Where is it, exactly?
Sometimes it’s easy to get confused.
Is it Crete?
Is it Cyprus?
Is it the Island of Rhodes?
No. It’s just Brighton on a fine autumn morning.
nichollsretirementproject
Don’t Panic!
I really shouldn’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations – but in many of the seating areas on the Norwegian Prima, we had little choice. The ship was built for cruising around the Caribbean rather than ploughing through the North Atlantic, heading for Iceland. Consequently at least half of the seating accommodation was on the outside decks, which when you are 60 degrees north of the equator and in the lashing Atlantic rain, is rather less than enticing.
All of which meant that for the entirety of our cruise, indoor space was at a premium and personal space rather limited. As I sat down with my book one morning, I overheard one fellow passenger proudly telling the small group sitting around him “Of course, you know that George Clooney plays at my golf club, don’t you?”
He didn’t actually mention whether or not he had ever spoken to the famous film star, but, nevertheless, his audience seemed immensely impressed by the association.
I was then treated to a conversation between two women, also sitting well within earshot, bemoaning the lack of choice amongst the various Chardonnays on offer in one of the ship’s numerous restaurants.
Having dealt with the paucity of Chardonnay choices, they turned their attention and their disgust towards the almost spotless 20 ft square picture window that gave them an uninterrupted view over the passing ocean.
An errant seagull had left the most discreet deposit in the corner of the window. How could the ship’s management allow a situation like that to prevail? Outrageous!
To clean these windows, – and there were about twenty of them along the front of the ‘observation lounge’ – would have required the use of some kind of gantry, which presumably would only have been available in port. It did occur to me that one solution might have been to find a small boy, a wet sponge and a long rope, but, on reflection, I decided not to suggest this to the indignant ladies in case they decided to take me seriously and suggest it to the captain.
In any case, my idea had one major flaw. Finding a young boy to carry out this task would have been very difficult. The average age of the passengers on the ship must have been somewhere north of 65. Of the 2000 passengers, I think I saw two teenagers, two younger children and one baby. All were being well guarded by their parents!
Another brilliant idea bites the dust!
When we joined the ship in Southampton we were told where our ‘assembly point’ would be, in case of an emergency. It was on the Deck 8. If the ship were to be in danger of sinking, a siren would sound and we should make our way down to Deck 8 as quickly as possible. We should not, of course, run or use the lifts. At the assembly point we would be issued with lifebelts and led to the lifeboats.
Well, call me a worrier, but our cabin, sorry, ‘stateroom’, was on the deck 12. The pictures below may give the reader an impression of the number of cabins on each deck and the length of the corridors to be traversed as the sirens howled. There were three more decks above us.
So in the event of the dreaded siren sounding, some 1500 passengers and staff would disgorge onto the nearest staircases in a state of some excitement, not to say, terror! Those with mobility issues would soon block the stairs and landings and what would happen to the numerous mobility scooters, walking frames and sticks is anyone’s guess. I had this vision of the more able-bodied passengers clambering over the bodies of their less able fellows in their rush to assure themselves of a seat in a lifeboat. Deck 8 was a long way down!
Perhaps we shouldn’t have worried. The Norwegian Prima was a brand-new ship and this was its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. What could possibly go wrong? The problem was that I couldn’t help remembering another famous ‘unsinkable’ cruise liner that set sail for New York a hundred or so years ago. I took comfort from the fact that our ship must have had all kinds of modern technological wizardry not available to the captain of the ill-fated Titanic. In any case, thanks to the current state of global warming, our chances of meeting an iceberg were not great!
Not exactly surrounded by PLUs*
We’d never been on a cruise before.
Well, that’s not strictly true. You could say that we cruised back from Kuala Lumpar on the CMA/CBM Bougainville at the end of our VSO years in Papua New Guinea. The difference is that, on that occasion, we sailed with two other passengers and 18,000 shipping containers. Such a story would have been unlikely to impress many of the 2000 passengers with whom we cruised across the Atlantic on the enormous ocean-going liner, the Norwegian Prima.
When I originally wrote this entry, we had already been away for six days, including two days moored in Reykjavik. Four days, then, on the open ocean. Our itinerary had had to be changed even before we had left Southampton, because the weather gods, in a fit of pique, had decided to vent their rage on the Shetland Islands. Norwegian Prima, in turn, decided that discretion was the better part of valour and set sail in the opposite direction, taking us along the south coast of England, past Ireland and off into the grey and chilly wastes of the North Atlantic.
The two days moored in Reykjavik were fun, although the city itself was not terribly exciting. As we walked into the centre of town, all we could see was huge, square and modern office blocks bearing the names of banks, shipping lines and insurance companies. We thought that eventually we would find the charming, original, cobble-streeted town centre. There wasn’t one. Only later were we to learn why. More of that anon.
