JUST ABOUT FULL CIRCLE.
From 2011 to
date.
So far as national events are concerned, little has affected us
since 2010 (not even the 2012 Olympics) and I begin to understand why
many elderly people become conservative 'with a small c.'
My
Leader, originally - like me - a 'small w' working class youngster,
has over the years become - like me - rather more of a 'small m'
middle class adult. It has not been a deliberate or snobbish
transformation and, praise be, it has nothing to do with politics.
Put it down to age and a changing world. Maureen has good friends in
all walks of life now, has long been a member of Newport, Isle of
Wight, W.I., is one of the pals in a lovely little quilting and
sewing group and - though she seldom mentions it - is a trained
counsellor.
I lunch once a month with a group consisting
mainly of retired police and HMRC officers. A good crowd. My
individual friends are few and cherished. In my working life I didn't
do all that badly for a bloke whose only learning qualifications were
an army first class certificate in four subjects (one of them map
reading), an ability to read Morse code at quite a high speed and an
Oxford GCE in English. Might have done better had I been less
outspoken. C'est la vie.
IN GENERAL:
The world now is worlds away
from the world of my youth.
The education available to working
class children in this country in the nineteen thirties was
elementary i.e. academically basic and geared to an artisan future.
Adult men would usually work for the same firm from apprenticeship to
retirement. Women kept house and brought up families. Marriages in
poor homes lasted for life, good or bad; divorce was a stigma and
there was not the money to pay for one anyway.
The upper crust talked
posh, class distinction was manifest and it was not uncommon for a
middle class home to carry a sign saying No Hawkers No Circulars and
an arrow directing tradesmen away from the front door to the
Tradesman's Entrance.
We were a narrow, bigoted, insular,
irreverently humorous race of people who, with few exceptions, “knew
their place.” We were also an empire-building little nation that
punched far above its weight. Our 'civilizing' presence burst, like
boils of condescension, on countries all over the world. The people
of those countries became citizens of the great British Empire (like
it or - more often - not) and we...well ...we were Great Britain. Top
of the heap.
Nobody foresaw the future. Empires do not last. In an
occupied country the native population understandably resents foreign rulers and cannot wait to drive them out. When they
eventually do go, those who collaborated with them (and any children of
that collaboration) can expect a bleak future unless they, too, go;
or even, sometimes, when they do. But countries (America? China?
Russia?) cannot resist building empires , if only by extending their
borders.
Lessons have never and will never be learned. And I really
must stop watching Indian Summers on Channel 4.
ON A HAPPIER NOTE.
Jean and Ian Dillow.
It must have been in 1989 that I last saw Ian
and Jean. Ian and some of his Wessex RHA colleagues did me the honour
of a farewell lunch before I retired my Link magazine typewriter and
said goodbye forever to the political ping pong of the NHS. Thanks to
this technology lark, Ian and I have kept in touch and a few months
ago came to the sensible decision that we should meet up again before
infirmity or the Grim Reaper elected otherwise.
We chose Portsmouth
as our location and the 7th
of
April as the best day.
Ian wisely sent me the above picture so that
Maureen and I would have faces we might recognize when we disembarked
at Pompey.
It worked a treat. We picked them out instantly on an
otherwise empty Harbour Station, had lunch at The Gunwharf and spent
a pleasant afternoon chatting and getting to know each other (Mo had met
neither of them before). We then explored our surroundings, shopped and
reminisced.
All in all, we later reflected, it was a great day and
well worth the boat trip. Ian came close to agreeing. It was, he later affirmed, almost worth the train fare from Romsey.
(I always said he was born to be an editor)
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