BROAD THOUGHTS FROM A HOME

Broadly speaking, they are fortunate who live in warm climes

and are not prey to the British inter-family winter sport

of "Pass the Cough."

I caught my current dose in a running pass before, with a neat kick, I transferred possession, as the sports writers say, to my wife,the Head Ferret.

I had hoped as a former captain of hockey she could have retained possession and managed the short run to the touchline without further help. Not so. Using the hook that made her the terror of the Remove, she passed it back and now we both lie a-nights, side by side on our sleeping platform, baying in unison.

We are not a pretty sound. She is more your last act of La Boheme; with the long pause between reverberations and what in the night watches seems an unnecessarily prolonged sigh. I incline to the peremptory bark, drawing attention to unlawful possession of the duvet.

Arguing by cough is an infant art but we have worked out some meaningful exchanges. Whilst her tiny hand is frozen reaching out for the medicaments, I do a very neat line in "wake up at the back there" if I suspect for a moment she has

sneaked off to sleep. At such times Mimi is the last thing I think of calling her. It had not occured to me until this recent illness what a self-satisfied way wives have of sleeping whilst husbands lie awake, prey to a sobbing cough

which would have brought the house down in any decent production of "I Pagliacci": "On with the mogadon, the pastilles and the soothers......".

What is deeply annoying is the way one only coughs at night when, to say the least, the claque on the other pillow is less than sympathetic; never during the day when a certain amount of emotional capital could be earned..."Well, thank you very kindly, perhaps just a tiny tot of something soothing. The throat, you know, not a wink of sleep these three nights past..."

No. What I get is the dog with its paws in its ears and the sort of look that only cats can give when for the third time they have been wakened by the sort of cough explosions that would have peace movements picketing the bedside. A sort

of Greenham Common cold.

You get no sympathy with a cold, but you do get sovereign cures. All different and all an assault on the sensitive palate.I am the prey of the Missing Linctus, awash with the sort of drug drenched syrup I swear is smuggled ashore at

night on deserted beaches. I have a collection of Premier Cru cough mixtures, donated by friends, would make your eyes water. One dear lady even made a special journey to purchase what I take to be the distilled essence of the instep of an elderly Cossack.

But, by golly, it worked. For twelve terrifying hours I was afraid to cough in case the duvet caught fire. Two teaspoons of that on your breath and you could empty an airport. Somewhere an illicit drug factory is bottling that dragon-breath and marketing it through the National Ill-health Service. I am afraid to close my eyes lest St George the dragon slayer should come galloping up the stairs and pin me to the pillow with his lance. Though I would be open to

negotiation re the removal of the damsel in distress from the distaff pillow. Coughing to be enjoyed should be a solo performance of bravura and suffering nobly born. To turn it into a duet, a sort of catarrhal counterpoint, is to make a mockery of misery.

 OH MY GOD

What a thing of vanity is man who believes himself the image of God. With his manifest talent as a designer why would God, who made the tiger, used a forked radish as a maquette?

I forget which German philosopher said that you could not make anything straight from the twisted timber of mankind but I reckon he was on the money. The problem is that we look on Him with Stone Age Eyes as an explanation for the weather. Thunder and lightning, God  angered; Sunshine, God fruitful; Darkness, God sleeping.

I agree with Randolph Churchill: He has been created by people who did not like Him.  When Randolph read the bible for the first time in middle age he told Evelyn Waugh, “God is a complete shit.” If you pay any attention to the bible no other explanation is possible. Ask gullible Abraham. And when you think what God did to His own son…….

I have shopped around a bit over the past eight decades. Now as I paw with growing impatience on the Pearly Gates I am thinking of advising Him to reposition Himself in the market. Change his image into something that gives off vibes of benevolence, loyalty and love. Something on the lines of Winnie The Pooh.

As an only child my Teddy was my first and only constant companion. We discovered the world together and mutually reassured ourselves when we found what dodginess was on offer. He was always ready to fall in with my plans. He would fight me, console me and watch over me when I slept. My mother used to claim there were four angels round my bed: one to guard, one to pray and two to carry my soul away. What did she know? Teddy and I would fight any angel of equal weight and reach.

Teddy had been around. He knew that a bear gets tubby without exercise. As A.A. Milne discovered, he gets what exercise he can, by falling off the ottoman. As all scholars know, the group noun for Teddy Bears is a Hug.When my great grandson was born I sent him a platoon of my Teddy’s successors, highly trained in all aspects of child watching. There were plenty to choose from here at Bear Command. Over the years the Ferret and I have marked happy moments by recruiting bears. Our recent wedding anniversary was marked by bear bride and groom; at Christmas a festive bear greets guests. There is a Cambridge, bear capped and gowned, in memory of a jolly lunch; a Mountie bear and a fox hunter in a livery of hunting pink, an archbishop bear and monk bears. A Mohammed bear marks the fuss Muslims made that time when a teacher gave his  name to the class bear. There are Guardsman bears, a giant Paddington bear my mother made for my sixtieth birthday, Pooh bears with attendant piglets and Eeyore. They sleep in drawers,waiting like King Arthur's knights, for a call to arms.

On duty still is a Cadre of Fighting Bears from my Regimental Charity, Help the Heroes. The Last Bear from Woolworth's is there and a stylish bear, a present from the painter Maria Saxe Ledger, a descendant of a medieaval saint whose embalmed body greets communicants in St Gallen in Switzerland. In her youth Maria had been the loveliest aristocrat in Europe and at 89, exiled to a valley in Wales, still painted her patent leather knee boots with clear nail polish and flew the Swiss flag in her garden so that the local Nationalists would not mistake her for a Sais. We lunched in a barn in the garden she had turned into a baronial hall with huge silver candle sticks, tapestries and a nude painting of her at twenty. The Bears and I contribute to several bear charities. We were a little shocked when one of them, Saving Moon Bears, sent us an invitation to a fund raising evening - of belly dancing. The belly is quite excited but I have told it that it is not an invitation to a belly ball.

