month that followed however, what with the ever-worsening blisters that I acquired from using the nail scissors....Mind you, I adamantly refused to speak to Weedon ever again, or at least for all the years I remained at that school!
FourteenThat Most Heinous of Games(Winter, 1964)
I'm sure that those people who know me will be the first to vouchsafe that I never use a big word when a diminutive will suffice. My work-a-day vocabulary, such as it is, lacks any real breadth and depth and, even when fully stretched, could never pass as being particularly impressive. Most frustratingly of all, I know that it will never develop the kind of versatility required to enter into the realms of the truly creative.
Why should this be? Well, obviously, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer (more of a spoon really), yet I'm pretty certain that I wasn't always this way....In fact, my deficit in the brain-box department probably stems from being forced at school, as a very naive fifteen year-old, to play that most pointless and heinous of testosterone-driven "games" for the emotionally inadequate and insecure....rugby football....
One freezing, January afternoon, circa 1964, as a savagely malicious wind directed lances of rain, sleet and snow up the legs of my wet, baggy, mud-be-splattered, two-sizes-too-big Dixie Dean cotton shorts and into my progressively deep-frozen nether-regions, I looked up and yelped in alarm! Terrified prop-forward, Andy "Stinker" Stone had suddenly turned in my direction and, screaming unintelligibly, had thrown an ice-covered lump of granite, cunningly disguised as a rugby ball, into my midriff just moments before disappearing beneath the 15 stone avalanche of fists, boot studs and gnashing teeth that was Mr. "Good God!" Green (Geography teacher and detention uber-fuhrer)!
Every year, Tewkesbury Secondary Modern School for Boy's hapless and terrified fifth form rugby first XV (into which I had been forcibly "enlisted" that very day by virtue of the fact that two thirds of the class were mysteriously absent from school) were pitted against members of the school staff's "Masters of Pain best XV").
At its altruistic best, this was (in the immortal words of school headmaster, Mr. "Bert" Weedon's letter to parents) "a wonderful chance for staff and pupils alike, to embrace a simple game of rugby as an opportunity for everyone to compete courageously and as equals on the level playing field of teamwork and commitment....To set aside all differences in the true spirit of competition and forge iron links of mutual admiration and respect".
In reality of course, it was simply an opportunity for a herd of the biggest, ugliest and grudge-bearingest members of the school's teaching staff to kick, beat and stomp the proverbial crap out of fifteen luckless and shivering wretches as repayment for all the insidious, so-called classroom misery we'd inflicted upon them over the previous five years!
Horrified, I held the solid, egg-shaped lump of ice in my trembling and very blue fingers....The still active part of my brain screamed "run you moron!", but my skinny, ill-shaped little legs and my permafrost-bitten feet failed, as a unit, to fully comprehend the awesome significance of the irresistible cascade of high-octane, adrenalin-fuelled panic suddenly overwhelming me!
My eyes widened to saucer-size as the vaguely hippopotamus shape of Jimmy "The Slipper" Edwards (French and Modern Sadism) rampaged into my field of view! I learned later, from the double-image of school nurse, Mrs. "Birdy" Finch, that it was, in fact, the gargantuan girth of Mr. "Pick-it-and-Eat-it" Peters (English and Foul Habits) who scythed me down from behind and that it was the behemoth Mr. "Scabs" Scrivens (Woodwork and Creative Pain) who actually sat on my head!
I do vaguely remember being dragged by my arms, half conscious, through the mud from the field of "play", but it was the halitosis-enriched breath of the disturbingly over-attentive "Dirty" Davies, the school caretaker that revived me long enough to hear the re-assuring diagnosis of "Bert" Weedon as he examined me briefly...."Well, yes....It's only a head injury....He'll be alright in a minute!".
Change, of course, is inevitable (except from vending machines). The very thought of a "staff v pupils" rugby match is a modern anathema....It simply couldn't happen in today's climate of over-enthusiastic child-protection and run-away health and safety legislation....and the children of 2006 should be made fully aware that we (and myself in particular) suffered greatly so that, eventually, they wouldn't have to! The modern school child can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that he or she will hardly ever have their head sat upon and their IQ drastically reduced by corpulent woodwork teachers lusting for blood and retribution!
The modern teacher, as any of today's children will rush headlong to confirm, is a thoroughly likeable, fun-loving, amenable and dedicated individual, totally undeserving of the abusive (though often witty) nicknames afforded to the so-called teachers of yester-year! That's why we have the entirely splendid and lovingly crafted tome that is the "National Curriculum". It keeps all our teachers on their "teachy toes", It guides them with great wisdom through the veritable minefield that is primary and secondary education and equips them with the indispensable tools of their trade.
The days of "Pick-it-and-Eat-it" Peters and "Good God!" Green are long gone, thank goodness and the future is coming up roses for our children and our children's children....and theirs....and theirs....and wouldn't it be nice if, somewhere along the line, a child, any child (but especially my own) could spare a moment or two to appreciate the sacrifice that I made all those years ago (albeit unavoidably) as I strove to live up to Weedon's idealistic tosh.
I eventually recovered, physically at least, from my drastic two minute contribution to the "match" and even the headaches disappeared over the years!. The combined best efforts of my three blubberous "academic " aggressors, totalling something in the region of 45 stones, had failed miserably to forge any of those elusive "iron links of mutual admiration and respect" and, despite the final score of only 57-0 to the "Masters of Pain", I just couldn't bring myself to believe that we had competed in any way as "equals on the level playing field of teamwork and commitment"!
Happy days!
Here, my children, aged 16 and 12 at the time this photo was taken, are probably deep in discussion about better ways they might find to "appreciate" their old Dad who, I'm sure they would be the first to admit, made all kinds of sacrifices on their behalf!
FifteenOff My Trolley(March, 2006)
I don't like shopping....of any kind! Too many people milling about and not enough space. I can just about tolerate a trip to an all-night Tescos at 0300hrs, provided I know exactly what I'm getting and where it is to within half a metre. I inevitably experience an overwhelming need to be in and out of the shop in less time than it takes to embarrass my teenage children in front of their friends (simply by being there apparently) and please, oh please don't let me be caught in a checkout queue between those totally socially uninhibited ladies (mysteriously found in pairs in every supermarket across the land) who are never without at least two massively over-laden shopping trolleys apiece, dangling never fewer than four grizzly, tear-stained and thoroughly grubby under-fives from every part of their anatomy while, all the time, dispersing a particularly thick and noisome mix of "search-and-destroy" BO and "Channel" Odour Toilet Water that has all the sexual allure of an eyeful of pepper spray!
Just a couple of weeks ago and due to unforeseen circumstances beyond my control (ie: my wife told me to do it), I was forced, against all that's natural, to go shopping during daylight hours! Arghh! Not only that, I was instructed to track down a whole bunch of stuff I'd never heard of, concealed on shelves I didn't know existed....What a nightmare!
Reluctantly, I decided to go to our nearest supermarket (only 11 miles away), but I wont say that it was Morrisons in case they find out who I am and take out proceedings against me! Basically, I hadn't been there since they took over from Safeways and I didn't know that they'd set up a "system" with their trolleys requiring that you now insert a pound coin into a slot device thingy on your chosen trolley in order to release it from a whole line of other, similar trolleys. Fair enough....If I'd known about it, I'd have had a pound at the ready, but I didn't know about it, so I didn't have one! You see, I don't usually carry cash when I'm out and about doing rangering bits and pieces and use a credit card for emergencies only....and shopping.
The shopping list continued to weigh heavy in my pocket and my orders from above still rang in my ears...."Get it done yesterday, if not sooner!".
I couldn't really go back home just for a pound and then all the way back to the supermarket....I didn't have time and there was no-one around who I knew well enough to scram a pound from. I did consider asking one lady if she could let me have her "used" trolley after she'd unloaded her shopping into the boot of her car, but then she wouldn't have got her pound back would she.
Only one thing for it then....
I'm sure that the nice people at Morrisons really are very nice people for the most part, but I do believe I've discovered their Achilles heel in terms of how far their patience can be stretched....Imagine if you worked there and some idiot came round the corner of an aisle pushing five supermarket trolleys all linked together and with assorted items of shopping piled on top of them! What would you think? What would you do? I'd probably find some very important shelves to fill in another aisle at the other end of the shop all of a sudden!
Yet isn't it strange how all "supervisors" and/or underling managers are the same the world over....How they all appear to be cast from the same die. What sets them apart from the rest of humanity however, is their total inability to cope with the unexpected. This, combined with their uncanny talent to turn their faces a bright purpley colour almost instantly (like a baboon's bottom) and their strangely puzzling desire to blow even the most insignificant of happen-stances out of all proportion to the real world, makes them truly unique!
Oh well....I did my shopping five miles further on at Tescos instead....They at least had "normal" trolleys" with good, old-fashioned wonky wheels and no slot thingys!
A bewildering and perplexing hour later, I had completed my shopping, even managing to find some of the things on the list and, despite a particularly wonky wheel (plus squeak) on a trolley that insisted I go anti-clockwise around the aisles against the main flow of most of the other, increasingly irritated shoppers, I felt a sense of achievement. It was then that I discovered that "thrift" is still alive and kicking in the backwaters of rural Gloucestershire....
In today's throw-away, credit-driven society, thrift has, for most people, become a thing of the past, but as I stood at the little lottery booth near the newsagents counter at the entrance to the shop, filling-in a month's worth of assorted National Lottery "Thunderball" and "Lotto" tickets, I felt a sharp prod in my left kidney....
"Is that your pen or the shop's?" The man was 90 if he was a day and was perched precariously on one of those Formula One "shop-mobility" stealth run-arounds. He was leaning forward to weild a particularly long walking-stick with a rubber bung on the business end and it was this that he'd used to poke me with!
"Yes it is" I replied, "there doesn't appear to be any shop ones".
"Bastards!" His response was honest, if not succinct. "Could I borrow yours?"
"Yeah, sure" I continued filling-in my tickets with renewed vigour.
"Are you doin' next Wednesday's as well?" He edged the machine forwards to within a centimetre of my suddenly vulnerable ankles and peered ferociously through half-moon spectacles at my ticket.
"Yes, I wont be long".
"I wouldn't do Wednesday's if I were you" He re-directed his acidic gaze towards me.
"Why not?".
"Well, wot if you wins the jackpot on Saturday....You'll 'ave wasted a pound!"
His reasoning was undeniably sound and unassailable logically!
I let him keep my pen....a cheap biro. He had renewed my flagging faith in humanity and it was the least I could do.
Not since a summer back in the 1980s had I been so heartened by such flawless logic....It had been while taking a hasty short-cut through Cheltenham's Imperial Gardens during a rainstorm of absolutely torrential proportions that I spied a Parks and Gardens employee, out in the open, "watering" the flower beds with a hose-pipe. I couldn't resist pausing to ask him why he was doing it in such a downpour and he replied...."Because I bin told to mate!".
Fantastic! For me, such encounters are the salt and vinegar on the fish and chips of life!
I saw the old man again a few minutes later, as I was loading my groceries into my vehicle....He was scattering terrified shoppers like chaff in the wind as he drove one-handed straight across the busy car park at 40 miles an hour, shaking his stick dementedly and shouting expletives at all and sundry!
Now there's someone who really does deserve to win the lottery....Imagine that kind of attitude having financial clout as well!
SixteenRemedial Remedy(Spring Term, 1955)
It was strange returning to my old primary school after my adoption. Getting on for six years old and still missing my half-sister, Rachel, an awful lot. Going back to the school we'd been at together was very hard. My new Mum held my hand now, but that long walk down the school drive on that first day back was one of the toughest things I've ever had to endure and I remember the peculiar, empty feeling I felt inside as if it was yesterday. I was scared and felt very, very alone!
I guess I was the only child in the school who didn't just "watch the birdy", but could tell the photographer what sort it was!
Queen Margaret's had all the trappings of a very new school back then, being just over a year old. The smell of fresh paint and polish permeated everything as every surface gleamed and window panes sparkled in the Spring sunshine....a sense of newness prevailed, but failed to lift my spirits as I sat at my desk next to child-harpy, Marjorie Bolton.
Marjorie, almost twice my size and wearing a hand-knitted, insipid-blue cardigan with a cigarette burn hole in the left sleeve, took an instant dislike to me. Middle of the school year and she'd been saddled with the tiresome task of molly-coddling "Creepy" (as she so endearingly liked to call me)! She'd had a double-desk all to herself for a whole term and now she was being forced to share with an "ugly, dim-witted boy"....Poor Marjorie
By the end of that first morning lesson, Marjorie had defined the boundaries of our work-a-day relationship and spent some time composing a complete and "helpful" set of rules that, as she explained in the form of a note that I still have to this day secreted in my old "Worry Box"...."Evn an idyut lik yoo can undrstant thees rools Creepy!"....
The Rools
1 Do not tuch me!2 Do not spek to me (unles it is to offer me a sweet)!3 Do not look at me!4 Do not got in my way....Evr!5 Do not tri to shar a book with me!6 Do not moov unles I say you can!7 Do not tel the teechur wot this is!8 I wil thump yoo if yoo do!9 My bruthr Bill wil thump yoo if yoo do!10 And so wil my dad!
Those were the "rools" then and we mustn't forget the "special" rule concerning demarcation zones for the allocation of desk space, which stated quite simply that all of Marjorie's desk belonged to Marjorie and that half of my desk also belonged to Marjorie....including the inside bit where she was "allowed" to store her spare stuff and which I was NEVER to touch....ever....EVER or I would be thumped!
The prospect of two full terms sat next to Frankenstein's Monster with only half a desk to myself and in complete silence only added to my misery during those first few weeks back at proper school, but still....things could only get worse....
I loved to read and still do....with a vengeance. It just so happens to be one of the few things in life that I picked up really quickly for some reason and without too much effort. The school meanwhile, employed its own reading scheme based on that wonderful old series of character-based books, the "Janet and John" stories. I liked them enough, in fact, to secrete them in my satchel and smuggle them home to read in bed at night. I'd tried asking if I could take a copy home one time, but children just didn't take books home in those days and my request was met with one of those long, disdainful stares that my teacher, Mrs. Carmichael, usually reserved for workmen and children with unfortunate toilet habits!
The "Janet and Johns" were colour-coded on a scale of so-called progressive difficulty and the school's "system" required that you started out with, say, a yellow, easy book which you then read all the way through. When you had finished, you took the book to your teacher and they asked you to read a page at random to them (no questions about the content or anything like that to assess your understanding of what you had just read). If you struggled through in a reasonably proficient way, then you were directed, with said book held tightly in your clammy little hand, to stand in the main hall, outside the office of school headmaster, Mr. Bright....or "Bright and Breezy" as he was more familiarly known, but who was, naturally, anything but!
Occasionally (sometimes within the hour), Mr Bright would appear from his office and, depending on how busy he happened to be, would either send you back to your classroom or invite you in to read yet another page of text. If he felt you had read well enough, he would allow you to take the next book in the series (green maybe, I can't remember) from the "Cupboard of Doom" where he also kept (quite cleverly) "Justice", his size 10 slipper....punishment and edification for the use of! The slipper "rested" beside the piles of books and served as a constant and useful reminder of both its existence and its awesome power!
Basically then, each individual decision to to promote any and every child in the school to subsequent levels of "Janet and John" lay entirely with Mr. Bright and never with the class teachers who, I'm fairly certain, would have been actively "discouraged" from sending too many children to his office in any single day!
In the highly likely event that you failed to satisfy Mr. Bright with your reading prowess, you were sent back to class with a flea in your ear and a stern warning to "buck your ideas up child" and not to waste his extremely valuable time. This was usually accompanied by a passing nod to "Justice"!
Understandably, most children hated Mr. Bright and lived in mortal dread of "Justice" who would often be administered for the most minor of infractions. I didn't hate him myself, I just didn't like him....and, most of all, I didn't like the fact that when you were finally summoned into his office and told to place your book on his desk, open at page so-and-so, he then proceeded to lean back in his padded chair, take out his tobacco pipe, filled with best-grade dried chicken crap and light it!
As a thick, putrescent smog of bluey-black fug gradually filled the tiny office, you were expected to read flawlessly through reddening, tear-filled eyes and fits of coughing only normally associated with victims of pulmonary black lung disease! Worse still, the poorer your performance, the more you were required to read as he attempted to give you extra time to "calm your nerves!".
I endured this wonderful example of 1950s best educational practise twice and then decided that enough was enough!
It was simple really....All I had to do was continue to read voraciously at home (lots of bird and nature books lent to me by my uncle Chris and science fiction from the public library) and pretend that I was struggling with my reading at school so that I never got sent to see "Breezy"....Brilliant! It worked really well (I must have a natural penchant for appearing thick), but it ended up working a little too well because my plan back-fired slightly and I was eventually referred to remedial teacher, Mrs. Baker and I was seconded to her "special" reading class on all subsequent Tuesday and Thursday afternoons! Still, I had a charade to maintain and it was well worth it not to have to read to "Breezy" and to be able to get away from Marjorie twice a week! It was also quite interesting and different to be in Mrs. Baker's class because she must have been employing some sort of radical, experimental learning system for those days....we had no desks (Marjorie would have died!) and we all sat in a circle around the walls, facing inwards like some sort of Alcoholics Anonymous therapy group. We rarely wrote anything down and were actually encouraged to express our views....of which I had many and various!
Mrs. Baker (the classic spinster) would have been able to give a lump of granite lessons on how to be stone-faced, but she was quite considerate really....The special needs "patients" in her class were not subject to the vagaries of Breezy's "Justice"....We were her "Chosen Ones" and, if any retribution was to be administered at all (and it often was, particularly to "Flea-Bag" Kenny Taylor), then it would be done, "sympathetically", by her and her alone using "Mr. Softy", her size 12 red leather slipper, complete with patent, hardened plastic sole and a jaunty, though slightly affectatious and demeaning (to my mind) pink fluffy bobble at the toe end!
Many, many years later and as a primary school teacher myself in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I attended an in-service day (called a "Baker day" back then) held at Queen Margaret's. It was very strange going back there after such a long time....I couldn't get over how small everything seemed, particularly the main hall. I remembered it being much larger....A place where we raced round and round during "Physical Painful" lessons and where we pranced up and down doing "Country Dancing" on Friday afternoons to the "tuneful" delights of manic Scottish bagpipe music played on Mr. "Sweep's" (the school caretaker's) red and white portable "Dansette" record player...all the while desperate to partner and hold hands with the unrequited first love of my life, Jennifer Bishop, whose parents considered themselves to be quite posh because they had a home-made TV aerial on the roof of their prefab....No TV of course....Just the aerial!
The greatest change lay in the general condition of the school itself....Everything was so shabby and run-down. Nothing seemed the same. It all appeared uncared for and abused! Even the playing field, once echoing to the delighted shouts and screams of children playing British-Bulldog, Germans and English, Chain-Tag, Clora and Kiss-Chase, had been violated by the erection of several grotty, terrapin-type, permanently temporary classrooms cunningly designed to bring down the appearance of the average building site, let alone a school!
During the course of the in-service day, I pointed out to other, slightly sceptical, teachers, a small hole in one of the hall's side walls where a large picture of the Queen had hung for many years. "It was to this that we turned to face, standing arrow-straight, at the start of each morning assembly to sing the full version of the National Anthem!" I told them.
Later on, I pointed out to the same group of now totally disbelieving and yawning teachers, two small screw-holes above the double-doors of what is now a large sports equipment cupboard in one corner of the hall. Back in the 1950s, it had been Mrs. Baker's classroom and the screw-holes had been drilled to accommodate a simple blue sign complete with the legend (in letters of gold)...."Mrs. Baker's Backward Class"!
