PC 478 Eating Habits

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I have to assume that none of my readers have actually ever been starving, although they may have screamed something to that effect at some moment. Starving is a horrible situation to be in and for some parts of the world starvation stalks people too readily. You may remember Stalin confiscated Ukraine’s wheat harvest in 1932; in the year that followed some 3.9 million, 13% of the population, starved to death. (See PC 273 ‘Stories to Tell’ March 2022)

Malnutrition follows and, unless there’s a slow reintroduction to energy-giving food, the physical effects become irreversible. That is life limiting.

In developed countries we seem to get into fixed routines when it comes to eating. Breakfast starts the day, something in the middle, called lunch in the southern half of England but often ‘dinner’ in the North, then supper/tea/dinner after you’ve stopped working. Other opportunities to put food in your mouth might be mid-morning, traditionally called ‘elevenses’ in Britain or simply ‘coffee’. In my Army service, in barracks most things stopped for ‘coffee’; down to the various messes or canteen, a quick peruse of the morning papers, a chance to talk to others not in your sub-unit, and then back to work. Afternoon tea for the middle and upper classes would have been tea, sandwiches and maybe a slice of cook’s latest cake; for the workers it was their main meal of the day. Who can forget Shirley Valentine’s husband Joe, in the film of the same name, arriving back from work, expecting steak for his tea, only to find that she’s fed it to a friend’s Bloodhound; ‘But it’s Tuesday. I always have steak on Tuesday!’

Fortunately you have a choice, to find some food and put it into your mouth …. and no one is forced-fed!

When I started my executive coaching career, I became a member of The Institute of Directors on Pall Mall in central London, so I could use the meeting rooms to engage with my clients. The huge oil paintings of the great and the good of the C19th that hung around the large rooms communicated a sense of ‘anything is possible’; that’s how I saw them, although I never asked a client their take! Sometimes for lunch I had a sandwich at my table, but more often-than-not I walked across Pall Mall and up the Royal Opera Arcade to an Italian-run Deli.

The arcade itself had a curious mix of tenants; today it lists an art gallery, a ‘Synergy Chinese Medical Centre’, a stationers and bookshop, a diamond merchant and the back door to the New Zealand High Commission, as well as the sandwich centre. This was a busy place at lunchtime, and the energised staff recognised their regulars with a big smile and wave: “The usual?” It was gloriously theatrical! Then my ‘usual’ was slices of rare roast beef in a granary bap with some horseradish sauce and masses of fresh black pepper; I can taste it now ….. to die for!

Another London lunchtime favourite was egg mayonnaise in a brown bap with masses of black pepper, and an apple, when I worked for Short Brothers in Glen House in Victoria. The usual? We do get into habits about food, don’t we.

My body screams ‘sugar please’ when I come back from hot yoga, where I’ve lost over a litre of sweat ….. so need liquid and sugar. I got into the habit of having a large bowl of cornflakes, with granulated sugar, full fat milk and an apple or banana; then some Cadbury’s Whole Nut! Over the months my weight gradually increased; not surprising! Then last year I got quite severe food poisoning on our TAP flight from Rio de Janeiro, took ten days to recover completely, lost weight and recognised here was an opportunity to change my habits. So now my ‘usual’ is a salad of crayfish tails, anchovies, tomatoes and cucumber.

A yoga chum passed me Chris van Tulleken’s paperback ‘Ultra-Processed People – Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food …. And Why Can’t We stop?’, as he thought I might like to read it. He had absorbed its contents lying in his evening bath and the back cover had clearly had alternating periods of being wet and drying out. In some strange way it made me want to read it more!

If you think van Tulleken’s name’s familiar, it’s probably because his ideas were popular with the late Michael Mosely, whose television series about food, particularly about intermittent fasting, low-carbohydrate and the ketogenic diets, made him a household name. 

In 2017 British consumers spent just 8% of their household budget on food; this compares with only 6% in the USA, but 11-14% in Germany, Norway, France and Italy for example. Research by the Food Foundation shows that the poorest 50% of households would need to spend almost 30% of their disposable income if they wanted to eat a diet that adheres to national ‘healthy eating guidelines’; the poorest 10% would need to spend 75%. UPF is almost universally cheaper, quicker and supposedly just as nutritious than foods and meals that need home preparation. For some it’s a no brainer.

I haven’t read more than a third of the book yet, but already like the statement: “Fish oil is bad for you; oily fish is good for you.”, although I accept that for some, ‘cod liver oil tablets’, for instance, might be more available than a couple of mackerel fillets. Van Tulleken uses Palm Oil to illustrate his point: “When freshly pressed, it’s an almost luminous, crimson, highly aromatic, spicy and flavourful, full of antioxidants like palm tocotrienol.”

Not sure whether you’re a fan of Nutella but this spread uses oil, and that can’t be crimson and spicy! So, the palm oil is refined by heating, has phosphoric acid added to remove gums and waxes, is neutralised by caustic soda, bleached with bentonite clay (!) and finally deodorised using high-pressure steam. The process is known as RBD – refined, bleached and deodorised. And it’s this process which is used to make soybean, palm, canola (rapeseed) and sunflower oils.

I wonder what other nuggets I will uncover as I read more of the book. It might make me question further: “The usual?”

Richard 13th February 2026

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PC 479 Memories of Regimental Service (3)

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Memories aren’t necessarily concentrated – my mind sees one, remembers other, hears a third, from the general collective memory of ‘my time in Germany’. We generalise our memories to make them manageable. For instance: I remember the funeral of Major Dick Jones, killed in a car accident whilst on exercise, and having to practise carrying his coffin with a weighted filing cabinet; the restaurant in the Lippstadt town square where the Pfeffersteak was to die for; spending a long weekend at the regimental Ski Hut down in Southern Germany; my left-hand-drive blue Volkswagen Variant; taking the train to Turin to collect a new Lancia Fulvia from the factory; formal mess dinners once a month,

all booted and spurred – the meal followed by mess rugby; what was known as ‘the porcelain telephone’ in the gentleman’s in the Officers’ Mess in Lippstadt, essentially somewhere to vomit when you have drunk too much (!); pretending to be a private soldier and collecting the late Richard Clarke, a newly-joined officer at that time, at RAF Gutersloh in a little Ferret Scout Car; studying for academic exams for entry to the Army Staff College, a prerequisite to promotion beyond the rank of Major; learning that the wives of my soldiers could also be charged with offences under Military Law – a Sergeant’s wife lost her temper, smashed a bottle over someone’s head (nice huh!) and ended up in a Military Court; listening to the first ever moon walk – ‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ – by Neil Armstrong on 20th July 1969, on a small battery-powered radio in a tent in Trauen Camp; sitting for the annual Regimental Officers’ photograph, which often included a dog or dogs – this one of 27 Medium Regiment Royal Artillery in Lippstadt in 1972;

travelling to the German North Sea island of Sylte one Easter for a long weekend. Accessible by a man-made causeway, an up-market place for Germans to be seen, to promenade, to eat cake; another memory is easy – the extension cable I used in my Officers’ Mess accommodation, to take power to a stereo system, is still in use (see PC 108 ‘I’m Long and Black’ October 2017): attending a ‘Colloquial German’ course in Mülheim, near Düsseldorf, and embarrassingly translating a message to the effect there was a tank (hiding) behind the large farmer – confusing bauer (farmer) for scheune (barn).