THE THICK EAR OF IT

I had to give up writing satirical novels. However outré the situation I imagined, life created one infinitely more outré. Under the Camerloons it is difficult to know whether you are watching “In the Thick of It” on BBC2 or the Parliament Channel.

Currently our greatest fear is a forthcoming Balkan invasion. Over the horizon an army musters, dancing on its knees, drinking Tokay by the gallon, expelling clouds of Balkan Sobranie and nibbling on goulash the while. It is as well to recall Hungarian film maker Alexander Korda saying the recipe for a Balkan omelette is "First steal a dozen eggs....." Those of us who make a habit of falling over in public are all in favour of immigrnts: others less so. Ever alert, the Government is planning to ask the public whether we want to be part of Europe - but not for another four years or so. In the meantime we have made a film telling foreigners what a terrible place Britain is and warning them to give it a wide berth. At the same time millions are to be spent by the Tourist Board making other films beguiling holidaymakers with a whiff of kipper and loving long shots of empty beaches. What do we care? We are spending 48 billion to cut an hour off rail trips from London to Birmingham.

THE CAMERLOONS ARE COMING.............

Now that the Devil has retired, his work on earth accomplished, who are we to blame when things are still going wrong by the hour?

The smart money seems to be on Lady T. True, she behaved like a prime minister, a mistake made by few called to that high office. I suppose it was her Falklands Moment that made me doubt her. You may recall, she sent ill-equipped troops, in borrowed troop ships, to an unnecessary war, defending the right to be British of islanders from whom British passports had been withdrawn. We were to recapture a land owned by British Coalite, fighting an enemy led by officers trained in Sandhurst and using armaments largely bought from us. The error was compounded when we celebrated our victory by immediately putting Goose Green up for sale.

Three centuries ago, wiser views prevailed. In the 18^th century Dr Johnson said of the Falklands:

“A bleak and gloomy solitude, an island, thrown aside from human use, stormy in winter, and barren in summer; an island, which not even the southern savages have dignified with habitation; where a garrison must be kept in a state that contemplates with envy the exiles of Siberia; of which the expense will be perpetual, and the use only occasional.”

Alas, Lady T started a fashion, irresistible to those who succeeded her. Blair, and now Camerloon, saw her transformed from Alan Clarke’s erotic dream into a victorious Nelson, empty blouse sleeve pinned to her bosom, metaphoric eye shield and all.

So they both had to have a Thatcher Moment. In Blair’s case, two; whereas The Camerloon is taking on the whole of Africa in days when he has reduced the size of the army to platoon strength. He has form. He did the same in Afghanistan. To go for the treble he will have to send the Lone Ranger. Though I suppose there is still the Army Cadet Force. It is coming to something when I have to admit the only branch of the Establishment left to admire is the Royal Family, though even there Prince Hal is in trouble for killing the enemy. The first, and clearly identical, Prince Hal was written about by Shakespeare. This brave successor’s chronicle appears in discredited tabloids.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver.”

-      Thomas Paine. Common Sense

MY GRANDSON SAM WARNS ON SNIFTERS

The Vaportini website refers to blood alcohol tests still detecting the alcohol but doesn't mention breathalysers. I performed a little more research and it seems that the breathalyser test works because the blood stream through the lungs is so close to the surface of the lungs (for oxygenation purposes) that it acts to increase the amount of alcohol in the air in your lungs. In short, that which you blow into the tube is a strong indicator of your blood alcohol content. The Vaportini won't circumvent (vent - geddit?) this. However the alcohol taken in via a Vaportini does get into your blood more quickly and maybe it can be processed by one's organs more quickly. It's almost certain that the time between first imbibing and passing a test is shorter with a Vaportini, however the time between finishing your drinking and passing your test may not be. I think the best way to test this theory is empirically. 

“If only I applied myself to banking in the same way I do to theoretical and practical application of alcohol theory maybe we wouldn't all be stony broke.” 

Blocks and chips spring to mind. In the army when we were down to our last shilling to finance a night out we would spend it on a pint of beer, empty a box of matches on the floor, drink the beer, bottoms up, then bend down and pick up the matches one by one. Worked every time. The more rich and fastidious would empty a glass of whisky, roll the emptied glass in their warm hands releasing the film of whisky on the wall of the glass in sufficient quantity to pour into the beer.

One group in my regiment went further. Detailed to guard a flying bomb site, they drank the flying bomb fuel. Chewing Duraglit and drinking Brasso was widely practised. God, I could do with a snatch of Duraglit now. 

HITLER: THE LAST CONSPIRACY

Definitely the read of the week.

The year is 1967.

Charles Ritter is an ordinary journalist, filing everyday stories. On an assignment in Ireland, an elderly German doctor helps him with his migraines.

But Doctor Theodore Morell is not what he appears. He is a man with a past - and a man with a secret. He was Hitler's personal physician during the last days of the war. From his bunker in Berlin, Hitler masterminded one final conspiracy. And Ritter is about to find out how World War Two really ended. But as he gets closer to the shattering truth, the intelligence agencies of three great powers are alerted to his pursuit of the story.
So far as they are concerned, Hitler met his death in 1945. And anyone who thinks otherwise must be eliminated. 

'Hitler: The Last Conspiracy' is a blockbuster thriller that is meticulously researched and brilliantly told. It is perfect for fans of Frederick Forsyth, Robert Harris and Robert Ludlum.

'A ripping yarn.' -- Sunderland Echo. 'An entertaining yarn, filled with vivid characters. And the finale is intriguing.'  Yorkshire Post. 'Most thought-provoking novel of the year. Truly sensational.' - Northern Echo. 