I guess that not everything changed for the worse!
SeventeenHmm?A Ranger Anecdote(January, 1997)
Whimbrel x 5Pink-Footed Goose x 7Brent Goose x 1Whooper Swan x 4Little Stint x 1Purple Sandpier x 1...
The list went on....and on....
Mark and I looked at the list....then at each other....then at the list again....then out across at what was still visible of the rain-swept estuary. We were miles from anywhere. Four Herring Gulls and a miserable-looking Mute Swan hid from the torrents of rain as best they could beside a rotting old log left stranded by the tide and a cheeky Robin ("inside" the hide with us!) encouraged Mark to continue feeding him little pieces of chocolate buttons by voicing his approval of all things Cadbury!
The view was spectacularly devoid of hundreds of species of birds!
The list was written within the slightly damp and musty-smelling pages of the hide's hefty log-book, which was about two thirds full of amazing and apparently frequent weekly sightings of a huge variety of birds.
"I wouldn't mind seeing just one of these birds right now!" said Mark, hot Thermos coffee steamed up his glasses as he sipped tentatively from his plastic mug.
"Me too! So who do you think sees all these birds then?"
Lifting his glasses slightly to focus on the mostly scrawled handwriting (he didn't need them to see things up close), Mark skimmed back through the pages of the log...."Someone with the name Ricky S., apparently....Oh, and some guy called Simon Parker....or Packer....or Pecker maybe....er....and a fella called Frank." Mark began counting (mostly on his fingers), turning back the pages once again...."and it looks as though, between them, they've seen 63 different species....not including all the common ones, such as Blue Tit, Blackbird, Herring Gull, Woodpigeon, Robin, etc. They only write down the interesting ones"
"Your Robin's pretty interesting....He's trying to nick one of your buttons!....Anyway, I wouldn't mind betting that most of those sightings are at the weekend as well!"
"Why?" Mark replaced his fogged-up specs and glanced in my direction, not at all able to make out my face.....or anything else for that matter!
"Have a look and see."
"What's the date today, 15th ennit?" Removing his specs again, Mark began juggling days and dates recorded in the log-book in his head.
I looked out of the hide's slit-port window....The Herring Gulls departed as a solitary Mallard appeared from around a bend, waddled up onto the muddy shore and sat down, partially out of the wind, beside the largest tuft of marsh grass it could find. The rain fell harder than ever, reducing visibility by even more! "Crikey", I thought, "it's too wet even for the ducks!" Mr. Robin, meanwhile, perched on Mark's binoculars expectantly and promptly did a whoopsy in one of the eyepieces....Mark didn't notice and I didn't say anything....I needed something to brighten my day!
"Twelve out of the last sixteen entries were on weekends....Mostly Sundays....and all but two of those were by Ricky S., Simon or Frank....but never together. Oh....and apparently, someone called "Trisha" hates a guy called "Nick" because he's a "t*ss*r!"
"Strange isn't it?"
"Maybe he is a t*ss*r"
"No, not that!"
"What then?" Mark wiped his specs, threw another piece of chocolate for the Robin to fetch (which it did!) and lifted his bins to his eyes...."Argh! What's that?....Ergh! It's on my glasses....and my bins!....Ergh!
"That's lucky that is!" I almost managed to stifle a grin...."Maybe we'll get to see something now!"
"I can't see a bloody thing!....Where's that bloody Robin....?"
"Gone I think"....and so it had....Bright birds, Robins, but you shouldn't give them chocolate, it's mildly toxic to birds!
"What's strange?" Mark repeated his question while searching for something to wipe his specs and bins on. He leaned across and tried to use the hood of my jacket!
"Gerroff! It's not my fault....That'll teach you to feed the birds! Is that laxative chocolate by any chance?" I moved slightly further along the bench and stared out once again, into the downpour. "I just think it's strange that people only seem to see anything really interesting at the weekends and that it's just three people who are doing most of the seeing is all!"
"Are you trying to say that these guys are....cooking the books? Maybe no-one comes here during the week." Mark had had no choice but to resort to using his handkerchief to clean his bins and specs!
"Maybe they don't. It's remote enough....Not your average reserve hide with all mod-cons. Though this is a good spot....There's bound to be the odd scarcity or two and plenty of interesting stuff to attract birders all week....Like I say, it's just that only our three "friends seem to see any of it!"
"Well, yes....There are a few mid-week entries....but not nearly so many sightings according to this."
We sat on....and on in silence, scanning the shoreline for signs of life....Any life!
"It's a kind of code!" Mark's sudden declaration made me jump!
"What is?"
"The bird-watcher's code....It's sacrosanct!....or should be!"
"If there is or ever was such a thing, then it's certainly not written down anywhere to my knowledge"
"It would be a kind of verbal agreement....between bird-watchers....An agreement never to lie or make false claims. That sort of thing only harms birding....People would be misled....There'd be no trust!" Mark looked quite annoyed.
"A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on!" I'd read that somewhere and it sounded clever.
Mark took a few moments to mentally digest what I'd said. "That's quite clever" he said, eventually.
"Thank-you....Look!....What's that?"
"Over there, by the three little trees....Some sort of wader I think!"
"Wader? Where? What trees?" Mark placed his third mug of coffee on the bench beside him and struggled to wipe yet more condensation from his glasses with his handkerchief and only succeeded in smearing Robin's poo all over them again! He put them on anyway and raised his binoculars to his eyes, scanning the shoreline frantically!
"Uh-oh....It's gone! Can't see it now!"
"What was it? What did you see?"
"Dunno, it was too quick!"
"You're lying aren't you? There wasn't anything there was there?" He directed his best withering look straight at me, but it was somewhat undermined by the distracting effect of the smeared bird poo!
"We might as well go. This is a dead loss!" I began to gather my stuff together.
"I agree!"
The rain had begun to ease off a bit and we could make a quick dash back to the Land-rover without getting too wet hopefully. I went to close the window....
"Mark, quick....Look!"
"Oh yeah....What is it this time?" He glanced out of the window anyway, despite his scepticism...."Ah yes, a fox....Great!"
The animal was trotting, large as life and in broad daylight, along the shoreline and just a few metres from the front of the hide.
"What's that....dangling from its mouth? Is that what I think it is?"
Mark took a closer look...."What?....Urgggh! How could it pick that up in its mouth?"
"It hasn't got any hands I suppose. Got any more of those chocolate buttons?"
The ex-para blanched, "I think I wanna puke!"
"Fine ranger you are! I expect something like that smells really interesting to a fox....You wont be wanting those buttons then?" I repeated.
The fox disappeared with its trophy and we ran back to the vehicle, but not before adding our own impressive list to the log book's distinguished pedigree....
Mute Swan x 1Herring Gull x 4Mallard x 1Fox x 1 (with used condom!)
EighteenFoundation....A New Ending!(1971)
"Look...Your choice is a simple one....put in a full day, every day, or leave the course!" Principal McKinley stared across his desk at me. This was his trump card and he'd played it almost straight away!
His words, however, didn't have quite the effect he'd anticipated. Art college didn't suit me at all. The entire place lacked discipline....the course itself....the students....the staff....especially the staff! Everyone and everything seemed to drift along without direction or purpose....without anything really. I'd only completed my zoo-keeping apprenticeship in 1968 and worked for a year or so longer at one of the country's largest menagerial (is there such a word?) institutions. That place had been run with the marketable efficiency and all the colour of a high-class Amsterdam whore-house! Cheltenham Art College certainly had many of the characteristics of the average menagerie....the students and staff in particular, reminded me constantly of many of the zoo's more flamboyant residents....but without their social graces of course. It could never be singled out as anything remotely productive however!
As for continuing to work at the zoo, once my apprenticeship was completed, I'd simply wanted a respite from the 0400hr starts to the day....preparing huge amounts of vomitous food for hundreds of species, mucking-out dozens of cages, cleaning, sweeping, scraping and more cleaning until gone 1900hrs most days....and for less than a tenner a week! Things would obviously improve once my apprenticeship was completed, but I'd decided on a change of direction anyway....if only for a break from the smell of bird crap and disinfectant! So I'd turned my attention to art college (via two years of "A-Levels" at Tech), and the even more noisome smell of slightly damp and sticky-looking students....minus the disinfectant!
However, I planned to return to the world of all things zoological in maybe three or four years time....it wouldn't turn out that way of course, but it's what I'd planned!
It was only a "Foundation" course after all. A year to try your hand at basic fine arts, photography, ceramics, creative design, film-making and a bunch of other stuff to help you choose a specialization for the three-year art degree to follow. It had all looked really interesting and very tempting in the course prospectus. Competition had been keen for available places apparently, but they'd liked my work enough, initially at least, to offer me a place, even though I'd only been able to produce a mixed-bag "portfolio" comprising almost entirely of animal studies in assorted media!
This wasn't my first appearance in front of beer-bellied, ageing hippie, Norman McKinley and his Hawaiian wardrobe. I'd been summoned into his "inner sanctum" four or five times over the last fourteen days and, as he sat back in his padded chair and proceeded to light his beloved (but smoked entirely for effect) black and silver, Maigret-style pipe, it seemed, for all the world, I was suddenly back at primary school, enduring one of those "Bright and Breezy" moments all over again!
"Well....?" He continued to stare at me, struggling to stifle a nicotine-tar induced chesty cough as he did so. "You really do need to get your act together on this young man. Your er....training....can't be all that important surely....?" The final words dissolved into a cocophny of coughs and caustic snorts and wheezes that fed the copious tears as they suddenly began streaming from his porcine little eyes. Gradually, he regained his composure and his reddened face returned to its more familiar, insipid, cadaver-esque complexion as he sought brief psychological refuge by shuffling the papers on his desk until his breathing also returned to normal....I waited patiently and watched....fascinated.
By "training" he was referring to the so-called "root" of the problem....the fact that at 1500hrs every weekday afternoon, I would set off from the Pittville Art College campus, with my kit-bag on my back, to run the five miles, barefoot (even in snow!), right across town to the sports hall at the Technical College on the Park Campus. Once there, I would train relentlessly, usually by myself, practising Shotokan Karate Kata (forms/patterns) for a couple of hours before instructing my club class from 1800hrs to 1930hrs. After the class, I would continue training either by myself or with one or two others until the hall was finally locked up at 2100hrs. I then ran back to Pittville, loaded my pushbike with all my kit, books, art materials, etc and cycled the eleven miles home to Tewkesbury. I did this every day, no matter what! The problem was, college didn't finish, officially, until 1800hrs!
Even so, nobody on my course stayed until 6 o'clock....not ever. This was art college in the early 1970s for goodness sake! I was virtually the only one in the entire place or on any course, who wasn't doped-up with "Puff the Magic Dragon" all day long....and therein lay the REAL problem! I didn't drink alcohol or smoke (I still don't) and I tended to make my opinions very public with regard to the popularity of the sacred weed amongst students and staff alike! I didn't "fit in" and, early on in the course, a particularly insecure senior lecturer called Fox (sculpture and creative w**king), had taken an instant and almost palpable dislike to my self-righteous and sanctimonious pontifications almost from day one!
Fox knew that I'd been a zoo-keeper and, for reasons known only to himself, took enormous pleasure in taking the proverbial pee-pee out of me at every possible opportunity and I put up with it, stoically, for months, if only because I believed that the enlightened Karate practitioner should always turn the other cheek, no matter what the provocation!
However, one morning, after a difficult night sitting up with my Mum who was very poorly at that time (Dad worked nights) and then a tough cycle ride to college against a particularly strong wind and in pouring rain, I found myself at the sharp end of yet another of Fox's clumsy attempts to embarrass me in front of the rest of the class. He just couldn't resist starting in on me! It was a familiar theme....revolving around what he considered to be the probable habits of zoo-keepers with regard to the sexual proclivities of assorted primates in their charge. This time, however, he went on to make comparisons with unfortunate incidents reported in the press at that time concerning Catholic clergymen and certain children!
I believe that there are three things that no man or woman should ever be ridiculed or insulted for....the colour of their skin, their choice of partner or their religious beliefs. Their politics are fair game....How else am I going to lay in to all those extreme right-wing fascist b*****ds! I'm not a Catholic and goodness knows, I've got reason to hate some of them, but I don't (I've tried!) and I certainly had no reason to hate them in those days!
In my defence, I can only say that it must have been the the last straw in what had been a very long succession of irritating straws on a not so good day . John Wayne once said....
"I'll not be wronged or insulted or laid a hand on....I don't do these things to others and I expect to be treated the same way!"....Good on ya John!
Strangely, my memory of the "incident" is vague and I depend heavily on my 1971 diary (I've always kept diaries) to recall the details....I remember standing up and finding myself walking across the room to stand in front of Fox. I remember him sitting, as he always sat, the wrong way round astride a wooden chair, his arms resting on the chair-back, facing the class like some sort of mounted Horse-guards cavalry officer addressing his troops....He was also (very irritatingly to me at the time) one of those lecturers who believed absolutely that they were doing you an enormous favour by insisting that lowly students always call them by their first name....in his case, Paul!
"Fox", I said, "you're a prat!" and, according to my diary, "I smacked him one on the lip....not enough to hurt much or fetch blood, but more than enough to shock"....and it did, apparently....big time!
The rest of the class gasped, two or three cheered (I remember that!). Fox went white and jerked his hand to his mouth. He looked at me incredulously, he looked at the class, he went red, started to say something, thought better of it and rushed out of the room....straight up to McKinley's inner sanctum (take that any way you want, you wont be far wrong!). I went for a coffee in the refectory.
One thing led to another....Fox's ill-concealed dislike of me turned to open and bitter hatred and my fate at Cheltenham Art College was sealed! He didn't make fun of me again, but the poisoned whispers in the Principal's ear began in earnest and so too did my visits to his office!
I had taken up Karate in the mid 1960s, shortly after beginning my zoo-keeping apprenticeship and despite having very little spare time (or money). I discovered a whole new way of life....a whole new philosophy in fact....a new way of thinking! I loved everything about it....the extreme demands, both physical and mental, of an art-form that knew no bounds.....relentless, pure and unforgiving!
I loved the power that emanates from the sheer speed and dynamism of the techniques themselves and I bathed in the overwhelming sense of health and vitality that is the inevitable reward for the true Karate disciple. I embraced the fitness side of it and immersed myself in the enormously demanding martial and combative aspects. I enjoyed the free-style combat (kumite) competitions (even winning some and eventually achieving a call-up to the National Shotokan Karate Kata squad back in the early days). Most of all, I thrilled to the artistic and fluid nature of the movements themselves. I attended every available weekend course after leaving the zoo, along with a small number of other "serious" practitioners, as I sought to train with the very best instructors (some of them Japanese) across the length and breadth country and of whom there were very few in those days.
I eventually started up my own, strictly "traditionalist" Shotokan Karate club in Cheltenham in the early 1970s and even taught myself to speak and write basic Japanese! Only my continuing passion for bird-watching and treks to the coast on surfing expeditions ever interfered with the six to eight hours of training I put myself through every day!
All this occurred shortly before the cataclysmic and devastating (to the martial arts purist) advent of Bruce Lee and the heavily Hollywood western-influenced cinematic avalanche of ridiculous and totally misleading Karate and Kung-Fu "films". They served only to brainwash a gullible and impressionable Americanised public into demanding quick-fix fighting styles that would turn them into night-stalking, death-dealing Ninja assassins virtually overnight....and all in just one or two 60 minute training sessions per week....but that's another story!
"Well....?", McKinley was growing impatient, "What's so special about Judo anyway?".
"Character, Sincerity, Effort, Etiquette and Self-Control!" Quoting the five maxims of Karate (if not those of Judo as well), was an honest answer, even if I had lapsed somewhat with regard to the latter. McKinley stared at me blankly. My explanation had about as much credibility as a zoo in a jungle to a man like McKinley, but I'd tried....sort of.
"What are you talking....?" A knock sounded at the door...."Ah....That will be Mr. Fox....er....Paul....No, Mr. Fox to you....Come in!"
Fox poked his head round the door and looked at me...."You're still here then?" A note of disappointment coated with a sprinkling of uncertainty was etched into his tone. I chose not to reply. Fox had refused to have me in any of his classes over the three weeks since the "incident" and did his level best to avoid me at all other times!
"Don't worry Fux", I said finally and stood to leave. "I've had enough of this place and you especially! How's your lip by the way?" Having come into the room, he scurried round to McKinley's side of the desk while my acute problems with authority continued to screw up my life as I flung myself headlong upon yet another self-destruct button!
I walked out of the office and went to find Faye. She, at least, had been the one decent thing to happen to me during those otherwise dour months at art college and I wasn't about to walk out on her as well. I told her all about it and she was upset that I was leaving.
We went on to spend a very special afternoon together at her digs and, for a while at least, she made all those bad feelings just melt away!
As disparate a group of 1970s instructors as you would care to meet from various styles of Karate based in and around the County and gathered together to rehearse for a public demonstration somewhere or other. At times like that, I guess we were the Karate-world equivalent of that fabulous police motor-cycle display team, the "Purple Helmets"....minus the motor-bikes of course (although we did occasionally jump over them....and cars....and each other....and other stuff at demos!). I'm in the middle of the back row by the way and, yes, my hair really was that dark colour!
As volunteers queue patiently for their turn in the "Oriental vasectomy" demonstration, I stand well back, hands on hips, glad that I'm only doing the "how to kick heads off shoulders from a standing jump" routine! (England international, Andy Sanders was fine by the way, after Manny's shoddy, though amusing workmanship and, 30 years on, his limp is barely noticeable these days!).
A very grainy picture taken for a combat magazine (I think) during the 1975 National Championships at Crystal Palace. This was a quarter-final bout in which I up-ended the previous year's champion, scoring a full Ippon, only to be beaten in no uncertain terms in the semi-finals by the eventual new champion! This was also a very painful day of competitive fighting for me...I managed to break two meta-tarsals in the very first round kicking my opponent's elbow at full speed, then dislocated my left shoulder in the third and had to have it put back in. Finally, I snapped my right-hand thumb back to the wrist in the fourth, as I caught it in my opponent's sleeve delivering a punch to his body! You can just make out the strapping on my right hand in the photograph as I use it to inflict the follow-up blow. In those days we were only allowed to wear groin protection (most didn't). Fist, arm, shin or body pads weren't permitted, let alone head protection....the Japanese insisted that it made full-contact pointless! ....Don't talk to me about footballers and meta-tarsals!
As a footnote to this chapter, I would just like to pay homage to the late and great Manfred "Manny" Polster who died tragically young a decade or so back. Manfred (on the left in the back row of the group portrait) was the total Karate fighter and, with fists like bunches of concrete bananas, was the ferocious scourge of of all those unfortunate enough to be drawn against him in competition. He was enormously well-liked and highly respected throughout the Karate community and the news of his eventual demise, after a protracted illness, was a tremendously sad blow for us all. I add this paragraph for both Manny and his family.
NineteenWhat for Your 4 X 4?(February, 2006)
I don't suppose I'd have ever mentioned the following incident on these pages, but after receiving a certain letter in the post recently, I felt moved to compose a little ditty. Please forgive the general cringe-worthiness of it, but then again, rollocks if you don't!
What for your 4 x 4?When all you do is drop the children off at schoolThen drive to Tescos trying to look so cool!
Fifteen bags of shopping piled up in the back...Food for weeks I shouldn't think you'll lackBut back to shop so soon for pretty much the sameThen back again....Again....Again...And then again!
