PC 211 Off Arromanches (continued …. see PC 209)

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Asking Kevin, both mate and the yacht’s mate and the most competent of my crew, to take the wheel I headed below. Sure enough there was about two inches of sea water washing around; lifting a board confirmed the bilges were full and it wasn’t simply water off crew oilskins. (Note 1). My heart started to beat faster as the crew expected me to sort it out!

I turned on the electric bilge pump; nothing happened. I shouted to John in the cockpit to find the manual pump, to make sure the tube was out of the locker and to start pumping. My mind began to fill with a thousand things I should do …… and they were all ‘NOW’! Where’s the pump? Saucepans please! Put a position on the chart, note in the log. Where are the flares? Is the life raft easily ready? What about life jackets? I had never felt the necessity of always wearing a life jacket on a yacht – but sense these days with smaller less-bulky ones available that might be an out-dated practice. But I knew down over the lee rail was the coast of Arromanches, with its rocky shallow foreshore extending far from the beach and we were on a falling tide. (Note 2) “Oh! Shit! The club’s flagship might go aground! Explain that to the Committee!” Then at last the first and only important question: “Why was there water inside?”

The crew formed a saucepan chain (you know what I mean!) and bailing began. Waves were breaking over the bow and it was unpleasant below and on deck. I needed to get the yacht in a more stable state so took the helm, brought the bow through the wind without changing the jib sheets and hove to. Wonderful! Suddenly the movements lessened and there was less noise.

Rudder tries to turn the yacht towards the wind; wind on the foresail resists

I hope none of you have had to heave to in an emergency; I certainly hadn’t before but had demonstrated the technique to those learning to sail. I had likened the sails to two hands around a bar of soap. Squeeze – tighten the sails and the wind has to accelerate through the narrower slot – the soap and it shoots out – and the boat moves forward. When you take the bow through the direction of the wind, and leave the foresail untouched, the mainsail and rudder try to move the boat forward and the headsail resists. The yacht simply sits, slightly head to wind, and if the sail areas are well balanced, hardly moves.

I have sailed on many wooden yachts that let water in, as the planking opened a millimetre or two beating hard to wind. The 30 sqm and 50 sqm yachts at the British Kiel Yacht Club (see PC 106) were particularly wet below and it was essential to have all your spare clothes and sleeping bag wrapped in black rubbish bags to keep them dry! But St Barbara III’s hull was made of GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic) – God help us if we had somehow cracked the hull on some high bounce as we left the harbour!

Dismissing this nasty idea, my thoughts then turned to the anchor stowage. A more stable yacht meant less water was breaking over the bow ….. and finding its way below! I knew from experience that if the Kedge Anchor was not exactly positioned in its locker, with even a centimetre proud, the hatch cover would not fit and lock properly and water would seep in, and in rough conditions flood in. Turning on the foredeck lights, I took Hew with me and, clipping on at each stage, we made our way up to the bow.

Generic ‘anchor stowage’

Sure enough, we could make out the anchor locker lid was not flush with the deck. In their haste and in the pouring rain, coping with a pitching deck as we motored out through the harbour entrance, the foredeck crew hadn’t got the anchor properly stowed. It took Hew and I about 5 minutes to get it fitted properly and, as we made our way back to the cockpit, we hoped that the level of water on board would begin to reduce. After ten minutes that was noticeable and there was much relief all around.

I was a bit of a stickler for writing up both the daily log and the journal so, as we set a revised course for The Solent and Gosport, wrote up both whilst the emotion was running! Somewhere in the archives of the Royal Artillery Yacht Club are that log and the journal entries.

Google Earth showing The Solent, with the Isle of Wight on the bottom left and the entrance to Portsmouth top left

As is often the case when sailing, conditions can change quite rapidly. From our rough start from Trouville in a Force 7, the wind had gradually decreased as we crossed The Channel. We shook the rolls out of the mainsail and changed up to the No 1 Jib.  Abeam of the Nab Tower, the wind dropped completely, the sea strangely calm and the last few miles were made under engine. 

The Nab Tower at the entrance to The Solent

It was quite a relief to tie up alongside the pontoon in the Gosport Marina mid-afternoon and switch off – in every sense!

Richard New Year’s Day 2021

PS A Very Happy New Year to all my readers

Note 1 Gallows Humour is often part of a crisis and this was no exception!  I was reminded of part of Tales of Old Dartmoor, a radio sketch from The Goon Show (February 1956). To cut to the chase (It’s all on You Tube so if you have never listened to it, do so!) Dartmoor prison had somehow become HMS Dartmoor, a floating prison ship (!), and the crew were looking for the ‘treasure of the Count of Monte Cristo’. Rumour had it it lay under the floor of Cell 626. They lifted a flagstone.

“Ah! Look! Water.”

 “Salt Water!”

 “Look! There’s more of it! It’s coming in.”

Note 2. After reading PC 209 Jonathan sent me this photograph of his great uncle Harold Hickling briefing Churchill at the Mulbery Harbours off Arromanches. June 1944

PC 206 Off Arromanches; at night, in a gale!

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This is a page from my Royal Yachting Association Log Book. Note the entry for 10th – 17th June 1979:

…… doesn’t say more than the very basic headlines but the memories from those few days, in fact one particular two hour period, linger on over forty years later. I attended the two-year Army Staff Course at the end of the seventies: Division 1 at RMCS in 1978 and then a year at The Staff College Camberley 1979. In the summer of that second year we were fortunate enough to tour the Normandy beaches and hinterland used in D Day 1944. The Battlefield Tour was a welcome relief to classroom discussions and it lived up to its colloquial name, The Bottlefield Tour!

The battlefield tour was unique in that soldiers who had attacked and defended this part of northern France came and talked about their experiences and memories. I think it was the last, given the increasing age of our guest speakers; we were blessed. The administrative part of the tour was centred around Deauville but by tradition a number of us sailed across on service yachts to Trouville, the next-door harbour. I was lucky enough to skipper the RAYC flagship St Barbara III, a Nicholson 43.

The crew with St B on the left

After all the normal pre-voyage activity we assembled at Gosport opposite Portsmouth on 9th June. The weather forecast for the week was mixed, a bit like the weather of early June 1944, but for our outward trip was set fair. From memory a north-easterly F4 allowed us to clear the Solent forts and set a course for Trouville. Trouville, in keeping with a number of ports on the northern coast of France, could only be entered some two hours either side of high water.

We found the harbour entrance on the bow after some 65 miles of uneventful sailing and tied up stern-to on the harbour wall, bow to anchor, not a method I was well practised in but fortunately there weren’t too many rubberneckers!

