HQ COSTAL COMMAND, NORTHWOOD It Was at Northwood, Middlesex, That I First Encountered Prejudice

Peter Calladine TO 48TH ENTRY TELEGS – RAF COSFORD - REUNIONS I was sad to miss the 48th Entry reunion. However, because of my wife’s teaching commitments it coincided with one of the limited periods in the year when we can take a holiday – so when you were all at Cosford we were doing the Coast to Coast walk over 13 days. I would have liked to have heard what everyone has done with the lives since leaving Cosford and what they got up to in the RAF. If it is of interest to anyone, here is something about my RAF experiences post-Cosford. These days I usually tell people that, being one of the few people in Grimsby who was able to be able to read and write, I formed an escape committee and we tunnelled under the wire to escape. What followed immediately after that you all know about. Out of the frying pan and into the fire – I exchanged Grimsby Fish Docks to be a Boy Entrant at RAF Cosford. After Cosford I was posted to RAF Northwood (HQ Costal Command). I’ll try to recall some of the more interesting and, possibly, amusing episodes during my time in the RAF. HQ COSTAL COMMAND, NORTHWOOD It was at Northwood, Middlesex, that I first encountered prejudice. Northwood lies in what is sometimes referred to as London’s stock market belt. Property values are exceedingly high. Most kids went to independent schools. Their parents wanted them to get a good education; and they probably didn’t want them mixing with comprehensive children from less well-off areas. The class system was alive and thriving in Northwood. On the first Sunday lunchtime at Northwood I found myself with some other guys in the local watering hole, The Reindeer. A lot of men were drinking half-pints. Half-pints! This was some new to me. It would have been unthinkable in Grimsby, where you would have had to have been incredibly brave or stupid to publicly exhibit a mannerism that would unfailingly have invited a physical assault for having transgressed the macho mores of our Viking society, where men drank pints of bitter by the gallon and Nancy-boy half-pint tipplers were consigned to the Accident and Emergency Department of the local hospital. It was very crowded in the pub so when an attractive, well-dressed, and seeming very nice girl of around the same age wanted to get to the bar, I instinctively moved to one side and said something like:…”In you go, love”. Now, in those days I still had a Northern accent. I also had short hair at a time when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones had already made long hair popular. Unlike her, I was noticeably not the progeny of a stockbroker. George Bernard Shaw famously said that: “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.” The young girl had certainly been sufficiently well-educated to despise those from the lower classes. My presence clearly offended her deeply. She peered at me down her nose as if I were a piece of particularly noisome excrement and exclaimed, in a hoity-toity voice: “My daddy says I’m not to speak to ‘you people’ from the RAF camp”. The use of the expression ‘you people’ was brilliant; a wonderful put-down. In retrospect it was almost theatrically comic, but it wasn’t at the time. I was so dumbfounded that I could not muster a response. How could someone be so purposely offensive? Any kid in Grimsby would get his/her ears boxed by their parents for being so publically obnoxious. On another occasion, a Cockney Londoner told me that I spoke with a ‘funny accent’. I asked if she had ever read George

1 Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. She didn’t know what I was talking about so I explained that she, too, spoke with a ‘funny, and possibly even funnier, accent’, the same one as Liza Doolittle. That was the end of that short-lived romance. I was getting to be reasonably well- read by then, even if the finer points of diplomacy still eluded me. I read everything in those days, everything from Dickens to Dostoyevsky, Kafka to Kipling, Friedrich Engels to Len Deighton. RAF STEAMER POINT, ADEN In 1965 I left the class-based aggression of Northwood for the more honest, less snide, aggression of the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (Flossy) in Aden. I think that Aden was the last bastion of real colonial attitudes – officers and their ladies, NCO and their wives and other ranks and their women etc. I was at Steamer Point, for two years. Sun, sand, boredom, hand-grenades, bullets and bombs. I have a lot of memories about Aden, many of them amusing. The most memorable event in Aden for me was