When was the last time that you walked instead of satInside your giant SUVTo drive a mile or lessTo MacRonald's for your tea?
You've always liked to rat-run down that country laneAt speeds too fast for anybody sane!
Collisions with a horse four years ago....(killed!)And then a Fallow Doe....(put down by me!)Have given you no fear of driving like a titAnd making out you're proud of it!
Of that, one day, you gave me proofWhen I found you lying on your roof!You seemed okBut upside-down within a ditch!Too fast on ice this time....daft bitch!
I called it inAnd tried to help....to pull you outBut all you did was curse and swear a lot and shout!
"For God's sake, shut your din!I'll have to kick the windscreen in!The doors are blocked and you're too bigSo now you're stuck there like a pig....in sh*tstreet!"
I started smelling leaking fuelSo focused hard to keep my cool!
The bonnet resting in a treeI worked to get the battery freeAnd with the disconnection doneI cut your belt....It wasn't fun....To have you drop on top of me!
"Help yourself why don't yuh?....Just a bit!What?....Yeah, that's smoke....oil on the block....No f***in' joke!The pros will have to deal with it!"
Inch by inch, I dragged you clearThe sound of sirens getting nearBut it was done!I left you cursing in the sunAnd slipped away into the woods....
Today a letter came for me....She's going to sue....for damaging her SUV!
I rang the Boss....He thought a bitThen promptly said"Don't give a sh*t!I'll get my London brief on it!"
The Boss walks tallIn hallowed corridors of powerAnd a brief like his costs hundreds every hour!It must be said, we go way back, the Boss and me....to darker daysAnd, now as then, means what he says.He takes good care of all of usWith just the minimum of fuss
I guess he's paying off a debtto some back then He can't forget!
Update....The woman concerned was much aggrieved that I had caused, as she saw it, a great deal of unnecessary damage to her beloved SUV. As it turned out and with the benefit of hindsight, she was probably right, though I think that perhaps the Fire Brigade may well have been fairly "enthusiastic" in their own efforts to free her had I not already done so! Nevertheless, her immediate course of action was to go to one of those splendid "no-win no-fee" law firms to seek appropriate compensation.The lawyers there actually felt that she had a reasonable case and were keen to pursue it vigorously in the twin interests of justice and fiscal reward!
I subsequently received a convoluted letter from her newly appointed Righteous Seekers of the Just Reward, informing me, basically, that proceedings were to be taken against me and that I should seek my own legal advice. I passed the letter on to the Boss and he faxed it to his Legal Eagle. Apparently, A simple phone-call was made to the woman's lawyers and words were said (I don't know what). The case was dropped like a hot affidavit and I've heard nothing more from them since!
Interestingly and perhaps worthy of note, the woman's SUV, despite being fairly new, was only covered by third-party fire and theft insurance. She was particularly annoyed that I had prevented it from catching fire by disconnecting the battery! As far as she was concerned, I should have released her from the vehicle first and then left it to burn! All I can say is that, if it happened all over again, I can think of a third and far more appealing option....!
TwentyThe Delta Files(1973 - 1977 and 1983 - 1986)I have made many abortive attempts to complete this chapter and have ended up with a final draft of about four thousand words....each one poked, prodded, weighed, dissected, censored, sanitized and agonized over time and again. As a result, I've ended up with something increasingly wide of the mark, but at least somewhere in the neighbourhood, albeit a few blocks down the street! In reading it, you'll wonder why the heck I'm making so much fuss, but this was a very difficult time for me and all I've really done is navigate around the reef and not across it, so to speak! In the final cut, I've also decided to change the name of the company to "Delta Hydraulics Equipment Ltd"
Initial investigations into the suitability of cats as guidesfor the blind were fraught with many unexpected problems!
I had two periods of employment at Delta Hydraulics Equipment Ltd and they were both pretty miserable, but it was during the 1973 to 1977 spell that I was particularly unhappy....mostly for reasons in my personal life mentioned above, but also because I was in limbo. I'd completed a zoo-keeping apprenticeship plus another year or so, but then chose to improve my qualification situation by first acquiring "A" levels at Technical College and then by attending Art College (the latter being a disaster!) instead of continuing at the zoo.
1972 saw me at yet another crossroads. Thrown out of Art College for fattening the lip of an obnoxious and verbally abusive lecturer, I needed some sort of job and the best I could manage at short notice was a spell at "International Stores", a supermarket situated near the Cross in Tewkesbury. It's no longer there of course and the premises are now divided between a newsagents and a burger-bar, but I worked really hard for the eight months I was there, nine hours a day, five and a half days a week as a store-man. I unloaded countless, sometimes huge, delivery lorries all by myself, mopped floors, stacked shelves and managed the logistics of a busy warehouse....and all for just over £8 a week....I missed the zoo!
I didn't stop looking for something a little more suitable though and I eventually applied for a vacancy in the Time-Office at Delta Hydraulics and, surprisingly, got the job. This involved sitting in a room, something like a cross between a cage and a vivarium, in the middle of a very hot, very noisy and very smelly factory floor keeping painstakingly accurate records of all the machine-tooling "jobs" undertaken by the scores of machinists, moulders, welders and trimmers....logging them on a job, logging them off, detailing quantities produced, itemizing stock acquisition and, at the end of each day, balancing all the numbers. I did this for nearly a year before a vacancy arose in the Delta Technical Publications Department for a graphic and paste-up artist/proof-reader. I applied and amazed bosses at the interview on three counts...I could read, I could spell....and I could draw any damn thing they asked....from memory if need be
.I got the job!
The job itself had an extremely steep learning curve. I had no formal training in engineering or knowledge of any of the working processes and basic mechanics of such sterling Delta Hydraulics products as hydraulic pit-props, mine roof supports and oleo retarders. They were in fact, a complete mystery to me. Still....I only had to draw bits and pieces of them, put together technical magazines and instructional brochures and render engineer-speak into understandable English. It was, after all, a positive move up from the Time-Office.
There are many aspects of working at Delta that I could explore here, but it's really just a small handful of the two and a half thousand or so people who worked there that I especially remember all these years on
.a number that was devastated by redundancies and aggressive rationalization practices and which totalled barely a thousand by the time I left (on the first occasion) in early 1977, but had fallen to less than four hundred by the time I departed for the second and final time in 1986, to train as a primary school teacher!
There were, of course, the usual mix of characters
.the good, the bad and the ugly (especially the ugly) when I first started working there in late 1973, but of all the people I could mention, I choose to recall the beautiful Sue. Sue was an audio/touch-typist who could type as fast as most people talked. Sue was also totally blind. Despite her disability however, she managed to be extremely "observant" and was well tuned-in to all the goings-on in the office, if not the entire factory and very little escaped her radar! She was extremely witty, in an Eddie Izzard kind of way and sat at her type-writer, ear-piece in-situ and "Mr Magoo", her guide-dog, at her feet, tippy-tapping away all day long (Sue that is, not Mr Magoo). Amazingly, she rarely made mistakes with her typing
.something that earned her a great deal of respect amongst company bosses who often vied with each other to pass work in her direction if it needed to be done quickly and with the minimum of fuss....and all a good twenty-five years before intel pentium processors were invented!
Sue's desk was about two metres from my drawing-board and she liked to talk all day long about anything and everything. She was one of those rare individuals whose sense of humour was on the same wavelength as mine and she had a way of "looking" at the world that buried its way beneath the veneer and the gloss. Some people found her very un-nerving to talk to, but I could never tell if it was because she was blind and was therefore unable to make any kind of eye-contact with you or simply because people seemed to sense that she could somehow "see" inside their heads!I think it was very unsettling for them at times!
Sue enjoyed a "stealth" game we played....she said that it kept her wits honed and razor-sharp. Leaving the office involved passing her desk and, whenever I needed to go out or come back in, I would always try to sneak past her without her noticing, but never with any success! "Don't be long!" or "Get me a coffee will you?" or "Could you take this to Mr. So-and-so's office?" or "Where have you been to, China?" always rang in my ears just as my hand touched the door handle! It was nearly two years before I realized that it was Mr bleepin' Magoo wagging his bleepin' tail under her bleepin' desk every time I walked past (but only when it was me) that gave the game away....She told me that he enjoyed the game as well and she always slipped him a treat when he wagged at me! It remains a great disappointment in my life that I was never able to get past those two without being detected, no matter what I tried....give me a highly-trained Special Forces sentry in broad daylight with all his senses intact any day of the week!
Everyone has an idiosyncrasy or obsession or two, but Mr. S here had three....skittles, porn magazines and catching a mysterious, covert mouse....the one that no-one but he would see scuttling about in his office! He also seemed to spend his entire day being totally stressed out by anything, everything and everyone. When you do a card for someone, they tend to keep it (though what they do with it is anyone's guess), so I don't have many of the huge number I've produced for all sorts of people over the years. The vast majority have been well received, but, unfortunately, on this occassion, after being presented with this particular cartoon by his well-meaning colleagues, Mr. S rushed around to Publications, slammed the cartoon on the desk in front of me and stormed out of the room....nor did he ever speak to me again!
It wasn't long before my ability to draw cartoons and caricatures had become common knowledge and I was soon inundated with so many on-going requests for leaving cards, birthday cards, congratulations on your promotion or retirement cards or well-done for getting pregnant cards that I was finding it very difficult to keep up with my work-load! Even the company bosses and directors were getting in on the act.
Few people, if any, escaped my pen-propelled so-called wit in those days, least of all assorted members of my family! This cartoon, which went on to grace the ward Sister's office wall for several years, depicts my Dad during one of his shorter stays in hospital around 1984. He'd not long been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer....though it was the throat cancer secondaries that did for him in the end....that and the large orange-sized putrid- smelling tumour that erupted from his neck during his final weeks! Mum and I took it in turns to sit with him both day and night during those last days and, because he was desperate to be conscious to the world until the end, he refused the large doses fo morphine required to take the awful pain away! I remember wishing that I could drag thick-headed teenagers new to the smoking habit along to see him for just five minutes. If the glazed, pain-drenched look in his eyes didn't put them off smoking for life, then the foul stench of rotting flesh emanating from the oozing tumour should have done it....but then some people really are very, very thick! Sorry Dad, I guess I was really angry with you!
I saw a street-artist drawing caricatures of tourists in London not so long ago and I asked him how much he charged...."£20 a time mate!" he replied. That was for about ten minutes work and people were queuing up to be drawn! His drawings were ok and good luck to him, but he wasn't talking to his subjects. How can you do a good caricature of someone without finding out a bit about the person you're sketching and trying to "fix at least a spark of who that person is into the picture as well? The best caricaturists can always do that.
Meanwhile, back at Delta, it was my cartoons that occasionally got me into considerable trouble! I worked there during turbulent times in British industry and the unions were more often at loggerheads with the management than not. Frequent industrial action in the form of go-slows, over-time bans and restricted work procedures took place constantly and various groups of workers were downing tools every other day. All-out strikes were commonplace!
There were many injustices in both camps and I felt unable and unwilling to ignore them all. Cartoons are one of the very best vehicles for any kind of social commentary and my "comments" and observations concerning both unions and management were not always appreciated by either side....to the extent that I even felt obliged to stop driving my newly acquired car to work at one point and caught the bus instead for a while....until someone objected to my being on it when they were! So I cycled, leaving my bike hidden about half a mile from the factory!
It wasn't so much that I ridiculed some of the, at times, incredibly asinine behaviour on both sides of the industrial divide, it was really the fact that I dared to have an opinion at all outside of official union mandate! It's hard to realize now just how unpleasant and dictatorial the unions could be in those days and how petty, divisive and mean-spirited the management could also be. I could see the rank stupidity prevailing on both sides and chose to highlight it all too frequently with my cartoons! To this day, there are those who still hold a grudge against me (workers and management). They are unable to either forgive or forget some of my more acerbic observations! I guess the truth can sting for a long time!
Despite the fact that I gradually built up what amounted to a substantial "profile" within the records of the much beleaguered personnel department, it wasn't actually any of my so-called politically-orientated cartoons that got me into the most trouble. it was, in fact, the cartoon featured at the start of this chapter that resounded around, not only Delta work-places, but at union meetings in companies up and down the country!
I drew the above cartoon after chatting to Sue one day about the value of cats as pets as opposed to dogs. Sue had her much-beloved Mr Magoo and also a Manx cat she nicknamed "Manky", real name "Maxwell the Manx"....for short! (W.C. Fields and Six of a Kind springs to mind, but you'd have to know the film)!
She maintained that cats were good companions and I argued that you never saw a mountain-rescue cat, a sheep-cat, a guard-cat, a sniffer-cat or a guide-cat for the blind and that dogs were even better companions because they were keen to go for walkies and play ball games and stick games, etc and weren't nearly so mercenary as cats! I added that dogs were more intelligent, loyal and capable of great heroism....She replied that although a dog might be intelligent enough and brave enough to leap through a sheet of glass to enter a blazing building, climb three flights of burning stairs through thick and acrid smoke to drag a baby from its cot and then leap with it in its jaws from thirty feet up into the arms of a fire-fighter, a cat was intelligent enough to just let the stupid dog do it!
So it went on....all that day....and the next....both of us thinking up new ways to advance our theories.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love cats....little ones or big ones. I worked with the latter on and off for long enough and the heftiest chapter I've ever written for this so-called "book" is one about a Cotswold "Big Cat" that I eventually came to call "Shadow", a black Leopard, which I finally tracked (with the help of another ranger) to its lair. I took hundreds of photos over several months of the cat, its lair and even the remains of its kills. I also made several paw-print plaster-casts. Sadly I was forced to bury him in a deep grave after discovering the animal dead one summer's day. Death was almost certainly caused by what I subsequently discovered to be a very large and aggressive-looking abdominal tumour....about the size of a grapefruit!
However, following advice from certain quarters, I have decided NOT to add that particular chapter to this site just yet, simply because I've been convinced that the wrong kind of people might start taking an interest in Cotswold Big Cats all of a sudden and I prefer it that anyone reading this "Slices" thingy remains blissfully unbelieving....and that's the beauty of it....most people will just take me to be a liar or a fool....or both and will think pretty much the same as many around here who are all too familiar with my exploits and who find the thought of Big cats just a little bit too much to take on board. Fair enough, but there are a number of people who I took to see the cat at its lair or who have seen the photos, paw-print plaster-casts, etc, who happen to know better and will be more than prepared to back me up if asked!
The CBCs mind their own business and are totally shy and reclusive and if you're at all concerned about potentially dangerous animals on the loose in your neighbourhood, then talk to the ding-bats who insist on walking their guard-type dogs off the lead in your local park near the kiddies play-area!
Still, I digress (I do find this chapter emotionally difficult to write for reasons I just wont go into and I dare say I'll delete the last couple of paragraphs yet again when I read it through later!)
Moving on....I drew one version of the "Guide-Cat" cartoon by pressing firmly on a sheet of card on a graphics soft-board and dotted the caption out in braille characters copied from a book that Sue had lent to me so that she could "appreciate" the joke as well, which she did....in fact, she thought it was very funny and she also thought another one that I did of a cat leading its blind owner along the top of a larch-lap fence and one of a guide-cat stalking birds in a garden with suitably confused owner in tow were also very funny! I always produced "raised" (embossed) versions of my cartoons for Sue....I guess they were the only cartoons she ever got to sort of "see" and she even thought that we should go into business to market the idea! I expect someone's done it by now though!
Lots of people thought the cartoon was quite funny and it circulated around the company as most of them tended to do and instigated all the usual comments about what a waster I was drawing silly pictures all day long! Unfortunately however, this was the 1970s and Delta was a company like many others
.infected with a large population of insidiously prejudiced, right-wing, self-righteous, eagerly-offended, banner-carrying Dorks who were totally incapable of understanding that people with disabilities were endowed with just as much of a sense of humour as everyone else and that not only do they hate being treated as though they're somehow "fragile" and "special", but that they're quite capable of laughing at themselves or each other! I knew that because Sue told me so....frequently! She hated being treated as though she was some sort of alien life-form (I even did a cartoon about it which she put on the wall behind her desk!)
Before long, an official complaint was levelled against me and I was required to attend a special meeting in the personnel department with a smirking union official tagging along behind! I received a stern official warning and was told that the cartoon was deemed highly offensive! I asked who had been offended by it and was told that an unspecified number of complainants (the Dorks) had acted to prevent the cartoon causing offence "to any blind people who might happen to see it" (his exact words....I wrote it all down in my diary that very evening)! Ignoring the obvious faux pas, I asked how many blind people there were at Delta Mining and had they been consulted on the matter. He looked uncomfortable for a moment and finally said only one (Sue), but that it was far too delicate a matter to involve her! I asked him why and he just stared at me as though I'd gone completely mad!
I left personnel pretending to be suitably chastised and related everything word for word to Sue who was keen to hear all the details....She was absolutely furious and went straight across to personnel and threatened to hand in her notice if I wasn't totally and immediately absolved of all accusations!
Sue had another quite un-nerving ability during such confrontational moments....to be able to follow any person she was mad at around the room just as though she could see right into their dark, shrivelled hearts (at least that's how she made people feel she saw them) and most preferred not to argue with a blind person anyway....which generally served to make her even madder!
I never received the apology that she demanded, but the official warning was eventually rescinded and the cartoon took pride of place alongside the "alien life-form one!
I already had something of a history with this particular band of Dorks however (they were Dorks with a capital "D"), concerning a swathe of cartoons I'd drawn concerning an unpleasant little incident initiated by them a few weeks previously! There happened to be two lovely middle-aged ladies of German origin who worked in the company print-room. They'd moved to Britain shortly after the war as DPs and married English men. Their spoken English was extremely good and they were always up for a laugh and a joke with me while I waited for AO blueprints to be made-up or some-such. However, they would occasionally revert to speaking their native tongue when confronted by some particularly perplexing technical problem or possibly just to do a bit of gossiping!
That the ladies were German was bad enough for Das Dork Brigade, but the fact that they dared to speak German in the work-place was, for said Dorks, tantamount to treason This ultimately resulted in a petition being taken round the factory by der Uber-Dork himself and several of his "heavies" to "encourage" people to read and sign post-haste. I accidentally spilt my coffee on it when it was passed to me and one of the heavies leaned across my drawing board and broke my pencil
.the swine! It made a good cartoon though, enjoyed by all, but ultimately resulted in my chocolate sponge pudding with double lashings of warm chocolate sauce served up by Wendy, a canteen lady, who frequently made her amorous intentions towards me crystal clear by serving me with her extra-large portions, being tipped in my lap by the afore-mentioned heavy! However, when Sue, sitting opposite me at the time, realized what was happening, she instantly defused my impending reaction by starting to howl and shout in front of the entire canteen that the heavy had ruined her dessert, he was horrified and felt obliged to buy her another one which she promptly tipped down his front to a resounding cheer from everyone there
.and thats an absolutely true story that I'm certain could only have happened at Delta!
The petition meanwhile, demanded that the ladies were not to speak German under any circumstances during working hours "upon pain of subsequent disciplinary action" (those were the actual words....imagine today, Arsen Wenger being told that he's not allowed to communicate with any of his French players in their native tongue)! The petition however, was eventually signed by more than seventy people (some, I believe, under implied duress) and presented to the head of the personnel department with appropriate union representatives in attendance. A few days later, those two delightful and totally harmless ladies were issued with an "official" warning endorsed and signed by a number of company heads of department demanding that they refrain from any form of communication in their native language!