Anyway, back to the boat, – sorry, ship, – sorry, cruiser. After six days, I was beginning to feel as if I had been trapped in a floating American Republican Party convention. Whilst in Reykjavik we were due to go on a shore excursion to see some of Iceland’s spectacular scenery. Even before we got as far as boarding our bus, we were treated to a fellow passenger from the US sharing, at some length and loudly, his concern that Hurricane Ian, which was approaching Miami at the time, might damage one or other, or possibly both, of his cabin cruisers. We felt grateful that this was not something that we had to worry about.
The excursion set off out of Reykjavik, visiting an impressive geyser that spewed boiling water and steam out of the ground every twenty minutes or so.
Eventually our bus load of fellow travellers was disgorged at a restaurant for lunch. Linda and I found ourselves randomly allocated to a table where there were already six Americans deep in conversation about the cruise, how it compared to other cruises and how Norwegian performed in comparison with other cruise lines.
We sat quietly as the conversation went on. One of our fellow lunch guests was an extremely large and imposing man with opinions to match. He was probably about the same age as us but what might be described as ‘morbidly obese’. He was saying how pleased he was that the door to the shower in his first-class cabin was extra wide and opened outwards to allow him access. This comment was greeted with general approval around the table and led on to an animated discussion amongst all six of our fellow travellers about the various levels of ‘Loyalty Tiers’ that were available on the cruise.
Apparently if you have completed 150 nights on a Norwegian Cruise Line ship you become a ‘Sapphire’ passenger. 350 days sailing makes you a ‘Diamond’ passenger. (I think we were ‘Dross class’ passengers.) It was clear that both levels were represented around the table.
Sapphire Class passengers are entitled to certain perks including free laundry, as many free chocolate-covered strawberries as they can eat, dinner with the ship’s officers and an extra carton of water – every day!
Diamond Class passengers enjoy all of the above plus priority entry into the theatre and into the more exclusive restaurants, exclusive cocktail parties and an extra-special ‘Sail and Sustain Mixology Experience’, which, I understand, is an alcoholic, cocktail-based activity!
There was also an Ambassador Class, but I didn’t dare ask what perks were attached to this. My guess is that it entitles you either to sexual favours with the captain or the right, at the end of the cruise, to keep the boat and moor it somewhere off the Florida Keys with your other two yachts.
Back at our lunch table, the conversation had moved on to American football and one of the my new American friends said that he had given up watching football “Since all of this ‘woke’ nonsense started!” He was referring to the practice of players ‘taking the knee’ at the start of matches as a symbol of opposition to racism. I exchanged a glance with Linda and bit my lip.
Then came the Rubicon. As lunch was coming to an end, one of our new companions, in hushed and solemn tones, offered condolences on the death of our Queen. I accepted the sentiment graciously, hoping that the conversation would move on to other topics. Then he said, very solemnly, “You must have been so upset at the news!”
I couldn’t help myself. The time for the fight-back had come. I pointed out that whereas I had great respect for the Queen and what she had done for the country over her long reign, I was not particularly devastated at her death. She was, after all, 96 years old. It wasn’t exactly unexpected that she should die and at least she lived long enough to be able to accept Boris Johnson’s resignation!
Eyebrows raised. Further fuelling the incredulity around the table, I said that now that the Queen had died, and in a country where millions of people are suffering financial hardship and are dependent on food banks to feed their children, I saw absolutely no reason why our antiquated, unelected and hugely expensive monarchy should continue. I pointed out that there are many countries that manage to make their way in the world without having to tug their collective national forelock to an over-privileged, over-numerous, sprawling royal family that places itself above everyone else and for whom nobody has voted. The United States and Germany were two prime examples. The table went quiet.
Lunch came to a merciful end and we were able to return to the bus.
Linda was so impressed by my performance and my ability to make friends and influence people that she could hardly speak!
* PLU = People Like Us
Joining the SKI-Club.
I’ve only really had one encounter with the world of skiing – and it was not a happy
experience!
A little over twenty years ago, – around the beginning of the 20th century – I was in the very
early days of my teaching career at the Portslade Community College in Brighton.
Unbeknown to me, one of the PE staff had organised a skiing trip to Austria for fifty or so
kids, (or ‘students’, as I should now call them.) Expectations had been raised, money had been
paid and then, for reasons that I never discovered, the teacher concerned was
unceremoniously sacked and immediately shown the door. No-one would discuss the
reasons for her dismissal, a topic that was only talked about in hushed tones and in quiet
corners but the cancellation of the trip was the talk of the staff room.