breaking into the officer’s food store and stealing a load of fruit while on a 24 hour guard duty. On the day in question the locals had been excessively exuberant after Friday evening prayers and this had led to an unusually large number of attacks on the British military. We won, they lost. Rumour had it that the morgue’s capacity had been exceeded and that some corpses had had to be temporarily stored in the cooled food depot in Tawahi. During the evening and night, two people were allocated to guard the food store. One sat behind sandbags on the roof and the other was supposed to patrol the compound. We did a 24 hour guard duty on our two days off, incidentally, so our working week was around 68 hours. The most frustrating part of a low-intensity conflict, where the bad guys do not wear a uniform, is not knowing what the enemy actually look like. Not definitively, that is, because you seldom get to eyeball the guy who fires the shot or throws the hand grenade. Here was our chance. We snapped open the lock of the store and entered, hoping to examine the corpses of the NLF. None where there – but it was an Aladdin’s Cave. We never had fresh fruit in our mess, although the officers had supplies flown in regularly from East Africa etc. Now we found ourselves confronted with shelves and shelves of fresh fruit. We plunged in with abandon, grabbing every sort of fruit imaginable and eating fruit like there was no tomorrow. Big mistake! The result of 18 months of fruit starvation was that this fruity feast had a strong laxative effect. Four hours later I found myself guarding the officers’ mess compound in Steamer Point at around 2.00am. I suddenly realised that I desperately need to find a toilet. The entire area was lit up like a Christmas tree and there was no access to an indoors toilet. In desperation I smashed the lock on the Arabs’ hole-in-the-ground, outside toilet, and used that. However, so much fruit made for a very loose and explosive bowel movement and I found myself the bespattered victim of what I shall call an impressive case of ‘blowback’. Now, the locals did not use toilet paper but water. Unfortunately, the water was off, so I had no alternative but to use my underpants. Having cleaned myself up as best I could, how was I to get rid of the evidence, the filthy underpants? I couldn’t bury them. The disturbed ground would be obvious and someone would think it was a mine – the Officers’ Mess had been blown up earlier in the year by someone enterprisingly taping explosives under the tables, so they were quite sensitive about these things. What to do? The Officers’ Mess was perched on

2 the top of a small cliff and there was a patio with tables overlooking the beach. I decided to throw the disgusting evidence into the sea. With all my strength I hurled the messy underwear in the direction of King Neptune; but I hadn’t accounted for an incoming breeze. The soiled underpants landed on the coils of barbed wire put there to dissuade intrepid National Liberation Front freedom fighters from scaling the cliffs to blow up the mess…again. Well, this posed a worrying problem. My ‘shreddies’ carried my ‘dhobi’ mark, so they could easily be traced. I had to get them back, so I found myself, holding on to one of the steel stanchions securing the barbed wire, leaning out over the beach, and trying to reach the offending article with my .303 rifle. Oh yes, the bad guys had Kalashnikovs and we had bolt action .303s. Have you ever tried holding out a .303 at arm’s length? Impossible. Eventually the Land Rover arrived with my relief. It sounded its horn and I had to abandon Operation Underpants. For days after I awaited in great apprehension for a call from an outraged CO. It never came. One of the Arab mess workers must have removed the offending article without comment to any officer. I always preferred the ordinary Arabs to the officer class. I owe that guy one. I ought to buy him a pint, or a bag of qat, perhaps. I left Aden about two weeks before the final withdrawal. By that time I had read a great deal more authors and I knew sufficient Arabic to say “Fuck your – religion, mother, sister, brother.” These were all essential expressions when haggling in the local market. For years after Aden I was nervous about going into crowded places. It took a while before I stopped checking out roof tops and windows when walking down the street. Inshallah, I came back in one piece, although I only weighed about 8st 8lbs and wore size 28 jeans. Many years later, in 2005, I think, I was at Moscow’s Civil Service University and I met the Russian/Yemeni daughter of the first Rector of