I assume that you are all able to smell the stench of foetid irony emanating from this particularly nasty, maggot-infested little episode dredged from the annals of British industrial history....endorsed as it was by both unions and management at the time? Such people didn't trust foreigners, particularly Germans, at all back then (many still don't). Most German ex-patriots were believed, at the very least, to be gradually under-mining the delicate fabric of British society and were most definitely NOT to be trusted, even after several decades of living, working and raising families in this country! I also happen to believe that Basil Fawlty's infamous, but ill-fated instruction to those about him "not to mention the War!" was a funny, but equally oblique and profound social indictment of that less than innocent period....Clever Basil!
The saddest thing is that the people who instigated such all too commonplace work practices back in the 1970s weren't the swastika-bestrewn, Doc Martin boot-wearing, denim-clad skinhead-types you might normally associate with such prejudiced and paranoid behaviour, they were all perfectly respectable, well-educated, lower and middle-management employees with wives and families and forty-year mortgages....which is why they always opted to be clever I suppose and use devices such as petitions....and that, to my mind, is far more disturbing than a boot-full of hob-nails in the wotsits any day! In fact, I think I prefer the skinheads....at least with them, what you see is what you get and there's a kind of up-front and in-your-face misplaced honesty about them!
Funny though, it was just about then that I started to learn a bit of German and to use it about the place....and so did Sue! My cartoons suddenly began to depict groups of visiting Polish, Czech, or Belgian mining representatives or customers confronted with large signs forbidding them to speak in their native tongues or, sometimes, a company manager or two gesturing frantically, trying to make themselves understood without interpreters while some bewildered Mexican or Balkan Mining Consortium delegate grew more and more perplexed. Few people saw the "funny" side however and I was given two verbal warnings and my very own "official" written warning which I framed and placed above my desk! No-one offered to replace my pencil though!
I would have been sacked eventually I suppose, but for the fact that events in my life took a very sudden and devastating turn and my time at Delta drew to a close without any further encouragement from either slope-browed heavies or the company itself! They did actually take me back though, in 1983, but in an altogether different capacity.
Computers had become "the future" during my absence and the newly stream-lined and thoroughly rationalized Delta Hydraulic Equipment Ltd was, I believe, the very first significantly large company to fully computerize itself. It even led the way, for a while, in terms of computer applications and I was re-employed in the computer operations section of "Management Services"....a brand-new department given the role of maintaining and sustaining company computer viability, but it was really just a place where most of the department's workforce, consisting of systems analysts, code de-fragmenters, operations analysts, computer programmers and
.me, sat for eight hours a day, staring at ICL monitors (remember ICL?) totally bewildered by endless strings of programming code issuing from giant spools of tape or hard-discs that resembled half-size UFOs levered into disc-drives the size of fridge-freezers!
Basically, we would just sit and wait for the whole system to crash (which it managed to do about once every hour, taking at least another hour or sometimes all day to "fix") while irate heads of department jumped up and down, demanding to know why the sodding system was unavailable yet again! Its funny to think though, that all the hardware and software needed to run a system capable of supporting a company the size of Delta back then could, today, be handled by something hardly bigger than the home computer I'm working on right now!
I hated it though, with a passion, but I just got on with it
.after all, it was the first time in more than six years that I was permanently dry and in the warm all day
.and that nobody, but nobody was trying to either shoot me or blow me up!
I remained at Delta until, as I mentioned earlier, I left to train as a primary school teacher in 1986, having completed an Arts degree with the Open University during the previous three years
.not easy with a full-time job or when youre as thick as me! Meanwhile, the company had become a mere shadow of its former self and the workforce much depleted.
Sue had been made redundant while I was away, but must have been far more upset by the loss of Mr Magoo who died in his sleep at her feet one day! I havent seen her for years, but the last I heard, she was still living alone and working as a free-lance typist from home with a new guide-dog called Joop and faithful Manky, the cat (cats can be very loyal and long-lived too). I know she would have missed the hustle and bustle of a busy office, thats for sure and there would certainly have been no-one trying to sneak past her every five minutes or anyone there for her to be a mother-hen to
.and definitely nobody to draw stupid cartoons for her to laugh at!
Delta Hydraulics Equipment Ltd ceased to function altogether and closed its doors for the last time a few years ago. A demise probably hastened by the sell-out instigated by senior management
.but at least they came out of it ok I guess!
Twenty-OneOne Door Opens....or, alternatively"Lest We Forget Them Too!"(An Anecdote for Remembrance Day)(Winter 1980/81)
Doc's death when it came, was utterly sad and pointless (see chapter 13). Officially, he was a victim of severe manic depression and he eventually took his own life in horrific circumstances about a year after leaving the Regiment! I particularly want to remember Doc and others like him (of whom there are, sadly, far too many). Their names are soon forgotten by the Military Machine simply because they move on from their regiments and back into civilian life. However, they take with them malevolent, vengeful demons....and, for some, those demons are far too unpleasant to bare! Bereft of the anaesthetising structure and impetus of their military life-styles, such demons begin, sometimes years later, to exact a terrible and savage retribution.
I want to recall those particular men and women on this Remembrance Day because they too served their time and did their duty. They die, but not a glorious or remotely meaningful death....not in battle or on patrol. Instead they die at home, frightened and often alone or in some urine-drenched shop doorway on a freezing winter's night. They're not showered with posthumous accolades and the public rarely learn of their exploits or of the parts they played in any conflict. They appear on no roll of honour. No-one buys a poppy for them! Yet to me they're heroes nonetheless....desperate souls who go on to fight much tougher battles against far greater odds every moment of every day remaining to them!
This anecdote may not amount to much, but it's dedicated to them all the same....
Most gunmen were usually able to escape capture by the security forces by virtue of the fact that the local populace were encouraged by the IRA to leave all external doors and ground-floor windows of their homes unlocked twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Few resisted, many were happy to oblige. This made the pursuit of suspects in Catholic areas of the city virtually impossible, if only because if a door was left open for the pursued, you could almost guarantee it would be locked and bolted immediately afterwards for the pursuers!
With a practically guaranteed avenue of escape, snipers had grown more daring in recent months and not more desperate as the Government tried to insist. Foot patrols had become particularly hazardous and many security units had taken to patrolling from the comparative safety of armoured vehicles 90% of the time.
Jammy-Dodger had stopped the Land Rover about half way along the rain-soaked street. Terraced housing stretched out on both sides of us, but only the nearest buildings were readily visible through the persistently steamed-up windows. The windscreen-wipers barely coped with the volume of water as the downpour beat out its hypnotic rhythm on the vehicles grill-covered split-windscreen and metal roof.
No-ones bloody stupid enough to have a riot in this! Jammy wound down his side-window a fraction of an inch
.any more than that wasnt a good idea.
We were there because of unspecific reports concerning a so-called mob apparently gathering in an adjoining street. As usual, it was our job to take up a "tactical" position some distance away and observe any and all on-going proceedings, reporting back to Command if and when necessary. Wed been there for ten minutes and had seen nothing untoward. Jammy had kept the engine running and Kelly monitored the comms. No-one had shown the least bit interest in us, except for a rain be-sodden mongrel dog that had wandered by, pissed against one of the wheels and then sat down on the soaking pavement, staring up through one of the side windows at Tex Mick as though he was the long-lost love of his life
.which he probably was!
See, someone likes you Tex! Doc grinned at the big Geordie It must be a flea thing!
Billy Bunter wiped condensation from the rear window with the sleeve of his tunic
Hey, theres two women avin a set-to over the road.
We all turned to look and, sure enough, two women were standing just about toe-to-toe shouting abuse at each other not more than fifty yards away. They started pushing and shoving each other. A few people were braving the rain to turn out for a look-see. The dog ran across the road to join in. Tex breathed a sigh of relief!
A teenage girl tried to intervene as one of the women, her fists raised, turned her attention on a tall fair-haired youth. A screeching tirade of foul abuse spewing from her mouth! Heads were appearing from windows and doorways all along the street.
As you were
.Its nothing to do with us I said.
Could get out of hand. Might get nasty suggested Billy.
Nothing to do with us! I repeated as I noticed that some of the people encircling the protagonists were putting up umbrellas. I imagined that sooner or later someone would try to sell tickets!
Weapon! shouted Tex suddenly
.In the crowd
.Man with a rifle I think
.Yea....Yea, Im sure it was!
Where? We all strained to see, wiping more condensation from the windows!
Call it in Kelly! Whered he go Tex?
Into the house with the dark-blue door I think
.Could be goin anywhere!
Watch it! Get ready to hammer-it Jam!
Kelly called it in and I really wanted for us to just get out of there, but the comms-set suddenly sparked to life and told us to hold our position and that support units were on their way!
Watch the houses! warned Kelly as he shifted in his seat for a better view along the street.
The debacle just across the way was getting a good deal more lively with two or three of the spectators suddenly joining in with the finger-pointing and general vocalising. It looked for all the world like a couple of families arguing over two teenage amores. Maybe it was, but I doubted it. More likely they wanted us to deploy from the vehicle to go and sort it out, then a sniper would slot one of us, everyone would be friends again and theyd all go back indoors for tea and biscuits!
We waited.
The row across the road continued, but gradually seemed to lose momentum. People continued to stand about looking slightly uncertain. Occasionally someone would glance in our direction....
The THWACK!, when it came, was ear-ringingly loud against the side of the armour-plated vehicle and made us all jump out of our skins! I remember it made me bite my tongue quite hard!
Up there! Corner of the street by the low wall! I followed Jammys pointing finger.
Move it....Fast as you can!" Jammy accelerated at about warp-factor eleven and with absolutely no regard for the Land-Rovers primitive diathlon crystal! We reached the corner sooner than even he expected and he hit the brakes
.VERY HARD! We skidded
.and skidded
.right into the wall! We deployed in a fashion originally developed by top instructors at the Keystone Cops School of Deployment and Tex and Doc finally took up defensive positions while Kelly stayed on comms. Jammy followed me over the wall and into someones back garden. It was empty. No sign of the gunman. Half a dozen back doors belonging to half a dozen terraced houses were closing as we gathered our wits and gazed around. We were more than wary of a secondary gunman or shinnie-type booby traps!
We returned to the vehicle.
Anything? Asked Kelly. He already knew the answer. He reported in.
Trouble up the street said Doc. Somebodys hurt I think! Should we check it out?
I looked back up the street towards the crowd that had gathered there beforehand. A small group of people were crouched over what looked like a body. A woman, not one of the original pair, seemed to be pulling frantically at her own hair and was wailing hysterically!
Another diversion? I didnt think so. You could see it, even from where we were
a dark-red stain spreading across the wet pavement between the feet of the silent onlookers.
Call for an ambulance Kelly! Lets get up there
.Careful does it! Get your bag Doc! I began to wonder where the "support" units were!
No-one offered any resistance. No-one said anything. The silent, gathering crowd just stood around and watched us pass. Bitter hatred infected every stare. The casualty was a fifteen year-old boy
.hit in the chest by what later turned out to be an old-type Lee Enfield 303 round
.the one that had careened off the side-door of our Land-Rover! Kelly did his best
.applied a field-dressing, kept the pressure on. Tex got blankets from the nearest house. We tried to keep him dry and warm. Neighbours calmed the woman down a bit and Doc insisted that she talked to the boy
.Keep him conscious he kept saying to her, over and over again. He said not to move him. He thought that the round might be lodged in the boys spine
.Fortunately, it wasnt as it turned out.
The support units arrived and a particularly belligerent army captain took charge. He dispersed the crowd in typically heavy-handed military fashion and he tried to insist that the woman and the boy were moved indoors. He said he was an incitement to the locals, a kid lying in the street, bleeding all over the fu**ing place! Who cared if he croaked he said, One less Mick to worry about!. Doc told him to "piss-off!" and there was an awkward moment as Tex, Jammy, Billy and Kelly all gathered round Doc, still kneeling beside the boy's prostrate form! The Captains mood was ugly, but theirs was practically Quasimodo and he must have thought better of it and he moved off to shout abuse at some poor sod of a squaddie for not looking busy enough!
A civilian ambulance showed up
.more than thirty minutes later, but the boy lived despite it all
.thanks to Doc!
Nearly a week later, while the boy was still recovering in hospital, a child passed a folded note to Doc on another rain-soaked day as he knelt in a doorway a few streets away from where the youth had been shot.
He showed it to us later that day. It was unsigned and in hastily scrawled handwriting, said quite simply....
"Thank-you marine"
It doesn't seem like much, but to us, back in those hate-driven days, and to Doc especially, it was pure platinum! The note didn't need any signature, we could all guess who it was from. Most significantly, It was a rare splinter of human decency that touched us profoundly at a time when decency of any kind had been all but erased from everyday life!
Doc's wife, Vicky, told me after his death that the note was very special to him and that he had always kept it in his wallet, but she hated the military and what it had done to him. She despised what he had gone through and how much she and her children had also suffered.
This story then, is for all the Docs....and for all the Vickys as well....and their families. Lest we forget them too!
Twenty-TwoChristmas Break(December 1963)
You cant shteer a boat that ent movin! Mr. Warbuttle was sitting up in bed doing his best to gum an apple into submission while his teeth looked on from a glass of water on his bedside cabinet.
What boat would that be then? I asked. The bottom of the step-ladder that I was holding on to suddenly wobbled a bit.
Oi! Hold it properly will yuh? Paul Medways concern for his own safety arrowed down to me from somewhere near the hospital ward ceiling.
And you cant shteer a train neither! Little pieces of apple sprayed across Mr. Warbuttles bedclothes as he continued to lecture us on the importance of making the right decisions in life and the dire consequences that would surely follow if we failed to do so. Right now 85 year-old Mr. Warbuttle was advocating the importance of how we needed to get off our lazy schoolboy backsides and get out into the world to do something useful with our sorry lives! A train goezsh where it goezsh
but itsh up to you to choosh whisch train you catsch and whisch shtashun to getch outch atch!
Whats he sayin? Paul looked down momentarily from on high. Pass us some more drawin-pins will yuh?
I took a box from my blazer pocket and passed it up to him. Mr. Warbuttle wants us to catch a train because we cant get there in a boat
.I think.
Get where?
When I wuzsh a lad your age
. Mr. Warbuttle sprayed on as we continued to strive majestically to hang seemingly endless yards of brightly coloured paper-chains from the rafters of the eight-bed mens ward of Tewkesbury Cottage Hospital.
This was a traditional service provided for the hospital by Tewkesbury Secondary Modern School for Boys and harked back to a time before the War when, during the last week of term, the school would provide a couple of so-called arty boys to decorate the mens ward and Elmbury Girls Secondary School (now Tewkesbury Comprehensive) would deploy two of its own pupils to do the same for the womens ward. For the past couple of Christmases, it had fallen to Paul and myself to do the boys bit.
It was a much-coveted job. It got us out of school for as much as two whole days (if we worked at it) and the hospital staff and patients were always really grateful. We were inevitably showered in chocolate biscuits and mince pies and enough Tizer to float Mr. Warbuttles boat (so to speak). The decorations themselves were all hand-made by inmates at the afore-mentioned schools and some of them were actually quite presentable (the decorations too). Each ward had its own enormous tree donated by a local farmer and we spent ages fiddling with the bulbs on the Christmas tree lights trying to get at least three to work simultaneously!
All that paper switch-backing across the ceiling in sagging chains and yards of pre-historic wiring convoluting its way between patients beds was enough to make Matron blanche, but she always just smiled
.Thank goodness Health and Safety hadnt been invented in those days or people might have got hurt!
The fact that Paul and I were quite arty meant that it was always us who were chosen by Skelly, the schools one-man art department, to tackle anything the least bit creative and which may possibly come to the attention of the schools inspector! This included assorted scenery for school plays, all backdrops for the annual dual-school productions of Gilbert and Sullivan (Iolanthe, HMS Pinafore and the Mikado spring to mind) and various bits and pieces for solo and joint-school choir productions (both Paul and I had been told we never could or would be allowed to sing in the choir ourselves....there were, according to "Windy" Galesthorpe, the music master, "certain standards to uphold"!). Bits and pieces for parent open evenings kept us fairly busy as well
.that was back in the days when parent evenings were actually a trial for the parents
.back when teachers were seen as virtual pillars of the community and back when they had real power in the classroom and were always extremely keen to chastise the parents for their failings rather than the other way round!
Things were going quite well on the ward and the decorating was moving on a pace. I continued to hold the ladder firmly while Paul stretched out somewhat perilously above Mr. Warbuttles bed to secure the last paper-chain to a small section of coving. At that precise moment, Matron walked up to the ladder and, ten years before the advent of pocket calculators, held up a list of accounts figures for Paul to read.
How much does that come to Paul? asked Matron.
Paul glanced down at the page of numbers
.a lot of numbers
.£92 17s 6d replied Paul. He returned his attention to the coving.
Thank-you dear Matron turned on her heels and squeaked noisily all the way back to her office across the ward's highly varnished parquet wooden floor in her crepe-soled sensible work shoes.
He was a total mystery and a cause of great distress to Mr. You will sit there until you learn It boy Thomas, who just may have been possibly the greatest maths teacher in the history of maths
.ever! You see, apparently where maths is concerned, its no good just knowing the answer, no good at all. Its the how you work it out bit thats really important
.even if it means you get the answer wrong
.you have to know how you got it wrong!
Consequently, Paul was never allowed to sit a maths exam in his entire life! There was no point. You were only awarded one mark out of every ten for getting the answer right, so Paul could get every answer correct, but still only get a maximum of 10% in a maths test simply because he didnt have a clue as to how hed worked it out! Unfortunately, apart from his not inconsiderable artistic talents, he had no other recognizable abilities and continued into secondary education as a Junior Remedial pupil and, ultimately, Senior Remedial!
Ever the self-proclaimed champion of the unjustly treated, I felt a great sympathy for Paul
.He was treated badly by the system. He had a wonderful gift, but was seemingly condemned for it. Crikey, he could have discovered the meaning of life or found a cure for cancer or something, but he was never given the chance to utilize what was, to all intents and purposes, an awesome talent!
Life is like a ladder
. Mr. Warbuttle had finally finished his apple, but not his lecture
.Youve godda climb it one step at a time!
Any Mince pies left? Paul, having pressed home the final drawing-pin, turned awkwardly to stare down at me.
I looked across to the table in the corner of the ward where several platefuls of biscuits, home-made mince pies and lashings of fizzy drink had been arranged with regimental precision (obviously this was a time when, like Health and Safety and Political Correctness, MRSA super-bugs had yet to be invented and such things as Christmas decorations and mince pies were not seen as life-threatening harbingers of pandemic disaster....Besides, Matron would never have allowed such a thing as a so-called "super-bug" anywhere near her precious patients....she had them far too busy worrying about not making the place look untidy by lying around "pretending" to be ill all day long! "It's no good just lying there Mr. Butler" Matron would scold...."You need to get that awful jaundice into a wheelchair and out onto the veranda! December air isn't cold Mr. Butler, it's fresh and crisp! So come along, bring your drip. Chop, chop!" It was rumoured that Hattie Jacques sent her fan mail!).
Plenty I answered.
Paul took a step downwards
.and slipped
.and fell! He was lucky. The ceilings in that old hospital are quite high and he fell all the way from the top to the bottom, but he was fortunate....He managed to land on something quite soft and yielding and he wasnt injured in the least! Unfortunately however, it was ME that he landed on and I WAS hurt....he broke my bloomin' arm!
Matron rushed out of her office and several nurses and a doctor also ran to help
.To help Paul that is! (Bear in mind, that this was a time when hospitals could afford such basic luxuries as doctors and nurses....Now of course, they're forced to soldier-on, albeit heroically, with little more than hoards of notebook-wielding administration staff instead!).