Travel to East Germany was almost impossible, although one could drive or fly to Berlin with the correct paperwork. In the British sector of West Germany, troops occasionally patrolled the border with the East, more for its Public Relations value than any suggestion it was a deterrent! I undertook one such week’s fascinating patrol with sixteen of my gunners and am glad I did. We stayed in farmers’ barns, although a young Guard’s Second Lieutenant, who was attached to us, and I shared a room in the main house. I remember our first morning; out of nowhere, in his rather plummy voice: ‘Drat! He didn’t pack my razor!’ ‘What’s the problem, Brian/Andrew/Toby/etc?’ ‘My man (ie batman) forgot my razor!’ I lent him a spare and hope he learned a little lesson; if you want to guarantee something, do it yourself!

I have mentioned that 39 Medium Regiment spent two Christmases (1972 and 1975) on operations in Northern Ireland (see appropriate postcards). Prior to my second tour, the commanding officer, Mike Hudson, decided we should get used to working well into the night, so shifted our working day from 0800 – 1630 to 1230 – 2200. Previously, we just accepted that training went on into the evening. Now we could have a nice relaxing morning and the ‘working day’ never went beyond 2300.

Twice in my Army career I organised an Officers’ Mess Summer Ball, the second time in Bulford north of Salisbury, the first time in the Lippstadt Officers’ Mess. In the latter I was assisted by Anna Clements, the wife of the resident dentist John. I saw a lot of both of them and their three young boys, but it was Anna whose artistic ability gelled with mine in designing the decorations. 

Memories of food outside the Officers Mess are of the wonderful German sausages and their extravagant cakes. Their little ‘Schnell Imbis’ (‘Fast Snack’ (Obviously!)) caravans were everywhere in die Parkplätze and the ‘Currywurst mit pommes frit’, served on a white cardboard tray with a little wooden two-pronged fork, became the easy answer to hunger pangs. Writing this, another memory surfaced! On big exercises in Germany, we tended to operate on Greenwich Mean Time, the time zone adopted by the Royal Air Force. In the summer months that meant we were two hours behind the locals. At the end of one gruelling day, the lieutenant colonel of the armoured regiment I was attached to suggested we had a snack in the local pub – the kitchen of which to our dismay had already closed!

Living on continental Europe had its advantages from a travel point of view. In 1976, a conversation over lunch in England led to an offer; ‘come out to Palau, Sardinia and help Merry Andrews, the old friend of a friend, crew his yacht’. Two weeks on and off sailing, ‘fed, watered and accommodated for free’; I jumped at the chance. Late one Friday afternoon, with some sandwiches for supper, I set off in my little Lancia Fulvia for Civitavecchia, the port city to the west of Rome, from where I could catch a ferry to Olbia on Sardinia.

It’s just under 1500kms; Google Maps today tells me it would take around 18 hours. I drove until I felt the need to sleep, pulled into a layby, dropped the seat down, covered myself with a sleeping bag and slept. I reached Civitavecchia in time to book for the 2300 sailing; my car was hoisted onto the ferry deck by crane and I headed off in search of the bar. Two Gin & Tonics went down in quick succession! It was a very good fortnight.

And finally, our world was a diet of Alphabet soup. For example:

RA JDSC 2IC CO BC BAOR FOO TEWT NAAFI CPX GPO ADC AFV ADJ OP AG6 NSI SGT BDR GNR FP FUP GCM

Richard 20th February 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Oh! And I managed to find time to race from Tenerife to Bermuda in a 55ft

ketch:

see PC 161 The Atlantic 1976 (Sep 2019)

PC 476 Memories of Regimental Service in Germany (2)

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….. continued from PC 474 …….

In PC 15 Alcohol and Other Drugs (June 2014) I wrote about my own journey from schoolboy to teetotaller, through a great deal of red and white wines, spirits and liqueurs, not to mention cigarettes and little cigars! As a single officer living in the Mess off-duty life revolved, as I’ve already admitted, around the bar; it was part of the life we led. Sometimes you need someone else to tell you some home truths. Paddy Surgeoner, the Battery Sergeant Major of 132 Medium Battery (The Bengal Rocket Troop) Royal Artillery, took me aside one day and said: “Hold out your arm, Captain Yates.” “Why?” (so argumentative!) “Just do it, Sir!” So, I held out my arm, as straight as I could. He looked at my hand. “Keep your hand still.” (It was shaking!) “I am, Sergeant Major!” “Think you should cut down on the booze, Sir!”

South of the German city of Hanover lies the town of Coppenbrügge; to its south-west lie what were the British Army bases of Bielefeld and Paderborn. Somewhere near the town the geography moulds and constricts any advancing enemy from the east into a narrow fold – forever known to those who exercised a fighting withdrawal as the Coppenbrügge Gap. I certainly spent a few days each year in a camouflaged vehicle or trench overlooking this ‘choke point’, waiting to bring down artillery fire on the ‘enemy’.

Recently we have become more aware of our changing global climate and an increase in the frequency of ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ events. In 1972, during a two-week live firing exercise on Hohne, the six self-propelled M109s of my battery (6 Medium Battery Royal Artillery) were deployed in a firing area which was surrounded by very tall pine trees. As the afternoon wore on, the wind strength increased to a point when it would have been unsafe to continue firing. Thirty minutes later a tornado ripped through the countryside. My observation later was: ‘It was as if a malevolent hand had brushed the surface of the land’, uprooting thousands of trees and lifting corrugated rooves off barns.

Often a mammoth ‘fuck up’ can led to glory! In 1973 my battery was on a non-live firing exercise on the Bergen-Hohne Training area, part of which would be a test of our ‘nuclear’ preparedness. As the GPO (Gun Position Officer) I was responsible for every aspect of the gun position. It went wrong from the beginning. I bummed a helicopter ride from a chum, Jim Longfield, to conduct a reconnaissance of the allocated training area to determine where best to set out the six guns; that was OK! But the first ‘recce’ Command Post AFV 432 caught fire on its way overland, causing delays and by the time the test started, we were behind. Our responses were slow because the firing tables hadn’t been amended and eventually the Directing Staff (DS) and AIGs (Assistant Instructor Gunnery) terminated our participation. We would be retested, a NATO requirement, after the DS and AIGs had crawled all over us, admonishing us for this and that; it was not a happy few weeks.