The author Revel Barker started writing for newspapers while still at school and joined the Yorkshire Evening Post in Leeds before becoming the youngest reporter ever employed by the Daily Mirror. As a reporter, defence correspondent, foreign editor, and managing editor he travelled the world, gaining first-hand experience of many of the situations and meeting many of the people described in 'Hitler: The Last Conspiracy'.

He now lives on an island in the Mediterranean, and is also the author of the best-selling 'The Mayor of Montebello'. ‘Hitler’ is published by Endeavour Press, the UK's leading independent digital publisher.

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PRAT OF THE WEEK of the Week.

Michael George Bichard, Baron Bichard, KGB,A former benefits chief  sits on a quango looking at demographic changes and their impact on public services.He has said that retired people should do community work or face losing part of their pension so as not to be a burden on the state.Pensioners have paid in for their pensions in good faith, having been told that National Insurance would give them a good pension. People have contributed for their pensions and it is their pension. It is not for the government to use as a carrot or a stick. During good times, the government should have built up a pension reserve rather than used pension funds for funding vanity projects like the millennium dome so that state pensions were not the giant Ponzi scheme they are now.

Lord Bichard also needs reminding that community service is a judicial sanction judges can give criminals. Is being a pensioner therefore, going to be a criminal act in his brave new world?His lordship is setting a perfect example At the ripe old age of 54 he retired from the Civil Service in May 2001 with a pension of £120,000 p.a.! (Index Linked)

ON THE PRACTICE OF WATCH POLISHING

There are very few sybarites swimming about in the puddle which was once the deep pool of my life; apart, that is, from the moment of high excitement when Sarah, the lady who obliges, polishes my silver watch, chain and sundry fobs. Ventures into the watch-bearing outside world being  nowadays limited to bouncing off pavements, the watch and chain have languished in dull obscurity on the chest of drawers in my bedroom, a chronological Cinderella.

The fobs hang limp and undistinguished. The copper medal made from the metal of Nelson’s Victory to mark the first centenary of Trafalgar, the Victorian half sovereign, the family crest, and the silver match box taken from the bloodstained tunic of my 18-year-old Uncle Willie, killed in the Gretna Green troop train disaster on his way to the Western Front in World War One, droop, grimy shadows of their  former selves.

Then lo, from some magic kingdom floats down the Divine Sarah, be-wanded on a white cloud of Duraglit, and once again the belly becomes an Aurora Borealis. The chain a fiery Milky Way, a Halley’s comet. Odin and his wild herd streak across my 60-inch firmament. Nelson’s Victory hoists its battle flag; the matchbox, a farewell gift to Willie from some unknown girlfriend, sheds sparkling silver tears; and a shining Queen Victoria is for once highly amused.

I am tempted to loan Sarah my treasured “Butler's Guide to Running The Home and Other Graces"  by Stanley Ager, butler to the third Lord St Levan at St Michael's Mount in Cornwall. I was born to be buttled but, alas, four monarchs have neglected the peerage I have always believed my due. I am doomed never to be handed a freshly ironed newspaper on a silver salver. I must be content with this with this account of newspapers so favoured:

“We had to keep them looking fresh so we ironed the newspapers three or or four times a day. Some people screwed the paper into a ball and then threw it down in disgust if they read something they disagreed with, others managed to crumple a paper simply by handling it. We ironed the papers on the pantry table. It only took a couple of minutes to press each one. You need a warm iron. Press the front and back pages, starting at the top of a page and working down. There is no need to iron the rest of the paper, the heat of the iron will flatten the intervening pages.

“Only the better newspapers, such as The Times and Financial Times were read in the drawing room. I certainly would not bother to iron  the cheaper ones – they are not worth the trouble, and the print is very likely to rub off.”

It was a long haul to reach Butler Rank. Ager, at 14 in 1922, began as a hall boy, learning his trade by serving the servants. Only after six months in the servants' hall were hall boys permitted in the front of the house. If they proved able there, they were promoted to second or third footmen who served at table, cleaned silver and cared for clothes. First footmen assisted the butler. Footmen were in their thirties and had valeted the gentlemen of the house before they were fit to buttle. Fully trained, they earned £90 a year, a formidable sum, and were entitled to impose demands. No servant would accept a job unless the owner had several houses which offered opportunities to travel - and one in London.

The more time I spend in Ager’s company, the more Downton Abbey appears a Greasy Spoon in comparison. Beer was delivered daily to the Servants' Hall in ten gallon barrels. Gentlemen for breakfast were offered ten fluid ounces of whisky in little silver decanters to pour over their porridge. After a day with hounds Ager poured three tots of whisky for the Huntsman. One in each boot and one down his neck to warm himself for the hack to kennels . At lunch the gentlemen drank light ale, the ladies sherry. Sherry was served again before dinner; white wine was offered with fish, red with meat, white wine and champagne with sweets. Then came the dessert wines - port, brown sherry and malmsey - and liqueurs after coffee. At ten o'clock, before bedtime, the grog tray was brought in - whisky, gin and mixing brandy; soft drinks for the ladies, followed by a flask of hot water.

On New Years' day Royal Punch was served. For the recipe Ager advised using inexpensive glasses. After the first toast the custom was to hurl the glasses to the floor. It was wise, he said, to have a dust sheet on the floor for the quick removal of broken glass.

Ager also warns:

“This punch is very potent. When making it beware the fumes arising with the steam...

"Brew two ounces of Indian tea in a quart of water. Pour a bottle of Burgundy into a large saucepan and heat slowly over low heat. As soon as the heat arises add a bottle of hock; stirring, add a bottle of medium sherry and a bottle of rum. Mix the juice of six lemons with a pound of lump sugar and add to the wine mixture when it is near the boiling point. Pour the tea through a strainer into the simmering liquid. Finally add a pinch of ground ginger, a pinch of nutmeg and two sticks of of cinnamon. Pour into a silver punch bowl and serve with a ladle in glasses of about claret size. The glasses should be warmed to lessen the risk of breakage."