Paul was fine and everyone was very relieved. I continued to roll about on the floor in agony, un-noticed, clutching my fractured arm while a host of highly-trained medical staff rushed to find Paul a comfy chair and a glass of Tizer!
I was tended to, eventually and I spent Christmas with my arm in plaster, but only after a sound telling-off from Matron for allowing Paul to fall off the ladder and a lecture from Mr. Warbuttle about how life is, in fact, a lot like like holding on to a ladder
.if you do it properly, then the job gets done. If you dont, then Life will dump a whole mess of troubles right in your lap! I didnt argue!
Sadly, the following footnote to this Christmas tale goes some way at least to prove that in life generally, there are very few Disney-type happy outcomes....no matter how carefully you hold on to the ladder
Paul Medway was never able to use his artistic talents (he had no paper qualifications to get into college or the intellectual where-withall to get himself into any kind of art or design-orientated work.). His father had been crushed and killed by a lorry at Fletcher's Flour Mill in Tewkesbury years before and Paul barely remembered him. By all accounts, his mum was a schizophrenic and was always threatening to kill herself. According to Paul, it was just to make him feel guilty about his Dad and he used to joke that next time she did it the police would have to treat it as a hostage situation! (He had a twisted kind of sense of humour that few people, apart from me, ever really appreciated). Saddest of all perhaps, he was never encouraged to use his special gift
.so we still dont know the meaning of life. He may well have the answer himself by now however
.he died, aged just twenty, from some sort of congenital heart condition while unloading a delivery lorry working as a storeman for the old Fine Fare supermarket chain!
Mr. Warbuttle went on to defy medical science by living until he was 97 years old and he always liked to ask me (with a twinkle in his eye) if I was still holding on to the ladder. It wouldnt be very long though, before (as Mr. Warbuttle would see it), Id let go of the ladder altogether and Life would prove just how wise a seemingly insignificant, eccentric little old man without a tooth to his name could actually be!
Twenty-ThreeF.A.D.(July, 1969)
Let me guess
JM had walked into the food preparation/sick room un-noticed and had seen me struggling to open the much-beleaguered first-aid cabinet one-handed. Was it Betty or Ena?"
Ena" I whimpered as I turned to face the voice at the door and pints of my lifes blood poured from my deeply lacerated finger onto my newly cleaned and pressed (we did our own) overalls! Still more of the precious liquid fell onto the bright blue and lovingly disinfected (by me) linoleum floor.
It looks quite bad. You might not make it this time! Sit down, Ill get you something for it He was relishing the opportunity to tease me as he opened the cabinet and removed an armful of assorted bandages, sticky plasters and the largest syringe he could find! He directed me to the one and only chair in the room
.a comfy armchair that hed donated himself to what he called the Ferocious Animals Department (or FAD as it came to be known). This was in fact his own term for the zoos brand-new and head-curator-inspired Childrens Pets and Pet-Petting Corner, created as a means by which very young and unsuspecting children could be introduced, up close and personal, to harmless, fluffy cuddly bunnies and stuff
.Brilliant! It was a new idea in those days.
Meanwhile, tending to all sorts of young, abandoned or sickly animals was a time-consuming and sometimes arduous task and the comfy chair had proven a real blessing during the long, hot summer nights when you had virtually nothing to occupy your mind but a tatty paperback novel and an industrial-strength alarm clock set to go off very, very loudly every couple of hours!
FAD was actually home to, amongst others, a bewildering and volatile mixture of psychotic rabbits, deranged Guinea pigs and sadistic tortoises, the last of whom, although short on speed, were long on malicious memory! All the harmless fluffy cuddly bunnies and stuff had, within a few weeks, been eaten by those less inclined to be fluffy and cuddly, but no-one really had the heart to tell the head-curator of this fact!! The most feared pets of them all were the afore-mentioned Betty and Ena, a couple of geriatric, but entirely diabolical Gerbils commonly believed to be in league with the Devil!
Ena (endearingly named after Mrs Sharples) had not been at all well for a couple of days, but despite all hope, was stubbornly refusing to succumb to her illness. In fact, it was while trying to feed her half an eye-dropper-full of best Navy Rum (to cheer her up a bit and possibly help her on her way) that she recovered sufficiently to remember who and where she was and had promptly bitten me on my blatantly unprotected finger!
It looks deep. Well have to get it cleaned up properly
.You know, we might have to amputate the rest of you to save the finger! Youve had your shots recently have you? I gave him one of my looks!
Yea about a month ago I squeaked
.Its all right, I can manage by myself! I tried to be brave, but JM gave me one of HIS looks in return and reached for the triple-extra-strong antiseptic
.the kind they use to sterilize toilets on trains!
I remember the pain
.vaguely, as though through a veil of red mist! I also remember the Beano-style bandage so inexpertly applied by JM to my now hugely swollen and throbbing digit (if you pardon the expression)!
We hardly ever had this kind of trouble with the lions
.Lions couldnt be bothered to bite you
.they were far too lazy
.unless you did something exceedingly stupid, like forget to feed them! It was always the little creatures
.or the ones who needed your help the most. They always seemed to have a head-load of bad attitude and, more often than not, a belly-full of spite!
Best of it was
.I was supposed to be birds, but with Karen, the usual FAD keeper, off sick with an infected ear from a tortoise bite (dont ask
.it could have been worse!), Id drawn the short straw and FAD was all mine for the duration! JM delighted in this and frequently dropped in to check that I was still alive and to offer me the benefit of his infinite wisdom. I enjoyed his visits.
Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon while I was covering for Karen, and I watched their one small step for Man in the early hours of the morning on a tiny portable black and white TV in the now infamous food preparation/sick room while nursing Andrew, a very poorly Chinchilla.
Karen's ear got better and she eventually returned, albeit reluctantly, to FAD. Innocent children continued to be introduced to the nice, fluffy animals and some of them were hardly bitten at all. (This remember, was long before litigation had been invented and people knew what self-responsibility was and so it didnt really matter!). JM continued to brighten my days with his visits and I managed to ignore most of his ridiculous, though highly entertaining pearls of anecdotal wisdom. Most importantly perhaps, Ena pulled through to live on, I believe, for another year or so, but she got meaner than ever (probably due to the rum) and spent the last of her days in isolation, well away from innocent children and fearful keepers! Sadly, Andrew died in my arms before the moon-walkers had returned to their miraculous Eagle.
I left zoo-keeping about a month later to go to Tech college in Cheltenham in the hopes of getting a couple of A-levels. I'd completed my apprenticeship at the zoo plus another year or so extra....I'd more than served my time. I'd scrubbed and cleaned hundreds of cages and enclosures, prepared countless exotic meals for a huge variety of species and got to know many of the most engaging characters I would ever meet in my life....most of the people were quite interesting too! I guess I was ready to hang up my wellies and move on.
Moving on however, turned out to be a much tougher thing to do, emotionally at least, than I could ever have imagined....but that's another story!
Miko(Late September, 1980)
Sumimasen! I finally caught the waitresss eye.She walked across to our table Nani ni nasaimasu ka she asked
.very formal, very polite. I figured that she was about twenty-three years old.Kohii o hitotsu to chiisu sando o kudasai Not brilliant, but I was learning....gradually.Hai She turned to face my twenty-eight year-old Japanese coastguard escort, Kenji.Remon tii
. She waited while Kenji deliberated
.Hamu sando o kudasai he announced finally.The waitress turned back to me miruku wa ikaga desu ka She asked, pen poised above her note-book.Hai, onegai shimasu I replied with what I hoped was more of a smile than a gormless leer and prayed that Id learned enough formal Japanese not to cause offence!
Was it my imagination though, or had I detected a moment when the waitress had seemed to drop her guard
.just ever so slightly? She'd bowed in the painfully polite and respectful way common to all public workplace employees, but she'd also looked me directly in the face as she did so
.not so respectful, but not disrespectful either
.not to me anyway. Our eyes had met
.just for a second
I watched her walk away to place our order and felt my companions eyes watching me watching her
She is pretty , yes?
She certainly is Kenji I replied, going slightly pink. The girl had reached the counter where a second waitress said something to her that I couldnt quite hear, but they both glanced back in our direction and giggled. Definitely not respectful and I reddened! Was that a hint of a smile as she turned away?
Kenji continued to stare at me for several seconds as I shifted uncomfortably on the warm plastic seat . Ten months is a long time here for you I think he said.
Kenji was certainly right. Ten months was a very long time for most things, but far longer when it came to certain others.
Would you like me to introduce you?You know her?I come here very often. Shall I call her over?What? No! I mean
.what would I say? She doesnt speak any English for Gods sake!Your Japanese is fairly good and you are respectful. I think she likes thatNot that good Kenji
.Not good enough to chat-up girls!One girl, only one He looked up and smiled
.then in Japanese and loud enough for everyone in the pristine-clean, sun-lit Suma-ku Ward café to hear, but a very pretty one I think!Shhh! Panic knotted a very large fist inside my chest, Look Kenji, chatting-up girls is not something Im very good at, even back home!Then not being able to say anything will give you something to talk about
At that moment a coffee with milk and a lemon tea appeared on the table in front of us and I felt my face turn scarlet!
The girl looked as though she wanted to flee as she continued to provide us with napkins and finger bowls (for sandwiches?).
You are Miko
.yes? Kenji began to stir his remon tii
.This is my friend. He is called Goose by his heroic comrades
.He thinks you are very pretty! My facial colour suddenly went off the scale, though I was relieved to notice that hers did too!
I gave Kenji one of my best annoyed looks and felt a strong urge to explain why they called me Goose and how I would have preferred something more macho, like Hawk or maybe Falcon, but all I could manage was a very formal and virtually unintelligible Hajimemashite, dozo yoroshiku!
She stood there, quite tall for a Japanese woman, her head slightly bowed, staring at the floor. She raised her eyes without moving her head and stared at me through her long, straight raven-black hair. Herro
.Goose she said almost inaudibly and (to me) incredibly sexily while simultaneously managing to exhaust her entire English vocabulary with just those two words.
At that moment, her own sense of panic probably compelled her to deliver a sudden staccato of machine-gun Japanese of which I managed to identify probably no more than three or four words at most
.until a delighted Kenji eventually came to our rescue as interpreter
Goose is a British Royal Marine and hes been here in Kobe with his unit for the last ten months to help our humble Coastguard train in the use of special new equipment used in ship-to-ship boarding strategies and ship-to-shore deployments". Miko stared at him blankly. "Goose will understand some of what you say if you speak very slowly She absorbed Kenjis words, then looked at me more openly as I sat there, sweating uncomfortably, a red-faced, social incompetent dressed in green combat fatigues, topped off with a jauntily-angled green beret.
I finish work in one hour, if you like, we could walk in the park. Kenji repeated her words in English, although Id more than got the gist of it. I wondered where the excruciatingly shy and ultra-polite waitress had gone all of a sudden, though I did question the integrity of at least part of Kenjis translation, not to mention my own very limited ability to understand conversational Japanese!
Kenji made an excuse to return to base early while I sat on a low wall and waited for Miko to finish work. I felt like some sort of spotty, nervous, teenage boy agonizing over his very first date!
Wed finally agreed, with Kenjis help, to rendezvous in a small, nearby park and I half expected her not to turn up, but she did, exactly on time and we walked and talked for more than two hours
.all through Suma-ku Ward, along the beach made famous by the Beach Boys with their 1970s song "Sumahama", along the water-fronts and back around the shops.
Miko did most of the actual talking (very un-typical for a Japanese woman
.at least back then) and asked lots of questions about me, the RM and the UK. Apparently, many of her friends had travelled to Britain on educational trips with school or college, but shed never been able to go herself and wanted to know all about it. We attracted lots of attention
.the quite tall, very pretty Japanese waitress and the 6 3 butt-ugly British soldier.
Like Kenji, Miko seemed to know at least half the population of Kobe and a number of Japanese citizens went out of their way to talk to us, speaking to her informally, like a long-lost friend and to me with the utmost deference and respect. It was a very enjoyable and educational couple of hours.
She was delighted to hear of my passion for birds and thought my nickname was very funny
.and appropriate!
Tori ga suki desu ka she asked.
Hai, tori ga suki desu! and I went on to tell her as much as I could about my encounters with birds since being in Japan. With that, she grabbed my hand and led me a short way to a busy main road where long lines of traffic took turns to queue at staggered sets of traffic lights. The road was mostly four lanes wide and lined along both sides with Walnut trees for as far as the eye could see. We sat on a bench in the warm, late September sunshine and she told me to wait and watch
What followed is something Ill never forget and served to raise my respect for the intelligence of certain species of bird by about twenty notches!
We sat in silent anticipation for a minute or two, until we became aware of some fairly agitated movement amongst the leaves and branches of several of the closer Walnut trees. A distinctive and familiar cackling drifted down to us. I guessed immediately who it might be making all the din and soon spotted the culprits
.about a dozen or so Daurian Jackdaws. Daurians are an extremely intelligent species similar to our European Jackdaw, except that they usually come in a distinctive two-tone black and buff version and have dark instead of steely-grey eyes. They only spend the winter in Japan, flying down from China and Siberia, but these reprobates must have arrived quite early and were currently engrossed in prizing walnuts from the branches of the trees. Miko said that they had been around for about a week, but that they came every year.
Its what happened next however, that amazed me
.Once a bird had wrestled a walnut from a branch, it would wait patiently for the lights at the nearest junction to turn red and for the traffic to stop. Then, quick as a flash, the bird would fly down and place the hard-shelled nut on the road in front of a waiting vehicle. Whereupon it would return to a place of safety and wait. A minute or two later, the lights would change to green, the traffic would move forward and the nut would be crushed beneath the wheels of the vehicles. Brilliant! The lateral-thinking birds even waited for the next red light before diving in to retrieve their spoils! I'd heard of similar behaviour involving Spotted Nutcrackers (another type of Crow), but had never witnessed it first-hand.
As a boy, Id enjoyed setting up little 3D puzzles in the garden for Blue Tits to solve, involving matchsticks, Hornby railway wagons, chicken wire and peanuts. You know the kind of thing
.pull out a matchstick to release the wagon to roll out of the wire tunnel to get the peanut kind of thing. They were very good at it, but not as smart as those clever Jackdaws!
Miko was delighted at my reaction and suddenly kissed me on my cheek
.We both went red!
We spent ten more minutes watching the birds without saying another word. I reached out and held her hand! Miko eventually announced that she must catch the last bus home and I walked her to her bus stop not far from the café. We said goodbye in an appropriately formal way, but I promised to return to the café as soon as I could. I stood and watched her waving through the back window of the bus until it turned a corner and was lost from sight.
Two days later, my unit received orders to join a second RM outfit stationed in Nagasaki and from there we were unexpectedly returned to the UK within the week! I never saw Miko again!
I spent hours composing a letter in hand-written Japanese and sent it to her via Kenji. I "hope" it said how much Id enjoyed our small amount of time together and that I was really sorry to be leaving. I thanked her for showing me the Jackdaws and told her that I would miss her very much.
Over a month later and on a cold, grey, wintry day in Arbroath, an airmail letter arrived for me in the post. It contained just a single sheet of paper upon which was a beautiful and exquisitely drawn ink-sketch of two Daurian Jackdaws in a Walnut tree, with the names Miko and Goose written in Japanese characters underneath.
Two weeks after that, my troop and I were back doing border reconnaissance patrols in Northern Ireland!
A very long, narrow and beautiful city, Kobe is the principal port on the Japanese island of Honshu and the capital of Hyogo Prefecture. It was the first to open its gates to trade with the West as recently as 1868. We were actually stationed there for nearly eleven months, but were mostly either confined to base or required to work alongside the Nihon Coastguard in a predominantly advisory capacity. We had relatively little contact with the local population, particularly at first and excursions into town were always under the watchful eyes of "chaperones". Mine was nearly always a junior Coastguard officer called Kenji, who spoke excellent English and who eventually grew to become a very good friend.
There were relatively few western tourists visiting the city back then, most preferring Tokyo. Kyoto or Hiroshima as their primary destinations. However, this was still a busy port-of-call for a great deal of foreign shipping and merchant seamen of many nationalities could be found at almost any time enjoying shore-leave in some of the more commercial parts of the city. Meanwhile, the majority of US and British naval vessels headed for the much more industrialized port of Nagasaki and a British marine, remained therefore, a fairly unusual sight amidst the hustle and bustle of Kobe's dockland areas.
I enjoyed spending time in the older harbour districts of the city and most of all I loved Suma-ku Ward where I would spend many hours pottering about along the beach or on the quay-sides, watching the seabirds and the people go about their daily business. It was a busy place, vibrant and full of colour. Everyone I spoke to was invariably friendly, painfully respectful and always happy to oblige such a tall westerner with answers to his never-ending questions and nosey ways! The fact that I was so amicably "indulged" was due mostly, I think, to the enormous popularity of local boy Kenji, but also to the fact that I tried very hard, from the outset, to speak the "lingo"....sometimes with hilarious or even disastrous consequences! It earned me a kind of respect and I would advise anyone planning to visit Japan, for whatever reason, to do the same....it is much appreciated.
I would certainly like to return to Japan one day, but not to Kobe. On 17th January, 1995 the city was struck by a truly awful natural disaster, the worst since 1923! The Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake devastated huge areas of the city and all but wiped out its wonderful harbour district! More than 6,400 people were killed that day and 300.000 were made homeless!
An incredibly important city economically, Kobe was completely re-built within two years and now boasts a fascinating mix of both the traditional and the thoroughly modern. It is still a beautiful place however, resting as it does, beneath the magnificent and richly forested Mount Rokko, a veritable paradise for birds. The view across the bay to Osaka is breath-taking and the city enjoys some of the best weather to be experienced anywhere in Japan!
Sadly, all of the city's busy, hard-working little Suma-ku Ward is gone now and many of the people who lived and worked there are gone as well. So I want to remember Kobe the way it was....a place full of fascinating sights and interesting, friendly people....A warm, sunny corner of the universe where I once met a beautiful Japanese girl who was happy to walk and talk with me, who sat on a bench with me and showed me some very clever birds because she knew it would please me. She was someone who quickly became special to me, someone who kissed me on the cheek and held my hand....for just a little while.
The Seven and the Two of Doom!(October, 1965)
"How much is it?" I asked and felt myself shiver slightly as the icy-cold wind whipped through the town streets on that chilly mid-October night. The dancing, multi-coloured lights of Tewkesbury's annual Mop Fair reflected off the windows and walls of the buildings around us while our silvered breath hung in the air for barely a moment before being snatched upwards and away into the inky blackness above our heads.
"'Half-a-crown." replied Tony, pointing towards a brightly painted sign half-hidden behind a group of teen-age fair-goers.
I allowed myself to be swept along the pavement for a few yards in an effort to read the sign properly
.braving the irresistible momentum of the crowd to do so, as it squeezed itself through the narrow gap (like dung from a horse's rear-end) between the eight-foot high brick wall enclosing "Turners" scrap-yard and one side of the enormous "Waltzer" which, each year, was erected by steely-eyed Fair-folk in a valiant attempt to block at least three-quarters of the width of Nelson Street....
Come and See
Fortunes Told!
Cross Her Palm With Silver(Not Less Than 2/6-)andYour FutureWill Be RevealedRight Before Your Very Eyes!
I gradually elbowed my way back towards Tony and the willowy Wendy, his clingy, self-obsessed girlfriend of four days, as they huddled ever closer together against the bitingly cold wind alongside the fortune-teller's tent quite cunningly positioned out of harms way in the scrap-yards recessed entrance.