At that time, I was the Head of Modern Languages in the school and the senior German
teacher. Apart from imparting to my students the unending delights of such things as verb
conjugation, noun genders, adjective agreement and errant German word order, I saw it as
my role to expose my students, as much as possible, to German life and culture and to
try to counteract some of the negative stereotypes that were still rife in our school more
than fifty years after the Second World War.
And here was a trip to a German-speaking country and a chance for fifty kids from the
‘wrong end’ of Brighton to experience a country, a people and a culture different from their
own, whilst at the same time learning a new skill.
For those students, albeit a small minority, who were actually learning German, it was an opportunity for them to see that the language wasn’t just another subject to be learned in school but was a living language that real people spoke in real situations and in everyday life. Even bus drivers and shopkeepers and little children could speak it and they didn’t seem to struggle with it at all!
And the whole trip was all about to be cancelled. I offered to take it on!
Although I knew Germany quite well, having lived there for more than eighteen months as
part of my studies, I had hardly visited Austria and I had certainly never been skiing – nor
ever wanted to! I could never see the attraction of sliding down a beautiful, snow-covered mountainside on a couple of thin plastic planks, at great risk to life and limb when, with decent pair of boots, you could walk peacefully down the same mountain, appreciating the views and arriving at the bottom with limbs intact.
Many of the kids had also never been skiing. A number of them had never even been out
of Brighton so we organised a couple of sessions at a local dry ski slope. (I didn’t even
know that such things existed!) Most of the students took to this training like ducks to
water. I didn’t! There is a big difference between being 16 and immortal and being a few
years past 50! Over the many long years since I had been 16 I had developed a strong
instinct for survival and for keeping my bones unbroken and all in the right configuration.
We set off for Mauterndorf in Austria, a journey of some 22 hours.
There was one boy on the trip called James. He was about fifteen years old and was one of the kids who had hardly seen the world beyond East Sussex. His mother had been in hospital with cancer and he himself had ended up in another ward of the same hospital after crashing his bike. His father had had to divide his time moving between the two
wards during visiting hours. James’s injuries were not too serious and he was soon discharged. His mother died.
For a while it was unsure whether James would still take part in the trip which was due to
take place a few weeks after his mother’s death. Eventually his dad agreed that he should
go and James seemed relieved to have something else to think about.
Having reached Austria after nearly 20 hours of travelling, following an unfortunate mechanical incident somewhere in darkest Kent, we stopped for a ‘comfort break’ at a convenient service station. We stood in the warm morning sunshine, overlooking a verdant Alpine valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains. James turned to me and, with total awe in his voice, said “This is well beautiful, Sir!” With a lump rising in my throat, all I was able to say was “Indeed it is, James. Indeed it is!”
On our the first morning on the slopes we all had to be fitted with our skis. When it came to
me, the instructor explained that when someone is over 50, which I was, the skis would
need to be adjusted to ensure that they would detach more easily in case of need. This
would lessen the risk of the pre-geriatric skier breaking an ankle or a leg as he hurtled down
the slopes. I was not reassured.
I spent most of the week pottering around on the training slopes, mainly concentrating on
learning how to stop, rather than on how to go faster, which seemed to be the main
preoccupation of most of my students. Schneepflug! Schneepflug! Snowplough!
Sixteen-year-olds, I discovered, have no fear.
On the last day of our week-long stay, the frightfully macho ski instructor suggested that
we all go up to the ‘Mittelstation’, so that the students could show off their new-found skills
on the way down. Why? Why?
As the teacher in charge, I concluded that it would send all the wrong signals if I let my
students disappear off up the mountain, leaving me still sliding around on the training
slopes or sitting comfortably in the café at the bottom. I therefore decided, much against
my own better judgement, to include myself in the trip to the Mittelstation and to brave the
journey back down to the village.
Not one of my better ideas!
Twelve of us started off from the top of the slope, the ski instructor, ten kids and me.
Within five minutes, the group had split itself in two. The instructor, with nine of the kids,
had flown off down the slope in a flurry of powdery snow, and were quickly out of sight. I
‘Schneepfluged’ my way, very cautiously, down the early part of the slope, trying to keep
control of my skis, my ski poles and my mounting terror!
One girl, sixteen years old but with the maturity of a thirty-year-old, realised that her teacher was somewhat less than competent on his skis and decided that it might be a good idea to stay back to keep an eye on me. Suddenly, the slope veered unexpectedly to the left, as slopes are prone to do. One of my skis followed suit. The other ski – and my knee – didn’t! My skis unlocked themselves and flew off on their own adventure, I found myself spreadeagled in the snow! My young student companion came to an elegant stop just beside me, but not before I had let out a couple of expressions that no sixteen-year-old girl should hear, certainly not from her teacher!