the University of Aden. It was wonderful to talk about Aden with her. I didn’t ask, but I presumed, that her father must have been in the NLF. RAF DIGBY After Aden I was posted to 591 Signals Unit at RAF Digby where we monitored RAF aircraft communications. We had such a great time moving from one flying station to the other that people would not take leave. This might sound incredible, but it really is true. Everyone was scared of missing something. I was great fun going out for four weeks to one flying station, then back to Digby for one week, then back out again. We fancied ourselves. We fancied ourselves so much that on arrival at a new station we liked everyone to know we had arrived. We had an arrival party trick. This was for someone to go into the NAAFI bar, around 7.30pm when it was filling up. The rest of us would be waiting outside. He would then shout out as loud as he could:…“Hi ho!”. Having grabbed everyone’s attention with the hi-ho, the rest of us would enter in single file, on our knees, singing the Seven Dwarfs’ song from Walt Disney’s Snow White – “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go….”. It always made an impression…of sorts. We operated from blank sided trucks packed with electronic equipment. On arrival at the flying station our first job was to establish ourselves near the end of the runway and set up our aerials. This was a tricky job as the aerials were high and carried an array of heavy VHF and UHF aerials. As there was no standard RAF issue bad weather gear we were allowed to wear whatever did the job, usually anoraks from Millets etc., although we also had some ex- flying crew immersion suits, very handy when it was raining hard. If anyone asked us what we were doing our orders where to remain ‘stumm’ and if they persisted, we were to refer

3 them to our CO at RAF Digby. It was pure joy when, at RAF Leuchars, the Station Warrant Officer intercepted some of us coming off the flying station part of the camp onto the administrative side. He laid into us for being such a scruffy, filthy mob. True, we did look like characters out of Kelly’s Heroes, and we were proud of it. We knew of no-one else in the entire RAF who could have got away with the way we dressed. The SWO demanded to know who we were and what we were doing. We felt like kings when we refused to tell him what we were doing and why we were dressed like we were. Instead we referred him to our CO. After a telephone call, we were eventually allowed to proceed on our way, smirking and leaving behind an incandescent but impotent SWO. Heaven! Bliss! It was also at Leuchars that we came back from an evening shift to a bloody awful supper. ‘Wink’ Allington started to write a complaint in the Mess Complaints Book. We saw his shoulders heaving up and down and we realised he was laughing. He could not explain for laughter what was so funny. He merely stabbed a finger at the book. We looked at previous entries so see what was so funny. Someone had written:..”I want lemon curd, and so does my pal”. On one occasion we were prevented from leaving a flying station by the RAF Police who ordered us off the bus. In the H-block we had been billeted in we were confronted with evidence of our wrong doing – a sapling that had been uprooted and stuffed into a toilet, the top bent over along the ceiling. “What is all this then”, asked the snowdrop. “It a mys-tree,” suggested one of our guys. Someone quickly added: “No, I think it’s a laver-tree”. It’s easy to take the mick out of the brain dead. RAF CHANGI, SINGAPORE At long last, after Digby I got my first choice posting, RAF Changi where I was at Far East Command Communications Centre. I loved Singapore. I always tell people that my fingernail marks are probably still embedded in the tarmac from when they had to drag me to the plane home. On RAF pay we lived like Tuans (lords). We ate out every day. There was marvellous Chinese, Tamil, Malay and European food. Some of my fondest memories involve food. A bunch of us would go to Chinese restaurants downtown, not to restaurants frequented by Europeans, but those frequented by the Chinese. We wanted authentic food, not tourist fare. The menu would inevitably be mono-lingual, i.e. in Chinese. Sometimes the waiter spoke no English so we would just stab at various places on the menu hoping we would be served a variety of fish, meat, rice and noodle dishes. This ploy usually worked, until one day the waiter placed a very suspicious and unappetising dish in front of us. We had no idea what it was but the waiter was bright enough. He guessed that we wanted to know what we had been served with. He