Wendy had made it abundantly clear from the outset that she thoroughly resented me being there, but Tony had insisted that I should go to the fair with them that evening as I was his friend. He knew only too well that there wasn't really anyone else for me to go with and besides, he was quite aware of the fact that Wendy had probably only offered to go out with him in the first place because she knew he had a part-time job at Mitton garage and would have plenty of money to spend (as she hoped) entirely on her!
"How much money you got Don?" he asked.
"Nearly twelve bob." It had taken me weeks to save even that much for the fair.
"Is that all?" sneered Wendy "Oh well DONALD, I suppose you'll have spent it all SOON and then you might as well go HOME!"
Tony moved away from her and slipped half-a-crown into my hand...."Go on Bird-Boy, go and get your fortune told....It's on me."
I looked him in the eyes....one brown, the other milky-blue. I could tell he worried about me sometimes, though I never really understood why...."Ok, but only if you'll come in as well."
"How old are you....five or somethin'?" Wendy mumbled her sarcasm towards the night sky. She much preferred that Tony spend ALL of his hard-earned cash on her and not some pea-brained, geeky tag-along! Beautiful inside she wasn't, yet she was, in all fairness, a tall, slim and very pretty brunette....except I'd noticed long before, that her eyes seemed strangely vacuous, almost soul-less. Eyes have always been important to me. They can speak volumes if you think you know how to read them!
"Come on then!" Tony grabbed me by the arm and marched me into the little tent. Wendy followed, obviously annoyed.
"Donald isn't it? I've been expecting you!" Gypsy Rose-Lee welded me to the spot with eyes I would never be able to read. "Sit down boy and cross my palm with silver".
Tony and I glanced at each other and I did as I was told.
"You heard us say his name outside the tent....You Must've!" Wendy's eyes, despite her well-reasoned explanation, had widened considerably!
"Be quiet child!" the Gypsy woman arrowed a glance at Wendy and then looked kindly back at me. She held out her hand and I pressed the half-crown into it. She closed her fingers around the money then opened them once again. The coin had disappeared! A trick, but a damn clever one!
Wendy gasped, I was enthralled and Tony grunted. He shifted his stance slightly and I could tell that he was almost as impressed as me.
Gypsy Rose-Lee took my hand in hers and I opened my palm for her to read. Her hands were cold as ice! "Do you want to know what things was, what they is or what they will surely be?" I guessed to myself absently that she'd be about sixty or so years old...."None of your business!" she barked suddenly. She had gained my undivided attention!
"Ask 'er if you'll ever 'ave a girlfriend" offered Wendy. I actually think she was trying to be genuinely helpful for once.
The fortune-teller studied my hand then looked into my face. Her eyes were unfathomable pools of....of....pain....inner pain....she had suffered greatly during her three score or more years. I couldn't see it, but I could....sense it....
"All kinds of creatures trust you don't they Donald? Yet....there is very little trust inside of you...not for most people at any rate! You trust him I think!" She nodded towards Tony.
"Ask her when you'll die" blurted Wendy suddenly. "What year? Ask her....Go on!"
"Shut it Wend'!" snapped Tony "Come on, we'll wait outside."
Gypsy Rose-Lee continued to stare at me until they'd gone...."I never tells of the death of things Donald. It ain't right, but Death will stand at your shoulder many times before you are called yourself!"
Now, this was supposed to be a bit of fun....a lark if you like. I'd never truly believed in such er....stuff, but unfortunately, I'd always been cursed with an open mind and, at that moment, my mind seemed to be a lot more "open" than usual!
I continued to sit there....mesmerized by those unreadable eyes....like one of the luckless Rabbits so easily "drawn in" by my uncle Chris's hypnotic hunting techniques.
"Er....I've got ages then....before I....er, you know?" I couldn't help asking and kicked myself mentally for being so stupid!
"Can't say!" came the cryptically terse reply....but was that "can't" as in not able to or "can't" as in not allowed?
"I SHALL say this though boy....a Seven and a Two will mark the end of it....Now go and join your friend!"
I left the tent and filled the others in on what little they'd missed, but I kept the mention of the "Seven" and the "Two" completely to myself.
Wendy was right, it didn't take long to spend my measly twelve bob and I eventually bid my good-nights and walked home alone.
The Gypsy's words continued to play on my mind however and I spent quite some time recording the strange episode virtually word for word in my diary before finally going to bed. "A Seven and a Two will mark the end of it!". What the heck was that all about?
Two weeks later, I'd left home and begun work as an apprentice zoo-keeper fifty miles away and, as the years passed, I managed to more or less forget about the entire incident....except that somehow, I gradually came to believe that the Seven and the Two most probably referred to the year-date (though it could just as easily have meant a number "27" bus) and I managed to make myself particularly anxious throughout the whole of 1972! New Year's Day, 1973 finally came as a profound relief after a year of gnawing anxiety! In fact, my very first entry in my 1973 diary began with the words, "Well, I made it after all!"
That would be that of course....for ages....Humongous relief....No more Sevens and Twos appearing together in the year-date for decades to come....that is....not until....
Unto Us(17th August, 1988)
Wed been trying for years to have a baby
.years, but without success. Wed read everything ever written on the subject
.taken endless advice from medical professionals
.from family and friends
.and even Old Mother Tippett, the ancient woman who lived with her cat in the woods on the outskirts of the village. Shed given us the benefit of her antique wisdom
.and a special concoction made from a secret recipe to help sort things out!
Meanwhile, my wife had totally exhausted all the usual methods of making something happen
.popping fertility pills like Smarties, eating loads more spinach, walking home backwards behind the oxen on successive Tuesdays with the wind out of the West
.Crikey, we even tried having sex
.but nothing seemed to work!
.Yet there he was, at 7.17pm on that hot, humid August evening way back in 1988
.my beautiful son
.or at least the bit of the top of his head that was just visible as he slowly, oh so slowly, made his way out into the world!
I guess that at this point, as her sweat soaks into the sheets, her breathing accelerates ten-fold and her cries reach a kind of terrifying crescendo, most men stare down joyously into their partners tear-stained faces while struggling desperately, if not heroically, to hold back a whole flood of crazy emotions
.totally oblivious to the thirty-six hour nightmare of pain and fatigue that the woman in their life has just endured
.is still enduring!
I couldnt help thinking at that exact same moment however, that if men were the ones who, for millions of years, had had to go through months of all that pregnancy and pre-natal stuff, followed by hours of pain-drenched labour, then wed have found some way by now to make the whole process totally painless and completely trouble-free
.After all, men dont do pain particularly well! Mmm, I tried instead to concentrate on NOT thinking about my poor fingers as my wife inadvertently crushed them to a pulp in her newly acquired, vice-like grip
.I thought about asking for a gasp or two of gas and air, but changed my mind
.People dont realize just how tough this giving birth business actually is for us males!
Suddenly, the head was clear
.and it looked for all the world like a giant, wrinkly, purply-coloured er
.prune! Then the rest of the body followed almost straight after with a strange kind of schloppy, ploppy, popping sound that I've tried to forget, but can't!
So there he was
. Nothing to it really. Just over two weeks late, but all done and dusted
.Except of course, it wasnt
Two weeks late being born meant that his umbilical cord had deteriorated considerably and, despite the midwife managing to clamp it off and cut it in the usual way, the main part of the cord suddenly tore away from his navel below the clamp closest to him and blood began to pump from his belly at a terrifying rate. I watched in shock as she tried desperately to re-attach the clamp to the tiny piece of raggedy cord still connected to the now open, gushing wound, but the clamp was too big! Another nurse attempted to swab the area around the tear as the midwife then tried desperately to pinch-off the blood-flow with the tips of her fingers! A doctor suddenly appeared and told her to hold on because her fingers were smaller than his! Blood was everywhere and the floor had become dangerously slick. Then, after what seemed like hours, a second nurse burst into the room with a smaller, more suitable clamp and the doctor eventually managed to attach it. The bleeding stopped, but my son had lost an awful lot of blood and appeared to be unconscious. He was rushed to intensive care where he remained for the next forty-eight hours! It was a very worrying two days!
Ive lived through a lot of scary stuff in my time, but nothing compares with what your kids can put you through. They say that a man never truly matures until he becomes a father and theres finally something in his life more important than himself
.Well, there have been two occasions over the years when my maturity has grown by the nth degree and watching those terrifying events unfold during the birth of my son was certainly one of them
.As for the other
.Well, Ive told that story elsewhere already!
Thankfully, my son went on to make a full recovery, turning out to be a bright, strong, happy, healthy little boy who loved nothing more than to read books and play football. Hes nineteen now, as I type this, enjoying city life in his second year at a big posh university and sharing a house with his beautiful girlfriend
.I guess hes doing ok, but it could all have been so different if a very worried nurse hadnt found that bl**dy clamp in time!
Lies, Lies and More Damn Lies(March 1982)
This chapter is actually one of a dozen that I have written as an integral part of this so-called auto-biography, but until now, have been reluctant to place in the public domain
.No, not because of any deeply ingrained psychological or emotionally distressing issues, at least not in this particular case, but simply because the content will appear much too fanciful to the average reader and far too unlikely to have ever occurred at all to the military enthusiasts amongst you! I have however, spent many hours writing and re-writing it in a determined effort to make it sound at least a little bit plausible so, before you all rush to your e-mail thingys to dispute its factual integrity, Ill save you the trouble
This is a totally fictitious account of events that never took place. After all, they couldnt have
.HM Government had absolutely no idea of what the Argentines were up to at any stage during the months leading up to the Falklands War and furthermore, we must believe them without question when they say that they were taken completely by surprise when South Georgia was occupied and then again when the Falkland Islands themselves were invaded!
I would also like to make it very clear that the Americans were at no time involved in British preparations (secret or otherwise) to eventually regain the Falkland Islands
.not at any point or in any way, shape or form
.and particularly with regard to providing British Forces with the use of strategically significant air bases and port facilities (such as those at the joint-operational Wideawake on Ascension Island for example). They certainly did not provide any kind of pre-war intelligence, useful or otherwise and, most importantly of all perhaps, at no point were British reconnaissance units (Royal Marines, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides or, as a last resort, the Army) involved in any covert monitoring activities actually based on the Argentine mainland itself
.either before, during or after the invasion. That would have been diplomatically antagonistic to say the least and the politicians would never have allowed it
.even if most of them knew what was actually going on
.which, of course, they always do!
Besides, there would be absolutely no logistical, strategic or tactical advantage to be gained by knowing exactly (or even approximately) where, when and how the enemy is distributing or positioning its forces or of what those forces are comprised
.and there would be no point whatsoever therefore, in deploying specialist reconnaissance units in key areas in an effort to observe such things and, by relaying such information back to say, a submarine innocently lurking somewhere off the mainland coast, possibly save hundreds of British lives
.thats always assuming everything did eventually go pear-shaped
.something no-one could have possibly anticipated anyway!
It is for these reasons, together with the fact that I do not wish to be arrested for contravening the Official Secrets Act, that I have given this chapter the title of Lies, Lies and More Damn Lies and believe me, you have no idea how appropriate a title like that might happen to be!
.A thick blanket of stars and a sliver of silvery moon cast their eerie metallic light across a silent frosted landscape. They also managed to provide just enough light to enable me to track the old farm-worker through my rifles SUIT sights as he peddled his squeaky sit-up-and-beg bicycle along the country lane that marked the Irish border some two hundred yards beneath my cover position. Apart from the silhouette of a solitary skein of wild Geese making its way slowly northwards across the cloudless sky, he was the only living thing wed seen for more than an hour and now, cold, tired and very hungry, the four of us who made up the macho-sounding Goose squad were very much looking forward to
You know what
.I think that War is just Gods way of teaching us geography! Kellys whisper came from about a yard behind my left ear
.It made me jump!
Jesus frick Kelly, dont do that! I mightve shot that poor b**tard! It was a little bit weird the way that this particular six feet two inches of Royal Marine was nearly always able to sneak up on me totally unawares! Irritated, I half turned to stare into the bemused bootnecks camo-smeared face, but in the shadows, his eyes and breath were the only parts of him that were clearly visible! Were not AT war, remember? Theyre terrorists and what they do is er
.illegal and not officially an act of War!
Kelly stared back at me
.Yea, yea
.So were just glorified frickin policemen then really?
Look, its all just Bo**ocks! I was rapidly losing the will to live
.Just call it in and tell them to send us a taxi back to Base ASAP*. Ill get the others!
.Now, I know that when I write dialogue like this it irritates the heck out of the military purists out there and they love nothing more than to e-mail my sorry a**e to put me right on the details, but then, they do tend to have been raised on a diet of macho bulls**t dialogue written according to some anonymous Hollywood scriptwriters perception of how the military talks amongst itself. Well, I guess theyre probably right up to a point, so perhaps my countless critics would be happier if I said Id called it in myself
.saying something along the lines of This is Gamma-Zero-One to Base-Alpha over
.We request immediate evac, Do you copy?
.Thats EZ extraction co-ordinates zero-three-five-zero-one-zero
.thats right, just past the house with the green door on your right
.Say again Base-Alpha
.No, the green door! Mrs McEllery lives in the house with the BLUE door
.Yes Base-Alpha, they certainly are
.very big indeed! Er
.Thats a Roger and out
.No, I mean over
.Copy! Sadly, we actually tended not to talk like that at all, or at least we didnt for 90% of the time, but hey, what the heck
.Roger you and out
.Do you copy that
Less than two hours later I was standing at ease-ish in front of the Bosss desk as he scanned through my hastily completed two-page written report
.the one Id managed to scribble-off twenty minutes earlier as I scoffed my egg, beans and tomato sauce on toast in the mess hall.
So, the usual waste of time and resources then? He looked up from the page hed just been reading.
Yes sir. There was no suspicious activity at all sir
.Would you mind explaining what this is then
.and this
.and this here? It looks quite suspicious to me! He pointed at several small to medium-sized stains on one of the pages
.Egg-yolk sir
.I think
.and possibly baked-bean juice
or maybe coffee sir ! He stared at me for several very long moments.
.Well, Ive just received orders from above
.It appears that you Goose1 and your happy little band of reprobates, plus Fox and Dog units, are required elsewhere. Get your gear together and assemble all three squads in the briefing room at 0930hrs. Some Army Major chappy will be telling you all you need to know
.then youre off back to the mainland
.Condor I believe, at 1030hrs. Good luck and dismissed!
I turned to go. Stopping at the door, I looked back at the CO
.Can you give me a hint sir?
No I cant. Youll find out soon enough. Meanwhile (he called me by my first name at this point), I suggest you try to get ten minutes shut-eye somewhere along the line.
Oh dear, I didnt like the sound of that
.He hardly ever used first names
.It was a bit like hearing the start of your own obituary before you actually die*
.I felt a vague shiver run down my spine!
.As opposed to hearing it AFTER you die I suppose!
We sat around the edges of the briefing room
.twelve of us
.Goose, Fox and Dog Reconnaissance Squads
.Recces finest! A few of the men were chuntering their disapproval at not being allowed to rest-up after eighteen hours of freezing their tits off while sitting motionless in various hedgerows and ditches dotted along the Irish border
.and waiting
.always waiting and er
.watching! Meanwhile, wed sub-consciously arranged our bergens like some kind of olive-green barrier on the floor in front of us and I was sure I could hear the stitching moaning and creaking under the strain of so much kit!
ATTENHUT! Having dozed off without realizing, I jerked awake, nearly falling off my chair, as the Royal Marines answer to Porridges brilliant Senior Prison Officer McKay attempted to gain our undivided attention
.Hallright yeez orrible w**khers, this his Major Wishni
.ah bo**ocks
.This hofficer here his the harmy Major from harmy hintelligence
. Someone to the right of me sniggered!
Heez here for the purposes hoff enlightenin yeez has to wot yeez har here for!
I elbowed Kelly awake as the major walked across the room and stood behind a desk positioned in front of us. Shuffling a few papers, he cleared his throat
Good morning
.Thank-you Sergeant
.Dont stand up men (we didnt)
.I am in fact, Major Weisnetzki and Ill get straight to the point
.Youre all heading back to Condor post-haste. From there youll be flown to another destination, probably in the same transport, where you will be joined by some other chaps and immediately thereafter you will board a different transport and be taken to yet another base
.No, Im not able to name the base at this moment in time
.Any questions?
What about our families sir? Billy Bunter looked concerned. Everyone else was confused. I felt another, but slightly stronger, shiver run down my spine!
Well naturally, theyll be staying at home
No, I mean when can we talk to them?
Im afraid you cant
.Any more questions?
Seven or eight people put their hands up. No? Good, thats all fine and dandy then isnt it. You depart in
. he glanced at his watch
.forty-five minutes! The Major gathered his papers together and walked swiftly out of the room.
Kelly leaned forward to catch my eye Was that the briefing or the briefing for the briefing?
I stood up, hefted my bergen onto my shoulders and picked up my rifle. I raised my voice above the growing groundswell of tired, disgruntled and cursing bootnecks
.I suggest that everyone gets some sleep if you can
.I dare say someone will wake us when were needed.
I eventually found a quiet corner in which to settle and managed to write-up some of the more interesting of events to befall me recently in my diary before finally drifting off to sleep.
I should think that just about all of us managed to get at least some shut-eye during the journey
.in the Chinook en-route to Arbroath and then again as we continued roughly South-West towards the Welsh border and another destination. It was there that we found ourselves sharing a long-distance USAF passenger transport with the other chaps and then it wasnt long before we were settled in our plush seats (very different to the narrow and very hard metal-alloy benches of the Chinook) and the plane was manoeuvring for take-off. We eventually headed due South.
We took the opportunity to eat a meal of sorts served up from the little galley by a couple of American stewards and then most of us slept for the remainder of the flight. When we eventually touched down however, we had no idea of where we actually were
.except that it was some kind of an air base
.a very large one
.and that it was possibly on an island. It also appeared to be populated entirely by US Air-Force Personnel. It was, by this time, very early in the morning of the following day (if you see what I mean)
.it was very dark and very windy!
As we stepped off the plane, I was sure that I could just make out the faint sound of what must have been the Atlantic ocean way off in the distance. It was more obvious however, that we were not MEANT to know exactly where we were for the time being or that the majority of the bases indigent American population werent supposed to know, officially that we were even there
.probably both! Ah, the games that politicians play!
A narrow walkway, built using chipboard with walls eight feet high, ran from the plane to a miserable-looking wooden hut situated at the very edge of the airstrip. Its windows had been completely whitewashed
.EVERYONE appeared to be going to an awful lot of trouble to ensure that NO-ONE knew we were there! It was in the hut however, that we were briefed for a second time, though on this occasion, far more comprehensively!
Eventually, as a thin wedge of dawn light gradually began to crack open the distant horizon like the lid on some huge Pandoras Box, we found ourselves standing on an otherwise deserted dockside
.about fifty of us, with our weapons in our hands (if you pardon the expression) and our bergens at our feet
.each filled to bursting with eighty or more pounds of brand-new and specially issued kit (issued in Condor) and extra ammunition! Finally, the order came for us to board the boat
I hated submarines (I still do)
.whether it was the huge Polaris nuclear-powered jobbies based up North
.the controversial ones that Comacchio were responsible for protecting (mostly from the fiendishly clever ladies of the CND
.thank God they didnt organize the IRA)
.or the smaller, conventional types. It didnt matter
.I hated them all equally
.but suddenly, there we were, more than fifty bad-tempered, foul-mouthed British troopers sharing crew quarters designed for less than twenty
.and preferably a very short twenty at that!