On the re-test, everything and everyone came together. The result was highlighted by the Master Gunner, a full-ranking general, who came by helicopter to visit the gun position. Initially he couldn’t find it, so good was the camouflage that my gunners had used to disguise the six large M109 guns. “Best gun position he’d ever seen.”

You can make out the Self-propelled M109 barrel – but not much else.

Three Nine Regiment Royal Artillery in Paderborn had a tactical nuclear capability, that is the ability to fire a small yield nuclear shell. The US made the shells and their maintenance was controlled by a small American Army detachment led by a Captain Bob Anala. His team’s presence in the barracks ensured there was also a small PX (PX: Post Exchange – an American store), where I was introduced to the delights of Aunt Jemima pancakes, Bourbon, and King Edward cigars.

Bob celebrating his birthday

Other names surface from the murky depths; Ollerhead, Bailey, Corbett-Burcher, Ross, Longfield, Bromby, Watkins, Tar, Bazard, Faith, Sawrey-Cookson, Peters, Piper, Rooke, James, Clarke, Colley, Treseder, Myberg, Pender, Morley, Harman, Gwyn, Freeth, McNee, Quarelle and Scarlett …. and my soldiers like Sergeants Fitzpatrick and Williams or Bombardiers Batchelor or Elrick.

When I started Officer Training at RMA Sandhurst, we wore leather boots for drill and leather boots for training exercises – they got wet, they were uncomfortable. Fast forward to Germany some years later and it wasn’t much better. In the winter Germany was generally colder so I bought a pair of fur-lined tank boots. These, with white long-johns and insulating inner soles, became de rigour, especially when one was on a bare hill practising ‘Observation of Fire’ (ie correcting artillery fire to where you wanted it) and it was -10C. One spring for some reason the whole regiment was in a tented camp up at Bergen-Hohne; we had over a foot of snow!

I reflect that one got used to living outside, either down some hole, under or in a vehicle. So much so that on return to barracks after two or three weeks living in the elements, it was necessary to turn off the central heating and throw open the windows!

I have mentioned in another postcard that, on a day off from an exercise, I visited the Belsen concentration camp, or what was left of it ….. mounds and mounds of banked earth, with a simple sign at their base, something like: ‘Here are buried 2000 bodies’. If the atmosphere pervading the area wasn’t bad enough, sombre, tangibly evil, no birds, one only had to drive across to the Bergen-Hohne railway station, where those destined for the camp arrived. Looking down from an overbridge at the platforms, a light drizzle falling in the dusk, a breeze swinging the station lamps ….. imagining a train arriving and disgorging its human cargo for their final kilometre or so …… words fail but the visuals survive.

(To be continued …..)

Richard 30th January 2026

Hove

http://www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PC 474 Memories of Regimental Service in Germany (1)

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During my 20 years serving Her Majesty and her elected governments, I spent almost six years in Germany, when it was divided into West and East, and home to the British Army of The Rhine (BAOR). In the 1970s 1st (BR) Corps, which was headquartered in Bielefeld, had a strength of about 53,000. NATO forces faced the combined might of the USSR and Warsaw Pact armies. To quote a former commander of 7th Armoured Brigade: “These were huge armies that we were going to have to take on, and we were inevitably going to be overwhelmed by numbers. Therefore, it was the amount of damage that we could do …. to limit their advance before ‘nuclear release’, before we actually used tactical nuclear weapons.” I reflect that we never practised ‘advancing’, always refining the managed retreat!

I write these memories at a time of heightened tension across Europe, with Russia reinterpreting history to justify its own belligerent nature. Sad when you read its president talking about war with Europe. Why can’t he refocus, on, say, raising the living standards of his people?

Sailing a 30ft engineless Danboat with the late Bill Pender

In my first year in Lippstadt, before going to university, I was often sailing in The Baltic, on yachts from the British Kiel Yacht Club on the western side of the Kieler Fjord (See PC 106 Sailing in The Baltic 2017, PC 229 Kiel to Oslo 2021 and PC 231 Ropes and Sheets 2021.) I continued to introduce soldiers to the rigours of offshore sailing when I returned to Lippstadt in 1972, before moving down the road to Paderborn the following year.

My absence from barracks was noticeable! So much so that when the Second-in-Command, Major John Harman, wanted to reinforce a point in his lecture to junior NCOs, he allegedly asked: “So where would you expect the FOO of 132 Battery (Note 1), Captain Yates, to be at this stage in the battle?”, a wag at the back shouted: “Sailing in The Baltic, Sir!” In my accommodation in the Officers’ Mess, I had a wall covered with charts of The Baltic, with coloured lines marking different expeditions. Good times!

In August 1969 I heard on the radio Prime Minister Jim Callaghan announce that British troops would be sent to Northern Ireland ‘to aid the police’. I was, naturally, on a yacht, this time near the little Danish village of Aerøskøbing and within three weeks of returning to England and starting university. I genuinely thought I might miss some action, with the prospect of three years studying Civil Engineering. Surely in that time ‘they’ could sort out what would become known as the Troubles? No one forecast the civil conflict would last for 30 years. My own ‘Tales of Northern Ireland’ can be found in PCs 196, 197 & 198 from 2020.

I was a single officer during my time in Germany and life revolved around training in and out of barracks, sport,

An inter-regimental match in February 1973

and the Officers’ Mess. It was here we congregated for a mid-morning coffee, a drink in the bar before lunch, a drink or two in the bar before dinner and possibly a nightcap. I sensed we ‘worked hard and played hard’! There was no watchable television, the newspapers were at least a day old and the only telephone was a landline contained in a little kiosk in a corner of the Mess hallway. For international calls, you had to talk to the operator and book it! The Mess in Lippstadt was a grand building with a double-height dining room and a Minstrel’s gallery at one end. During morning coffee in one of the anterooms, Captains David Morley and the late Bill Pender would read, with appropriate accents, Punch magazine’s Idi Amin column. (Note 2) Somehow a wonderful memory, although the subject was evil! Idi Amin was the dictatorial President of Uganda (1971-1979) whose regime was responsible for the deaths of anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 Ugandans and the expulsion of some 50,000 Ugandan Asians, who owned the vast majority of the country’s businesses; economic collapse followed.

We enjoyed a life of duty-free alcohol, cigarettes and other goods like cars. The British Forces were supported by the NAAFI (Naval, Army & Air Force Institute), which had a large supermarket near the barracks in Schloss Neuhaus. Living as a single chap in the Officers’ Mess, my victualing needs were met, and I rarely went to the NAAFI. On the odd occasion I did, I was disappointed. Looking for some ink cartridges for a fountain pen, I tried the NAAFI: “Sorry love; no, we don’t stock those ….. but you’re the third person this month who’s asked for them.” I left, thinking well why don’t you order some in if there is a demand.

Training for the four-month infantry-role deployment to Northern Ireland took a huge chunk out of our normal Artillery training schedule; I did it twice!