pointed to his head and grunted – oink, oink. Ah! Crispy fried pigs’ brains! It was the only time we passed on a dish. We gave it to some Chinese guys on the next table. It was greatly appreciated. On another occasion we were in Zamzams, a curry restaurant. This was strictly for locals and decidedly down market, but the food was terrific. It was open to the street. We sat there one day eating our fish curry and ladies fingers with rice and parathas when a bunch of American tourists off a cruise ship went by examining ‘the local colour’. They watched the cook spinning parathas in the air to make them wafer thin, and looked at the colourful clientele, Tamil and Malay labourers in dhotis, eating with their fingers. One of the Americans, a caricature of an American female tourist, together with wide brimmed hat and a pair of aggressively feminine butterfly winged spectacles, suddenly pointed a finger and exclaimed in sheer horror: “Hal, just look. White men!” If we had been quicker thinking, we would have looked around us in surprise for these out of place white men, these orang

4 puteh. Instead we just looked at one another and laughed. We were more native than Lord Jim. On another occasion we took a recently arrived Scot with us. We had to get the cook to fry potatoes and eggs for him. Our Scots friend maintained that:..”I’ve never eaten curry because I don’t like it”. This was especially hilarious because he had not meant it to sound funny. He eventually did admit that the parathas were good. I went to a Chinese restaurant in the UK shortly after coming back from Singapore. I didn’t go again for around 15 years. In an Indian restaurant at around the same time I suddenly realised that everyone was looking at me. I was eating my meal with my fingers – it was with parathas, might I add, not rice. This habit was unknown in 1970s UK. On days off in Singapore we would sometimes hire a launch at Changi creek. We would load it with barbecue equipment, cooler chests full of beer and all that was necessary for a picnic on the beach. We would go out to an uninhabited tropical island where we would put up parachutes in the palm trees for shade. We would spend the day swimming, drinking beer, eating the barbecue and listening to the Creedence Clearwater Revival and Led Zeppelin. Those with WRAF girlfriends would sneak off into the bush for a sly ‘quickie’. Heaven, sheer heaven. RAF DIGBY…again On leaving Singapore someone in the RAF decided to have a huge joke at my expense. I filled in the relevant form. What was my desirable kind of employment, i.e. flying station, communications centre etc.? I stated “anything but a signals unit”. They also asked for geographical preferences. I stated “anywhere but Lincolnshire”. I joined the RAF to escape Lincolnshire. Of course, I was posted to 399 Signals Unit, RAF Digby, Lincolnshire. I must have made someone’s day in the office where they match preferences with vacancies. I can see the scenario even now:..”Eh this guy doesn’t want an SU or Lincolnshire. Let’s send him to Digby, ho ho”. I bet they had a huge laugh at my expense. I sincerely hope that they died laughing. I hope that they died slowly and painfully. However, before Digby I was sent to RAF North Luffenham to learn Russian Morse code. 399SU at Digby was interesting. It reminded me of a much enlarged bridge on the star-ship Enterprise in Star Trek, minus Mr Spock and company. I never did need to use my knowledge of Russian Morse code. I was employed plotting on a huge map. A key moment for me was when I caused an uproar of laughter mispronouncing the place name Bydgoszcz (Poland) – I guessed at Bide-go-sice instead of Bid-gosch. This incident was to change my life for ever. If my colleagues had not made fun of me I would not have felt somehow inferior and feel the need to improve myself. It was this impulse that eventually led me to languages and, later, to university and an academia related career. It is amazing how seemingly small incidents can change your life. We like to think we plan our lives but so much is pure chance. At Digby many of my drinking companions were linguists – Russian, Polish and German. They would have pronounced Bydgoszcz correctly, of course. I thought that they must be incredibly clever, well I would, not having a single GCE to my name. However, I eventually figured out that they were not much different to me, so urged on by the others I too applied for language training. After a two day assessment at RAF North Luffenham I was declared to have an aptitude for languages. I was posted to the RAF Language School at RAF North Luffenham to learn Russian.

