At a 101 I have slowed down with writing and painting, yet can’t stop. In my mind are small incidents in life that are not worth the space of a blog but are worth mentioning in short pieces even though I may have written about them in the past.
1.
In the RAF I had just crashed a lovely little aeroplane in America and, having knocked out two instruments from the panel with my head, was not at all aware of the circumstances.
In bed at the airfield’s hospital I was visited by the Commanding Officer and Adjutant.
“I suppose you now want to give up flying and return to England”, said the CO. “No Sir, I want to get out of this bed and FLY”, say I. As the Officers left the ward, the CO was heard to say to the Adjutant: “That’s just the kind of young airman we want in the Air Force”.
All continued well with my budding RAF career.
2.
I was staying with friends in Norfolk, and, on a particular summer’s day, was asked to be the crew on a “Brown Boat” with a rather grand lady Commodore of the sailing club as Captain. She and I set out. “Free the weather sheets”, she commanded. I somehow muddled through.
3.
In California my film prop-master son Robert fired off a real gun by mistake. It was reported to the LA Police who, if called out, have to make an arrest leading directly to jail.
There were communal showers in prison and he recalled that if a piece of soap fell to the ground in one you did not pick it up!
4.
My grandmother, a diminutive lady of some presence, was leading my mother along a pavement in London’s Soho district when their progress was thwarted by a gang of young ruffians. Grandmother approached them.“Aside scum”, she commanded. They stood aside.
5.
It was said amusingly in the RAF that mothers would say to their pilot sons: “Fly low and slowly to be safe” - two very dangerous ways to fly an aeroplane.
6.
“Children steal your life”.
7.
For a happy life you should never be too rich or too famous. But a little bit of each works out very well.
8.
Everything is missable.
9.
Some people, when they are aware of my age, ask me: “What are your secrets?”.
So I have a standard reply which invariably ends with hoots of laughter. I reply that of the greatest importance is to have a partner with whom you can laugh a lot. Next I recommend garlic. I don’t know why. Third comes red wine - of which I have partaken some in my life. And last - A good sex life.
10.
In January of 1946, as a young RAF Pilot Officer, now grounded because the war had just ended, I was posted to Pembrey in South Wales, for a reason I cannot recall except that it involved a Spitfire testing rocket-launching mechanisms near Pemdine Sands.
I was invited to the home of a coal miner and his family.
Coal was then strictly rationed, but not for a coal miner.
All I remember about this house was its blacked, cast-iron kitchen range that heated the house, dried the clothes and was the sole means of cooking.
But it was the fire glowing in its grate that caught my eye - perfect in the symmetry of its red coals. Then I saw why it appeared so orderly and perfect. Each piece of coal was placed on it by hand with such reverence that it could have been the conducting of a religious ceremony.
11.
A fellow officer at Pembrey had a mother who, through illness, was quite unable to communicate. He was in contact with her through spiritualism. He asked if I might accompany him to a meeting in a public hall. Why not?
He took a seat in front near to the medium and I at the back of the crowd hidden away as much as possible as a sceptical observer.
He received no message, but I was singled out, as a crowd parted in front of me to be told that I had health concerns on my right hand side. But I was young and very fit. So I dismissed this information as hocus pocus.
Sometime later, at another RAF station, it was so cold that with no coal we had to forage the hedgerows for combustable material for our Nissen hut stove.
I was soon given a medical and Xray on being demobbed, to be told that I had TB in the right lung.
No comments:
Post a Comment