M109s in the direct as opposed to indirect fire role

The artillery training programmes at regimental level hadn’t changed for decades; individual/personal training advanced into sub-unit and regimental exercises, then in the autumn much larger Divisional formations practised over the north German plains. Farmers were paid compensation if dozens of tracked vehicles ripped through, for instance, their fields of Sugar Beet. These exercises naturally never used live ammunition; we practised that with 155mm shells on the Hohne-Bergen and Münsterlager Training areas.

We did some mad things but then we were in our twenties, and everyone does mad things in their 20s, right? One Friday afternoon I got in the car after work, and drove to Calais, some 550kms. I then caught the 2300 ferry to Dover and drove to Leicester. On the Sunday afternoon, I drove back to Dover, caught the ferry to Ostend in Belgium and drove back into Germany, arriving for breakfast in the Officers Mess.

(To be Continued)

Richard 16th January 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 An artillery Forward Observation Officer (FOO) would be attached to an infantry or tank regiment, to bring indirect fire support as necessary.

Note 2 Regular articles by Alan Coren appeared in Punch, “utilising phonetic spelling and current idiom to lampoon this odious dictator. Sadly, its success won the attention of the Politically Correct Commissars, who pompously halted the satire.”

PC 138 Remembrance – Another Time and Another Place

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In case you’ve been on Planet Zog and missed its significance, November 2018 was one hundred years after The Great War ended, at that 11th hour on that 11th day of that 11th month. They waited for five hours after a ceasefire was agreed, they waited for a nice tidy numerical sequence of hour, day and month; meanwhile hundreds died, for a political gesture! (See PS) Much has been made, rightly so, of the immense sacrifice of life, both military and civilian, that four years of conflict had witnessed. The war to end all wars; until we went to war again 21 years later. 

The simply poppy has become synonymous with remembrance in the UK

Now we will remember them. We read about both heroic and pointless sacrifice, of simply ‘doing your duty’, of man’s inhumanity to his fellow humans, and shudder. My maternal grandmother’s eldest brother Dudley Corbett, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps, died a month after the end of the war from a war-related illness; he was 37.

In amongst memorabilia handed down, from whom I am not sure (!), I have this metal shaving mirror in a leather pouch, from Merchant Taylors’ School Club dated Christmas 1915 and wishing its recipient ‘Good Luck’, and think of that hugely optimistic cry ‘It’ll all be over by Christmas’, and that was in 1914!

In Germany, this year’s 100th anniversary is not being commemorated in the same way. Instead of looking back, they are looking forward to this time next year when they will remember the thirty years since the Berlin Wall came down, paving the way for reunification a year later. You may recall the dividing of the then East German city Berlin by a hideous concrete block wall, and the fortification of the long land border between East and West, the Inner German Border (IGB).

Stationed in Lippstadt, West Germany, in 1973, I took a patrol along the British sector of the IGB, accompanied by a member of the British Frontier Service. These ‘civilian’ guides monitored the border along the southern sector of the British zone from Lauenburg to Schmidekopf. They wore a uniform rather Naval in appearance, white topped cap and fawn duffle coat, and the chap who was with us as we watched the East German Border Guards, and were watched in return, was a mine of information. My week-long patrol was accompanied by a Second Lieutenant from some Guards battalion; we shared accommodation in barns and farmhouses – on the first morning he exclaimed: “Drat! My man hasn’t packed my shaving kit!” I didn’t have a batman and packed my own stuff so wasn’t too sympathetic!

Memories from my five years in the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) could fill many PCs. (Ed: In January/February 2026 I wrote three PCs about my Regimental Service (PCs 474, 476 & 479) Some immediately come to mind and others require more than a nanosecond:

The ubiquitous roadside snack bar (Schnellimbiss) that served a long sausage drenched in a hot sauce (currywurst mit pom frits) on a cardboard tray that only just took the weight. When you were hungry, this was manna from heaven.

Two regiments, my Royal Artillery one and one Royal Signals, were housed in a large barracks. On the gate was a soldier with a rifle. No one realised that the ammunition was kept under lock and key inside the guardhouse; couldn’t trust the squaddie with live ammunition!! Until the Baader-Meinhof Gang started causing mayhem; alert states went up and the ammunition went into the rifle’s magazine!

I have fond memories of food! If we were out of barracks on some form of training, but not on a tactical exercise, we relied on the BQMS to provide meals from his 3 ton kitchen truck. The alternative was to have our own tinned rations and do it ourselves; the first option was always the best. Breakfast: great noisy gas blowers shot flames under the large dixies of water; on top flat trays cooked greasy fried eggs, fried bread (yum yum), bacon rashers, mushrooms and tinned tomatoes. It was alright if it was dry, but if it was raining water somehow got into the mess tin and turned the tomatoes into soup.

Married officers lived on The Patch; if you were under 25 you had to get permission to get married, as well as find someone who would have you of course!

Self-propelled guns, armoured vehicles and supply trucks lined up after some large-scale exercise in 1973.

We trained and practised our profession. The cycle hadn’t changed much since Wellington’s time; individual training at the beginning of the year then section, platoon, company and regimental. Not until the autumn did we link up with other units in huge divisional exercises across the north German plains. And as the combined weight of the USSR and Warsaw Pact would have squashed us easily, we practised going backwards (we didn’t talk about retreating, just going backwards or a fighting withdrawal!); hopefully this would have given the politicians time, someone would authorise the use of a tactical nuclear weapon and everything would stop. Fortunately we never had to put these plans to the test. 

We drank. The BAOR enjoyed Duty Free status and that applied to everything from cars to alcohol and petrol. When we were in barracks, as a single officer the temptation to drink at lunchtime, drink before dinner, with dinner and after dinner, was immense; there was no television. (see PC 15) If the Russians wanted to invade western Europe, Christmas was definitely the best time as everyone walked around in an alcoholic haze!

In addition to our professional training, we undertook adventurous training of all sorts. For me this focused on offshore sailing in The Baltic (see PC 106); delightful and memorable experiences.

Our experiences in life are what shape us, and understanding their importance and their influence is essential. We can’t change those experiences but we can keep their memories in perspective, as we live today and move into tomorrow. 

Richard 30th November 2018

PS Rather like the Japanese found on some remote island a year after the Second World War had ended, news of the Armistice took days to reach those in conflict in Africa. It wasn’t until 25th November 1918 that German forces in East Africa surrendered and 100 years on services of remembrance took place in Kenya and Zambia. 

PC 161 The Atlantic – a Tall Ships’ Race

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Way back in 1975, on a cool autumnal evening in Dempsey Barracks, Sennelager in Germany, I was sitting in my room in the Officers Mess of 39 Medium Regiment Royal Artillery, thinking how the last training exercise had gone. The mess orderly knocked; I had a telephone call, someone called Major Mike May. Hard to believe these days, when communication devices are personal and in your face, or should that be at your ear (?), but the Mess’ telephone was housed in a little cubicle off the main ground floor corridor. Outgoing calls were made via an exchange operator! It was a somewhat airless and dimly lit space, but doubtless privy to countless intimate conversations over the decades. I had sailed with Mike May a few times and this was really our only connection; so I was expecting some sailing-related question, but not: “Would you like to navigate an Army entry in the STA Race next year?”