"Driven from the pleasing billows of debauch,
“On the dull shore of lazy temperance" as I am, I cannot tell you how difficult it was to copy those words by Lord Rochester.

Happily, from his banker’s desk in New York, my grandson Sam throws the following  lifebelt onto those remembered billows with this cutting from The Huffington Post:

“The Vaportini provides a revolutionary way of consuming alcohol. It is inhaled rather than swallowed. It is smooth and flavorful, the subtleties of the individual spirits are apparent. It is absorbed directly into the bloodstream and does not go through the digestive tract. This has the advantage of no calories, no carbs and all the effects of consuming alcohol are immediately felt, making it easier to responsibly imbibe. Unlike traditional consumption of spirits, Vaportinis give more control. Shortly after exhaling, all the effects of the alcohol are felt. In contrast it takes up to 30 minutes to feel the full effects of spirits that are swallowed.

"Visiting a friend in Helsinki we headed for his outdoor sauna with a group of friends and a bottle of vodka. He poured the vodka over the coals and breathed in the vapors until we were sufficiently inebriated. We then went outside to roll in the snow to “sober up”and headed back in the house to partake of smorgasbord. About an hour later we headed back to the sauna with another bottle of vodka. The rest of the afternoon followed this cycle."

Easy on the snow roll. But I’ll sniff to that, knowing at last the origin of "snifter". As a New Year tradition it beats the hell out of standing outside clutching a bit of bread and a lump of coal, waiting for the first stroke of midnight.

  

FAREWELL TO ARMS

When it wants to be rude the army has a way of falling back on the Alphabet as a weapon.

Paratroopers who jibbed at jumping out of a moving aeroplane carried forever after on their documents  the letters L.M.F. which stood for Lack of Moral Fibre. My lack of moral fibre was too obvious to be remarked. The best I managed was R.T.U. which was Returned to Unit. Quite an achievement on the Berlin Airlift, which the army used as a dump for what it quaintly called Undesirables. More, I was also sent away from airfields at Fassberg, Celle and Wunsdorf in turn before the army ran out of airfields to exile me to and RTUed me to HQ 7^th Armoured Division in Celle.

That was it. I decided to go into military business on my own account. I swapped my tam o' shanter for a beret without a badge, got a fraulein to embroider me a flash to go on my epaulettes which read “Official Army Observer”. Thus bedecked, I presented myself as “civilian attached to the army with the honorary rank, for purposes of rations and accommodation, of sergeant”.

There was a saying amongst the more gullible soldiery:  “You cannot beat the army.” Rubbish. I reckon in my short stay I got the best of three falls.

Certainly the army believed I was a “civilian attached” for nearly a year before the truth came out. Fortunately the RSM was an Irish guardsman with a head of polished bone who only had a vague idea about the work of Public Relations. To him PR equated with Provost. It all happened rather quickly. In the morning I was a layabout and technically a deserter of standing; by lunchtime I was re-kilted, tam o' shantered, brightly polished and Provost Sgt of HQ 7^th Armoured Division. At 19, I was the youngest provost sergeant in the British army and by a mile the most relaxed. My own experience of durance vile disposed me in favour of the prisoners. Mine were allowed evenings out, accompanied by a regimental policeman for whose beer they paid .

The army may have ended its war against the Germans in 1945. I was a still skirmishing against the army until 1949. To be fair, the army won. I was court martialled twice  in the last six weeks of my service, also, as far as I know, a Rhine Army record. Firstly for disobeying an order and being rude to the RSM, secondly for stealing W.D. property. It happened like this. I handed in a second-hand kilt my mother had bought for two pounds, secreting my issue kilt which was eleven and a half yards of black market potential. The RSM had his revenge. 7^th Armoured was cavalry and, so far as I knew, a hundred miles from the nearest Highland regiment. He found an elderly Argyll captain and asked him if the kilt was Government issue.  The Captain did his best. “Of course it is. There is the regimental number,” he said. 

The RSM was determined. “Can you tell from the number when it was issued?"

The officer looked at me with sad apology. “1918,” he said.

I always think the army was hasty in its judgement of me. In turn, it had my deep devotion in all matters other than discipline. It tried so hard to be helpful.

In Kings Rules and Regulations there was an example of how to give evidence which is the funniest prose I have ever read:

"Sir. As I was passing the regimental stables I heard the sound of an ammunition boot coming into contact with the flank of a horse. Proceeding stablewards, I observed 01746 Private Snooks A  kicking a horse, the property of the War Office.

"When I reprimanded him he took forage caps one, also WD property, from his head and dashed it to the ground where he proceeded to jump on it, saying: "You may do what you will, I will soldier no more."

My discharge book read: “Sgt Skidmore was an exemplary NCO.” The “Sgt” was crossed out  and substituted with “Corporal” which in turn was crossed out. The final version read “Private Skidmore was an exemplary NCO.”

Twenty years later there was a sequel. By this time I had become a freelance reporter in Chester, a garrison city. Every Friday I gave lunch to contacts. One week it was senior policemen, the next the Rural Dean and Cathedral Canons ,the next departmental heads of the County Council. But the lunch I enjoyed most was for the two majors who ran the army PR unit. One morning they asked me to do a favour. They wanted to bring in an officer newly posted. They explained they couldn’t find out anything about his history and asked me to try.

Brian, as he insisted I call him, was a half colonel, an extremely amiable man. As we sat over our brandies I asked him what was his favourite Command. His eyes moistened as he recalled: “I was commanding officer of the 3rd Military Corrective Establishment in Bielefeld."

“Know it well Brian,” I told him. "I had the honour to serve under you in 1948.”