When I was doing my military service or sailing offshore, the mnemonic ‘grid to mag add, mag to grid get rid’ served us well as the variation was some 4 degrees ……. and mistakes happened! An hour after our arrival one of the other skippers, who I knew well, took me aside up on the quay and quietly questioned whether you added the magnetic variation or not, as they had missed the channel entrance!! (Note 1)

Some left for the on-shore accommodation, others were staying on board. We did have a chance to have a party on Gladeye, skippered by Robin Duchesne.   

Of the tour itself, out of all the stands where a veteran, of whatever nationality or rank, told us of their experience, one particular talk stays in my memory. A grey-haired rather rotund Yeoman Officer told us he had been in command of a troop of three tanks and that they had come under fire from some Germany artillery on top of a ridge to his front. His leading tank was hit and he had watched in horror as his troop sergeant had emerged from the hatch in a ball of flame. We stood exactly where his tank had been 41 years before; on the horizon we could see the escarpment.

This lovely chap told us how it was. “I hadn’t really listened to much of the training about radio procedures and artillery cooperation and stuff, I just knew I wanted to get hold of some artillery fire to neutralise the enemy, and bloody quickly. I picked up my radio mic and yelled: “Hello Gunners, this is Tony! I need your help.” (Note 2) “Hello Tony, Gunners here!” a voice crackled in his headset “Where do you need us?” Tony admitted he wasn’t very good at map reading but after some discussion eventually the gunners put a round on the ground somewhere towards the ridge. From there Tony was able to say “Further on” “Right a bit” until he was satisfied that three rounds fire-for-effect would sort out Jerry. And it did!

The tour eventually ended and some of the participants left for the ferries whilst us sailors returned to the harbour basin in preparation for our trip back across the Channel. In an ideal world we would have time to wait for favourable weather but so often work commitments squeeze that window. The forecast was a squally Force 8 gusting 9 out of the North East …… so prudence suggested waiting a while. Just after midnight on 17th June, with the gale forecast to blow itself out, we hoisted the mainsail with its four rolls, tacked on the No2 Jib,

Bottom right shows the crew putting the reefs in. Bottom left happens to have the late Robin Duchesne.

…….. slipped our moorings and headed down the sheltered harbour entrance towards the sea. I sensed it was going to be a bit bumpy and ensured the fenders and warps were safely stored in their lockers and all the crew had well-fitted safety harnesses; I reminded myself the crew were not particularly experienced. Two of them worked on the foredeck, under the lights and in the torrential rain, to stow the anchor in its bow locker. Their stance was made difficult by the sea rolling in, and St Barbara rose and pitched as we motored out; every now and again there was a loud bang as she smashed into a large wave. By the time we cleared the entrance pilings they had returned to the safety of the cockpit. We could just about make our bearing to the Solent and, having hoisted the Jib, after about 30 minutes I switched off the engine; Tony went below to put the kettle on.

“Hey! Skipper! There’s lots of water on the cabin floor” (‘cabin sole’ for whom this sort of thing is important!)

To be continued …..

Richard 18th December 2020

Note 1 Each degree of variation over a distance of 60 miles will result in one nautical mile off course. A 4 degree variation would give you 4 nautical miles off course …… and the entrance to Trouville was a narrow dredged channel you approached on a transit!

Note 2 I was a Gunner so knew it should have been something like ‘Hello G31 this is Tango 23A over’

PC 54 The Loo

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Some subjects are so dry it’s difficult to get worked up about them, but my PC about loo paper brought back many memories for my readers, some good and some hilarious. So popular was this PC that it’s inspired me to go the next step and scribble about the actual loo.

Some of you will have visited ancient castles or manor houses in England where the ‘loo’ was a little seat in a turreted corner of the bedroom; an improvement from the portable box! From the outside, the turret overhung enough for the ‘drop’ to clear the stone façade. Some years ago there was a TV documentary series in the UK, trying to take a new look at old designs: one was about the loo. The design of the loo doesn’t seem to have changed much in more than 150 years.

There are many words for this receptacle for our daily waste. Whilst this list if not definitive …….loo, toilet, lavatory, ‘long drop’, khazi, WC (short for water closet), the crapper, the Dunny, the ‘restroom’, bog, the ‘ladies’ or ‘gents’ in a public environment, the facilities, the white phone, latrine, the John, little room and privy.

Funny how words become part of our language. Take ‘crap; possibly a verb and certainly a noun! It’s been around since the C17th referring to waste, but not used for bodily waste until 1846. But the word only became well known thanks to a Victorian plumber, Thomas Crapper. He was extremely successful in manufacturing bathroom fixtures and had a Royal Warrant. So ubiquitous were Mr Crapper’s toilet bowls, with his name written on the rim, that American servicemen stationed in Britain during WWII coined the phrase “going to the crapper”!

Thomas Crapper (1837 – 1910)

I do remember potties under the bed, but was shocked by this story, told to me in 1975 by a female newspaper reporter who had covered the kidnap by the IRA of a Dutch industrialist in County Kildare. Traced to a small village called Monasterevin, the siege attracted the world’s press, who had trouble finding somewhere to stay. My chum eventually found a house that offered the share of a bed (!) …… but was horrified to find that under the bed were emptied beer bottles ….. full of urine!

I am indebted to Paul for sending me this photograph, the latest design of ‘pissoire’ used by men at the Spa motor racing circuit in Belgium. He couldn’t find the female equivalent although you can buy a female ‘P EZ’ funnel on Amazon!

I wonder at what point the rocket-nose-shaped ‘pissoires’ take off?

Back in 1968 I chartered a small 19ft yacht for a week’s sailing in The Solent on the south coast of England. On board was fellow Gunner Gerry and two girl friends (note that this is girl …. friends and not girlfriends!) joined for the weekend. Braganza was a very basic sailing boat, with two small bunks and a little gas stove – but no loo! This doesn’t present a problem if you’re a bloke, but for members of the fairer sex a bucket placed below on the cabin sole of a moving/shifting/lurching sailing boat does not encourage the natural flow of things! On the Saturday evening we moored in Wootton Creek on the Isle of Wight …. and I have a very vivid memory of these two girls rowing the little pram dinghy ashore to find a proper loo. The speed at which they were rowing was possibly indicative of the urgency of their quest.

I remember painful experiences at boarding school. If you wanted to go to the loo before breakfast, you had to go before the breakfast bell sounded. After that, you were simply not allowed to go, irrespective of how desperate you might have been. I really to this day do not know what aspect of social behaviour I was meant to learn? If you need to go to the loo, you need to go to the loo – simple!