The STA (Sail Training Association) was an umbrella organisation for offshore sailing in the UK, but more importantly organised an annual international race for square riggers and sailing ships. (See note 1) I had taken part in its 1969 race from Portsmouth to Skagen in Denmark, so was familiar with its ethos of encouraging youngsters to develop their character through sailing. Additionally in 1974 I had had a fortnight sailing as a Watch Officer on the TS Malcolm Miller, a three-masted schooner. The 1976 race was from Portsmouth, England to Newport, Rhode Island, USA via Tenerife, in The Canaries, and Bermuda. These four legs would be sailed by different crews; we were allotted the Tenerife to Bermuda leg, a distance of just under 3000 nautical miles. Bermuda, an island lying some 600 miles east of the USA state of North Carolina, is 22 miles long but only one mile wide!

After some crew training in The Baltic we, Mike May as Skipper, me as Navigator and ten other army personnel, flew to Santa Cruz de Tenerife on 21st May 1976 and took over the Nicholson 55ft yacht HMY Sabre.

Two days later the race to Bermuda started; there must have been about 50 vessels, from huge ‘tall ships’ to lesser mortals like us. Offshore racing is strange; you have a crowded, manic surge across the start line, the skippers set their course and off you go. Most modern yachts can sail just below 40 deg to the wind, the tall ships probably only manage 60 deg; but their speed was much superior to ours, so their passage quite different! I don’t think we saw any other competitors after that first night, such is the vastness of our oceans! It’s a long time ago (!) but I think we organised a watch system of 4 hours on/4 hours off with a ‘dog watch’ to change the routine …… for three weeks.

So ….. days of watch and sail changing, attempting to squeeze another knot out of the yacht and our inexorable progress towards Bermuda. Ripped sails needed mending, gear needed maintaining, bread needed making – or should that be kneading? And with twelve people in a small confined space, the crew needed managing!

The trade winds are the prevailing pattern of winds found in the tropics, from the east towards the west. Tenerife is some five degrees north of the Tropic of Cancer so we were able to take advantage of these favourable winds, flying the large spinnaker sail almost for two weeks, before a final few days of head winds and heavy seas. Somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic we were becalmed and this gave us all an opportunity to have a swim, although prudence ensured only one crewman was in the sea at any time, the rest maintaining a lookout for sharks!

…….. and me! (Not thinking how deep the water was!)

Fresh water was rationed to 1.5 litres per person per day – although we had an extra splash in a whisky at drinks time. The eventual lack of fresh food and the constant exposure to salt water produced some skin issues but otherwise the planned menus worked well.  Sometimes the nights seemed very long …….

…… and at other times the conditions required much concentration …….

We checked in with the Race Controllers every day by two-way radio, giving our position and listening to those of the yachts we saw as our competitors! Into our final week and we had head winds which gave us more movement and surprisingly some seasickness!

No two yachts were the same and there was a handicap system. We navigated by sextant with sun and moon shots, converting our data by way of navigational tables and a Hewlett-Packard calculator the size of a house brick that had some computing ability, to a position on the chart ……. and were very pleased to find the tiny island of Bermuda right on the bow on the 10th June.

We had arrived in Bermuda at the beginning of the hurricane season, greeted by cloudy and extremely humid weather. The Tall Ships gradually filled up the harbours and small bays and celebrations were numerous and colourful; thousands of young people enjoying a tremendous achievement, crossing one of the great oceans of the world. And if you’ve never tried Planter’s Punch, do so, but do it in the environment for which it was created; doing so back in Germany some weeks later it wasn’t quite the same! But we had done well and somehow managed to win some trophy.

Richard 19th September 2019

PS I even managed to catch up with an ex-school friend who lived there.

Note 1. Founded in 1956, the Sail Training Association (STA) became the Tall Ships Youth Trust. The current Tall Ships’ Races are organised by the Portsmouth-based Sail Training International.

PC 108 I’m Long and Black

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“Oh! If I could only talk I could tell you a thing or two …….  but if it helps I’m almost 50 years old; not that it matters as I don’t measure my existence by years but by my capacity to deliver what I was made to do. OK So I’ve got your attention, that’s good as normally I am just left in a cupboard hung up, feeling abandoned ……. until the next time. Currently I’m in the cupboard with the hot water tank, a lazy maid and some Samsonite luggage as there’s no garage or attic where we live. It’s warm when the water’s hot and quite dry, so I can’t complain.

My first memory I think comes from 1969, when my owner needed something like me; it’s a good feeling to be wanted. He had a large room in the Officers’ Mess Annexe of the Artillery Barracks in the German town of Lippstadt, on the edge of the Paderborner Plain.

The barracks had housed a Luftwaffe battalion and the Mess itself was beautiful, but single officers’ accommodation was limited, hence the annexe within the main barracks. Sadly there were few electrical sockets and he saw a need for an extension cable of some sort. Ah! You’ve guessed it, I’m an electrical cable; three wires, green, red and blue (See Note) sheathed in a black outer casing. I used to be part of an enormous reel of cable that the army used for all sorts of things. Then one Saturday my owner soft-soaped the soldier in charge of the stores to cut some off; it was about 15 yards long (we didn’t ‘do’ metres in those days.) At one end he fitted a square pin extension block and at the other a German two pin plug. The smart record player, the radio and a couple of lights were all plugged in. Oh! And I am ¼ inch in diameter.

You might be surprised to read that I gave birth once! My owner needed about six feet of flex. He never told me why, just got a pair of pliers and cut it off! Didn’t hurt as I am inanimate but I healed up quite well, particular when the plug was refitted. By then we were back in England so my two end connections didn’t change. At one end I have a rubber coated square three pin plug, at the other a rubber coated socket. Both have become pretty grubby over the years but it’s been a long haul!

It’s hard to imagine today but outside lights at Christmas were a real novelty back in the 1980s …… and the best ones came from Germany ….. so a visit to a Christmas market in Hanover secured a large string that was rewired with a UK square plug and that was plugged into me. In those days he didn’t have an outside socket and he relied on me, you see. But it was suffocating, being wrapped up in lots of plastic bags and duct tape to keep any rain out. Oh! The ignominy of it!

Wanda the bronze angel fish doing her thing, provided with power by me! (circa 2001)

I was also used to provide power to the pump that fed water up into Wanda; it came out of her mouth!! But when the outside socket was fitted, my job was done, and I went back to hanging around, for some time at the top of some cellar steps.

