Memories of childhood during the Second World War.
Of school and family life and military service. A British expatriate looks back at his own yesterdays.
If you scroll down the page past the posts you will find some old photos from my past.
1
Some thoughts behind the story
This tale is vaguely true; or as true as my memory is after so many years. It is also subject to that selection that permits one to only write about what one wishes to be remembered. That which has been put in the dustbin should stay there.
I had a very happy childhood. Schooling was tough, but nobody ever said it ought to be happy. Happy childhood is a phrase that applied to me. Happy schooldays is an oxymoron. We were all in it together and took it the way we were meant to. After all our elders had all been through the First or Second World Wars. There was nothing wishy-washy about them.
The army was also tough but I had deliberately chosen an elite regiment so there was nothing to complain about.
I was a rebel. Not one who wanted to overthrow the system. I believed in the system. I just refused to be dominated or to lick boots or to kow-tow or whatever expression one wishes. I was and have always remained independent. The powers that be neither liked nor accepted that. There was the source of all my problems.
This story ends when I am about twenty-five. It begins of course with my first memories.
Bannockburn £5m will put visitors in the heat of the battle - Times Online
Bannockburn £5m will put visitors in the heat of the battle
A new installation at Bannockburn will use cutting-edge digital technology to recreate the drama of the battle in which Robert the Bruce and his fewer than 9,000 men used little more than spears and strategy to crush an English army twice their size.
For six years from 1955 Britain ran a secretive programme to school young men in Chinese before shipping them off to the Far East to spy. Only now has their story become public.
Girl Guides centenary marked in Royal Mail stamp issue |
 The commemorative sheet went on sale on Tuesday
The range of activities undertaken by Girl Guides- the UK's largest youth organisation for girls and young women - features on a new set of stamps. The Royal Mail has issued them to commemorate 100 years of Girl Guides. |
Signing on centenary: 100 years on the dole - Times Online
Signing on centenary: 100 years on the dole
What do Tracey Emin, Duncan Bannatyne and Jim Knight have in common? They have all received unemployment benefit
One of the harsh lessons of any recession is that no one is safe — as Jim Knight, the Employment Minister, would be first to agree, having been jobless himself during the Eighties. “It wasn’t a very joyful experience,” the 44-year-old MP recalls. “You had to go to two offices to sign on back then, which was mad, and you queued up to find staff standing behind Perspex screens, just like images everyone remembers from The Full Monty.”
Tony Blair can still pull a crowd, only this time they were baying with raw anger - Times Online
Nearly 13 years ago I stood on the streets of Whitehall among a loud and boisterous crowd exclusively — obsessively — focused on one man.
Yesterday, on the same streets outside the Chilcot inquiry, another crowd was gathered, with the same focus, the same barriers, the same heavy police presence and even, I suspect, some of the same faces.
Once again helicopters chattered overhead. But instead of cheering the election of Tony Blair, this crowd was baying for his blood.
Last of Great Escape camp PoWs return for recreated long march - Times Online
It is 20 degrees below freezing and the diesel in the engines of the Royal Air Force lorries is turning into jelly. To the former prisoners of war who have come to Poland to commemorate the 65th anniversary of their forced march from Stalag Luft III — scene of the Great Escape — the conditions are familiar in all but one detail.
Ayrshire businessman has to pay through the nose for using tissue at the wheel
A businessman has been fined £60 and had his driving licence endorsed for blowing his nose while stuck in a traffic jam.
Michael Mancini, a furniture restorer from Prestwick, Ayrshire, was given the fixed penalty and docked three penalty points after leaning over and pulling out a paper handkerchief to wipe his nose when stuck in Ayr High Street. Mancini said that his van was in neutral with its handbrake on, and that he was flabbergasted when he was signalled into a parking bay by an approaching policeman.
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