If you were camping in the 1960s and 1970s you simply took a shovel and walked off to somewhere where no one could see you. Cousin Susan writes: “…. Then there was the loo paper in Egypt and one small town in particular…..a hole in the middle of the floor, no loo paper and no doors so we had to get our friends to stand in the doorway so passers-by could not see us performing our acrobatic ablutions. My thighs were mighty strong in those days!”  Benedicte has similar memories of loos in China today – but would rather forget them! In the Army the camping arrangements were more formal; the Royal Engineers dug bore holes (should that be bored bore holes I wonder?). If it was cold it was OK, in this hessian-encircled latrine; if hot, the flies ensured it was not somewhere you lingered.

My stepfather loved smoking his pipe, particularly when mowing his wonderful lawn … but also, and sadly for the rest of us, when occupying the small downstairs loo. Part of his morning weekend routine, I guess, attempting the daily crossword in the paper, sucking on his tobacco-filled pipe and attending to nature … all at the same time. The little room needed a quarantine notice on the door for at least an hour afterwards.

Mind you, it isn’t necessarily your own loo experiences that are worth writing about. Jeremy Clarkson, a man made famous as much by his Top Gear TV Motoring programme as his ability to call a spade a spade, has a column in the UK Sunday Times. After someone complained of their hotel in Turkey, his weekly column was full of his own experiences, including this: “Certainly I cannot forget the converted old sheep station in the uplands of Bolivia. During my stay, I was woken one morning by a cleaner who entered my room without knocking, shuffled past my bed with a mumbled ‘Buenos dias’, went into my bathroom and took a noisy dump (slang for ‘going to the loo’!!) before shuffling out of the room with a frankly insufficient ‘gracias’”

I have always remembered a story that did the rounds one term at school; written on a grubby piece of paper it told the story of the confusion that arose between the use of WC for either ‘Wesleyan Chapel’ (Named after John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church in the C18th) or ‘Water Closet’. This being the C21st, I ‘googled’ it (That must be a verb by now – ‘to google’?) to get the story correct. It hasn’t lost its amusement after 50 something years and is reproduced in full below.

Celina’s father would sympathise with Paul who, recalling Bronco loo paper, wrote:  “Bronco was absolutely useless of course but then I have always detested loo paper of any sort, as it is just not up to the job (so to speak)! Every house I have ever owned has had a bidet and I would find it uncomfortable now to live without one.” Maybe he should try the combined loo/bidet; choose your music/scent/temperature/softness/air …… and away you go!

This PC seemed to go on and on; sorry! I normally try and constrain myself but seem to have suffered a bout of verbal diarrhoea with this one! Enjoy the scribbles!

Richard 8th November 2015                                               richardyates24@gmail.com

PS. “There was a little old English lady who was looking for a place to live in Switzerland.  She asked the local village schoolmaster to help her and together they found a place that suited her.  She returned to London to get her things, but on the way home she remembered that she had not noticed a bathroom in the new place, or as she called it, a water closet.  So when she arrived in London she wrote to the schoolmaster to inquire about a water closet in her place.  Being somewhat embarrassed to ask about this, she decided to just use the abbreviation W.C. rather than spell out the words.  When the schoolmaster received her letter he was puzzled by the initials W.C., never dreaming that she was referring to a bathroom.  So he went to the local minister to see if he knew what a W.C. was.  Of course, the minister thought it stood for the Wesleyan Church.  So the schoolmaster wrote this reply to the English lady.

Dear Madam,

The W.C. is situated nine miles from the house in the center of a beautiful grove of trees.  It is capable of holding 350 people at a time and is open on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday of each week.  A large number of folks attend during the summer months, so it is suggested you go early, although there is plenty of standing room.  Some folks like to take their lunch and make a day of it, especially on Thursday when there is organ accompaniment.  The acoustics are very good and everyone can hear the slightest sound.

It may be of interest to you to know that my daughter was married in our W.C. and it was there she met her husband.

We hope you will be here in time for our bazaar to be held very soon.  The proceeds will go toward the purchase of plush seats for our W.C., which the folks agree are a long-felt need, as the present seats all have holes in them.

My wife is rather delicate; therefore, she cannot attend regularly.  It has been six months since the last time she went.  Naturally, it pains her very much not to be able to go more often. I shall close now with the desire to accommodate you in every way possible, and I will be happy to save you a seat down front or near the door, whichever you prefer.

Sincerely,

          Alfred Schmidt

Schoolmaster”

PC 47 Loo Paper

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It was Mark Twain who observed that travel broadens the mind; you don’t have to go far, however, even the local streets are full of rich pickings, if you care to look! I thought my own mind fairly broad, but it’s been stretched further by our recent North America travels, experiencing other places and other cultures. So when I encountered the thinnest, no, I really mean thinnest, loo paper in my life in Seattle, I thought this could be the subject of another PC ….. although it might need a little delicate handling ….. know what I mean? And if you had a rather prudish upbringing, maybe it’s best not to read any further!!

When I refer to ‘loo’ paper I encompass all the various descriptions of the genre; ‘toilet’ paper, ‘lavatory’ paper (very old fashioned maybe) …. and now the word ‘tissue’ is common-place. In France they refer to loo paper as PQ (a contraction of ‘papier cul’- ‘cul’ meaning ‘bum’ or ‘arse’); in German it’s ‘klopapier’ and in Portuguese ‘papel higiênico’. A couple of hundred years ago you might only have had the option of using some torn grass or old newspaper, but now the options are endless. The manufacturers of the ubiquitous ‘Wipes’, available for every cleaning job, have even developed the ‘toilet wipe’, which is ‘flushable’. Oh! Joy!

Back in the days of a less sensitive nation, in Britain there was ‘Jeyes Toilet Tissue’. Jeyes is now synonymous with cleaning products that get around the U-Bend but back then …. here was a cardboard pack of folded sheets of hard paper. The paper was a light brown in colour. It was neither absorbent nor comfortable; fortunately we have moved on. All loo paper used to be white, then coloured bathroom suites came into vogue and the manufacturers made a fortune in making loo paper that matched the various colours on offer – Avocardo, Peach etc. And we all know Andrex’s playful little puppy …… to advertise loo paper! I’m sorry, I simply do not see the connection here; what is the association between a sweet, soft, cuddly, youngster, having fun …. and wiping your bum?