Occasionally I would have a car vacuum cleaner plugged in but the suction was never strong enough and invariably the domestic vacuum cleaner was used. Don’t ever do this on a driveway which has been surfaced with gravel. I have always thought of myself as a sort of DIY (Do It Yourself) extension cable; no pretences, me. But I remember he once was in B&Q (a DIY Store) and saw an extension cable in a proper reel, red I think it was. I could sense he coveted it, looking all neat and new, but he is loyal to me and walked away, shaking his head and muttering.

I am grateful for his love of sailing, you know. If he hadn’t learned about how to handle ropes (on board a yacht a rope is actually called anything but a rope – for example warps, sheets, halyards, guys etc,) I would not be in as good a shape as I am now. On board a sailing yacht a tangled rope is a disaster waiting to happen, so there was constant vigilance to ensure all ropes were tidy and coiled It’s best to coil the rope/cable into the left hand, as that movement of the wrist takes out any twists in the rope. Wire cables such as me are no different.

In my twilight years I am generally used to connect to a jig saw, a sander or a garden strimmer, as his drill is now a Dewalt cordless one. You might think this is progress but he uses it so little the battery is invariably dead and needs a charge!! Maybe he rues the day he got rid of the one that needed me; who knows?  I won’t mention the fact that he uses the garden table as his workbench and that it occasionally gets nicked, sawn and drilled into (so don’t tell anyone). I cringe when it happens but what can I do?

And my friend Wanda? Well, she’s come inside …… and seems content to look wistfully down the road to the sea …… some 150m away.”

Sometimes one gets an idea and just needs to scribble …… inane really!

Richard 21st October 2017

Note: these days it would be yellow/green, brown and blue

Old (ie me!) on the left, new on the right

PC 106 Sailing in The Baltic

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In the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 the spoils of war were, no doubt, extraordinary and various. One of them was a collection of yachts based in the Baltic city of Kiel, the centre for Hitler’s enormous U Boat fleet. The base itself had suffered extensive bombing and its huge concrete submarine pens lay crumpled and blasted, but the British Army established a sailing club on the western side of Kieler fjord, where these windfall yachts were moored.

Wind the clock forward to 1969 and the British Kiel Yacht Club still had a small number of these ‘windfall yachts’ as they were known; some 30 sq ms, a couple of 50 sq ms and one 100 sq m classic wooden yacht called Kranich, built in 1936. (For explanation of sq m ‘square metre’ see note). In addition they had a fleet of modern GRP ones that were used to teach the rudiments of sailing to British Army personnel; these were without engines!

I hadn’t sailed much as a child, one simple sailing holiday with my father when I was 10, but in 1968 sailed around The Solent a bit in a little 19ft yacht called Barbican …… and on a very wet yacht in Cyprus …..  and rather liked it. You might say I took to sailing like a, er, duck to water? So when my Regiment was posted to northern Germany, the obvious place to indulge the interest was in The Baltic. To refresh your knowledge of geography, The Baltic is the name of the shallow sea that is almost enclosed by European countries – Sweden, Finland, The Baltic States, Poland and Germany, and flows out through the low lying islands of Denmark, through the Kattegat and into the North Sea. It’s got a low saline content due to its mix of salt water inflowing from the North Sea and outflowing fresh water draining from a land mass four times larger than the sea itself.

Two shipping channels run between the large islands of Funen and Zealand and between Zealand and the western coast of Sweden. Otherwise the Danish waters are quite shallow, making for short sharp seas when it’s windy and always interesting navigation. Channels are marked by upturned broom sticks; some had one bundle of sticks lashed to the pole, others two and sometimes three. So typically Danish!!

Before going off to university, I was in Germany for 9 months in 1969, and took part in Kieler Woche, the country’s equivalent of Cowes Week, the sailing festival on the Isle of Wight in UK. I sailed on a long keeled yacht called Uomie, named as it was taken in payment of a debt!! We did well during the week and particularly coming first in our class in the Fehmarn Light Race. The skipper gave each of the five crew members a little silver schnapps cup.

After university I rejoined my Germany-based regiment ….. and naturally went back to sailing in the Baltic. The first time was actually racing from Cowes on the Isle of Wight to Skagen, right on the tip of Denmark. Skagen is an artists’ favourite, as the quality of the light is amazing. We then passaged south to Malmö in Sweden for a regatta. Teaching soldiers the benefits of teamwork through using the forces of nature, ‘adventurous training’ as it was euphemistically called, was considered a good thing!! The attraction was obvious; hundreds of little islands, narrow channels threading their way between them, charming villages and towns with enchanting names like Aerøskøbing, Middlefart, Juelsminde, Kerteminde, Lohals and Faaborg.

In my 5 years in Germany I must have developed a reputation for often being away from barracks sailing. Once, during a leadership course for junior NCOs, the Regimental second-in-command, Major John Harman, was explaining some aspects of the vital cooperation needed between the artillery and infantry. I won’t bore you with the details but at some point he asked, by way of confirmation that they had understood: “And where would you expect to find Golf 31 (my radio callsign) Captain Yates during this particular phase of the battle?” A wag at the back of the classroom shouted: ‘Sailing in the Baltic sir!’

In my room in the Officers’ Mess, I hung up on a wall four Danish maps sellotaped together so I could plot the course of each trip; after a couple of years it looked as though a drunken spider had walked into some red paint and then all over the map! Apart from trips up the Als Sund north from Sønderberg, drifting in and out of islands around Lohals on Langeland, and finding enough crabs for supper in a rotten rowing boat just alongside where we had tied up in Aerøskøbing, one major trip involved sailing St Barbara II, a 42ft Rebel, up to the Norwegian capital Oslo, when the engine had been taken out for its annual overhaul. This meant that we had to charge the battery, needed for navigational lights if nothing else, every time we went into a harbour. Going into a crowded marina without an engine was a tricky and anxious time and occasionally we gratefully took a proffered tow.

The Oslo crew on St Barbara II

On one trip sailing a ‘windfall’ yacht, we had just tied up alongside the village quay in Juelsminde and were getting down to the serious business of having a drink. People get attracted to yachts and boats in harbours as the poles of magnets to each other and we often had rubberneckers peering down on us. One particular old chap came wandering down the harbour wall and stopped; “Guten abend. Wie Gehts?” he greeted us. Then he proceeded to switch to Pidgin English. “Zis iz a lovely yacht, ja! Sehr schön. You took zem from us after ze war ja?” and with that, shaking his head as to what might have been, he shuffled off back into the village.

Generally the islands between the mainland of Denmark, Jutland, and the island of Zealand, on which Copenhagen is situated, provided ample enough cruising grounds, but one year I actually sailed into Langeline Harbour in Copenhagen, before continuing south through the Stege Bugt to Stubbekøbing. In Denmark’s capital city, down in the harbour, lies the delightful statue of ‘The Little Mermaid’, sitting on her rock since 1913. Her head is of the ballerina Ellen Price, but as she didn’t want to pose naked the sculptor persuaded his wife Eline Eriksen to pose for him.

