A grey autumn day

It was a grey autumn day that Maud Clements died in the nursing accompanied by her few meager possessions; they were a grubby torn bible, a faded photo of her late husband and some chipped and cracked china dishes that had accompanied her from her last home. She had told her carers that they were special as they reminded her of Jack her husband. Her family came after they had been told she had gone and saw what little of her life remained; they shook their heads and told the manager, “Just get rid of it all, it’s just rubbish”. The manager nodded politely and instructed the cleaner to dispose of everything as the family wanted nothing. Amanda Perry, the cleaner collected the few pieces of Maud’s life placed them in a cardboard carton and set off for the trash bins ready to dump the lot. As Amanda dropped the grubby, torn and broken items in the bin her eyes glimpsed one little dish of a courting couple; on the back Maud had stuck a label which read, “Just like Jack and me” so she slipped it in the pocket of her uniform.

                                                  A grey autumn day

                                                Unforgotten memories

                                                  As love lingered on

Image found at www.etsy.com

Skipping by

I remember the nineties
My grandparents did too
Many more years before

Yes looking back can be fun
But there's sadness too
Yearning for days of yore

We were spritely as young fawns
Laughing kissing more too
Pleasure forevermore

Now the years go skipping by
Words, numbers mixed up too
Now that I am fourscore

For everything we have gained
So much is lost too...so
Live your life to the core

Image by Maria de Bruyn found at www.mybeautifulworld.com

Recollections of a warped mind (No 11)

7) Victory in Europe 1945 despite my brother’s interference

War eventually came to an end in May 1945. It lasted longer for our troops in the Far East of course, but the euphoria of victory in Europe was such that we now thought we were invincible. The newspapers had sparingly been providing us with news for a year or two with much being said about the Second Front for far too long. The first front of course was the horrific war being waged by Germany against the Russians. The Russians implausibly were on our side only because they were fighting the Germans. They were our allies for the duration of the war but not much long after. It was a marriage of convenience and it was this hypocrisy that opened my eyes to the political machinations of men in power even at such an early age. The Second Front was avoided by the western allies (Britain, its colonies and dominions and the United States and the few other countries that had not been overrun by Hitler and wanted to be involved in the War). Britain certainly did not want a second front if it meant that hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were going to die on European soil as had happened in the First World War. The Americans didn’t want a second front unless they could see some distinct advantage for themselves when it was all over. So the war dragged on through 1941 to 1943 whilst the Russians were slowly wearing down the German fighting machine and using up all their men and material resources. The allies had plans of course but were reluctant to put them in place. Eventually the not too secret invasion was arranged. It was too hard to hide the massive build up of troops and equipment in Southern England in the spring of 1944, so they built huge dummy camps and vehicles and placed them in and around the Southern Counties to confuse the enemy reconnaissance. The real invasion force made their way down to the channel coast by various means for weeks on end over the roads and lanes of Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. They were quite obvious, the convoys streamed continuously night and day through the towns and villages, tearing up the roads, keeping us awake at night and us boys inattentive during the day at school as we heard them pass the school’s front wall.

One evening my brother Bryan produced with pride a detailed map of Southern England which had fallen from a tank grinding through the town earlier that day. He had obviously whisked it quickly out of sight and left the poor tank commander to figure how to get down to Portsmouth Harbour ‘blind’. We didn’t hear of any missing tanks on the news but they wouldn’t have told us anyway. I like to imagine this lone tank lost in the West Country perhaps at Barnstaple not knowing where he was going all because Bryan wouldn’t give the map back. The invasion took place regardless and Field Marshall Montgomery had great difficulty advancing across Normandy with one tank short but eventually the battle was won and victory was assured.

In later years after the war, Montgomery settled in a delightful house at Isington Mill near Alton in Hampshire. He used to drive in his old Rolls Royce to Alton Post Office in the High Street, to collect his aged pension there. I only saw him once face to face and the glare he gave me made me feel sure that he knew where that map had ended up!

Recollections of Warped Mind (No. 7)

Mr. Chamberlain brings us the good news from Munich 1938.

I can honestly say that despite my tender years I was aware of the Second World War. My war was however coloured somewhat by the daily dose of propaganda on the radio or wireless as we knew it then and the daily papers. This information or misinformation had been served up to the masses daily from well before the war began. Quite by chance some sixty or more years later I had given me a British weekly magazine called Picture Post. It was the edition that celebrated the return from Munich of Mr. Chamberlain the Prime Minister of Great Britain, who had achieved what he thought was meaningful negotiations with Herr Hitler the Chancellor of Germany, over the Czechoslovakia problem. Czechoslovakia was a small, made up nation formed at the end of the First World War in 1919 from part of the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Chunks of the losing nations were joined together to create a composite of nationalities in the border region between Germany and Hungary. There were Czechs and Slovaks of course, but within the boundaries there were minorities of other peoples. I won’t use the term ‘race’ in case you think me racist. There were Poles and Magyars and Gypsies (or Romany) and not the least, Germans.