If you worked for Her Majesty, as I did during my time in the British Army, we had ‘Government Issue’ loo paper; like the Jeyes stuff, but on every sheet it said ‘Government Issue’! If you were not a fan of a particular Government, the joke was obvious! And the ration that came in the ‘field pack’ had three small sheets per day; the common thought was ‘one up, one down, one polish’!

In Waitrose, an upmarket British supermarket, you can buy ‘Bathroom Tissue’ scented/coated in Aloe Vera, Jojoba or Cashmere. Do you sniff it before you use it, or do you really appreciate the difference in texture ……. by touching it? The mind boggles! In Yukon Territories, Canada, in a small place called Carmacks, a tourist emporium had a stack of loo paper wrapped as ‘Up North Toilet Paper’!?

The large, round container with a commercial-sized roll means less checking for cleaning staff , but have you ever found that the ‘free’ end is somewhere inside, almost stuck to the whole roll, and getting the free end usable takes forever? The ‘Seattle’ loo paper I think was designed for two (or more?) uses. The first is obvious, but the second? Well, it could easily have been used for tracing paper, it was so thin. And actually very difficult to take off the roll if the end was not obvious; a little like cling film/kitchen wrap when the effing end is completely invisible/undiscoverable!

One of the loos I use regularly (no pun intended!) is in our Bikram Studio complex. The overhead light is motion-activated (I’m sorry, this is just the way it comes to mind) which is fine unless you sit for longer than the timer allows – and the light goes off ….. and stays off until your flailing arms get noticed. In the Riverside Cottages we stayed in in Fairbanks, Alaska, they went one better, or worse! The shower/loo room had a timer for both light and extractor fan, and was customer-operated before you went in and locked the door. Well, here’s a conundrum. How long do you set it for before you enter? Get it wrong and you might end up in the dark, with your knickers around your ankles and …….

Bikram Yoga is practised in a studio where at least two walls have floor to ceiling mirrors. That’s fine, as part of the practice is to observed one’s half-hearted attempts to get into a certain posture; ‘must do better’, the voice in my head is often shouting! But in Brazil I encountered a mirrored wall …. in the loo! Aaaggghhhhh! The first time I used it, I was only wearing my Bikram shorts, ready for the session that would started shortly. After a minute or so sitting down, I suddenly looked to the right and ……. saw ……. well, Rodin’s Thinker is good to contemplate …… this sight was not! It sure hurried up my visit.

Recently I went into a loo, a rather narrow little room, sat down, did what I wanted to do, and then looked for the loo paper. After about 30 seconds, I located the roll, behind my shoulder. I almost dislocated said shoulder in trying to release a few sheets of paper; should I put my arm under my shoulder or above? Eventually the only way was to physically swivel on the loo seat through about 160°.

I don’t think we British have really got into using a Bidet, but I can understand its raison d’être! In an imagined nightmare scenario, you use the bidet ….. and look for a towel. There isn’t one! OK! There are probably some paper towels somewhere ….. but then you realise that in the C21st paper towels have been replaced by a Dyson Hot Air drier, fixed up on the wall. Success in the subsequent physical gymnastics required might guarantee you a place in the 2016 Olympics!!

Very mundane musings for a summer afternoon!

Richard 14 August 2015                                          richardyates24@gmail.com

PC 512 Does it Matter?

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Talk about choosing a title for some weekly scribbles with the opportunity to range far and wide! Maybe I should simply focus on personal issues like, for instance: ‘Do you insist on the loo seat being left down?’ OK! Immediately we are divided between those of you who call the ‘water closet’ the loo and those who call it the toilet! Or you might be confused and use the term ‘lavatory’ which, if I was being pedantic, is ‘a fixed basin with running water’ but can be used to refer to the whole room with a toilet (aka loo) and basin. We had a lunch party last week and the loo seat and lid were left up, left down, just the lid up ….. despite us having one of those soft closure lids! (Note 1) I hope our guests smiled when they saw that we buy our loo paper from ‘Who Gives a Crap’!

Doesn’t matter, does it, what you call it? And sitting down with friends for lunch, it doesn’t matter whether you call the piece of material to protect your clothes a napkin or a serviette, does it? Providing it’s material not paper!

It doesn’t matter how you perform a yoga posture – we are all different mentally and physically and no one should make any judgments. It simply does not matter – until the ego taps you on the shoulder and asks why you haven’t…..! And if you believe that the practice of yoga, hot or not, could be ego-free, try it yourself. You might even encounter a group ego!

Recently there have been television crime dramas based in Bristol and Belfast, hot on the tails of one about Brighton’s police force and how they cope with the mayhem that others see as ‘having a night out’! The latest Belfast series covers migration in Northern Ireland, overlaying the still-simmering religious divide.

It reminded me of the current ‘stand-off’ between Northern Ireland’s Orange Order (Note 2) and the people of Drumcree. As Max Hastings, writing in The Times, says: ‘The Orange Order wants to demonstrate its claimed legal entitlement to stage a sectarian march through an overwhelmingly nationalist housing estate in Drumcree.’ It mattered in 1857 when a government report stated: ‘The Orange system celebrates its festivals …. which lead to violence, outrage, religious animosities, hatred between classes and, too often, bloodshed and loss of life.’ Nothing seems to have changed in over a century and to those of us who live in Great Britain it’s anachronistic in the extreme. Surely time to abandon such wilful provocations as the Drumcree march and realise how much this would matter for the greater good?

Last month one of my postcards was titled ‘Communication’ and this month we have had another example of poor communication …… and it matters. The British Museum in London is exhibiting the Bayeux tapestry for the first time since it left these shores for France in 1080 …. and the 70m long display has attracted thousands of people wishing to view it. The exhibition has presumably been years in the planning, but no one seemed to anticipate the potential number of visitors. Long queues developed, not helped by people staying too long in front of the exhibit – clearly not allowed or imagined! They could have installed a moving walkway which would have helped.

But the lack of communication was obvious when early this month they had to close the exhibit to the public as they were hosting some corporate event. These things don’t happen overnight ….. so why didn’t they block out entrance to the public months ago? Some people travelled a long distance only to be told they would get a refund of the ticket – but no recognition that the British Museum’s poor organisation and communication had led to other nugatory travel and hotel expenses. Reminded me of the Hotel Fasano in Rio de Janeiro. There had been no warning that, during our short stay, the roof-top swimming pool would be closed for a corporate event. We the poor public are second best to corporate money. But timely communication would have helped.