The memories of sailing in these delightful waters will stay with me forever; although I have few still photographs, I have many hours of Super 8 Cinefilm, transposed to VHS Video and then to CDs as technology made one means obsolete! And so will the Danish sense of humour. Did you know that a ferry service runs between the Swedish city of Gothenburg and the Danish town of Frederikshavn on Jutland? Well, there is one and it’s rumoured that the skipper doesn’t need a chart, he simply follows the line of empty green Carlsberg bottles thrown over the side by Swedish passengers pleased to get away from the ruinously expensive alcohol of their home country!

Richard September 2017

Note: The Skagen School of artists exists because of the quality of the daylight on this very tip of Denmark

Note: For those technically minded, these ‘square metre’ yachts are measured by a difficult formula. R Metres = (L + 2d + √s – F) ÷ 2.37 where L is the waterline length, d the difference between skin and chain girth (?), s the sail area and F the freeboard

PC 15 Alcohol and Other Drugs

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The afternoon drinkers on George Street here in Hove are a rum lot, a glorious mix of ages and gender, most seemingly down on their luck, others lost in their personal reverie. Makes me sieve the memories of my own life and my relationship with alcohol and other drugs ….. although I am certainly not ‘down on my luck’ and probably never have been!

At one point in my teenage days, I vowed not to drink ….. but that didn’t last long. After ‘prep’ at boarding school one evening, we went off on bikes to The Owl, probably the smallest, grottiest village pub imaginable. I should add here that ‘pubs’ were out of bounds! My chums suggested a half pint of the basic draught beer, probably Wadsworths from the local brewery. I remember lifting it to my lips; bitter, watery, my face wrinkles even now at the thought of it. Somehow I drank it, not relishing the taste. And then I was persuaded to have another! Didn’t take much for my vow to lie shattered on the straw-strewn floor. Besides, alcohol plays a huge part of the fabric of our Western society, a lubricant for work, love and play, so why not just do what’s expected?

And everyone smoked!! Silk Cut, Passing Cloud, Gauloises, B&H, Dunhill, Marlborough; you name it, I probably smoked it! My grandparents lived in Bath and on a day off school I would take the bus to see them. My grandfather smoked unfiltered cigarettes and the ash would drop onto his waistcoat; the butts went into the wastepaper basket and then Granny, before retiring for the night, poured in some water to ensure there were no live embers!!! Once, on my way back to school on the Sunday evening, I got off the bus in Devizes to stretch my legs, with a cigarette in my mouth. Down the steps, straight into one of the school prefects! Oops! That earned me 6 strokes of the cane and much street cred! We got rather blasé about it as we got more senior. Ray and I would have a cigarette after breakfast ……. and then go off to the Applied Maths lesson; it took Mr Hiscock the teacher to remind us that cigarette smoke sticks to both breath and clothing!

At home as a family, my parents, brother and I would watch Saturday night television – smoking; on some occasions you could hardly see the screen through all the smoke! And to think it was permissible to smoke on the London Underground, on aeroplanes and in the cinema; I think we’ve moved in the right direction here, banning it from all public places! You remember that wonderful Nina Simone song “Don’t smoke in bed!”? Well, I think I used to start and finish the day with a cigarette; such is the addiction, the craving for nicotine. There were long periods in my life when I didn’t smoke and long periods when I did, but I had my last cigarette in 1994, well on Tuesday 21st April at 9pm if you were wondering! Do I miss it? Sometimes, if I’m honest, yet smelling second-hand smoke is …. revolting!

Attitudes to alcohol and other drugs in the British Army simply reflected what was going on in civilian life, although thankfully the use of drugs other than nicotine, soft or hard, was rare. We smoked and we drank, both often to excess. My step-father gave me a silver cigarette case when I graduated from The Royal Military Academy; I still have it ……. and his father’s pewter hip flask circa 1890. I was posted to Germany, to a small town called Lippstadt, to help deter the Russians, for the Cold War was at its height. The hip flask came into its own filled with ‘ferrets’, a 50/50 mix of brandy and cherry brandy, on the bare-arsed live-firing ranges of Bergen-Hohne when the temperature dropped to minus 10 deg C.

We drank at lunchtime and in the evening. We ate in dinner jackets once a week and had formal ‘dinner nights’ once a month; we drank, often to excess! In the old Luftwaffe Officers Mess where we single officers lived, there was an interesting addition to the fittings in the ‘Gentlemen’s’. Made of good quality porcelain were two objects which looked like urinals, but were in fact receptacles for …… vomit! Yes! Truly; complete with long vertical side bars, brass and polished daily, to grip on to. Can you imagine? Even today I think how simply awful …… but so practical if alcohol had got the better of you! By the way, I don’t want to give the impression that we were always pissed! When we were out of barracks training, often for weeks on end, we were dry! We simply worked hard and played hard!

When I first started giving blood, the National Blood Transfusion service offered tea & biscuits afterwards; and still does I guess. But men were also asked whether they would like a bottle of Guinness, on the basis that this famous Irish stout would replace some of the iron that was contained in your donated pint of blood. Seemed madness to say ‘no’! So The State encouraged you to drink!

Not a great fan of beer, I developed a taste for wine, which when I was growing up was still a bit of a celebratory drink. The white wines were dominated by Liebfraumilch and Black Tower, cheap German imports – about the only good thing about them, in my opinion, was the name! I loved red wine, the gutsier the better. In my youth it was generally French although you could get decent German reds if you happened to be in that country. Gradually wine from the Antipodes made its way to England and Shiraz and Grenache became a favourite tipple. It was fine to drink as the advice at the time was “Red wine is good for you!”

Sailing and drinking seemed to go together too. There was one occasion when my hired yacht was tied up alongside a German one in the port of Sønderborg in Denmark; the crew had gone ashore – probably for a drink! The skipper of the German one asked whether I wanted to join him for a gin; my mind immediately imagined good gin, lovely tonic, a slice of lemon and lots of ice. Below decks he opened a bottle of Gordon’s, and poured a generous amount into a glass …… and that was it; after a while neat gin isn’t that bad, but it does give you a headache!

I won’t recount how we felt the following morning after a few of us tried every drink on the bar list of the local teachers’ mess; or tell you at what time I had a first beer at the start of a yacht race in The Baltic. I will however offer my rather untutored observation after a Wine/Food Tasting event ……. that dessert wine will go with any type of food and I’ll advise you against drinking too much Pimms, with little lemonade and in strong sunshine.