“Oh Skiddy,” he said, “were we kind to you?”

That is the odd thing about the army. I had to admit they were.

THE EIGHTH AGE OF ACHE

For the general assemblage of letters no one approaches Shakespeare. He is the Tower of Babel with stained glass windows on every floor. But stand on me, the man is no mathematician. Seven Ages of Man?  EIGHT, and still counting.

Forget mewling and puking, ignore playing hookey. Dismiss bearded like a pard, whatever that is. A sighing furnace I will give him.  A world too wide for his shrunk shank? Oh, if only that were true. Twenty-one airborne stone give him the lie. Spectacles on nose, pouch at side, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. I have done all that. 

Not a word, you notice, about falling over. These days I do it all the time. Show me an escalator and I will show you a prone position. Wet grass and I am as Nureyev in modified leap.

This week in a city of dreaming spires I spiralled, ambushed by a kerb no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman. A crowd scattered before my stately edifice as I crumbled like a mill chimney, or, more accurately, a pot still.

I have a certain expertise in the architecture of falling over. You begin with a fond farewell to the perpendicular, the next and most graceful move is a panic stricken hover. Walking stick at the High Port, cap dislodged, spectacles awry, you plummet like a stout Stuka dive bomber, finally to sprawl like a homing pancake.

And that is when you discover how badly this country needs immigrants. In Peterborough two Indians, a Turk and assorted Poles combined to snatch me from the ravening jaws of an escalator. This week Poles were once again in the vanguard rushing to retrieve me from a recumbent posture. Thanks are also due to a brace of Pakistani ladies and a gentleman I took to be a forgiving Iraqi, which was pretty decent of him when you think what we have done to his country.

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE, say I. If it weren’t for immigrants, I could be lying there yet.

TO THE SKIES WITH LITTLE ARDUA

The only road to Berlin from the West  in 1948 ran through the Russian Zone. When they closed it in a fit of pique there were two options. World War 3 or an airlift. Airlifts were cheaper and the Americans war plans were based on using hundreds of atomic bombs but only about 50 bombs existed in mid-1948 So on balance the airlift seemed favourite.

Berlin only had  36 days' worth of food, and 45 days' worth of coal.  The city would need seventeen hundred calories per person per day. That meant 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In total, 1,534 tons were needed daily to keep the over two million people alive. Additionally, the city needed to be kept heated and powered, which would require another 3,475 tons of coal and gasoline.So they had to get their fingers out. They succeeded by using  689 aircraft..

The pilots and aircrew came from America, Great Britain Australia  Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. The most popular was a Yank Lieutenant Gail Halvorson. After visiting  children in Berlin, he began dropping candy with mini-parachutes from them as he flew over the city. Soon many pilots were following suit and providing the children of Berlin with treats. There was a stack of mail in Base Ops addressed to "Uncle Wiggly Wings", "The Chocolate Uncle" and "The Chocolate Flier". His commanding officer was upset when the story appeared in the news, but when the Top Brass approved  "Operation Little Vittles".became big news In the end, over three tons of candy were dropped on Berlin, and the "operation" became a major propaganda success. The candy-dropping aircraft were christened "raisin bombers" by the German children.When I arrived at Fassberg on attachment to the 8th USAF it gave me a great story for openers.

The cost of the Airlift was approximately US$224 million (equivalent to approximately $2.19 billion now). The C-47s and C-54s together flew over 92 million miles in the process, almost the distance from Earth to the Sun. At the height of the Airlift, one plane reached West Berlin every thirty seconds. Me and “Flookie” Anderson would like to have done more but our time was taken up arranging to steal one of the C45 Skymaster planes, fly it to the Russian Zone and sell it to the Reds.

Well, I say me and Flookie. Actually we had some help from an ex-IRA man who had found his way into a Highland regiment and an American PFC called Kerr who we thought would do the flying bit, him being in the air force.

Actually that was the flaw. We had everything worked out and then Kerr ruined the whole thing by admitting he couldn’t fly. Flookie was most annoyed. He said “You can’t fly? You are in the bliddy air force, man”

Kerr said he was but he was only a  corporal and you had to be an officer before you were taught piloting. He said he could drive but Flookie said; " What was the use of that. We couldn’t drive the bloody thing. The Russians have closed the bloody road."

I didn’t like it when Flookie got upset because he had a tendency to violence. A couple of nights earlier we were walking passed the war dog compound where Doberman Pinshers were trained to bite people

“See me,Sandy” he said “ I used tae train they dugs”

Flookie was one of those imaginative men who claimed to have done everything and I expressed mild doubts

“ Ye don’t believe me” he said, opening the compound door, dropping to his hands and knees,crawled towards a dozing Doberman and bit it on the paw.

It was like a Disney cartoon. The Doberman leaped to its feet, howling. After all here he was being shown every day how to bite two legged creatures but no one had warned him they bit back.

The Corporal Dog Handler was furious.” He’s just bitten my dog” he said. “ You must put him on a charge”

I said “ Its your dog. You put him on a charge”

“You are the ranking NCO “ he said

I said I am not a real sergeant I am in Army PR and I didn’t know how to put people on charges

He said “Charge him under Section 40 of the Army Act, that covers everything”

So I did. I do not want to go into details of what happened when we appeared before Col the Lord Langford, my Commanding Officer. He was to become my best friend in the years that followed and we have laughed about it. Well he has laughed

 I remember what he said when the Orderly Sergeant read out the charge “Under Section 40 of the Army Act causing damage to WD property, in tat he did bite a Doberman Pincher.“

 I was very shocked. I didn’t know that Lords were allowed to swear like that and what he said about National Service conscripts I could not bear to repeat

HANGOVERS ARE OVER
.