I did come across a new item some months ago and thought ‘good for you’. Having been through the difficulties and agony of divorce, I was interested in the story about a woman whose second divorce cost both her and her husband £80k. It prompted her to start offering divorcing couples a cheaper option than the adversarial one that lines the pockets of solicitors and lawyers. She had clearance from SRA, but lawyers with a vested interest in the current system complained and she was up before a judge for offering unqualified advice; she could have gone to prison! Financial reductions in the state-funded Legal Aid budget have reduced the number of cases it can support from 180,000 to 10,000. The judge recognised there had to be a better way for Joe & Jill Public to access affordable legal advice and suggested she continue. A victory for common sense.

And, of course, it matters when you buy a bunch of fresh Basil and two days later it looks like the flopped ears of a hare. Last week I thought there must be a better way of keeping it fresh. The solution is to place it in a container with a little water, and a plastic bag over the top, essentially creating a little moist greenhouse. The last leaf was as fresh as the first.

And in the wider context of life, nothing really matters, however much we agonise about this and that.

Richard 9th October 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 I hadn’t intended to mention this, but I scribbled about loo paper in August 2015 (PC 47) and followed that postcard with one about ‘The Loo’, with the famous Mr Crapper, in November that year (PC 54). I could email these to you as they are time-expired on WordPress.

Note 2 After King William of Orange (King William III) who invaded and secured Ireland for the Protestant crown by defeating the Catholic King James II in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

PC 511 …… and on ……

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To use possibly an inappropriate expression, we seem to have got our knickers in a twist with the State and society’s attitude towards trans individuals.

On 16th April 2025 the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of ‘sex’, ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in equality law refers strictly to biological sex. It said that holding a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) does not change a person’s legal sex of the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. In clarification, the judges ruled that interpreting the law to mean anything other than biological sex would make the Equality Act ‘unworkable and incoherent’ and stressed that service providers can continue to maintain separate or single-sex spaces based on biological sex.

The Scottish government had argued that transgender people with a GRC are entitled to sex-based protections, while the lobby ‘For Women Scotland’ claimed they only apply to people who are born female. At the centre of the debate was Sandie Peggie, a senior NHS nurse who, in 2023, objected to a transgender doctor, Beth Upton, using a female changing room at the A&E department in Victoria Hospital Kirkcaldy. Upton was biologically male but identified as female.

Arguments about biological sex and how to accommodate trans people have rumbled on for years but it’s worth remembering that only 0.5% of the population of England and Wales identify as a gender different from their birth sex. (Note 1) Even so, various government departments and organisations are dragging their feet over the implementation of the Supreme Court’s ruling that sex is based on biological sex; surely, they have a responsibility to implement the law, whether they agree with it or not? Sandie Peggie, in taking her union, the Royal College of Nursing, to an employment tribunal, says: ‘The union should be working for their female staff and ensuring spaces for biological women, who should have separate changing areas, but the Trans lobby had blinded the nursing union’.

Shades of how Stonewall pushed its Diversity Champions Programme, a paid initiative that advises employers on LGBTQ+ inclusion. Critics argued that the programme pushes a disputed ideology prioritizing gender identity over biological sex and provides incorrect interpretations of the UK Equality Act regarding single-sex spaces. Nice huh! So much for the biased lobbyist!

I suspect we all like a good gossip, reading tittle-tattle about Mr Jones or Mrs Smith. I belonged to a number of Officers’ Messes in my twenty-year Army career and every one of them provided the whole range of British newspapers, from ‘the broadsheets’, The Times, Telegraph and Guardian, through The Express and Daily Mail to the ‘red-tops’, The Sun, The Mirror and The Sketch (published from1909 to 1971), the latter three focusing on celebrity gossip, sports and sensational stories rather than serious news.

Of course, we all argued that we had to read the red tops, or glance at the photographs, in order to keep abreast of what our soldiers were reading; ah! the snobbery of privilege, education and class. And of course, The Sun was still publishing its daily Page 3 photograph of semi-naked Samatha or Linda or …… (Note 2). You may remember my postcards about my active service in Northern Ireland 1973/74 and 1975/76 (PCs 196, 197 & 198 September/October 2020). During the first tour the Public Relations Officer managed to secure a visit of Miss UK and later from Miss World. In 1975 Wilnelia Merced, aged 18 and recently crowned Miss World, spent three days with us, giving a much-needed morale boost.

As an outsider, news of our own Royal family and other European royals can sometimes read like a soap opera. For instance, the recent death of King Harald V of Norway gave the media the opportunity to remind everyone that the new King’s stepson has been convicted of rape but is appealing, while his sister’s second husband Durek Verrett is a shaman who believes he’s come from another planet!

Here in the UK, just as the Royal Family were getting used to, or rather reluctantly accepting, that the Duke & Duchess of Sussex had returned to the UK, true to form, Harry & Meghan made headlines when they announced after two days that the drive to their children’s new school was too long and they would choose one closer to their home. Didn’t they factor this in when they made their choice in the first place? Early this week the headline screamed that photographers were ‘extraordinarily reckless’ trying to snap one of their children at their school.

And after Prince Harry’s rather ill-advised book ‘Spare’, another storm briefly blew through, with the publication of Earl Sencer’s book ‘Swan Song: Diana My Sister.’ It’ll be thirty years next August since Diana was killed in her car in Paris and Spencer wants to rake over the coals, to him still hot while for most of us it’s history. He’s made arguably outrageous claims about a conversation he had with the then Prince of Wales when Diana’s death was announced. There was a dignified silence from the current Prince of Wales, but the Palace felt obliged to issue a statement – ‘…. the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss.’ Am I alone in being unable to remember who said what last week, let alone 30 years ago?

AN Wilson’s review of Spencer’s book in the Sunday Times is worth reading.  He writes about the difficult dynamics in the royal family and how we the public respect our monarchy, but don’t love them, whereas Diana had an incomparable public appeal. We loved her, were enchanted by her! ‘It cannot have been easy to be her public companion.’

Indeed!

Richard 2nd October 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribles.co.uk

Note 1 The figures are open to interpretation! Some 48,000 identified as trans men and the same number as trans women. ‘Non-binary’ made up 30,000. However, some 118,000 individuals wrote ‘no’ to the question that asked if they identified differently from their birth sex – without choosing any specific identity!

Note 2 The Sun stopped publishing topless models on its Page 3 in January 2015, ending a 45-year tradition.

PC 510 And so we go on!

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At some point earlier this week I looked at my ‘notes for future PCs’ and thought there was so much to comment on I wasn’t quite sure where to start. So I thought I’d go to The Hope Café in the off chance I would bump into Sami and Lisa, or one of them, and conversation might help. Sure enough on Tuesday afternoon I found them both, sitting quietly at their favourite table and, armed with a double espresso, went over and interrupted them.