Twelve years ago, I completed an ordinary detox of food and drink for the month of January; you know the sort of thing, no red meat, chicken, coffee, alcohol, wheat etc. Being quite an obsessive character, for me it’s often all or nothing. I couldn’t, for instance, just have one cigarette a day or a week, as some people can; it’s nothing or 20. I recognised that this was almost the case with alcohol. Was there a day in the week when I didn’t have a glass of wine with supper? Or could I not really remember??!!  Ha! Ha! So whilst I happily went back to drinking coffee and eating red meat, I sort of delayed drinking alcohol again. And that’s where I am today, looking for good non-alcoholic beers, and there are some, and coping in a society where it’s normal to drink. “Still not drinking then?” the husband of a friend asks. “No!” “Oh! Go on, just one won’t hurt!” For some drinkers it’s impossible to see that you can survive without alcohol, for it makes us more relaxed, less inhibited, so surely you would, wouldn’t you?

There was a discussion on the radio about alcohol some time ago and someone suggested that 99.9% of all human relationships in our Western culture generally started over a bottle of wine or a pint of beer. Celina and I had our first supper almost three years ago; she had some wine, I had some water. Someone said one drinks alcohol to make other people more interesting!! If this is the case, I leave you to draw your own conclusions!



Richard Yates  June 2014                                     richardyates24@gmail.com

PC 131 Sipping Ginger Tea

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Sipping ginger tea and eating a large succulent red grape –  my body radiates warmth, at least that is what it feels like, in that afterglow of a massage. I’m on the third floor of the Banyan Tree Spa complex in Estoril, Portugal – a collection of pools, spas, saunas, a gym, treatment rooms and an indoor/outdoor café. The Spa Pool has water jets and a large circular section where the water rotates at about 2 mph. Swim against the current or simply let it lift you and take you – around and around!! Just the place for a wet Friday afternoon.

Massage has a funny reputation, a sort of nudge-nudge, wink-wink, amongst the male species and that reputation is not helped by some dubious massage parlours being used as a front for prostitution. You will have seen the different types of proper massages being advertised – Swedish, Aromatherapy, Hot Stone, Chair, Deep Tissue, Trigger Point, Shiatsu and Thai – and unless you regularly have them in conjunction with keeping fit or for some medical relief, it’s likely you only have one or two a year, on holiday maybe? I once heard a masseur saying that one a year is a complete waste of time – but hey that ‘afterglow’ is something, so why not have more?

Celina gave me a gift of a 90 minutes Thai massage: “Apparently it’s really fantastic!” I love massages, so readily said: ‘Yes please’. I prefer being massaged by someone of the opposite sex as that introduces an imaginary world that excites and disappoints in equal measure. I once had a massage by a chap who was blind; with his enhanced sense of touch and space it was unique, but it missed that frisson that develops, in my mind if nowhere else, between a male and female.

One website says: “Thai massage is a unique blend of assisted yoga, passive stretching, and pressing massage movements. Thai massage is more energizing than other forms of massage: it’s a little bit like yoga without doing the work, as the therapist moves and stretches you in a sequence of postures, usually on a mat on the floor. Like shiatsu, Thai massage aligns the energies of the body. The massage therapist uses rhythmic compression along the body’s energy lines to reduce stress and improve flexibility and one’s range of motion. It is done fully clothed. This type of massage can reduce muscle spasticity and back pain and has been shown to be useful in treating balance problems and migraine symptoms.”

So at 1720 I check in with Deborah at the Reception Desk, go and change into those obligatory white towelling bath robes, and report back. A Thai woman appears; it’s not until later I ask her name – Nicole – and there’s probably a Thai name by which she’s known at home, but here she’s trying to westernise herself. I think about asking but realise that pronouncing a Thai name might stretch my linguistic ability.

“OK. Go in there and take your clothes off. Here’s a sarong to wrap around yourself” – so much for the ‘fully clothed’! Obviously what follows is about my own experience, from my masculine perspectives. On my return she gestures towards a chair; I sit and have my feet washed – just so indulgent! Orchids and that piped music so typical of these places – ‘The Music of the Andean Pipes’ – Thai style! Then I am instructed to lie face down on the massage table, naked; she shields me from herself with a large green sheet, although there isn’t much to see! And once I’m prone I can’t see much either, as my head is face down in that little indentation in the table, tastefully covered with white gauze. After some initial kneading on my legs, I sense she climbs onto the table and starts on my hips and lower back, I can feel her thighs against my legs and that contact is ……… She presses her torso against my back and it feels good!

Being completely naked there isn’t that pulling-down-the-hem-of-your-knickers normally associated with the masseuse working on your hips. Nicole simply moves the sheet and, besides, she’s seen it all before! I’m grateful she doesn’t chastise me for my sunburnt buttocks, the result of an hour in the sun earlier. At some point, in this warm haze of sensory overload, my arms are down the side of the table; she brushes her thigh against my hand and I smile to myself.

I ask how long she’s been in Portugal and she says she’s here for eighteen months. Her English is very limited (but better than my Thai!) so conversation doesn’t flow; she just gets on with her job, applying her skill and oil to my body. I wonder what she’s thinking as she adjusts the sheet to ensure my limited modesty as her hands massage my inner thigh; probably wondering which noodle bar she will go to when she finishes, with the other masseuses with whom she shares an apartment. My thoughts are not on supper! I learn later that a Thai company provides the masseuses for a two-year stint. 

There was certainly no sexual attraction between Nicole and me but the mere fact that some stranger’s hands are touching my skin, sometimes quite intimately, does cause feelings, strokes the imagination one might say. The fantasy suggests her asking: ‘You like something extra sir?’ but in reality that is exactly what it is, a male fantasy.  Add the fact that my masseur was a woman, so masseuse, and it’s most men’s pleasure. I say most men as some presumably are repulsed by such intimate contact, but if you are a tactile person like me, it’s heaven. I am instructed to turn over onto my back, the raised sheet much like a magician’s cloak, and the fantasies I had when ‘tummy down’ restart, as I suspect do Nicole’s about noodles.

Towards the end she lifts a leg to one side and pushes against the hip, opening that joint to its furthest extension. Wow! The Thai massage ‘Spinal Twist in Lying Position’. A few minutes massaging the hands and fingers, then my skull and I’m done. Off for a shower in a side room then, dressed, back for ginger tea and large succulent red grapes.

For Nicole this is just a professional job, what she does, and she relies on feedback from her clients. I mark her card accordingly – excellent. It cost Celina an arm and a leg, an appropriate expression here perhaps, and I hope Nicole gets at least 50%, but somehow doubt it.

On the way back from the Spa, Celina and I compare notes. She suggests a massage is a bit like a sexy dance between two strangers. Whilst there need be no sexual attraction, the act of following one’s natural rhythms and inclination can engender a feeling of sexiness. She’s hit the nail on the head; a great analogy. A true basic instinct, this sexual urge, encouraged by the sense of touch, of smell, of heat, of oil ….. and lots of imagination!

The Thai goodbye, hands together, fingers steepled, slight hardly-discernible bow and she’s gone – and leaves my empty outstretched hand, the normal British ‘goodbye’ gesture, untouched!!

Richard 23rd August 2018                                      richardyates24@gmail.com