Never marry for love. You will never again win an argument. A week ago I lost the biggest ever.I have given up drink.It has taken me 42 years to cure alcoholism, fortunately with a few failures on the way. But after two dry days I feel I might have been more gainfully occupied

It feels very odd to have this uncomfortable feeling of being well.

 The only consolation was to read again this piece of magic prose by my all time favourite essayist. Bill Connor, “Cassandra” of the Daily Mirror;

“A hangover is when your tongue tastes like a tram-driver's glove.

When your boots seem to be steaming and your eyes burn in their sockets like hot gooseberries.

Your stomach spins slowly on its axis and your head gently swells and contracts like a jelly in the tideway.

Voices sound far off and your hands tremble like those of a centenarian condemned to death.

Slight movements make you sweat, even as you shiver from the deadly cold that is within you.

Bright lights hurt the eyes, and jeering, gibbering people from the night before seem to whisper in your ears, and then fade with mocking horrible laughter into silence.

The finger-nails are brittle and your skin hangs on you like an old second-hand suit.

Your feet appear to be swollen, and walking is like wading through a swamp of lumpy, thick custard.

Your throat is cracked and parched like the bottom of an old saucepan that has boiled dry. The next moment the symptoms change, and your mouth is stuffed with warm cotton wool.

When you brush your hair you are certain that there is no top to your skull, and your brain stands naked and throbbing in the stabbing air.

Your back aches and feels as though someone is nailing a placard to your shoulder blades.

Knee joints have turned to dish water and eyelids are made of sheets of lead lined with sandpaper.

When you lean on a table it sways gently and you know for certain that you are at sea.

Should you step off a kerb you stumble, for it is a yard deep and the gutter yawns like a wide, quaking trench.

You have no sense of touch and your fingertips feel with all the acuteness of decayed firewood smeared with putty.

The nostrils pulsate and smell the evil air.

You believe that you are in a horrible dream but when you wake up you know that it will all be true.

Your teeth have been filed to stumps and are about to be unscrewed one by one from your aching jaw.

You want to sleep, but when you close your eyes you are dizzy, and you heel over like a waterlogged barrel crammed with old, sodden cabbage stalks in the Grand Junction Canal.

When you read your eyes follow each letter to try to spell the words, but in vain – no message reaches your empty, sullen brain.

Should you look at a simple thing like a tree, it will appear that the bark is gradually crawling upwards.

Lights flash and crackle before you and innumerable little brown dwarfs start tapping just below the base of your skull with tiny, dainty hammers made of compressed rubber”

O Death, where is thy sting?”

SERGEANT MAJOR IS A SMOTHER TO ME

The adjutant at my new posting in Germany scratched his head when he read the charge sheet.

“I am a very bewildered officer,” he admitted. “You don’t look violent.”

I could see his point. Wearing ammunition boots, which have thick soles, I am still only 5ft 7 ins tall and in the kilt I look like a chubby reading lamp.

Yet according to the charge sheet I had assaulted six military policemen in the town square in Thetford causing actual bodily harm.

I explained I was just a bystander whilst the square heaved with angry Glaswegians hitting everything in sight including a pillar box mistaken for a red capped military policeman.

“Given the choice,” I said, “who would you arrest?”

He quite saw my point but said his hands were tied. It was a court martial offence. But he advised me not to make a fuss and plead guilty.

“They will see that it’s a trumped up charge and admonish you,” he told me.

I can honestly say that is the last time in the sixty-three years that followed I have taken any notice of good advice.

The court martial board didn’t see there was anything amiss. They awarded me 56 days in No. 3 Military Corrective Establishment in Bielefeld and there I was with a “Staff”, as the warders were known, looking up my backside for smuggled cigarettes.

The 56 days passed pleasantly enough and then I was back in Bad Oenhausen, making for the railway station intending to desert. It being plain the army and I were not made for each other. And that was the second time I heard the Voice From God. This time it was even louder. It came from a Scots Guards Garrison RSM “Jock” Graham who glittered fifty yards away at the end of the street.

Because of the army habit of speaking without spaces between the words I had no idea what he was saying but he did not give the impression he thought I was an asset to the Highland Division. I did catch his offer to rip the red hackle out of my tam-o’-shanter, stick it up my arse and make me hop up and down like a bloody rooster. And I fled through the first door I came to.

And that is how I became a newspaper reporter. The office I found myself in was the HQ of Army Public Relations and when a very amiable company sergeant major asked me what I wanted I said: “A job.”

“Have you any experience of newspapers?”

As it happened, I had. In civilian life I was an apprentice compositor on the Evening Chronicle. I started to explain but I got no further than “Evening Chronicle...” before he jumped up and grabbed my hand.

“A real reporter!  Kenneth will be delighted. Come and meet him…”

Kenneth proved to be the commanding officer. I had moved into another world where officers were called by their first name. Tobe fair Kenneth was no warrior.He had the air of one,no stranger to cosmetics. I later learned he had transferred to a cavalry regiment because they wore black berets which brought out the blue of his eyes

It only took two sentences to welcome me into the unit and then he said: “Just cut along to the QM stores and draw your three stripes. Then Paddy will take you to the sergeants’ mess…”

“A sergeant?” I said, and he got quite huffy.

“You cannot expect to be an officer straight away.”

There were revolving doors at the entrance to the sergeants’ mess but they didn’t revolve half as quickly as the Garrison RSM standing at the bar downing his dram.

Before I could speak, Paddy introduced me.

“SERGEANT Skidmore???” blustered Graham. “SERGEANT Skidmore? It took me three years to make lance corporal.”

After a pleasant luncheon Kenneth gave me my first job. It was the biggest story I have covered from that day to this.

It was the Berlin Airlift.

A BOOK TO START THE NEW YEAR

 Evan Morgan's  story is told in a book that is as good as any to swap for gift vouchers: " Aspects of Evan: The Last Viscount Tredegar " is by Monty Dart and William Cross. It’s a sometimes bewildering scrapbook but, like a rich plum pudding, filled with gold nuggets.