Still, at least we now had some idea as to where we were going and why. We also knew that wed be spending the next ten to fourteen days in a glorified sardine tin* speeding unseen (hopefully) all the way down to the South Atlantic
.running on the surface by night (weather permitting) or below the surface during the day. Unfortunately however, we twelve Marines were the ONLY Marines on board
.the rest were Army chuckle-heads who were soon spending more time up-chucking in the head than the rest of us thought was humanly possible!
Meanwhile, there was very little else for us to do except to stay out of the way of the boats regular crew, trade insults with each other, clean our weapons for the umpteenth time (yes, and those
.personal hygiene on a submarine is very important) or check and re-check our kit. Most of us soon lost what little cash wed taken with us (if you were anything like me that is) by playing cards with Tex Mick and, as we waited and waited and waited for the present nightmare to end and a new one to begin, the hardest thing of all to endure was the enormous difficulty involved in snatching just a few hours kip (on a rota basis) in any of the seventeen pitifully inadequate bunks that we were forced to share between the fifty of us!
The air inside that boat was foul to say the least and reeked of a not-so-subtle mix of grease, diesel oil, glow-in-the-dark arm-pit stench, crotch-sweat, bad breath and brown-job vomit (not to mention chefs beef stroganoff) and while most of the Army lads mysteriously chose not to consume food of any description for the duration, I was unable to eat most of the main courses served up by Monsieur Dick, the Boats terminally belligerent and eternally contemptuous its frickin meatballs or frickin nothing! chief cook and bottle-washer because of my vegetarian tendencies and so I lived almost entirely on biscuits-brown, tinned sliced-peaches (in syrup), chocolate or treacle-pudding (with or without custard) and endless cups of cinnamon tea for nearly a fortnight
.oh, and dried egg!
Now theres an old saying in the Navy that there are two kinds of Marines
.Royal Marines and submarines and that they both carry sailors, but it wasnt long before I began to appreciate what a truly difficult existence the average sub-mariner has to endure in order to earn his Queens shilling! Believe me, life is grim, or at least it used to be back then
.stuck inside a cigar-shaped tin can for months at a time, inhaling each others caustic farts
.no women, no daylight, no breeze in your face, no women, no grass under your feet, no football and no women! For us, it lasted just a couple of weeks, but Im sure that those two weeks scarred me deep down inside, sub-consciously, in ways that no man (or woman) should ever have to experience! Yes indeedy, sub-mariners really are a very special breed and I cant help but find myself saluting them
.even Monsieur Dick!
*....Mind you, this was no "brownwater" boat, it was very much a "bluewater" fish with an extremely experienced crew who just happened to be very, very good at what they did....including Monsieur Dick!
The time came at last and men were put ashore in desperately flimsy rubber boats in the utter blackness of a sub-Antarctic Winter night. The Army lads went first
.squad by squad, unit by unit, mostly in teams of four. Brave souls set adrift to paddle for all they were worth towards where they thought the land ought to be as savage gravel-hard spindrift whipped into a frenzy by howling winds lashed across their unprotected hands and faces. The inky blackness of the freezing ocean was indistinguishable from the pitch-black humourless sky
.no lights
.no stars
.no turning back!
The twelve of us looked on as the last of the Army teams shuffled its kit-laden way towards the exit hatch ladder
Why-aye, does your Mum know youll be oot this leet Scuzzer?* Tex had taken a shine to the likeable twenty-three year-old squaddie and sought to wind him up at every opportunity.
Scuzzer glanced back and tried to force a smile. He and Tex had become firm friends over the past ten days (though not before Tex had relieved him of all his hard-earned cash while playing cards) and we all knew that the big ugly Geordie worried about the boy.
Kelly glanced at the big man Hell be fine Tex, thats a very experienced team hes with
.probably the best there is.
Tex shifted uncomfortably Eh? Wye-aye man, Im not worried aboot him
.its just that he still owes me twenty quid!
.Im afraid that my attempts to write Geordie are pretty much the same as my attempts to speak it
.basically hopeless!
We semi-precious few still had a couple more days to endure aboard the boat however and now everywhere suddenly seemed so empty and eerily quiet (thats if you ignored the constant drone of the engines, the shuddering and juddering of the worryingly dodgy ventilation system, the distant sounds of the crew going about their daily routines
.and Jammy-Dodgers snoring). We never thought wed say it, but we actually missed the brown-jobs
.the constant rivalry
.the inter-service sniping
.the non-stop banter. Wed all given as good as we got and it had forged a special kind of bond. Most civilians will never understand how such fierce rivalry and blatantly antagonistic behaviour directed towards another human-being (or even towards squaddies) can somehow create a friendship with that person thats stronger than almost anything else known to Mankind and how that persons life quickly becomes far more important than your own
.Mind you, that doesnt stop them being total W**kers!
For a day and two nights we swept around the Southern reaches of East Falkland and probably right up through the Sound, dropping off passengers like some kind of macabre and sinister late-night bus service. We must have headed across the top of West Falkland and then set a course due West across to Santa Cruz. From there we sailed down the coast to Trelew (where my squad was put ashore) and finally, to Rio Grande. Soon we would be playing our own little part in the run-up to the invasion as we did our level best to avoid the attentions of the highly trained and very capable Buzos Tacticos
In war, there are basically two things that will get you killed faster than anything else....
The first depends entirely upon the level of your own arrogance....and believe me, it doesn't matter one iota how great or how wealthy the nation of your birth might happen to be or how vast its military might, it will absotively posilutely fail to save you from the single white-hot round currently hurtling towards your forehead from the rusted barrel of the ancient AK-47 wielded by some fifteen year-old peasant farmer's boy!
The second is the incompetence of those above you in the chain of command, an incompetence that tends to increase exponentially the higher up the ladder you go simply because those making the decisions are further and further removed from the reality of the situation until finally, you reach the politicians....with two possible exceptions, Winston Churchill, who so brilliantly held an entire Nation together throughout the worst days of the Second World War with little more than the resonance of his words and the iron contained within them and John F Kennedy who, in his determination to seek a peaceful resolution to a seemingly intractable political dilemma and in the face of utter stupidity and farcical political arrogance, almost certainly saved the world from a war of unimaginable consequences....and possibly paid the ultimate price for his efforts! For me, it's no coincidence that both of those great men experienced war very much at the pointy-end themselves during their younger days, either on horseback as a war correspondent/cavalryman or at sea in an MTB and that both had a profound understanding of what it really means to be a soldier or sailor at the mercy of the generals, the Admirals and the politicians!
As for the Buzos Tacticos....they were well-trained, very disciplined and highly experienced covert operation troops who worked well together in a team format and worse still, tended to trust to their instincts. Unfortunately for us, they could never be depended on to do something stupid simply because they were never arrogant....probably due to the fact that most of them were hand-picked from ghetto families who were forced to exist in the most squalid of conditions in the poorest areas of the country and possibly because they therefore had absolutely no incapacitating delusions of self-importance!
They were fearless, tireless and intelligent soldiers, but too few in number to make a real difference over such vast areas from a reconnaissance point of view, which, for us, involved moving at night and digging-in during the day on some God-forsaken hillside overlooking Trelew and waiting for something to happen! Their greatest strength as far as we were concerned, lay in the fact that they always assumed that someone like us would be out there....somewhere....at any time of the day or night and they tried to proceed accordingly. This highly commendable tactic however, was only based on operational decisions probably made at team-commander level and, fortunately for us, the "Exponential Leadership Incompetence Theory" was currently working overtime and the more common-sense grass-roots decisions were inevitably over-turned at some point en-route to the higher levels. In fact, during the days leading up to the war, the Juntas' top-brass much preferred to employ such troops as show-piece cahones in jingoistic, sabre-rattling ticker-tape parades....thankfully!
Femme Fatale
.A Ranger Anecdote(December 2007)
Just suppose that youd been born and raised in the old Czechoslovakia, that youd witnessed the worst of the troubles there first-hand and had seen your country literally torn apart. Suppose that you were eventually forced to begin a completely new life as a young teenager in the UK when your British-born mother eventually returned there following the murder of your Czech father.
Suppose you had later joined the British Army, going on to give eleven years of exemplary service, including successive tours in the volatile Baltic States as a UN peace-keeper/negotiator/interpreter, two tours as a Forces Liaison Rep in Northern Ireland, a US/UK Liaison non-com in Northern Iraq and then finishing off with a couple of years as a Company Drill Sergeant back in good old Blighty
.Well, if nothing else, I reckon it would be fair to assume that youd have (pretty much) seen it and done it all and that life would now hold precious few surprises for you, if any!
Not only that, what if, during your thirty or so years on planet Earth, youd been shot at by snipers from deserted tower blocks, spat on by children in the street, arrested by the Soviet Secret Police, abused, cursed, pushed around, shoved, intimidated, knocked to the ground, kicked repeatedly and blown up
.twice? What if youd once been fire-bombed in a street riot and suffered second-degree burns across most of your back resulting in enforced hospitalisation for two months when all you wanted to do was get back out there to be with your oppos and do your job! (No, Im not talking about the January sales where, as we all know, successive generations of little old ladies have honed their fighting skills to the nth degree and where terrified SAS recruits have traditionally been given their final and most challenging of survival tests)!
Suppose youd been through all that, only to one day be confronted by three very large, foul-mouthed, abusive and terminally moronic thugs on a public-access woodland trail and who had perceived you as being some kind of victim ripe for intimidation! Suppose they had insisted that you had absolutely no right to be where you were or doing what you were doing (collecting bark samples from trees) and that, one way or the other, you were going to have to move on
.whether you liked it or not!
What would you do in that situation
.also bearing in mind that you would have to be an attractive woman about five feet eight inches tall, weighing somewhere in the region of nine stones and that there is only one other person with you
.a very ugly man in his mid-forties, about five feet six inches tall and with a perpetually surprised look on his face
.and an expert on all things creepy-crawly?
.Phones ringing!
.Ill get it! I picked up the receiver
.Hello, Battersea Dogs Home!
Eh? Is that Mike? The voice on the other end of the line sounded confused.
No , Im afraid not
.I think youve got the wrong number
You dont sound like Mike
.I think Ive got the wrong number
Yes, I think youve got the wrong number
Sorry bout that
Thats ok, the phone was ringing anyway
.Bye! I replaced the receiver, but I jumped suddenly as it rang again almost immediately! I picked it up
Hello, Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, Matron speaking
Eh? Ah, Don
.Its Nobby
.ave you got a minute?
Er, Ye
es. What is it?
I think Im in love!
Im already married Nobby!
No, I mean it
.I think Im REALLY in love!
I must admit, this came as something of a shock. Now that Sean and Beth are, for want of a better word, an item, Nobby is the only one of us without a partner
.apart from Jenny that is. Though thinking about it, the Boss does seem to team her up with Nobby more and more often these days
.supposedly because shes plants and trees and hes bugs and stuff!
You? Youre in love? Who with?
She was brilliant Don
.Ive never seen anything like it! I spent nearly sixteen years trying to teach gormless Bootnecks how to handle themselves up close and personal in any situation and she could do the lot of them! I never seen anything like it!
Calm down Nob and tell me what happened
These three w*nkers came out of nowhere and started getting all stroppy
.tryin to push their weight around!
W*nkers? What w*nkers?
.pro-hunt pr*cks I think
.or anti-hunt maybe
.whats the difference? *
I took his point What did you do Nobby? I began to feel concerned.
.Jen told me to stay put and walked straight up to the one doin all the mouthin off. She tried to explain what we were doin, but he wouldnt have it and said we had to p* off or wed regret it!
Then what? You didnt do anything stupid did you Nobby? I didnt really want to hear the answer
.this sort of thing happens all too often to us in one way or another and people like Sean, Joe and Nobby tend to have very short fuses!
I didnt do nothing Don
.It was Jenny
.she told him that she had too much work to do to stand around talking to him all day and that he should come back in about five years when hed reach puberty!
.She said that did she? I though she was highly trained in liaison and negotiation and stuff?"
Yeah, well she negotiated his fat a*se by puttin her boot in his nuts when he called her a bitch and tried to push her ! I never seen anything so fast Don! I swear I heard them pop!
I tried to cast the invasive image from my mind Then what happened
.What did his fiends do?
They just stood there totally gob-smacked and she told them that if they picked him up and took him home, shed forget all about it!
.and did they?
Yeah, too right they did and then after theyd gone she sat down on a log
.then she started shaking and she was nearly sick!
Really? But what did YOU do? I still couldnt believe that Nobby had stood by during all this and done absolutely nothing.
I just sat down next to her and put my arm round her
.I didnt know what else to do!
But why didnt you get stuck in
.its not like you to miss out on a ruck?
I know, but Jen had told me to do nothing and shes got that kind of tone in her voice sometimes that you feel you just have to obey There was a long pause as Nobby was obviously struggling to make sense of what had occurred
.She also told me shed done it to save the guys life
.She said that if she hadnt sorted it then shed been afraid I wouldve and she didnt want me getting into serious trouble all over again and that Id probably go down for it this time, whereas it didnt matter what she did to him because shes a woman and theres no way hed go to the police because hed never live it down! He finally stopped gabbling.
.Weve all known from the outset that Jenny was considered to be one of the absolute best in the Army at what she did
.and I guess that confronting three moronic (pro or anti-hunt, there really is no difference) heavies in a woodland somewhere in the Home-Counties doesnt really compare with negotiating with trigger-happy, genocidal Serbian Troop Commanders for the release of abused and tortured Muslim men, women and children in the remote forests and mountains of war-torn Croatia where they were often forced to flee to seek refuge! On the other hand, what people dont seem to understand (least of all the British judicial system) is exactly how unpleasant little situations like the one that Nobby and Jenny were unexpectedly subjected to can affect them (or any of us for that matter), given what theyve been through over the years and all that theyve endured!
So what happened after that Nob? My main concern was for Jenny
.apart from anything else, we wouldnt want to lose someone as likeable and capable as her just because of some little incident with three frickin jerk-offs! Is she ok and have you told the Boss?
Yeah, he knows....and yeah, she's fine now
.kissed me!
Kissed you? Are you sure she didnt get hit on the head or anything?
.but shell kill me for telling you this
.she said it was for looking out for her
.Dont tell anyone I told you!
.It sounds to me Nobby as though she was the one doing all the looking out
.and dont worry, I promise Ill never say a word!" **
*....There is of course, no difference....irrespective of either your political or your altruistic motivations, a thug is a thug is a thug! If you're the type of social inadequate who chooses to use intimidation through verbal abuse and/or physical violence, then it really doesn't matter which party you vote for at your next local elections, you are intrinsically and fundamentally little more than a right-wing fascist extremist incapable of expressing your views in any other way and that makes you, more than anything else, a coward!
We're perfectly aware that both sides of the hunt debate are prepared to try and wriggle out of accusations made against them by claiming to have been merely defending themselves against "unprovoked" attack by elements of the opposite side....no-one ever seems to start anything! We are also aware however, that both sides are as bad as each other when it comes to the use of bullying and intimidation tactics because we've either seen it for ourselves or have been on the receiving end of it! We have occasionally and through no fault of our own (as with Nobby and Jenny above), been caught smack-bang in the middle of some very unpleasant goings-on before now and, although we all have personal opinions on a whole range of issues....including the hunting of foxes, we take no sides....a little trick that most of us learned to master on the riot-torn streets of Belfast or as UN Peace-keepers in places like the Baltic States!
**....For those concerned that I'm being an absolute cad and a bounder here by betraying a confidence, don't worry, Nobby and Jenny actually went out on a "date" over Christmas and then on another the day after....and then another....and another....and now I think it's fair to say that everyone knows that they too are an item....and I couldn't be more pleased for them. Oh....and before putting it on the website, I did actually pass this anecdote on to Jenny for her approval....Mmm, as an afterthought, I also included the telephone number of my old shrink!
Lillian(Summer 1956)
Oh well, here goes
Left....Lillian aged about eleven....I took this photo myself using my Uncle Sid's old box camera....I was about five years old at the time. I'm always saying that I don't like many of my own photographs very much....just a handful or so and that's very true, but this effort is the very first one that I actually liked simply because I believe it captures the essence of who Lillian was! Right....A very poor picture of Lillian at Tewkesbury Mop Fair taken in October 1955 with her Mum (and the only one I have of my aunt Emma). The photographer was one of those professional types that you used to get at places such as fairs or at the seaside. They usually got you to pose with a live monkey or somesuch dressed in human clothes, but I should imagine that Lillian declined holding anything even remotely resembling a monkey!
This months visit to the cemetery to pay my respects to and tidy up the graves of various family members and friends (there are so many of them to do now) resulted in two things
First and foremost, I found myself to be the focus of the attentions of what should have been a very shy Green Woodpecker, but who insisted on clinging to the side of a large tree no more than two or three metres from me as I sat very still for a while between Ellies and Lillians graves. It was a colourful, bright-eyed bird and I was spellbound as it remained there with the bright afternoon sunshine highlighting every detail of its gorgeous red, black and greeny-yellow plumage! I tried speaking to it softly as it continued to watch me without any sign of flying off!
Mmm, I guess anyone passing by would have assumed that I was just another one of those crazy-looking guys you see sometimes sitting amongst cemetery gravestones (minus the can of lager in my case)
.forever talking to themselves
.and maybe they wouldnt be far wrong!
Second, I made a final decision to add this story to Slices and I actually made it as I sat there on the grass, as close to Ellie and Lillian as I was to the bird.
Well, lets just say that it was a slightly odd few minutes
.nothing ghostly, nothing supernatural
.just a little bit strange!
Surprisingly perhaps, I wrote the first version of this story almost twenty-five years ago during a very long ocean voyage inside the belly of a conventional submarine. It was almost two weeks of having far too much time on my hands, just playing cards with the others
.and thinking! There werent even any half-decent books to read!
Since then, there have been other versions, written in all kinds of odd places as I sought, without any real success, to put to bed once and for all, some very persistent ghosts! Its also another one of those chapters which, until now, I have been unable to bring myself to place in the public domain
.So maybe the time has finally come.
Obviously, the story wont mean very much to anyone else (particularly a story so badly written), but for me it covers a very difficult time in my life
.one that Ive tried over and over again to come to terms with, but with no success!
Basically, the tragic events that occurred one very warm and sunny day way back in 1956 have haunted me for nearly fifty-two years and continue to do so relentlessly
Beautiful cousin Lillian
.only daughter of my aunt Emma and her, by then, estranged husband Jack. She was thirteen years old, always smiling, full of the joys of life and with so much to offer the world. She never failed to lift the spirits of all those fortunate enough to meet her.
I was barely seven years old and had lived with my new family for almost two years
.New name, new Mum and Dad, new home, a new Gran who adored me, uncles and aunts who treated me as one of their own
.and a dog called Slipper! It was wonderful! The only person I missed from my previous life was my half-sister Rachel
.In fact, I continued to pine for her for many years and it still torments me that Ive never known what actually happened to her after she disappeared, along with my natural parents, to begin a new life without me in the United States!
Knowing how much I missed Rachel, Lillian did her absolute best to replace her as the older sister-figure in my life and did it brilliantly. As a result, she grew to be very special to me and we spent huge amounts of time at each others homes or playing over the fields or doing odd jobs and running errands to earn pocket-money.
On one fateful Saturday lunchtime during the school Summer holidays and while my Mum and I were visiting Aunt Emmas, my Mum gave Lillian and me two shillings to run down to the fish and chip shop in town from my aunts house in Priors Park. We had been instructed to get four three-penneth portions of chips plus a pickled onion each and a scoopful of "scraps".