“Hey! Richard, how are you?” asked Lisa; “haven’t seen you since your fortnight in Portugal”

“God, that seems ages ago now; actually, over three weeks but it was a good time and now back into our Hove routines, the weather still lovely and warm. Hope it’s not a harbinger of a hard winter as some doomsayers are suggesting!”

“I hope not too; El Niño, this autumn and into next year, has a history of extremes. Incidentally, I follow Camilla Long’s column in The Sunday Times and couldn’t believe last Sunday’s. It covered the fact that an Iman, Hafiz Ashrafi, had been given an ‘interfaith’ award by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the USA. Clearly no one did much research about his views as the award was withdrawn days later when it was discovered that he had, inter alia, praised Bin Laden!

“Actually, that’s awful, Lisa. Seems rather symptomatic of everyone turning a blind eye to unsavoury issues, just for the sake of the PR.”

“But what incensed Camilla Long, and me when I read her article, was that Sarah Mullally had welcomed him, together with his wife, who was wearing a full niqab and his daughter, wearing a facemask. Mullally was an outspoken feminist and had said she would speak out against misogyny, although ‘when misogyny physically turned up at Lambeth Palace, she said nothing.’ The accompanying Times’ photograph was extraordinary.”

“Not sure where I stand”, interjects Sami. “A complex issue for sure but seeing someone wearing the burqa on the streets of Britain is very odd. We pussyfoot around the issue, most of my friends hate the fact that women are made to wear such a medieval form of dress when they are outside.”

“I hadn’t read the article, Lisa, but I’ll find it online. I must admit whenever I see someone wearing a burqa, I feel extremely sad for the individual underneath, and feel it has no place in British society. I do know that several European countries have banned its wearing, France for instance, since 2011, and Portugal last month brought in its own ‘burqa regulations’. I think Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, summed it up quite well: “In our view, anyone who comes to Italy to build a future here must learn our language, understand our culture and respect our rules.” Same for us; this hideous form of dress, and everything that is physically and mentally attached to it, must be banned here too. As a nation we believe in the equality of both the sexes and opportunity and mustn’t use our tolerant nature to justify acceptance of this form of clothing.”

“I think I got it” says Sami, ruefully. Lisa smiles; maybe she’s already thinking of writing an article about it for The Argus. Sami continues: “You know my parents were Anglo-Indians and when you British partitioned British India into India and Pakistan we had nowhere to go and ended up here?”

“Sorry Sami! Bit before my time!”

“Exactly. A little like the present-day situation with Israel and Palestine, which you helped create with the Balfour Declaration of 1947. We can’t rewrite history in the light of what has transpired since then; we have to make the most of it, for both the Jewish population and the Palestinian nation. Genuinely I think here in Britain we support the idea of a two-state solution but get incensed when Israel ignores the illegality of building settlements in areas of the Palestinian West Bank. I was pleased when the current Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband and himself a British Jew, announced in the House of Commons that the UK would officially recognise that illegality and impose targeted sanctions and trade bans on those Israeli settlements.”

“And then there were howls of protests from Jewish groups here in the UK, sort of ‘How could you?’. They can’t have it both ways! I imagine you’ve watched the Netflix series Fauda?” (Note 1)

“We have loved the first four series”, says Lisa “and read about the problems the producers had in trying to create a fifth series which covered the 7th October 2023 attacks on Southern Israel by Hamas. Wasn’t one of the show’s previous series’ producers, Matan Meir, blown up in a booby-trapped tunnel and killed?”

“Yes, I think so. I certainly read that the sister of Lior Raz, one of the show’s creators and the actor who plays the main lead ‘Doron’, and her children managed to stay protected in their house’s bomb shelter while Hamas fighters roamed around outside. It all gets a bit personal in a nation of 10 million! We have watched this latest series and it’s very good but, having read the warnings about upsetting scenes in the middle episodes, didn’t watch it after 9 o’clock; too emotional to guarantee a dreamless sleep!”

“We must watch it, although I am aware that Palestinians see it as anti-Arab and a racist tool of Israeli propaganda. Think I read that ‘it reduces a political conflict over land and rights into a simple narrative of counterterrorism versus blood-thirsty terrorists!’”

“I love talking to you two but now I need to run; thanks for your thoughts and enjoy Fauda!”

Richard 25th September 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS Two days ago, Wednesday (23rd) marked the northern hemisphere’s autumnal equinox ie the sun at midday was directly over the equator and the length of our day and night are roughly equal.

Note 1 Fauda translates to mean ‘chaos’ or ‘disorder’. It’s an Israeli show following a unit of Mizrahi Jews who go undercover among their Palestinian neighbours to root out terrorist plots. Mizrahi Jews are indistinguishable from Arabs and speak both Hebrew and Arabic.

PC 509 Communication

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Our friend Sandi, who currently lives near London Bridge, has been frustrated by the sudden closure of the local Hot Yoga studio. Frustrated by its closure over a month ago, but now more and more angry, yes, I know it’s a yoga studio and yoga and anger shouldn’t be on the same page, by the total lack of communication. No one responds to emails, no one suggests monthly membership will be refunded and much more importantly there’s no indication as to when it might reopen. Members drift, find somewhere else that ticks most of the boxes, and by the time it announces it’s reopening, there won’t be any students. Why don’t individuals and companies really understand how important it is to keep people informed?

I have always believed in the power of communication, good and bad; communication is key – even if you know nothing. When I worked for Shorts, the Aerospace manufacturer in Belfast, a huge percentage of the company was owned by the Northern Ireland Development Board. Suddenly HMG announced it was up for sale but as the weeks went by, no one said anything. On one of my frequent visits from our London office, I noticed how depressed people were, worrying whether they would have a job, who was going to buy the company etcetera; there had been no news. Meeting my Divisional Director, I asked him why he couldn’t tell the workforce anything about the proposed sale, who might be in the running to buy it and he said: “I don’t know anything”. I said: “But you’re the MD and your workforce expect you to know, think you do know, so why can’t you simply say you currently don’t know but you’ll keep them up to date?” Why are people so afraid of saying they don’t know? Communication …..

On our TAP flight to Lisbon on 16th August the plane was fully emplaned, the doors closed and we waited and waited and ……there was no announcement saying they expected to take off in five or ten minutes/waiting for our slot …… or similar, and I thought: ‘Why not?’ Twenty minutes before we ‘pushed back’. Good or bad communication helps us understand what’s going on and helps us prepare.