Czechoslovakia was an excellent example of peaceful coexistence of differing nationalities. It was comparatively rich in minerals and had a well developed industry. The Skoda motor works being a case in point.

Happiness and contentment are all very well in themselves but never let anyone know you feel this way. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he looked around Europe to see if anyone was happy and he noticed that the Czech people were looking pretty pleased with themselves. So he thought he would put a stop to that by demanding that the happy Germans living in Czechoslovakia should have the right to be happy Germans in Germany, so long as they stayed where they were and where they lived became part of Germany.

These thoughts of Hitler’s clearly became a crisis in the minds of those ‘good’ nations such as Britain and France that wanted to keep everything in Europe and the world for that matter just as it was. They needed to discuss the problem with Hitler. So the leaders of France and Britain decided the fate of little Czechoslovakia at a meeting in Munich and agreed to slices of that country being handed to Germany. This was the Sudetenland.

Incidentally no one invited the Czech prime minister to the talks but those that did take part emerged with smiles on their faces. The Czech government wisely accepted that they had no control over their own country. War had been averted. In hindsight this was patent nonsense. It had given Hitler a chance to assess the resolve of the Western powers and they proved to be lacking in this regard. Hitler marched into the Sudetenland and occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in a very short time to the silence of the Western ‘powers’.

I was blissfully unaware of this crisis, as my advisors had left me woefully ill-informed. Like the rest of Europe, except for the Czechs that is, I slept peacefully in my cot and was mindless of the dragon that had been unleashed.

Recollections of a warped mind (No. 6)

Me and Mrs. Wallace Simpson

Now there isn’t a lot I can say about King Edward Eighth and the love of his life Mrs. Wallace Simpson. The problem being that almost no one knew what was going on. People in those days did not have the suspicious minds that we have today. A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse as the saying goes. The British press were obliged to keep their traps shut about the romance, whilst the foreign press had a field day. There was honour amongst the press barons then. Not that we should give them any applause. In late 1936 when the story just had to come out because the King chose abdication “for the woman I love,” the British papers had for several years systematically censored out all reference to the future king’s affair.

Truth it is said is the first casualty of war. So the British people of which I was one, albeit only a few months old, were kept in the dark. Everybody of course had an opinion after the event. This was particularly the case because King Edward was a lovable man. He was the Brad Pitt come Princess Diana of the day. He visited depressed areas, talked to the unemployed and promised something would be done. People loved him for that despite the fact that he could in fact do nothing. The only thing to alleviate unemployment and poverty at that time was to have another war. And that wasn’t too far around the corner. Edward was a weak, misled and gullible fool and clearly none of his lady friends up to that time had the ability to make him think he was the opposite. When Wallace Simpson came on the scene she had that peculiar drive and ambition of an American, to be able to persuade him, incorrectly as it turned out, to assert himself and make his own decisions. The British had centuries before decided to behead kings who made up their own minds. Parliament was in charge through the elected government and the lovers soon found this out to their cost. Nowadays nobody gives a toss and who is sleeping with who, that is quite is immaterial. The sin was that he was king and as such had to marry a suitable person, with the right pedigree. Wallace Simpson had had two previous husbands, the last of which had been a house guest of the future king a few years previous. To embark on a marriage with her would have been making a morganatic marriage which was not good for the monarchy and the belief that kings of Britain were defenders of the faith, chosen by God and many other things besides, which made the populace love and adore them. So he went and lived a life of idle loneliness with his lover and performed no useful function for the rest of his life.

One sidelight to this sorry affair was the decision to have the coronation for his brother Albert (Bertie) on the same day regardless of the crisis and furore that was taking place. Thus on the 12th May 1937, I received, being a one year old at that time, a silver spoon to commemorate the event. The new king took the name George presumably because Albert the name of his revered great grand-father (at least by Queen Victoria) was too sacred to be recycled. Luckily the spoon had the right king’s portrait on it together with the word ‘Farnham’ my birthplace, engraved in the spoon itself. For years this was a treasured possession of mine and I even added it to the family silver when Maureen and I were married. It has disappeared now of course. Three children all needing to have spoons to dig in the garden over a number of years meant that it is probably laying buried awaiting archaeological discovery centuries hence. But I doubt if it will tell of my relationship with Mrs. Simpson.