Left....We used to call this pathway "Link Lane" (I don't know if it's called anything now), but it was a few feet wider than this and served as the main artery allowing access for all municipal-type vehicles from the town (at the Crescent) via the lane at the back of Swillgate to the main entrance of the town's principal "open" rubbish dump (about seventy-five metres further on). The population of Tewkesbury back in the 1950s was less than 10,000 while today, it's at least seven or eight times as many, so there wouldn't have been anywhere near as much rubbish! The cricket field that I wanted to cut across is on the left of the picture.Right....Through the fence and across the cricket pitch to the far right-hand corner of the ground was my much-used short-cut from my aunt Emma's into town.
It was less than a mile and we ran all the way, despite the heat, to the back of Swillgate situated behind the Abbey. I wanted to cut across the cricket pitch to save time, but Lillian said no, it wasnt allowed. I ignored her and ran across the lane to a hole in the fence
.She ran after me
For the majority of you who do not know Tewkesbury, the River Swillgate (once alive with Water Voles and Kingfishers) runs down through Old Man Steels farm as was, past Oldfield estate then along the back of the Hospital, Barton Street, Church Street then behind the Abbey (but North of the cemetery) and eventually into the man-made section of the River Avon (hand-dug by monks centuries ago) that, less than a mile later, joins with the River Severn at Lower Lode.
The slope is hardly noticeable today, but I'm standing at the western end of what was once Tewkesbury Council's "open" style rubbish tip. It was eventually completely filled-in and the ground levelled for the building of much of the housing shown in the distance (part of Priors Park). Then the foreground area became a camping site for many years (now long gone) and every Winter we kids would go sledging in the snow on what used to be a steep incline just out of the picture to the right. Finally the area was taken over by the local rugby club. Meanwhile, the prestigious Caravan Club site situated way over to the left is actually built smack-bang on top of thousands of tons of rubbish! Interestingly, many of the ever-dwindling number of people of my generation who were born and raised in Tewkesbury still refer to the area as "The Dump"!
Where the Caravan Club site is now was once the towns main rubbish dump, that is until it was filled-in during the mid-sixties for development purposes
.mostly housing! Before then, municipal vehicles of many kinds used the Swillgate lanes for access to the tips constantly during weekdays, but rarely (if ever) at the weekend.
Lillian ran after me, but straight in front of one of the larger varieties of lorry that never used the lanes on Saturdays!
I was half-way through the chain-link fence, shouting something back at Lillian whose attention must have been entirely focussed on me. I heard a thunking kind of noise, a man shouted Fuck! and then, as I began to turn my head back towards the lane, I heard a strange kind of scraping, liquid crunch. I was just in time to see the lorry skid to a halt about ten yards beyond what looked like a pile of rags lying in the road!
Now a tarmac road, this was once just a gravel-covered lane. The car-park used to be a place of trees and shrubbery (where I saw the Green Woodpecker)....All hail our wondrous god, the mighty motor car, for we shall worship it utterly and it will destroy all things!The Abbey is situated at about ten o'clock to the lamp-post and the Swillgate runs between the two. The accident occurred just about in front of the Silver Birch tree on the right when Lillian ran from the other side of the lane towards me as I was busy climbing through the cricket pitch fence in Link Lane about fifty metres to the right!
I ran back towards where I had last seen Lillian as the driver leapt from his cab
.Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! he kept saying over and over again!
I remember a woman screaming from somewhere!
It seemed to take an hour to reach Lillian
.as though I was running through treacle! I dropped beside her broken body, skinning both my knees
.I reached for her hand
She wasnt dead
.The frickin lorry had run right over her
.first the front wheel and then the back! She lay there, motionless, unable to move and I saw a Green Woodpecker land in a tree not far away. She tried to speak
She was worried because shed dropped the two shillings when the lorry hit her
.She said that my Mum couldnt afford to lose it! She passed out.
I didnt cry. I just knelt there holding her hand. I was angry
.it was my fault
A doctor came with a nurse in a car
.someone had run to the hospital less than a mile away. An ambulance was called, but it didnt get there straight away. They asked me who she was and where she lived
.they took her away. Mum came.
I never saw Lillian alive again
.she died with her Mum, Gran and my Mum by her bedside. Someone had notified her father and he rushed down from up North to see her, but she begged not to see him and I hated him because of it
.even more than the day he punched my aunt Emma to the ground and I stabbed him in the leg with a knife for doing it!
The doctors insisted that Lillian never felt any pain
.her spine and pelvis had been broken in several places and her liver and kidneys crushed. She lived through the night and half of the following day. She regained consciousness many times and apologized to my Mother for losing the money! She wanted to know if I was ok and asked if she could see me
.She died before I got there!
I fell out of love with God that day
.and thats the way its stayed!
Almost a thousand years old and one of the most famous buildings in Britain, Tewkesbury Abbey stands as it has always stood, immovable and inviolate. In truth however, it's the only thing that has remained virtually unchanged since the day it bore silent, stone-faced witness to Lillian's terrible accident, an accident which occurred almost exactly where I stood to take this photograph!If God was looking down on us that day, then he utterly forsook Lillian and me, so don't talk to me about "Great Plans" or "working in mysterious ways"....Don't try to tell me she was "taken for a reason" or that she was "chosen for a higher purpose"....or that "God isn't there to make life easy for us, but just to give us faith"....I've heard it all before! All I see when I close my eyes at night is Lillian looking up at me with her blood spreading out in a thick black pool around her....I see Ellie collapsing in a heap on the floor and me powerless to help her....I see Tony fall to the ground with half his head blown away....I see a sixteen year-old "enemy" soldier with his life bubbling away through the wound in his throat that I put there....I see the look on a friend's face as he holds open a plastic bag for me to literally shovel the mushed remains of another friend into....I see a woman telling me that my birth Mum and Dad had taken my step-sister away and that I would be going to live in a special place with other children just like me....I see the desperately worried faces of my very young son and daughter as they beg me not to keep stabbing myself....I see other things as well, but I don't see God's Mercy or God's Justice in any of it and I gave up trying to make sense of it all a very long time ago!At the age of just seven years I truly came to believe that God must surely hate me and today I feel no different!
Please note
I must first apologize unreservedly to any Scot out there who might take offence at my awful attempts to translate the Scottish accent onto the written page. I readily admit that it is completely and utterly dire! However, I also believe that to give any Scottish NCO an English-sounding delivery would be tantamount to an even greater crime against all that is both scared and tartan! Imagine then, if you will, a three-way cross between Sergeant McKay from "Porridge, Frazer from "Dad's Army" and Scotty from "Star Trek" and you might get somewhere near to what I'm trying to achieve!
Apart from being a brief outline of my initial introduction to the almost human phenomenon erroneously nicknamed Kelly who, along with a handful of others, went on to become such an important and integral part of my life, this is also my salute to that most indefatigable of creatures, the Scottish NCO! For, without his utter contempt for all things English, his steadfast determination to reduce even the most resilient of English gobsh*tes to little more than a pile of vomiting jelly and his insidiously wilful determination to persistently produce the best Marines and Paras the world has ever seen, the British military would, in those days at least, have been infinitely less than the sum of its parts!
I guess that things have changed considerably in recent years however and that political correctness will have doubtless reached those parts that even the most devoted mother of any battle-hardened trooper would ever care to touch, but a Scottish NCO, given free reign to train and develop an intake of completely raw, pathetically vulnerable and predominantly English recruits (whether Marines or Army) as recently as the 1970s was both an awesome and, at times, terrible thing to behold! Yet the few disparate souls who somehow managed to survive such creative training methodology will forever owe a debt of gratitude to those psychotic Scottish b*stards for basically teaching them how to survive in a world back then designed to do little more than inflict absolute pain and total misery upon any trooper less suitably prepared!
.and so it began
I am Captain Rupert Gatensby-Skinner The officer paused momentarily....You will address me quite simply as Captain or possibly Captain Gatensby-Skinner or, for those times during your training when your mind will have ceased to function, a simple Sir will suffice!
Another pause as the Captain took the time to run his eyes along the three raggedy lines of fifty-four occasionally slouching, sometimes dishevelled,but always nervous and bewildered-looking wannabe Royal Marines. In fact, we must have excelled in our involuntary role as a particularly sorry-looking bunch of increasingly rain-soaked no-hopers struggling pitifully to so much as stand to attention as we shivered uncontrollably in the sleet-streaked January rain with the wind howling off the estuary and our assorted suitcases, holdalls and rucksacks lying sodden and forsaken in the ever-deepening puddles at our feet.
For the next thirty-two weeks I shall be your Troop Leader
.My sole function in life is to offer you 'Nods' the benefit of my experience
.to give you worthwhile advice and a helping-hand when necessary. I am here to provide all kinds of positive encouragement and I am here to lend a sympathetic ear
.perhaps even a shoulder to cry on
.especially during some of the more, shall we say, difficult times ahead! The Captain spoke with one of those received, plum-in-the-mouth, frightfully English accents reminiscent of a 1930s BBC radio announcer.
He was also tall....well over six feet, broad-shouldered, dark-haired and swarthy-skinned. No more than twenty-three, his general demeanour somehow gave the impression that he was not only significantly older, but possibly made of flexible oak! He stood directly in front of us, feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped firmly behind his back.
This is Sergeant McCabe
. Turning slightly to his left, the Captain gestured toward a much shorter man standing beside him. The Sergeant sported a vicious-looking two-inch scar that ran more or less horizontally below his left eye. He was also the owner of an impressive sand-coloured moustache that almost completely obscured both his top and bottom lips! Someone at the back coughed and the man next to me fidgeted
As I say, Sergeant McCabe is also here to help you
.In fact, Sergeant McCabe is SO keen to help you
.and particularly YOU young man The Captain gestured again, this time at the Nod standing next to me, but using just his eyes and a barely perceptible movement of his head
."that he ASSURES me he will do everything and anything in his power to make your stay, however brief, a very meaningful and
.er, eventful one. Over to you then Sergeant!
With that, the Captain turned on his heel and strode purposefully away towards one of the buildings situated some distance off at the far end of the parade ground.
Tosser! I was actually standing in front of the guy who muttered the insult and I swear no-one else could possibly have heard him above the battering wind, but suddenly the Captain, who was by this time at least twenty yards away, stopped in his tracks, turned to face us once again and said Sergeant McCabe, after you have spoken your piece, take that mans name and ask Corporals Campbell and McCrombie to escort him to my office. Thank-you Sergeant
.Carry on if you will
Aye Sir! The Sergeant turned his attention back to us and waited patiently for the Captain to reach his destination and disappear out of sight
.Reet Yeez pampered sacks o festerin dog puke, let me make one thing very clear
.the Captain may be a stuck-up-sounding English frickin officer, but he is TEN times the man o all a yeez put together! Yeez are nuthin compared to him
.an any one o us happy band of NCOs would gladly lay down his life to protect im! Dye ken ma meanin sonny? The Sergeant had used the moment to walk up to me and stare directly into my face. Sudden realization dawned followed by an almost overwhelming sense of panic
.It wasnt me Sergeant!
SHUT IT you lanky streak of polluted p*sswater! Are you tryin to tell me Im wrong? Im NEVER wrong!
I said I'm NEVER WRONG! The Sergeant peered into my eyes with an ice-cold stare that I felt certain could freeze molten lava
.Corporal Campbell!
Yes Sergeant!
You heard the Captain
.Hescort this
.Whats your name gobsh*te?" I told him Hescort this piece of cretinous puke along to the Captains office immediately hafter I ave finished!
Now, as for the rest o yeez
.The Sergeant dragged his sub-zero gaze away from my face to address the rest of the intake. He gestured toward me with his right hand
.This is what is born into the worruld when the best part of it runs down its mothers chin! Someone stifled a snigger
.I was certain it was the guy behind me
.Thankfully this time, so was the Sergeant! He elbowed past me to confront the smirking perpetrator of what, to his way of thinking, had been the most heinous of crimes
Whats YOUR name Dipsh*t?
Kelly sir
.They call me Kelly sir on account of me looking a lot like Clint Eastwood sir!
Well now, is that a fact? Kelly, the man with no name eh? Well first of all, I happen to be a Sergeant, not a frickin Sir and, second, Ive given yeez a new name an from here on in its Dipsh*t! Dye understand what Im sayin laddy? NOT FRICKIN KELLY THE FRICKIN HERO, BUT DIPSH*T THE FRICKIN DIPSH*T! Is that clear enough fer ye?
Yes Sir
.er Sergeant, Dipsh*t Sir!
Corporal Campbell!
Yes Sergeant ?
When yooz hescort Gobshite there to see the Captain, perhaps yooz would also be so kind as to ask Dipsh*t here if he wouldnt mind tagging along!
Yes Sergeant!
A profound sense of justice began to permeate my entire being. The Sergeant meanwhile had re-emerged from within the ranks
Its a funny thing, but its usually more like half an hour before Ive winkled oot both the idiot AND the comedian from the rest o yeez w*nkers
.I must be improvin!"
Noo then, perhaps I might be allood to get on
.if the rest o yeez dunnay mind that is
.and first off, Id like to commend the Captain for his kindness and his concern fer ye welfare
Id like to, but I will nay! Let me make it perfectly clear to yeez
.The Captain is a very busy man and he nay needs tha likes o yeez morons spoilin his day. So, if yeez has any complaints, then please be so kind as to keep them to yerselves because MY sole function in life is to make foreskins like yeez so miserable that yeez will all be beggin to leave the Corps to return home to the arms o the ones who do actually give a sh*te aboot yeez!
* * *
Dipsh*t and I stood to attention as best we knew how in front of the Captains desk, flanked by smirking Corporals Campbell and McCrombie. We waited nervously for the Captain to re-arrange some papers. Finally, he picked up one of the sheets
For every new intake he began we have a list. A list of all those individuals who are, for better or for worse, recorded as being part of that intake. He sat back in his chair and stared, first at me and then at Dipsh*t His eyes were unflinching
You see, its a game we like to play
.Almost a tradition really. We start with approximately fifty names
.er, fifty-four in this case and then we cross them off, one at a time, as the poor unfortunate wretches to whom the names belong fall by the wayside
.er, so to speak The Captain spoke very quietly and, because we were still soaking wet and, therefore, frozen to the bone, we struggled to hear his words above the sound of our own chattering teeth!
Sergeant McCabe and I also enjoy a small wager or two as we try to predict which names will be crossed off next He paused to let his words sink in
You may or may not be interested to know that we especially enjoy trying to calculate which name or names will be amongst the FIRST to go
.Just a bit of fun you understand!" The Captain winked conspiratorially at the two Corporals.
It definitely WILL interest you to know however, that both the good Sergeant and myself are of the opinion that it will in fact, be one or other or, indeed, BOTH of you who will be amongst the very first of YOUR particular intake to succumb to the dreaded pencil
.and I think I should point out at this juncture, that neither Sergeant McCabe or myself like to be disappointed! He smiled After all, someone has to be the first to go and it might as well be the wasters
We were frog-marched, together with our sodden suitcases, from the Captains office back to our new Troop, who, by this time, were fully ensconced in a sparsely furnished, completely unheated, battleship grey-painted concrete hut that was obviously designed to double as both our sleeping quarters and a military spec wind-tunnel
.at least judging by the myriad of industrial strength draughts howling through the ill-fitting, single-glazed windows! We searched around for a bed beside which to dump our cases, but every bed had already been taken and all that remained for the two of us to use were a pair of rickety old cots, probably first issued during the Boer War. They were also positioned right next to the door!
Hi, my names Kelly the tall, rangy Clint Eastwood sort of look-alike held out his hand.
I shook it and introduced myself. Then I tested a cot with my foot Do you plan to be one of the first to go? I asked.
What do you think? He looked at me and laughed Its not even frickin 9 oclock and weve already been to see the Captain and had our bleepin' cards marked!
.Thanks for that by the way
.Let me know when I can return the Frickin favour why dont you!
No hard feelings then?
I looked at the guy for several seconds....He seemed impossible to dislike I guess not" I replied.
He walked across to the remaining cot and slid his suitcase underneath it. What about you? You've got to admit, 'Gobsh*te' has got a certain ring to it!
I tried not to smile "I'll stay as long as I can, but I can't go home....not just yet anyway!"
"Why not?"
"Personal reasons" A sudden wave of grief threatened to overwhelm me....
."Whats next?
.Some kind of fitness test I think. Apparently a few of the lardies, most of the drinkers and all the heavy smokers will chuck it in during the course of the first day....At least, so I've been told!"
Yeah? Well, I guess Ive got nothing to worry about then!
Ah-hah! My old friends Gobsh*te and Dipsh*t....All settled in are we? Sergeant McCabe had appeared at the entrance to the hut and was holding the door open as wide as it would go so as to enable the gale-force-driven rain to tear past him and head directly for our cots! He looked at us as though someone had just told him that tomorrow would be Christmas and his favourite birthday all rolled into one....I think perhaps they were right!
Happy days ahead gentlemen" announced the Sergeant to all and sundry
."Happy days ahead indeed!
Seaside Donkey(Summer 1959)
The seaside man who owned the Donkeys told me that she was only a young un and needed to have a lie down. At first, I thought she was dead, but when I knelt down beside her she opened her eyes, half-raised her head and looked up at me. I glanced across at my Mum and smiled just as she took this picture with my old Kodak Brownie camera.It then became obvious to me that the Donkey wasnt just resting at all, but that she was very poorly and I again asked the man what was wrong with her. A little more gruffly this time, he told me that she was only tired and was just resting!At this point, I walked over to my Mum and asked her if we could find a policeman and have the man arrested because the Donkey was obviously ill and needed a vet! I remember my Mum saying that it was none of our business and that we ought to be looking for Dad whod wandered off to buy ice-creams or something.Why dont you get her a vet? I shouted to the man, but he ignored me and carried on taking money from the people queuing up for rides on the other Donkeys.She needs a vet! I persisted.Look son, theres nothing wrong with her. Shes just tired all right?Then Ill get a vet! I looked up at my Mum Mum, she needs a vet!The man had walked away and begun allocating Donkeys to people or possibly people to Donkeys, it was difficult to tell.It was then that I noticed a couple of bobbies about fifty yards away standing by the entrance to the pier. I ran after them! * * *But you must help her! I pleaded I think shes dying!Is this your boy madam? My Mum had finally caught up with me.Yes officer. Im afraid he gets like this about cruelty to animalsCruelty? If the boys referring to Old Man Beresford down on the Beach there and his Donkeys, then I reckon he must have got it all wrong because its well known that Jim Beresford takes good care of his animals The officer turned his attention back to me Dont worry son, Jim therell look after any thats not well, believe meBut he said she was resting and she isnt! I wasnt about to let it go.Have you been on the pier? The second officer gestured behind him Lots of things to do on the pier there is. I used to spend all my time on the pier myself when I was a ladArent you going to do ANYTHING at all then? Frustration began fermenting in a vat of anger inside of me, adding volume and body to my indignation. I stared at the two police officers with utter contempt.Hes a bit rude if you dont mind my saying so madam. I think its a good idea if you perhaps buy him an ice-cream or something before he gets himself into trouble!With that, the two officers turned on their boot-blacked heels and walked across the road towards the town centre.Come on, we need to find your father Donald. Ah, there he is! Lets go, come on, try to forget about itI couldnt forget about it and it completely ruined for me what should have been a really nice day at the seaside!
Brumas(December, 1953)