Shoplifting I have great sympathy for those who have absentmindedly taken something and walked out of the shop, only to be nailed. I have walked into the street many times with a book, a birthday card, you name it, unpaid for. The interest in other products I didn’t buy in the end, distracted me and… Continue reading Stealing
Author: jp
The First day Afloat
Travelling since early morning, provided with food vouchers, eating on the run was difficult. The trains were full, and one spent the journey uncomfortably seated on a suitcase, while guarding a small case and kit bag, with a hammock in the guard’s van, At big junctions there were barrows selling sandwiches and tea and there… Continue reading The First day Afloat
Victoria Falls
In the then Northern Rhodesia. On film today it is certainly majestic, but to see the immensity, the rush of water, hear the noise and feel the constant rain of the spray in those simple, uncluttered days, is an unforgettable lifetime’s experience. We had an enormous American car, called an Overlander, with a soft, collapsible… Continue reading Victoria Falls
The 30s, I write, You Compare
Life and Standards I have always believed that until 1939. when Hitler mucked up the world and in Britain it has never been the same, the period from ’35 to ’39, when our economy was steadily improving and we had emerged from the austerity of WW1, was the most equable and relaxed time in our… Continue reading The 30s, I write, You Compare
Grenadier Guards At Whitehall
In time we, in the Westminster Homeguard were chosen to man blockhouses in Whitehall. Crude, concrete structures, set across a road leading to Whitehall and with a gate making free access impossible. Our job was sentry duty outside the blockhouse on ‘X’ nights a week and at weekends. In the blockhouse it was like a… Continue reading Grenadier Guards At Whitehall
Naval Life in 1940
The Changes WW2 Wrought On The Royal Navy 2 Once it had dawned on the Government that the war would not be over in a month, and Dunkirk reinforced this thinking, people were inventing new, and improving existing weapons and systems. fast, resulting in a constant state of change within the services. New categories of… Continue reading Naval Life in 1940
The Toboggan Run
For the sake of those who have only recently joined, here is a golden Oldie, to the rest, I ask your indulgence. I have said in the intro I was a latchkey child of a one parent family, I was also the baby sitter for a brother whose main aim was to gum red bars… Continue reading The Toboggan Run
Trials of Parenthood
Being unemployed at any time is not funny and in ’46 I had been unemployed for three months, and any resources I might have had had gone. I worked to reach a standard for the university entrance exam, and then I became a student on an ex-service grant of ?200 a year. I think if… Continue reading Trials of Parenthood
Old Ned
My in-laws were generous and kind, and any member of their extended family in trouble was welcome. So it was when Ned came to stay, permanently. Ned was both a character and a knowing old devil. In his late eighties when I first met him, tall, stooped, severely rheumatic, lame and rheumy of eye, he… Continue reading Old Ned
Sex & Child Abuse
I often wonder if young people, with shiny new degrees lecturing us on TV, in dictatorial terms, with such conviction, have really had any experience of the problems they are allegedly solving. I have met a number of those problems head on, at a time when they were not thought to be so. From the… Continue reading Sex & Child Abuse