Red-faced, in not inconsiderable pain, and slightly worried that any report of the richness of my industrial language might terminally jeopardise my emergent teaching career, I apologised profusely to the young woman.
“Don’t worry, Sir,” she said, in a voice that showed both composure and compassion, “I’ve
heard it all before.” I sank back into the snow, slightly ashamed but relieved that the threat to my career had receded. (Note: I wonder what that ‘girl’ is doing now. She’ll be in her mid-thirties and will
probably be a brain surgeon or the headteacher of some illustrious private school. I also wonder,
in my quieter moments, if she dines out on the story of the day that she rescued her foul-
mouthed German teacher from the top of a mountain!)
The full horror of the bus journey home, with my knee bandaged, my stock of paracetamol
exhausted and my dignity in tatters, have mercifully receded into the dark recesses of my
memory, so why, I hear you ask, after such misadventure in the Alps, am I so pleased to
be joining a SKI Club?
Well, Linda and I are now in our early seventies and my Linda has had a long-held
dream of sailing into New York, past the Statue of Liberty. We refused to even contemplate
such a trip while Trump was in power, so, just in case the worst happens, he is re-elected
and the United Stares implodes, we thought we ought to take the opportunity to fulfil her
ambition. All of which goes to explain why, as I wrote these lines, we were on a huge passenger liner, somewhere in the middle of the North Atlantic, heading for New York.
So what does this have to do with skiing? Mercifully, absolutely nothing! Never again will I
strap planks of wood onto my dainty feet and go hurtling down a mountainside . No,
this SKI club is one to which I am glad to belong.
SKI, if you haven’t already guessed, is an acronym to describe an activity that people at
our stage of life sometimes engage in.
It stands for ‘Spending the Kids’ Inheritance’, and we’ve made a very good start on it!
Oh Blog! How I have neglected you!
I don’t know why, but I haven’t felt inspired to write a blog entry since the middle of November last year. Perhaps it was the dark nights or the deadening effects of lockdown illustrated by the fact that on New Year’s Eve, on the stroke of midnight, there was no-one out on our street ‘toasting in’ the new year. Or perhaps it is my fault in that I have been so angry over the past two months as the constant torrent of stories have emerged that show our government’s contempt for the suffering that people endured during lockdown. Our political leaders have partied on regardless as they locked the rest of the population down and then have tried to ‘media manage’ their way out of trouble by turning the news agenda in any possible direction to deflect attention away from their behaviour. Migrants crossing the Channel, Prince Andrew’s latest revelations, ‘unreasonable’ Brussels negotiators trying to wreck the Northern Ireland agreement – anything to move the public’s gaze away from what the government has been doing.
Last week we reached the absolute pinnacle of diversionary stories as Downing Street tried to move the headlines away from the various drinks parties, or ‘work events with wine’ that have been taking place under the Prime Minister’s nose . There was a major announcement that the Transport Secretary is going to introduce legislation to limit the number of announcements that can me made on commuter trains! Wow! Thank God we have a Transport Secretary with a vision for the future of Britain!
Senior Conservative politicians are constantly coming on the radio and TV to tell us that we shouldn’t worry about illegal drinks parties taking place around Whitehall when ordinary people couldn’t visit their dying relatives in hospital. We shouldn’t worry about whether our Prime Minister has lied to Parliament or has tried to pull the wool over the eyes of every TV and radio journalist in the country. We should look at the Government’s achievements. The two ‘achievements’ that are always quoted are Brexit and how well the government has dealt with the Covid crisis. So let’s look at these.
Well, we are still waiting to see the benefits of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic has been a god-send to Brexiteers in allowing our politicians to say that it was not their fault that Brexit has achieved absolutely nothing except a shortage of labour in manufacturing and farming, a desperate shortage of staff in care homes, huge queues on the roads into Dover and a worrying deterioration in relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It’s all the fault of the pandemic.
On the coronavirus situation, we are treated every night to an update in the news bulletins which records the number of people who have contracted Covid, how many have died in the last 28 days and how many vaccinations have been carried out. Tory politicians are constantly telling us that our vaccine programme is a ‘world-beater’ and far in advance of any other country. We are also given the figures for the total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic, (currently around 160,000 people). But we have a world-beating vaccination rollout, our government proudly stresses, so we needn’t worry.
What is never mentioned are the international comparisons on deaths from Covid, because, as we know, ‘comparisons are odious’.
If we look at the number of deaths per 100,000 across Europe, we night see Britain’s performance in a different light. For example: according to John Hopkins University last week, the ‘league table’ for the total number of deaths per 100,000 people in Western Europe looks like this:
Netherlands : 122 per 100,000
Germany: 139
Sweden: 151
Austria: 156
France: 189
Spain: 192
United Kingdom: 227*
Perhaps we shouldn’t shout quite so loudly about how ‘world-beating’ our response to the coronavirus pandemic has been.