Last week the UK’s National Air Traffic System (NATS) failed; the IT breakdown led to the cancellation of more than 2000 flights and calls for the resignation of Martin Rolfe, its CEO, as this was NATS’s second major failure in three years. What will happen to him and to NATS is one thing, but for Jane & Joe Public it was the lack of communication – for instance no one knew what was/wasn’t happening; the lack of any contingency planning – for instance there was no extra drink delivered to planes sitting on the tarmac full of passengers for 6 hours; obviously no one within the airport’s management asking the real ‘What if …. ?’ questions. Didn’t we learn anything the last time this happened? Don’t Jane & Joe Public deserve better?   

And while I am ranting about communication, I could mention the sad news that a local hardware store on Portland Road, Nuts & Bolts, is closing tomorrow after 45 years. “Ever since the (COVID) lockdown, there’s been a massive shift from high street to online shopping, which is proving to be the death-knoll for many.” Libby Purves, writing in The Times early this week, wrote: ‘Veteran locals see it bit by bit: the big, confident ironmongery and household store shuts, sabotaged by Amazon; the little boutique, deli and shoe shop give up, independents going first; three more charity shops appear with their 80% business rate exemption.’

Sometimes needing to buy something to solve a problem requires looking around at a range of items or talking to someone more knowledgeable than oneself. Nuts & Bolts was an emporium for bolts, nuts, brackets, fixtures, screws, almost anything metal you could imagine. If I couldn’t find what I wanted when I wandered the aisles or was unsure whether ‘A’ was better than ‘B’, I went up to the counter and spoke to a human. Communicating with a chatbot isn’t the same, is it?

Celina’s nephew Tiago is 14 and goes to school in Estoril in Portugal. Every parent knew the school was building an extension to house his year group, due to open in the first week of September. During the Summer holidays there was no indication that there were problems, no warning, no time for considered thought ….. but the school administrators must have known the building wouldn’t be ready for the first day of term nor apparently any time soon. Parents have been scrambling around to find an alternative school for their child. With some warning, some communication, the school’s reputation might have survived; now it’s in tatters.

The subject of the Duke & Duchess of Sussex’s return to the UK had come up in conversation with Sami in the Hope Café last week. Irrespective as to whether one should care or not, as I am writing about communication there was a mixed reaction to the public notice sent out on behalf of King Charles by the Lord Chamberlain to government officials and the media, seeking to clarify their status. Was it really necessary to remind us they are private individuals rather than ‘active representatives of the monarchy’, non-working royals? Was it to spike their guns as they begin to find their feet and determine how to pay for their privileged lives? Whatever the Royal family does there is interest in this couple from certain sections of society …… and they’re just going to have to live with that!  

My brother spotted this cartoon by Matt …… which delightfully sums up the issue!

And, finally, correct spelling of words is essential for good communication. Seen in Dorset:

We have gas, water and electricity meters, and two metres, short or not.

Richard 18th September 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

PS I accept that American English spells metre meter, but this is Dorset not Delaware.

PC 508 Back in The Hope (Continued from PC 507)

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………

“Didn’t large sections of Middle-Class America dodge the draft, studying at college and university, leaving the poorer section of society’s 18–24-year-olds, who weren’t so fortunate, to fill the ranks? Isn’t it one of the many things the current president is accused of?”

“A bone of contention that still smells rotten today. When I finished Caputo’s book, I looked up the casualty numbers. Just over fifty-eight thousand American servicemen died, 10,000 of these from accidents, illness or wounds. Another 300,000 were wounded. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong lost over 1.1 million fighters, while the South Vietnamese some 225,000 soldiers died.

Do read it Richard; it’s very good. What was your major Summer read?”

“Apart from some glorious fiction from David McCloskey, Chris Hammer and Michael Connelly, it has to be Rory Carroll’s ‘A Rebel and a Traitor’, the story of Roger Casement, knighted by the Crown for his work as a British consul, but who turned into a spy and traitor for the cause of Irish Unity and, after a summary trial, was hanged in HMP Pentonville in August 1916. Reviews called it ‘a rich, stylish and immersive epic’, ‘deeply researched and fascinating’ and Max Hastings thought it ‘a gripping read’. I loved it!

I can’t remember where I read it, but someone reflected that in general terms the British and the Americans see the world as it is today and determine their politics, especially their foreign policy, on that uncluttered view. Others are continually thinking about their historical journey, in some cases letting this shape, dictate even, their modern politics. Reading the obituary of Ratko Mladic (1943-2026), the Serb who earned the moniker ‘The Butcher of Bosnia’, made my skin crawl. In amongst the horrific details of bloodshed and murder was this: ‘The day after his troops had taken Srebrenica, Mladic declared he was presenting the city to the Serbian nation as a gift, in revenge for the events of 1804 when forces of the Ottoman Sultan retook the town from Serbian rebels.’

Mladic is not alone. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was predicated on his warped view of Russian history. I also consider, as a westerner, the governments of Iran, Israel and Afghanistan beholden to historical influences.”

“Hey! Hang on Richard! Getting a bit heavy! What’s that quote from Buddhism: “You can’t change the past, but you can ruin the present by living in the past and worrying about the future.” You may not have heard but Mo told Lisa the other day that she’s going to spend more time north of London, now her mother’s no longer with us.

Listen ….. you remember the decision you made when buying a video player – VHS or PAL? PAL (Phase Alternating Line – 50Hz) was used primarily in Europe, Africa, Australia and parts of Asia for analogue TVs and VCRs; VHS (NTSC – 60Hz) was the public’s choice in the USA and Japan. Despite being technically inferior, VHS from JVC offered 2 hours video play so the public preferred it. And now you probably have old video tapes gathering dust in the attic, treasured memories and nothing to play them on. Technology has moved on.”

“We’ll miss Mo. Actually, I did convert some Super8 Cine film to video, then the technology moved on ….. so I converted them to CDs …… and now I don’t have a CD player!!”

“What about your mobile phone? Most of us starting using either Apple or Samsung because you knew someone who said theirs was the better option. And we get adept at using the one we chose; Lisa and I use Apple. Lisa’s mother, who has a Samsung, was given a Kindle for her birthday last month; to buy a book she needed an Amazon account. (Note 1) You download the App, and it tells you it will send a code to your email. It does, although by the time you close the app and find the email, the time for the code’s validation is over – 10 seconds? Lisa was trying to help, although unfamiliar with the Samsung!”