5 RAF NORT LUFFENHAM – JOINT LANGUAGE SCHOOL I spent 13 months on the Russian course after which I was no longer a Telegraphist but a Radio Operator L1; L1 meaning ‘Language 1’ = Russian. My sharpest memory of the Russian course was from when we doing a Russian conversation class. The topic of the day was Thalidomide. To our great surprise one of us students, Ron, announced, in Russian: “My brother was a Thalidomide child.” We all turned in our chairs in amazement. Ron had kept this all very quiet. This was news to us. Our teacher, Victoria, was Russian, an ethnic Buryat, I think. You would have thought her Chinese if you had passed her in the street. She was a good teacher. She was also sensitive. She exclaimed, in Russian, words to the effect: “Oh dear. Is he badly affected?” “Yes”, Ron said, “He has no arms or legs, but he has now left school and he has a good job”. “What does he do”, she asked, clasping her hands to her bosom and full of heart-rending concern. “He’s a paperweight in an office”, came the reply. We all burst out laughing. Of course, in those days political correctness did not exist. Victoria burst into tears and had to run out of the room. The Head of School, Boris Sergiakov, soon appeared to tell us all off and make the culprit apologise for his poor taste and for upsetting Victoria. Russians can be very emotional you know. I know. I’m married to one. The Russian course was incredibly intensive. There were two vocabulary and two grammar test per week. There was a major examination every fortnight. The RAF was clever enough to offer us incentives, a posting to Berlin on completion, and to be kicked off the course if we failed an examination – carrot and stick. This helped concentrate the mind. It was about this time that my father decided that I might not be a complete loser, after all. RAF DIGBY...yet again Equipped with a knowledge of Russian, instead of the expected posting to Gatow, Berlin, I was sent back to RAF Digby. I was pretty sick of Lincolnshire and Digby by now and I was really cheesed off on missing a brilliant posting to Berlin. Almost all RAF linguists were employed in Berlin, with short postings back to the UK at Digby, North Luffenham, or GCHQ. In actual fact my year at Digby was hugely enjoyable. I was better paid than as a Teleg, I also was promoted to corporal. I lived in a bungalow in Branston. I liked to tell people I lived near the pickle quarry. I had a decent car. I was very popular with the nurses at RAF Hospital Nocton Hall. I felt that the world was my oyster. I strode around Lincolnshire like a god. I shared the bungalow with a Russian Morse code RAF guy called John, who also had an RAF nurse girl-friend. Ellen was beautiful. Ellen was photogenic. Ellen was incredibly vain. Her room at Nocton was covered floor to ceiling with photographs….of herself. Don’t ask me how I know. John always called her Narcissus, because of her vanity. She liked being called Narcissus, it is a beautiful flower. One day she saw me reading “The Greek Myths”. She asked me if it was interesting. I told her it was fascinating. So she borrowed it. All was fine until she got to the tale of Narcissus. I had presumed she knew the story of the boy who was so vain he fell in love with his own reflection. I thought that she had found John’s use of this name for her amusing. Not so. Like Queen Victoria she was not amused, to put it mildly. I was feeling quite pleased with my life at that time. I felt I was cock of the walk. I remember inviting an extremely attractive nurse out to dinner late one evening at the Nocton Hall disco. She found it difficult to believe that anywhere would be open at that late hour, but I assured her that I knew a secluded little place down next to the river; so off we went, me and a friend

6 and her and her friend. I took them to an all-night greasy spoon café next to the River Witham in Lincoln and ordered mugs of tea and bacon butties all round. My girl was livid. The other one found it all quite hilarious. Word got around of course, but it acted in my favour. My name went up to the top of the ‘desirable Digby guys’ posted on the WRAFs’ Nocton Hall notice board. Yes, they really did have a league table. Now, that was a real coupe! RAF NORTH LUFFENHAM – JOINT LANGUAGE SCHOOL…again After a year of relative hedonism and pronounced debauchery at Digby I was sent back to North Luffenham, this time to learn German. I was to become a Radio Operation L1/L2, L2 being ‘Language 2’ (German). The German course was much shorter than the Russian course. German is much easier to learn than Russian. The course was a