He had a pet parrot that bit both Goering and H.G. Wells. Tredegar shocked his way through Eton, Oxford, Rome, North Africa, Bali, Canada and America. The Bright Young Things of London’s Café Royal Society toasted him in aphorisms. Ogling dowagers indulged him whilst his straight-laced huntin, shootin a’ fishin family, with Royal vestiges, was shaken by his escapades. In the Great War he dodged rat-infested trenches on account of a weak chest. Claiming he was renouncing pleasure and his birthright, he turned to mysticism and Roman Catholicism, studying at Beda College, Rome, whilst acting as a Papal Chamberlain at the Vatican. 

Evan attracted iconic women and saw off two wives. He transformed the austere family pile of Tredegar House in South Wales for rave weekend parties and black magic rituals. Effeminate footmen in powdered wigs received houseguests from Hollywood stars to the Satanist Aleister Crowley.  

Cross has a fine sense of timing. His last book, a biography of Almira, the Countess of Caernarvon, came out when “Downton” was creating TV audience records. The story of the Hon. Evan, an extremely well-connected toff and a tart, has irresistible echoes of Savile.

This controversial book unravels Evan’s chequered life and tells of his amusing court martial in 1943 for offences against pigeons. Evan was in charge of MI 14, the loft of carrier pigeons dropped by parachute into war-torn Europe. His offence was to compromise the birds’ security by showing visiting girl guides the canisters which were attached to their legs in a room hung with maps of pigeon droppings on Occupied Europe. The book contains a verbatim note of the proceedings which is the funniest prose I have read this year. When Evan finally snuffed it in 1949 it was in disgrace. Naturally his terrified (mostly royal) cousins ensured a massive cover up (indeed along lines as wicked and seedy as Savile and Mountbatten.) 

His degenerate life can be measured by the number of posthumous love claims the Tredegar Estate received from those bedded by him. He had the last laugh on all, including the monks of Buckfast Abbey whom he persuaded to give him burial space in their private chapel. He endeared himself to fellow Welshman Lloyd George, who adored Evan’s rakishness, by pretending to admire his mistress, later wife, Frances Stevenson, and so secured a job at No. 10. He rocked more boats than a tsunami: he could never be discreet or silent, or, alas, happy. Aspects of Evan is just a start at unravelling the sad but depraved life of the incomparable Evan. William Cross now plans a follow- up volume next year entitled Not Behind Lace Curtains.

Things are much different now, though one could wish for more literate policemen.

The recent row between the police diplomatic (?) corps and government minister Mitchell establishes a new law of language in which the ultimate obscenity is acceptable whereas to call a man a ‘pleb’ is beyond forgiveness.

Personally I am proud to be a plebeian.

(Latin, plebs) Member of the general citizenry, as opposed to the Patrician, in the ancient Roman Republic. Plebeians were originally excluded from the Senate and from all public offices except military Tribune and they were forbidden to marry patricians. Seeking to acquire equal rights, they carried on a campaign called Conflict of the Orders, developing a separate political organization and seceding in protest from the state at least five times. The campaign ceased when a plebeian dictator (appointed 287 BC) made measures passed in the plebeian assembly binding on the whole community.

Englishman Alun Morgan woke up after suffering a severe stroke speaking fluent Welsh despite having never been to the country for 70 years. That is more than many natural Welsh speakers can claim. The Welsh taught in schools and spoken on Radio Cymru bears little resemblance to the language spoken on the hearth. By law, brochures are printed in both English and Welsh. I wrote a story about a Citizens Advice Bureau in predominantly Welsh-speaking Bangor where the English version of a brochure had to be constantly replaced whereas the official Welsh version, which hardly anyone could understand, remained stubbornly on the shelf. My old pal the Moelfre (Anglesey) lifeboat cox was reproved on Radio Cymru for using the ‘wrong Welsh word’ during an interview. Welsh was Dick Evans’ first language.

THE WAR AND MRS WILLIAMS

Field Marshall Montgomery will have his own memories, but for me the most significant moment of the war came during the bacchanalia which suffused the population on V.E. Day. Mrs Kitty Williams, the wayward wife of our religious neighbour, had her way with me behind our garden shed. The celebrations which followed our atomising of the Japanese were marked in a similar way with my Sunday school teacher. I began to regret there were not more enemies to defeat.

These momentous days began innocently enough when our parents brought tables and chairs into the street and the children worked their way through mountains of Shippon’s Fish Paste sandwiches, strawberry jam butties,  fairy cakes and vast troughs of jelly on which armadas of cake boats with paper sails sailed tranquilly. In the evenings it was the turn of our parents to celebrate with dances under waxed lanterns and Glenn Miller on the gramophones. It was then that Kitty struck. God Bless Her.

Disappointingly, the army seemed less anxious to secure my services. It was 1947 before they summoned me to their colours - and spent the next two years regretting it. I was designated an O. R 1 (officer material) before they really knew me, and less than a year after achieving that proud moment I was undergoing a humiliating physical search for cigarettes, in a place I would not have dreamed of hiding them, as preparation for 56 days in a military prison.

The trouble started within 48 hours of my enlistment when I was designated to take a party of fellow recruits to Chester, 20 miles away, to be fitted with spectacles at Saighton Camp. We had a jolly journey down and we were laughing and joking when we climbed off the bus, but all soon went silent. What I took to be the Voice of God roared “WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THIS F……SHOWER?”

It wasn’t God. It was a huge sergeant whose polished cap brim had been readjusted to flatten his nose and who shone from badge to boots. I would have preferred God.

In the army sergeants manage to make all their words run into one another: “YOUORRIBLELITTLEMANGETTHEMFELLINANDMARCHINASOLDIERLYMANNER!”