Recollections of an warped mind (No 5)

What did you do in the war Daddy?

This was once an appeal to the not so patriotic to do their duty when the country was in peril. The child’s simple question would be answered by the parent feeling guilty or responsible and would thus be persuaded to do their bit for King and Country.

I thought it might be amusing to ask the question of myself or at least very similar ones, to determine what I was doing at momentous times, and how I can now account for my actions or lack of action at the time. Clearly it may be necessary for me to be economical with the truth, and bend facts and dates and events to suit my own personal history. That is the history that I remember.

Was I there? Well if not I was pretty damned close!

I play my part in the Spanish Civil War

Having been born on the 4th May 1936, the Spanish Civil was raging at this time. Looking back, had I had my current political inclinations as I emerged from the womb, no doubt I too would have been marching off, in my nappies to join the International Brigade, in order to defend the fledgling democracy that was too far left politically for it’s own good, in a country which unhappily nursed the Inquisition a few centuries previously to force the populace to conform to the unreasonable demands of the Catholic Church of the time. Well I can say that now but in truth I have always tried to avoid conflict particularly when a stranger you don’t know wants to put you in uniform and carry a rifle while he sits at home drinking his scotch while contemplating your next move. You move all right because you are a puppet on a string, with a stupid smile on your face because it has been painted there by propaganda.

History shows us time and time again that good does not prevail, so General Franco won in Spain, hundreds of foreign volunteers were blacklisted and his dictatorship lasted over thirty years. History also shows us that good does get a chance every now and again but good by its nature is weak, because it is reasonable, benevolent, considerate and anxious to please everyone. Bad, or the forces of evil, on the other hand is the opposite and by its unreasonableness, inhumanity, blindness and desire to please only those in control will be in power more often that not.

So what did I do at the time?

I cried. But my parents thought that I only had a dirty nappy.

Recollections of a warped mind No 1

Many years ago I fell in love with Connie. No, that is not true, I lusted after her. She was young enough to have been my daughter. She was a young tracer in the Drawing Office where I ran a section in a now defunct government department. She was assigned to me and in the days of very short mini skirts she used to attract the attention of all in the office when she worked on her drawing board, getting off of her stool, standing up and bending over to reach the top of the plan she was working on while the eyes of males around admired her pretty frilly briefs and curvy youthful thighs. Once she was mine to supervise, I tactfully told her of the distraction she was causing. She was surprised, but not offended by my mentioning this and somehow she seemed to bond to me after that. I became a second father figure to her so I alone was allowed to admire her legs and bum and sweet face and also to share all her confidences. These included the disaster of her leaving home to share some digs with a girlfriend as well as learning that the reason for leaving home was the impending split up of her parents. Later I had to enthuse over the news of her new boyfriend at Uni and their future plans culminating in her marriage where both my wife and I were invited to the ceremony. I said to her before the big day “I’ll be there but you won’t see me”. She looked at me puzzled “Of course I will” she retorted. Later after the honeymoon when she returned to work she had to admit she hadn’t seen me.

Her skirts however became longer. She still needed to talk about her life though; so their day to day problems were brought to me, such as the need to find a decent flat for themselves; the frustration with her husband’s little foibles such as how scruffy he was and their grand plans of building their own house in the foothills outside of town and him starting his own business. I was always there to nod and sympathise and let her give vent to life’s frustrations.

When she talked to me it was ostensibly about work but I could tell when it was personal when she would plonk the plans she was working on onto to my desk and draw up a seat and get close enough so no one else could hear what we were saying. I must confess as I perused her work and checked it, my hand would occasionally stray and touch her hand as we discussed everything under the sun other than plans she was working on. This was a very pretty hand, albeit with a wedding ring on. She never withdrew it straight away but contemplated our joint misbehaviour and then gradually took that temptation away. This was never done in such a way as to say don’t do it next time which was just as well as fingers were touched again on many occasion.

Many, many years later as I recall those years, I wonder what on earth I was thinking about. However when you come into contact with a beautiful person who you can bond with and clearly like each other, how do your show them? I never kissed her other than one peck on the cheek when she was heavily pregnant as I presented her with a gift from the office on her last day at work.

I know what I was thinking about. It was telling someone that they were special. She knew I cared for her and thought she was beautiful. She also knew that she could trust me to keep what she said to myself alone. Even that time she said “You don’t think I am getting varicose veins on my legs do you?” showing me some flesh above the knees. I must confess I never even told my wife that.