piece of doddle. I even found time to go back to Grimsby at weekends to practice my German on a friend of the family. We used to go into Stamford for a night out. I remember four of us going out on a bender one evening. ‘Big Mitch’ drank 12 pints of beer before he found he was finding it difficult to get more beer down his throat, so he drank a double gin and was promptly sick. His response was unforgettable. There had been something wrong with that last pint he told us. This was all the funnier because he obviously believed it. Three of us rented a house just outside Stamford. We had a great party one night. Half a dozen of us got totally wasted. We were didn’t finish until about 4.00am. The next day was the Air Officer Commanding’s annual inspection of RAF North Luffenham. We had to go on parade that morning. We nearly died. I have no idea why we had a party that night. I hope it wasn’t my idea. Princess Margaret visited the camp while I was there and confirmed her reputation for being a bitch, by all accounts. At her insistence, so the tale goes, a special toilet was installed for her…and promptly demolished immediately afterwards. They (perhaps she) did not want anyone boasting that they had sat on the Royal’s toilet seat while it was still hot, apparently. I like to believe that this is a true story but I suspect that it is apocryphal. 26 SIGNALS UNIT, RAF GATOW, BERLIN After completing the German course I was posted to 26 Signals Unit, RAF Gatow, Berlin. You may have seen a BBC documentary about it a couple of years ago. The RAF were paranoid about security and we were never to breath a word about what we did….or else. Having said that, anyone would have to be retarded not to guess that we guys did not go to work carrying headphones because we were being paid to listen to the Top Ten. So it was an education to watch a BBC documentary a few years ago telling the world about what we got up to in Berlin. The programme explained that our Signals Unit was located on the top of Teufelsberg, an artificial mountain constructed of rubble removed from bombed out Berlin at the end of the war. In our ‘facility’ we RAF guys, together with the Americans, monitored Russian and GDR air force radio traffic and reported back to GCHQ, the BBC explained. So much for security. Thank you the Beeb. I put down my poor hearing today to having sat there so long with headphones on and the volume turned full up, trying to make out what GDR pilots were saying behind a screen of ‘white noise’. I kept sane by running, half and full marathons. I discovered that I wasn’t a bad long distance runner. I finished up as skinny as a racing snake and incredibly fit. It was interesting travelling to Berlin via car. We had to go through the Russian military check point where we would park our cars and then enter a wooden cabin with a few seats, a

7 table spread with copies of Pravda and Izvestia. We would have to pass our putovka (travel pass) through a tidy slot in the wall together with our 1250. There was always that singular stink of papirosi cigarettes. A mysterious person behind the wall would stamp the putovka, return it through the slot, and we could then go. Pimply Russian conscript soldiers would then have to match the car licence plate number with what was written on the putovka and then we could proceed on our way. We used our knowledge of Russian to barter Russian insignia, shapki (fur hats), belts and buckles etc, with the guards. In exchange we offered Deutschmarks, girly magazines and/or cigarettes. We felt truly sorry for these poor conscripts. We knew that they were incredibly badly treated and abused. We actually felt some degree of solidarity with them. We would drive a hard bargain and then give them more than agreed – we would drop a packet of cigarettes or a girly magazine next to the car door. It was worth millions to see their eyes light up…but they had to be very wary of the lieutenant in the cabin. The work was horrendously stressful. We worked the usual morning-evening, afternoon-night shift system. Because we had to concentrate so hard at work we found it difficult to ‘shut down’ on finishing a shift. This took its toll. We were having more casualties than in Aden. One from a heart attack, others simply ‘cracking up’. Many were kept going by MO prescribed drugs. All of us depended on alcohol. I more or less went native in Berlin. I started hanging around downtown rather than at the RAF Rugby Club, our unit’s on-camp bar. I preferred going out to watch German films, enjoying the entertainment downtown, and hanging out with Germans, to what RAF Gatow had