In the End

Sometimes I wonder what to write each week, life has treated me well really, like all things it’s had its up and down but then that’s what has provided a lot of the background to my books. Not just in Saudi Arabia a time which whose memories are very precious to me but life in general and the people I’ve met, even in passing, provide the prototypes for some of the characters in my stories.

The couple in Inshallah were based closely on several people, it would be most unlikely that anyone of them would react the way Jinya did but her family life was taken from actual situations I witnessed. As I was trying to draw parallels between the Islam and Christianity it was most important not to come to any conclusions about the developing story especially at the end. I had to create an ending that could be interpreted to be satisfactory by either faith. It however left things up in the air a bit and many people have asked me to write a sequel continuing the story on but to do so would mean that I would have to declare an interest. Much better I believe to leave it where the reader has to make up their own mind and interpret it in the faith they believe in or if they have no faith speculate on the outcome.

Mike's memories "After shave"

Syb writing last week about Scrumpy reminded me of one or two more drinking incidents when I was in Cyprus. Before I started writing to Syb I was a bit wild; well there wasn’t much to do as we were virtually confined to camp for the whole of the time we were there, so drinking became an important pastime. Phil was a drinking companion of mine at the time and on one occasion we ran out of both money and booze. In our search to find something to drink we came upon a bottle of orange squash and a bottle of after shave (alcohol) so we thought we’d give it a try. I’ve long forgotten the proportions we mixed but I still remember the taste.  Actually the taste wasn’t too bad but the smell was atrocious, orange squash and Old Spice, our breath must have smelt beautiful.

Phil was a bit of an odd ball when he was on a survival exercise where each member of the team had to create an individual shelter for the night he took a bottle of Scotch downed it in one and slept peacefully in a ditch while his compatriots were scrubbing round trying to make shelters. I never did find out how he felt the next morning or what his Oi/c said.

There are many more tales of drunkenness but not particularly amusing so instead I’ll leave you with a little poem I remember from that time, I’m not sure where I found it, it could have been in Esquire or some magazine like that.

Starkle. Starkle little twink

Who the hell you am I think

I’m not under the affluence of incerhol

I’m not as drunk as some tinkle peep I am

I’ve only had tee martoonies

And I’ve all day to Sunday up in

I’m so drunk I don’t know who’s me yet

But the drunker I sit here the longer I get.

The spell checker has just had a fit!!

Home is where your husband is!!

For those of you who have read the last blog you will know that when we were first married we lived in a small caravan in a field during a glorious summer that lasted from March to September. Fortunately before winter set in we moved to much better site with a bath house and toilet block, we also had running water and electricity you have no idea how we treasured these luxuries.

We had also changed our old home for a new caravan 36x7’6” with a double bedroom, a kitchen we could both get in, a lounge 16’x7’6” and we had a party of 21 people to celebrate. It was a very cosy situation every one sitting on everyone else’s laps and drinking scrumpy out of great bottles called little johns. There were no glasses or cups we just handed the little johns around; at the time we also had Andy a black Labrador (see earlier blog) who joined in.

For our first Christmas in this new van we invited my parents, Mike’s parents plus his Grandmother, and Pete an old friend of Mike’s from his Cyprus days. He was kind hearted bloke who picked up an Italian girl who had nowhere to go for the holiday and invited her along so there were nine of us and a dog. The new van only slept 4 people so our sleeping arrangements were somewhat odd too, all the females slept in the caravan some on the floor and the men slept in a billet on the RAF camp site. I had to cook the festive dinner for this lot and managed it in the small kitchen by stacking pans on the top of each other on the gas rings and cooking the turkey an end at a time in the little oven. It must have been a pretty atrocious meal but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

We devised a new game sitting round that time we blew balloons up until we had filled the room so no one could move, we then debated if we burst one of them would it start a chain reaction. Well we all survived so I guess you can tell the outcome.

On yer bike!

While I’m reminiscing in things long past I should perhaps tell you about our first vehicle. As I’ve mentioned we lived on the edge of a field in a caravan 22x7.5 feet behind a hedge with a hole in it as our front gate. Through the hedge was a corrugated iron sheet acting as a bridge over a deep ditch, beyond that was a lane that ran down the side of a disused airfield. Sorry about all the detail but it is relevant to the transport situation.

We bought a tandem from Mum and Dad’s neighbour for £6, no it was a good one, things were cheaper then. This was our family transport though I did have my own bike when I wanted to be independent. When we went shopping in the village which was the other side of the airfield, we used to set the tandem on the main runway and if the wind was right I would sit bolt upright, hold my coat open and we would sail down the run way at a fair old speed. On the way back against the wind we would use the lane with high hedges.

In the field where we lived there were no facilities and as the first summer was really hot the farm who supplied us with water from a bore hole rationed us to one bucket a day, my how we must have smelt! To some extent we used to visit friend to use their baths and even if they weren’t friends and they had a bath they soon became friends. One couple we knew lived up a hill a little way along the lane and away from the airfield, of course they had a bath. Returning one evening from them Mike was on the front of the tandem and decided to let it go. We whistled along the lane until we came to the corrugated iron bridge which Mike completely missed, the tandem went into the ditch catapulting me over the hedge, Mike into it and completely wrote our machine off. From then on Mike walked!!