Is it any wonder that I haven’t felt much like writing an essentially light-hearted blog recently?
*(recent figures from Oxford University almost completely mirror the John Hopkins totals.)
Nepotism Rules OK!
Every year when we were teenagers, the St Barnabas Youth Club in Swansea used to present some kind of ‘show’ around Christmas time. Often it would be nothing more than a series of plagiarised sketches, stolen from the TV and performed to an audience of indulgent parents. And then we started to get a bit more ambitious and the Christmas show developed into a full blown pantomime.
One such show was ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ a theatrical masterpiece in which I took the unforgettable role of Bill Blowpipe, a performance, indeed a ‘tour de force’, that, I am sure, is still being talked about amongst the theatre-going intelligentsia of Swansea. (For those of you who are familiar with Daniel Defoe’s excellent novel of the same name, you might want to stop reading at this point, as our production of the Crusoe story bore absolutely no resemblance to Defoe’s famous tale.)
I like to think that I was given the leading role of Blowpipe at the tender age of fifteen because of my highly developed acting talents and the subtlety of the interpretation that I was able to bring to the role. Another, less charitable, explanation might have been that I only got the part because my dad was the producer!
For those readers who are not aware of the British tradition of pantomime I should point out that it is a particular form of theatrical performance, mainly performed for children, that usually takes place around Christmas time. Having said that, much of the humour in these shows is aimed at the parents accompanying the children and we are indebted to our French neighbours for the expression ‘double entendre,’ which permeates much of the script of the average panto. The words ‘subtle’ or ‘sophisticated’ have, as far as I know, never been used in the same sentence as the words ‘British pantomime’.
I should also point out that the French also have their own tradition of pantomime, that bears absolutely no resemblance to the British version. French pantomime is a much more artistic, well-crafted and ‘grown-up’ form of entertainment that includes a skilful blending of dance, acrobatics and mime and is aimed mainly at adults. If ever they find themselves, by any misfortune, watching a British pantomime, most French people usually sit in stunned silence and some may end up in need of therapy!
There are several long-held traditions associated with the British pantomime, one of which is the buxom pantomime ‘dame’, who is always played by a man in outrageous costume with heavy make-up and usually a huge wig. As I mentioned, the humour is not subtle!
If the narrative allows, and usually it is subverted to make sure that it allows, the story will include somewhere the appearance of a donkey, or similar dumb animal, played by two poor actors in a heavy, and usually very hot, costume. As the reader may notice from the photo below, the tradition of an actor, or two actors, playing the part of a horse or donkey goes back a long way in theatrical history. In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, even Shakespeare introduced us to the character of Bottom who was transmogrified by Puck into an ass, which must bestow a degree of legitimacy on the practice of introducing donkeys into theatrical performances. Indeed, there is probably a PhD to be written on the Role and Importance of the Ass in English literature and culture.
However, notwithstanding my somewhat contrived link with the Bard of Stratford, no one would describe British pantomime as sophisticated theatre.
The other tradition associated with pantomime, is that of the principal man, in our case, Robinson Crusoe himself, who is almost always played by a woman. See the gallant Robin Hood below.
In the St Barnabas Youth Club’s epic production of Robinson Crusoe in 1965, the title role was played by Linda, who thought she had been given the role because of her highly developed acting talents and the subtlety of the interpretation that she was able to bring to the role. It would be uncharitable to suggest that the fact that she was my girlfriend at the time and that my dad thought that “she had the legs for the part” had anything to do with the casting decision. (Note: I should point out, in my father’s defence, that political correctness had not been invented in 1965!)
So there we were, Linda and me as Robinson Crusoe and Bill Blowpipe, See below!
I should perhaps point out that the beard, that I am so manfully sporting in this picture, was stuck on with glue. It was to be many years before I was able to sport a real beard!
Apart from being an invaluable addition to the world of British theatre, the St Barnabas Youth Club pantomime had a value that transcended even its theatrical excellence. It gave a lot of young people, with differing skills and differing levels of confidence, the chance to get up on a stage and challenge themselves. In all, twenty kids appeared on stage in roles ranging from Man Friday to the Sea Witch to the Pantomime Horse. (How a horse managed to be on Robinson Crusoe’s desert island I will never know! But it did.)
Through taking part in this production and others that followed it, we young people learned how to project our voices and to overcome our fear of standing up in front of an audience. It is perhaps no coincidence that from the cast list of this one show, one of our number ended up running an international non-Governmental Organisation, another became a senior cleric in the Church in Wales, one became a Head of Social Services in the west of England and at least four went on to become successful teachers.
