Bagpipe 2009.Pmd

2008 to 2009 No. 31 Calls via email for contributions have again elicited an overwhelming response. Mac is grateful to all who contributed. Keep the information rolling in! Mac has had to wield the editorial pen with considerable vigour (not to mention ruthlessness), however, as the printed version of the Bagpipe is necessarily limited by postage costs. Fuller versions of a number of the contributions appear on the OA website: www.oldandrean.com. Where the contributions have been significantly shortened, the symbol ¶ precedes the contribution. Some (marked ¶¶) have been radically shortened: it is worth making the effort to read the full accounts.) Modge Walter (U4043) gets the ball rolling (Mac: or them while they were in Malaysia and Singapore and managed should that be the bagpipe playing?): As a retired couple, short trips to Thailand, China (my birthplace) and Sarawak both now in our eighties, we still seem to live a fairly active life whilst out in the Far East. This time we will be travelling via and continue to be thankful that we chose to retire to Port Halifax where my sister Alicia (an old DSG girl), now widowed, Elizabeth some twenty-five years ago. [This was after 36 years lives. as an electrical engineer and senior manager with Escom in ¶¶ Duncan Strachan ( M4545) writes: I returned to Natal and the Transvaal and after my retirement I was asked my home in Kenya, from College, just as WW2 was coming to serve as a Technical Consultant for Escom here in Port to an end. We flew from Grahamstown to Johannesburg, from Elizabeth for the Kwanabuhle electrification project.] there to some God-forsaken airfield in central Africa for the We are both active in our church – St John’s (Anglican) night, and then on to Nairobi - it took three days of flying in Church here in Walmer – as Lay ministers although I have an 18 seater Avro Anson, and it was at Mtito-Andei (probably partly retired from serving during the services and restrict my spelled incorrectly; and referred to as “God-forsaken” above) serving to visiting and ministering to ‘Shut in” members. (Mac: that we learned that the Japanese had sounds like he spends his time in the graveyard…) I am still surrendered. This led to a night of an active member of Probus and enjoy our monthly meetings celebrations and too much and also visits to various places of interest. As a result of drinking; so much so that our Probus membership my wife and I have made many good worthy pilot had to be friends - three of the men are O A s, namely John Goldsmith escorted to the plane before (E4446), Rex Winterton (A4347) and Mick Holmes (U4445) take off in the morning! But – all a year or two after me. Besides he delivered us home safely. weekly hikes with our wives, the above Which reminds me that a couple of and their wives and two other years later a friend, Kim Gladman, bet couples we socialise frequently and me £100 that I wouldn’t hitch hike the distance of the breadth play Canasta once a month. of Kenya with only a shilling in my pocket. He was reading a I am quite busy with book where one friend bet another that he wouldn’t hitch involvement with the Children’s hike the length of Great Britain with only one shilling in his Feeding Trust of Port Elizabeth pocket - and he suggested that we Kenyans were so and have been in children’s spoiled and “soft” that I would not do it. Well, a few days feeding charity business for later I arranged leave from my employer, and that evening on some twenty-two years. my way home, my motor bike developed a puncture. And as My wife Joan and I are I was pushing it along the roadside a car driven by a RAF the proud grandparents of pilot pulled up and the pilot asked me if I wanted help - and seven of our three children’s so after having had the puncture fixed he invited me to join offspring and now are also great him for a drink at the mess. grandparents of two. Joan and I are planning a visit during While there I told him of my challenge, and he said September and October to our youngest daughter and her “I’m flying a General to South Africa tomorrow morning - husband in Vietnam. Over the past five years we have visited would you like a lift?” Then I met another “world traveller” 1 hitching lifts by air to Europe - and I accompanied him, but Even though the Hitler war was in full swing, we saw got a lift to Bombay. There the customs / immigration officer and heard little about it. However there was Air School 44 asked me how much money I had on me - he asked to see it just up the Cradock road and we saw quite a lot of the trainees – and disappeared to the back with my money, and never and their trainers on occasions. Of course the old Airspeed returned. I was threatened with jail Oxfords would trundle about our skies morning, evening and for being a vagrant - but the night. British embassy picked me up I cannot remember how my brother John and I were and later put me on a plane befriended by Bishop Archibald Cullen (Diocese of Eastern back to Cairo and Nairobi. Cape) but we were often given lunch at his home and made Twice more we have done it: to play croquet afterwards with his daughter, Margaret. One Once when the airline I was holiday from school we went down to his seaside cottage – travelling on bankrupted during “Bishop’s Cote” at Bushman’s River Mouth. Those were the our trip and left us stranded in days when leopards used to visit the cottages in search of Basil, and once again in about 1990 unwary dogs for supper. Never saw one myself, (Mac: and when after relating the story of these hopefully never had an unwary dog for supper either!) but adventures to another friend, I was once again challenged to plenty of pugmarks in the yards. do it. The next day I went out to Lanseria Airport, outside Of course not all memories are happy. One night a glow Johannesburg - when I saw a very good friend who was a suffused our dormitory ceiling in Espin. Leaping from our beds company pilot, about to fly his bosses to Durban - so I asked we crowded round the back window which looked him for a lift. I spent the day on the beach, gathered a receipt onto the garage of a house next door. It was which I picked up on the beach; and returned that night having ablaze from end to completed the challenge. (Mac: well I guess you can see the end. The muni– world for 4 bob if you have friends in high places – he seems cipal fire-fighters to know a lot of pilots!) eventually After living in the USA for 14 years, my wife of 49 years put it out but and I now live in Birmingham, England. it had burnt ¶ Robin Kirkpatrick (E4244) fills us in on some of his all our maths’ experiences: As an OA I have been in the wilderness for 65 master’s car years! After leaving I went to UCT, and then I disappeared and fishing tackle off the radar, as they say, and was never in touch with my old – Our Mr. du Plessis. On the school again – until now. I would like to reminisce about subject of maths, I was the form’s duffer and seldom got any College during the middle wartime years. algebraic conundrum right. Tackling a particularly tough College in those days had a very mixed bunch of lads algebraic problem one evening at prep, I just threw in the from as far away as Ceylon and towel and dashed off what I thought a logical answer and Malaya, let alone Kenya and the slept soundly that night. Dreading the inevitable comment Congo. But for the war they might the next day, I crept into maths class and made myself small. have gone to England for their Dup was a little late. He also had a serious limp from some schooling. I am very glad they earlier problem, but when we heard a series of slow dragging didn’t because we South Africans footsteps approach our classroom we wondered if he was all gained a wider perspective of life right. Just then a hand appeared clasping from them. We had quite a the doorframe and slowly a head then sprinkling of them in my house, Espin. a body clutching books and papers. We had a lot of freedom in those After resting for a second or two Dup days – and, of course we abused it quite then reached his chair and plumped a bit. (Mac: well that hasn’t changed…) down. He looked up and said that he On Sundays, after morning service in the had a major shock and could barely chapel, we would dash back to our houses, pick up (usually) impart the awful news that no one a small tin of grape jam, a sausage and a chop, some bread – in the class had got the algebra and make for the hills for a glorious day free from classes, problem right – except one. homework and other restricting disciplines. Some of us even Wiping his brow he turned to me reached Howieson’s Poort Dam by foot, and just a few made and said he will never forget it to P.

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