He was not very impressed with my attempts. His own were much more impressive. Shivering with fear, it seemed to take less than a minute to reach the Optical block. I was so shaken that when we returned to the railway station I discovered that I had left the travel warrants back at the camp. With my new found authority I ordered several of my men to go back and bring them. Alas, they had picked up the one word indispensable in the army: “F…..off. If you want the f…….travel warrants, you go and get the f……. things.”

So I did. Unfortunately when I returned to the station they had all gone home and I returned to camp alone, carrying 24 travel warrants.The Orderly Officer was obviously impressed. “ F…..  me,” he invited. “You have lost 26 men? We didn’t  f…....  lose that many on D-Day.”

It soon became obvious that the army and I marched to a different tune. We O.R. Ones were given aptitude tests. The most taxing was to assemble a domestic light fitting. I had a picture of preparing to charge a mythical enemy when my C.O told me: “There are Hun cavalry to the right of you, on the left a battalion of Japanese spinners, and ahead a squadron of Prussian artillery. God knows what you can do." “Leave it to me,sir,” I reply. “I will assemble a domestic light fitting.”

What with the prison sentence,  three courts martial  and various little escapades, it was nearly two years before I joined my regiment. The commanding officer carried a Cromach, a long walking stick with a hook on the end, of the kind shepherds used. Try as I might I could not think of any way you could win a war with a flock of sheep, hurling domestic light fittings at a baffled enemy.

GRACE NOTE

At last an addition to the sadly small list of competent BBC interviewers.

Olivia O’Leary is unobtrusive, thoughtful in her choice of questions. Her voice has warmth which envelops both  the audience and the interviewee. Her questions are brief and always to the point and she manages to sound as though she wants to know what the answer will be and is not just waiting for a slice of silence which she cannot wait to gobble up. And she NEVER says “what you are saying is this…” All things considered, I am amazed she got the job.

Many interviews remind me of the time my bookmaker Willy Birchall rang an optical firm for a progress report on the binoculars he had sent for repair. He announced himself “Willy Birchall from Chester” and the girl on the other end said: “Is that a suburb of Manchester?” Proud Cestrian that he was, Willy asked her through gritted teeth if he could speak to a man and he told him: “I have just been talking to your beautiful receptionist.” “How do you know she is beautiful?” the man asked. “There is no other way she could have got the job,” said Willy.

SCARS ON SUNDAY

The most innovative TV producer I met in thirty years as a broadcaster was called Jess Yates. He devised shows that attracted multi-million viewers like “Come Dancing” and launched “Miss World",  but "Stars on Sunday", the ITV show he wrote, produced and presented, was his major contribution to TV. It was watched in its two-year run by 3,500 million viewers. It was the ultimate “God spot” and inspired a series of imitations, among them Harry Secombe’s “Highway” and “Songs of Praise”. It is the only religious programme that had more viewers than “Top of the Pops” and it received fan mail of 2,000 letters a week. 

The Pope agreed to appear on the programme and gave it his blessing. ITV boasted in its glossy brochure:

“Stars On Sunday has succeeded in fulfilling its aims. And more! Today, it attracts a regular viewing audience of 15,000,000, which on occasions has reached 17,000,000, and it never falls far short of the 10,000,000 mark, even in the summer months. In January 1972, when it completed its centenary programme, it celebrated the event by becoming the first ever religious programme to enter the television viewing charts. And during its first year in 1969, over 250,000 requests were received. That figure has well and truly exceeded the 500,000 mark today.

“But probably the strongest testimonial for Stars On Sunday is the list of stars and distinguished people who have appeared on the programme. It includes the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Anna Neagle, Raymond Burr, James Mason, Raymond Massey, Gerald Harper and Bill Simpson - who have all been featured regularly reading extracts from the Bible. Miss Gracie Fields, Miss Violet Carson, Anita Harris, Moira Anderson, Eartha Kitt, Shirley Bassey, Nina, the Beverley Sisters, Sandie Shaw, Harry Secombe, Cliff Richard, Lovelace Watkins, Norman Wisdom, Roy Orbison, Bobby Bennett, Howard Keel and the Poole Family, are just a few of the star names who have graced the programme and added their own interpretations to many well-loved songs.

“Yorkshire Television’s Stars On Sunday has now carved a unique place for itself in television history.”

The show's line-up of stars and the way they returned week after week was impressive. Even more

 impressive was the fact that none of them was paid more than £40, the union minimum for a day’s work of several recordings. No show cost more than £1,000 to produce. The elaborate sets - a palace, a ruined abbey and a country house library - were all borrowed.

Yates’s secret was that he had noted the way tape inserts were used in news bulletins. For “Stars” he taped eight songs or religious readings by every star that appeared, using songs from their repertoire which did not need rehearsal. Then he scattered the tapes through a season of programmes.

Perversely, the Independent Television Authority and its successor the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the controlling bodies of commercial TV, hated the show and loathed its presenter. Although it had no right under the Television Act to interfere with the content of shows, it re-wrote his scripts and finally used a savage newspaper campaign, based on half truths and inspired by a fading TV star Hughie Green, to wreck the show and destroy Yates. 

The News of the World missed a bigger story. Green had an affair with Yates’s wife a year after they were married and fathered her daughter Paula Yates, the wild child who married Bob Geldorf. In a torrent of spite from beyond the grave he boasted of cuckolding his one time friend. Think of him when you watch the rubbish the TV companies rehash over Christmas.

Good Heavens, is it that time already? I am off to watch "It’s a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol". Such a pity "Henry V" (the Olivier one) is worn out. I watched that film so often I qualified for the Agincourt Cross and was mentioned in despatches for climbing the Town Walls at Harfleur.

Do your best to enjoy Christmas, despite the fact that the next time we meet it will be Year 13. Those Mayans. They never got anything right.