And behind the scenes there were yet more young people who were able to develop skills in a range of areas. For example, there were no fewer than of four people who were responsible solely for the stage make-up, a pretty daunting job when you consider that at least four of the cast, including the future vicar, were supposed to be cannibals. (Note: I should point out that in 1965, ‘blacking up’ was not uncommon in British theatre. Even the Royal Shakespeare Company would think nothing of casting a white actor to play Othello and the BBC ran a very popular programme called the Black and White Minstrels Show for over twenty years before the practice of blacking up (and excluding genuinely black actors) became unacceptable.
There was work for kids with all sorts of skills in putting together a pantomime. Apart from the actors and the make-up department, someone has to operate the stage lights. Someone had to organise the costumes. Someone had to sell the tickets. And someone had to paint the set. And thereby hangs a tale.
As the photo below shows, the set had to portray the lush vegetation on Robinson Crusoe’s island.
One of our number, Vaughan, was quite a reserved young man and was certainly not interested in dressing up and cavorting around the stage. He was, however, quite good at art in school, so he got the job of designing and painting the set. A few of us were enlisted to give him a hand one weekend and for me this was an early lesson in what it meant to work with someone who was naturally talented.
Vaughan sketched out the palm trees and the distant mountain and told us helpers where to daub the different colours of paint. When we had finished the set looked dreadful! We left the stage with our heads bowed. Then Vaughan came along with his paintbrush and dabbed paint here and there in an apparently random fashion. Suddenly the whole set came alive.
Whatever became of Vaughan? Well actually I know the answer to that question. He left the UK many years ago and moved to the United States to an insignificant little town, just outside Los Angeles, called Hollywood, where he made his name as a celebrated film set designer!
Funny how things work out. I think my dad would have been quietly proud of the small role he played in developing the skills of the young people who took part in the St Barnabas Youth Club’s Christmas pantomimes.
Life after the Church Choir.
I recorded in my previous blog entry that I left the choir of St Barnabas Church in Swansea in a fit of righteous indignation following the vicar’s decision to spend unconscionable amounts of money on decorating his church. There were, however, two significant elements to the parish of St Barnabas. one was the church and the other was the youth club. Having stormed out of the church, I am very glad I didn’t storm out of the youth club. If I had, my life would have taken a very different course to the one it eventually took.
“Why is that?” I hear you ask. Good question. Well, it was like this.
The St Barnabas Youth Club was run by Mr Jones, the very mild-mannered curate of the parish. (We never referred to him as the Reverend Jones. Perhaps you don’t get that title until you graduate from the role of curate. Who knows?) The club was held in the church hall every Friday evening.
There was always ping-pong and darts and the rest of our time was usually spent chatting up the girls/boys respectively. From time to time we would have visitors from various organisations to entertain us. I remember when the Bowmen of Gower came to give us an archery demonstration and let us have a try at shooting arrows at a target. On another occasion we were graced with a visit from a woman from Boots the Chemist who came to give a demonstration of make-up techniques. (This was, of course, a ‘girls only’ activity. The days when boys would be comfortable taking part in such an event were still a long way away!)
One week a Barn Dance was organised and Mr Jones invited kids from another youth club in Townhill, which was, and probably still is, one of the rougher areas of Swansea. Big mistake! We well-behaved, middle-class kids from St Barnabas wouldn’t be seen dead in Townhill. Indeed, we wouldn’t have dared step foot in that part of town for fear of being eaten alive by the thugs and hooligans that we were sure inhabited the place.
Seared into the memory was one of the dances where boys and girls were arranged in concentric rings and we all walked around until the music stopped. You were then supposed to carry on with the next part of the dance with whichever partner was facing you. Then you would stop, walk around again and find yourself another partner. I think Mr Jones thought this would be a good way of getting the kids from the two communities to get to know each other. It had the effect of scarring my psyche for life!
I was about 13 years old and as I progressed around the room, the music stopped and I found myself standing opposite a much bigger girl from Townhill. She was probably about sixteen and she proceeded to ‘snog’ me, tongues and all! I was shocked to the core of my being! It still amazes me that I didn’t end up in therapy!
So, given this terrifying early experience, why am I so pleased that I attended St Barnabas youth club. Well, that’s another story!
Going for a Song.
I was a very angelic looking choirboy when I was ten. At least that was what my Mum said.
Every Sunday I would be there in St Barnabas’ Church in Swansea in my red cassock, white surplice with a ruff around my neck, singing my little heart out for the assembled faithful.