“Reminds me of a procedure that older Brazilians have to do every year to guarantee continued receipt of their pension – ‘proof of life’. In essence, you take a ‘selfie’, upload it to the government website, and expect a code sent to your email; hoping that your photograph was acceptable! You have to come out of the website, open your email, find the code, make a note of it, go back to the government website and enter the code ….. all within 20 seconds, or you get timed-out. Whoever designed the system forgot that the only people using it are likely to be slight slower than others, so I don’t understand why that ’20 seconds’ can’t be, say, one minute?”

“From a book I am reading, I learned a new word, Richard: ‘susurrus’ which means a humming, whispering or muttering sound, as in ‘the enthusiastic susurrus of conversation ……’. So, susurrus is an onomatopoeic word, it sounds like its meaning. But I guess you knew that?”

“No! But I do like it. The word just sounds like intermingled conversations; add the occasional clink of glasses and you have a cocktail party! By the way, I was forwarded a faux photograph of Harry and Meghan, in the sort of inflatable rubber dinghy used by people smugglers to get illegal immigrants into the UK; the attached message read: ‘Love it. I am so bored with them. Maybe the media’s fault in part but …’.

I responded: ‘Seriously couldn’t care a monkey. Both play the victim card and this gives me the idea they have NO concept of how others live. Various commentators have gone to print about their vacuous lives.’ The fake photograph showed them with the white cliffs of Dover behind them ….. maybe they were paddling to France? You saw the photo of a double rainbow over Cascais in my last postcard?”

“Think so!”

It was about the same time as the moon’s eclipse on 28th August – and I managed to get a passable photograph with my iPhone at 0521.

Listen, we both need to get going; well, I certainly do. Stay in touch and love to Lisa.”

Richard 11th September 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 There are other ways to buy e-books but this seems the simplest.

PC 507 In The Hope Café Again

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We came back from a fortnight in Estoril in Portugal on Wednesday. I have written before about Estoril (PC 454 in August 2025) and am reminded on my morning walk through Estoril and Monte Estoril that ‘it has been home to numerous royal families and celebrities, is one of the most expensive places to live in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula and is home to a sizeable foreign community.’  It’s sad to sense that so many of these enormous houses are empty, have that unlived-in feel about them, maybe a second or even third home, at a time when ordinary folk struggle to afford somewhere, anywhere to live.

As always, it’s good to come home, providing of course ‘home’ meets your needs and your wants. For Celina and me, our large apartment in Hove ticks many boxes; spacious, high ceilings, dual aspect, modern insulation and the sea is two minutes away. We thank our lucky stars that in the unusually warm weather we have had this summer, our bedrooms are downstairs, in what might be described as ‘lower ground’. They are about 3C cooler than our living room! William and Stefano are renting the apartment above us in Amber House. One day in desperation they asked whether we had a fan! A neighbour kindly lent them her two.

After the delivery of our Waitrose shopping, I popped into The Hope Café mid-afternoon yesterday to catch up with Sami, who I hadn’t seen since mid-June. Amazing where the time goes huh! I joined Sami at a table, having got a double espresso from Josh, who’d asked whether I knew anyone who they could hire, as Libby is finally going to retire.

“Do you?” asked Sami.

“No one springs to mind and this is a difficult time of the year, what with the new Academic Year, a new school for some, others to university or Sixth Form College. Lots of people already committed.”

“I liked your last postcard, Richard, (PC 506 Be the Person you want to be) and that final paragraph when you said ……. let me look at my WhatsApp ….. here we are: ‘We are social animals; we want to fit in, not brave it out, not branch out, be the odd one out. But understanding ourselves better, our extraversion or introversion, the degree we engage/need to engage with others, with our families and with friends, or preferring our own company ….’

We all find ourselves not being who we want to be, presenting an untrue image, hiding behind a façade, and I found this from some psychologist:

‘Some people call it a division between the ‘original self’ and a ‘pseudo self’. A person exhibiting a ‘false self’ occurs when other people’s expectations override the spontaneous expression of the ‘true self’. The ‘false self’ is a kind of masquerade, a self that is presented to the world, a ‘social self’. Not the true, private self, the one ‘inside’.’”

“I am pleased …… and I assume I am talking to the true self, Sami, not some cardboard cutout?! Haven’t seen you since I completed my two linked wooden spoons, have I?”

“You showed me the enormous one you made for your daughter from a discarded scaffolding plank, but this is something else?”

“I had the idea I could fashion two spoons from one plank, the loop at the end of each linked. Once the idea got embedded, I thought long and hard about how I would carve that; this is how they look:

To get there I made a model out of some plasticine; hadn’t bought that for decades although you can still find it! Eventually I got to this point ….

 Then spent some time thinking about how to untie the knot, as it were; slowly but surely managed to separate them. Some wood filler, stain and wax and we’ve ended up with exactly what I imagined!

“Wow! They’re amazing Richard. Well done you! By the way, I know you read a lot when you’re in Estoril ….. and before you tell me about your stand-out book, I need to tell you about mine. I’ve caught your habit of glancing through the newspapers’ obituary column and found that a chap called Philip Caputo had died.

“Who? What was his claim to fame?

“He was an American author and journalist, best known for his best-selling memoir of his experiences during the Vietnam War, ‘A Rumour of War’. In 1973 he was part of a writing team that won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on election fraud in Chicago. You had written a couple of postcards (PCs 493 and 494) about your stepfather’s deployment to Malaya in 1945 as part of Force 136 and I was curious as to Caputo’s time in Vietnam; I ordered his book and finished it a couple of weeks ago.”

“Wasn’t that the first modern war that the USA lost?”

“Yup! And they left with their tail between their legs, their departure from Saigon (renamed Ho Chi Minh City) in 1975 reduced to a rout.

Caputo had been a Marine Second Lieutenant in Da Nang Province in 1965 for just over a year and his memoir is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war, being compared to ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ (Note 1) What I found fascinating was his ability to describe the rigours of jungle warfare in every gruesome and human detail. For instance, the Marines were provided with three sheets of loo paper ….

“The British Army had the same, part of a one’s field ration pack, except ours was made of that hard, unabsorbent, paper. The common saying was: ‘One up, one down and one polish’! Sorry, I interrupted you, Sami.”

“That’s OK. Caputo described how you could never get your arse clean, most soldiers suffered from permanent Diarrhoea, and how you lived and fought in the rain, covered in leaches and being bitten by mosquitoes. He also observed what fighting, kill or be killed, does to the human soul.”

(To be continued ….)

Richard 4th September 2026

Hove

www.postcardscribbles.co.uk

Note 1 A semi-autobiographical novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War!1, billed by some as ‘the greatest war novel of all time’.