to offer. At this time it dawned on me that my future prospects where not great. I could see myself retiring from the RAF aged 40 and with no prospect of a decent job. Civilian life has no place for an overspecialised minor spy. In 1978 I decided enough was enough. I decided that I had to quit and prepare for the rest of my working life. However, the RAF was entitled to make me stay on for a further 18 months and this is exactly what they did. Having decided to leave and having made plans, I found their attitude pretty mean. I decided that, OK they could continue make me wear a blue suit, but they could not stop me behaving like a civilian. I rebelled by growing a Zapata moustache, growing my hair long and moving into a flat in Charlottenburg. I did my job and was always reasonably turned out, except for my long hair and moustache, but I failed to turn up for any mock Russian invasion exercises. I seldom went to RAF Gatow. I was thoroughly disenchanted with the RAF by now. I had outgrown it. It would not be unfair to say that I had more to offer the RAF than it had to offer me. My first allegiance was/is to myself. I even contemplated becoming a German citizen. In the end I decided to go to university. I was interviewed for places at Warwick and East Anglia. Both offered me places. I chose East Anglia because the course seemed more interesting and I liked the campus, the city and the guy who interviewed me – W.G.Sebald. After I left the RAF I was pleased to discover that two other guys had seen me as a role model. They left the RAF and went to university to study Russian. In retrospect, joining the RAF was the best career move I have ever made. The alternative would have been a mediocre existence in a grim town. Instead, I got to see the world and broaden my horizons. I met a lot of interesting people. The RAF provided me with the basis of a good education. Somewhere along the line I had picked up a few ’A’ levels and seven or eight GCEs. When I left the RAF to study German at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich I was totally fluent in German. In fact, Germans usually thought I was a

8 Plattdeutscher, someone from the North Sea coast. After the RAF I was able to secure a more interesting and rewarding career and one that would eventually leave me financially secure. Leaving the RAF when I did was the second best career move I have ever made.

Life outside the RAF At UEA I studied German Area Studies, i.e. literature, history and language. Well, I didn’t study language at all. I knew all that already. That allowed me to concentrate on literature and history. My two favourite lecturers were Max Sebald (W.G.Sebald) and Richard Shepherd. I took every course they offered. Max went on to become a much lauded novelist before his life was tragically cut short by a heart attack. Richard Shepherd’s course on Existentialism was a life changer. I spent my third year back in Berlin teaching at a Gymnasium in Wedding, directly next to the Berlin Wall. Someone had painted a door on the wall next to the school with the slogan (in German) “Anyone who comes through here gets one mark from me”. There was lots of funny graffiti. I lived in Kreuzberg, home to Turkish immigrants and students. The place was full of student bars. It was fantastic. I had the time of my life. Life was incredibly vibrant in Kreuzberg. It had a real buzz about it. When Ronald Regan came to Berlin it gave everyone the opportunity to go out onto the street and riot. When one riot police charge got a bit too near for comfort, I sensibly retreated to the balcony of my upstairs flat, where I harboured a group of like-minded anarchists. We were able to enjoy a grandstand view of the rest of the rioting from my balcony, beer bottle in hand, and quite safely. I do like to watch a good riot from safety. The stream of sparks coming from incoming tear gas shells, the cobble stone projectiles, the upturned cars. Not as lively as Aden, perhaps, but lively. After four years fun and games at UEA I had to start a new career. I did contemplate a PhD and was offered a place in Indiana, but I decided that at 40 I was too old for that. I eventually got an academic related job organising educational exchanges at the US/UK Educational Commission (Fulbright Commission). The pay was lousy but I met an awful lot of very interesting people. Only the crème de la crème receive Fulbright Awards. I used to go to a lot of functions at the American Embassy. I went wearing a Lenin badge once – for a laugh. After that I joined the Association of MBAs. I spent 22 years at Association of MBAs. I stayed