Sadly I have no photos of me in this impressive angelic costume to back up my claim. The only picture I can offer you, dear reader, is one taken of me at about the same time during my one and only, and sadly unsuccessful, bid to become an international rock star.
I am standing, on the stage of the Odeon Cinema in Sketty, Swansea, posing for the camera in what, in today’s parlance, might be called a ‘publicity photo shoot’. It was four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon and I had come directly from school in my school uniform, which accounts for the short trousers, scuffed shoes and dirty knees. (The crew cut is a whole other story!)
But back to St Barnabas Church and to my brief and inglorious ecclesiastical career.
Our family was never particularly religious. To this day I believe that my parents put me in the church choir just in order to get me out of the house for a few hours every Sunday morning and evening.
I, in turn, never really bought in to what I saw as the mumbo-jumbo of the services but I quite enjoyed being a member of the choir and exercising my reedy treble voice. I can still remember the sense of untrammelled wickedness I felt whenever the hymn “To be a Pilgrim” appeared on the hymn board. A small sub-group of us cassock-clad, angelic-looking ‘trebles’ would take great delight in singing “To be a grim pill” and then grinning broadly at each other in shared, subversive delight. We never tired of it.
Once of the big disappointments of my life, and the day when I first learned just how perfidious the world of grown-ups could be, was when the BBC came to our church to record an episode of “Songs of Praise” which was, and still is, broadcast nationally every Sunday.
We knew exactly when our moment of fame was due to be broadcast to the nation, but Mr Andrews, our choirmaster, made us promise that we would not stay at home on that Sunday evening to watch ourselves on TV, but would come to Choral Evensong as usual. In return, he said he would organise a private showing of the programme, just for us, at a later date. I am still waiting for that date!
Time passed. I reached my 13th birthday and I was still singing in the choir, Christmas came around, as it does quite regularly. That year, OXFAM was running a Christmas fundraising campaign as a result of which we had, on our mantlepiece at home, a little cardboard collecting box into which we were asked to deposit any spare change we might have to help the world’s poor.
We were five children at home. The oldest would have been just out of college, the youngest hardly out of nappies, my two elder brothers still at home and me in the middle. My mother didn’t work and my father held a junior middle management position in an aluminium factory. Money was tight.
With Christmas approaching, I remember seeing my mother putting what looked like a lot of money into the OXFAM box on the mantlepiece. I asked why she was doing this. It turned out that she was feeling very guilty about the fact that we were preparing to have a special family Christmas dinner while half of the world was going hungry.
At almost exactly the same time, the vicar of St Barnabas Church decided that his church was not grand enough. He decided it needed a ‘reredos’, which is an ornamental screen that stands at the back of an altar.
The reredos cost £3,000. In today’s money that would be £52,000!
I left the choir.
You Turn your Back for Fifty Years and Everything Changes!
At about ten o’clock last night I took our dog out for her evening walk. I bumped into one of our neighbours who was on his way down to the railway station at the bottom of our road to collect his sixteen year old son.
“Has he been to London?” I asked.
“No. He’s just make the journey down from Aberdeen!”
It transpired that my neighbour’s wife and three children had been in the north of Scotland visiting relatives. The young man had decided to abandon his mother and two younger sisters, who were planning to fly home, and to make his own way by train, just for the experience.
“Wow! Good on him,” said I “ A brave thing to do, all on your own, when you’re only sixteen!”
I continued my walk with the dog.
It being a quiet night, I fell to thinking about the young man’s epic train journey and I realised that I had made a similar journey at about the same age, over fifty years ago.
My brother, Andrew, had been living in Aberdeen at the time and, for reasons I cannot now remember, my parents decided to visit him, taking me along with them.
My relationship with my elder brother had always been a bit strained, so I was not keen to prolong my visit any longer than I had to.
Added to that, I was missing my girlfriend, now my wife, Linda, who lived in Swansea in South Wales. I decided to cut short my stay in Aberdeen and make my way back home to Swansea, ahead of my parents.
The distance from Aberdeen to Brighton, which my neighbour’s son had just completed by train, is 595 miles. The distance from Aberdeen to Swansea is 560 miles.
The difference is a mere 35 miles. The other difference is that I hitch-hiked it.
This was, in fact, my second epic hitch-hiking journey. The previous year I had hitched to Lucerne in Switzerland. I had intended to travel with a school friend, but at the last minute, his parents started to get worried and refused to let him travel. I decided to go on my own and my parents gave me the green light.
At that time I had a part-time, after-school job in a chemist’s shop in Swansea, delivering prescriptions to elderly customers. When there were no prescriptions to deliver, I helped out the stock-man behind the scenes in the shop, unpacking goods, pricing them and putting them away in the store room.