there up until my retirement. I did quite a few jobs during that time but for the last nine years I was Accreditation Manager. I put together teams of professors I we went to universities around the world doing quality control checks on MBA degree programmes. It was great fun. I choose the panel of experts so I got to work with people who were both knew what they were about but were also good company. I visited around 180 universities in 58 countries – Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, North, South, Central and South America and the Caribbean. I probably did around 300 visits overseas. The countries most visited were: Russia – 36; Spain – 25, France – 25. Languages came in useful. My Russian is now bad but at least I can get by and the Russians and Ukrainians loved me for it. I am fluent in Spanish and German but my French is an embarrassment. I had a few interesting moments on my overseas visits. I was arrested in Moscow, together with three professors, for jaywalking. Fortunately I understood enough of the cops Russian to twig that their only concern was for how much money they could shake us down for. I

9 coughed up the equivalent of £50 and they even gave us a lift to the Arbat. They left us all smiles – visions of mountains of vodka, no doubt. Russia is totally corrupt. In Lima I was expertly pick pocked while listening to a speech by El Presidente in the city plaza. One managed to get my wallet and he quickly passed in on to an old hag who quickly got lost in the crowed. In Athens I was robbed by a gang of Albanians, or gypsies, while travelling on the metro. Five of them surrounded me and started pushing and shoving. It was all very crude and blatant, no skill at all. I knew what was happening and kept hold of my wallet and camera but the got my mobile phone and some notes in my top pocket. Greeks on the metro saw what happened and looked thoroughly ashamed. In Paris I got out of a taxi at the Gare du Nord, put down my conference bag so I could take out my wallet and pay the driver, and voila! My bag was gone, together with mobile phone, camera and house keys. The house keys were the worst loss. And, in London, coming back from one of my visits I was mugged by two knife welding yobs only yards away from my home. Worst place I have visited – Lima. Lima is covered in fog for nine months per year and you never see the sun between, I think, April and December. Very depressing. Most different – Albania, unlike any other place in the world. Most hostile – Russia. Anyone dealing with the public is a sociopath, in shops, banks, the metro etc. I thought that everyone hated me when I bought a metro ticket on went to a shop. I later realised that they treat everyone equally badly. Most corrupt – Russia. Most hospitable – also Russia. Russians are the most hospitable people in the world. They would give you the shirt off their back if you mentioned that you liked it. Best place – the UK, OK, I am probably prejudiced. Most intellectual – Berlin, the only place I know where you can walk into a bar and strike up a conversation with a stranger about Shakespeare, Bertold Brecht, Gunter Grass, whatever. I always thought I would retire to Spain. I am a real Hispanophile. I speak the language well and like culture the style of living. However, when I was nearly retirement I listed all the things I wanted in life and matched them with locations. Spain did not appear in the top five. Top came Lewes, East Sussex. We looked at Brighton – too much like a London by the Sea, and Eastbourne – God’s waiting room. Lewes was perfect. An historic and interesting town, and near enough to London for exhibitions and culture, Gatwick 30 minutes away, and the South Downs on our doorstep. I still work, as a consultant but if the sun is out I go for long walks (i.e. 10 to 20 miles) on the Downs or I go birding. My wife and I both like walking. We go to the mountains in Scotland every year walking. We also do long distance paths elsewhere, such as Pembrokeshire etc. However, because my Russian wife is a teacher, our holidays usually have to tie in with term time in Russia, hence missing the reunion. Incidentally, and just for the record, we are both avidly anti-Putin. Prince Charles was spot on when he said Russia today is getting to be like Nazi Germany. The British press doesn’t get to publish half of the disgraceful shenanigans that go on in Putin’s circle. Congratulations if you managed to read as far as this. I hope what I wrote was readable, informative and amusing in places. Thank you for your kind attention. All my very best wishes for a happy future.