The stock-man’s name was Ieuan. When he heard about my proposed journey, he told me that he had visited Lucerne some years previously and had taken the cable-car up to the top of the magnificent Mount Pilatus. The view from the top had been stunning and the experience of standing on the summit of such a huge mountain had made a big impression on him. The Brecon Beacons just didn’t compare.
He gave me a five-pound note and told me that if I ever reached Lucerne, I was to use that money to pay for the cable car up Mount Pilatus. If I failed to reach the mountain, be would expect me return his five pound note.
I was determined that there was no way that I was going to let him have his money back. When I finally got back safely to Swansea some three weeks later, I presented him with my cable-car ticket.
What amazes me now, as I look back at these adventures, is that my parents were happy to let me don my rucksack and without so much as a mobile phone to keep me company, set off into darkest Europe with Ieuan’s five pound note in my pocket. My dad even arranged my first lift in a huge truck from Swansea to Croydon.
After conquering Mount Pilatus, the trip from Aberdeen to Swansea was a walk in the park. What could possibly go wrong?
And the truth is that nothing did go wrong. I returned unscathed from both adventures and went back to school.
How things have changed. I am sure that if either of my children had suggested at the age of sixteen that they wanted to hitch-hike on their own into the middle of Europe or into the furthest reaches of Scotland, there would have been some very serious discussions to be held! The idea that either of my grandchildren would want to undertake such a mad-cap journey when they reach their teens is unthinkable.
And yet, are the dangers of such an enterprise really any greater now that they were in the 1960s? Or is it that we are now so saturated with rolling news, much of it very dramatic and sensationalised, that just wasn’t available fifty years ago? Are we in danger of so scaring the next generation so that they become increasingly risk averse as they grow up?
Either way, it is certainly the case that the kind of adventure that was open to me in the 60’s would probably be unthinkable now. Sad, eh?
Troubling times.
The more I see of Boris Johnson, the more depressed, the more angry – and the more worried- I get.
The jokey, clownish architect of Brexit, who happily had himself photographed during the Brexit campaign supposedly ‘stuck accidentally’ on a zip-wire, brandishing two Union flags, went on holiday yesterday.
He seems to have completely shrugged off any responsibility for the queues of vehicles outside petrol stations all over the country, (because we don’t have enough tanker drivers), the planned culling of thousands of pigs and turkeys, (because we don’t have enough butchers) and the rotting of crops in the fields, (because we don’t have enough agricultural workers to pick them!) Thanks a lot, Brexit!
But at least we have ‘Taken Back Control’ and ‘Got Brexit Done’ and, more importantly, we have finally got rid of all of those pesky foreigners who used to do all of this work for us. Well done, Boris!
So now that we have walked out of the huge EU market on our doorstep, we are, at last, free to make deals with that mighty economic world power on the other side of the world, Australia. Now we can import large quantities of cheap lamb, and effectively undercut our own lamb producers at the same time.. Good move, Boris! Makes us proud to be British.
And there are other worrying trends going on with this government. For example, you almost never see a cabinet minster interviewed on television without them being framed by huge Union Jacks, the national flag that is supposed to represent the ‘unity’ of our increasingly divided nation. This arrogant and divisive Conservative party seems to have appropriated the national flag as its own party symbol, implying that if you are not enthused by this crude display of ‘patriotism’, then you are not being loyal to your own country.
How dare he?
Someone should remind Boris Johnson that, as long ago as 1775, his namesake, Samuel Johnson wrote that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” And so it has turned out to be.
And speaking of scoundrels, but now more seriously, it is perhaps no coincidence that two years ago a new and rather scary far-right party called ‘Patriotic Alternative’ was founded in this country. The party is anti-semitic, anti-LGBT and denies that the holocaust ever took place. It calls for the deportation of “people of migrant descent” and propagates a white supremacist ideology that aims to combat “the replacement and displacement of white British people by migrants”. It has been described as a ‘neo-Nazi’ party, and it claims to have attracted some 15,000 members in its first two years of existence. Other estimates put the membership at nearer to 5,000, but 5,000 neo-Nazis is still 5,000 neo-Nazis.
Its website offers conferences, camping trips, lots of flag waving and men carrying out healthy outdoor physical fitness training. Any of this sound familiar?
Returning to our own government it should be remembered that at a time when people who cannot feed their families are increasingly turning to the ever-growing number of food banks, Johnson’s government has just spent £163,000 on Union flags to frame its ministers when they are on television. Repeat, £163,000 to drape the Conservative party leaders in the national flag.
The last time I can remember a regime whose leaders used every possible opportunity wrap themselves in their national flag, things didn’t end well.
Indeed it ended in the Ruhr being obliterated and Berlin in flames.
nichollsretirementproject 