Tag: Army

The Canterbury Tales

A family wedding took us to rural Kent, the so-called Garden of England, with its rolling downs, dripping orchards and bountiful fields. We padded out the nuptials with a good gander around pretty Canterbury. The city has ancient roots – think Celts, Romans, Jutes, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans and Huguenots. Canterbury’s city centre was flattened by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War, but unlike many other British towns and cities, it was sympathetically rebuilt. Today, Canterbury is a university city and a huge tourist draw, principally due to the vast cathedral – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – which dominates the skyline. The largely pedestrianised cobbled streets are charming, if a tad Disneyfied (no doubt to keep modern-day pilgrims progressing).

Without a doubt, the cathedral gets top billing and is not to be missed. Despite my dim view of religion in general, I love a big holy pile, and they don’t come much bigger or more holy than Canterbury Cathedral. There’s been a house of God on this site since 597, after Pope Gregory sent Saint Augustine over to save the heathens from their evil pagan ways. What visitors see today largely dates from the 11th and 12th centuries.

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The Cathedral’s fortunes really took off after the murder of Archbishop Thomas Beckett in 1170. Beckett had become a right royal pain in the arse for King Henry II, who threw a queenie fit and exclaimed (allegedly),

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Some knights took Henry at his word and martyred Beckett in the north-west transept. Like you do.

The posthumous veneration of Beckett transformed the cathedral into a major centre of pilgrimage and a money-making machine. And then came Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The rest, as they say…

Canterbury is also famous, here at Pansies HQ, as the birthplace of one Jack Scott. Dad was a soldier and I was born at Howe Barracks in married quarters on Talavera Road – number 24, according to my birth certificate. The barracks are long gone, replaced by a new housing development, though Talavera Road remains. That’s my Canterbury tale.

Even the Ducks Are Pissed Off

These constant rainy days are really starting to get on my tits. I’m not unfamiliar with big weather. As an army brat in faraway Malaysia, there was the annual inundation during monsoon season, with overflowing sewers and flooded classrooms. And then there was the ‘Great Storm’ of 1987, which barrelled across the land and ripped off half the roof of my house. In more recent times, as semi-retired Aegean gentlemen of leisure, Turkish winters taught us a lesson or two. Spare towels were requisitioned to stem the relentless tide of water flowing under windows and doors as angry tempests crashed ashore, overwhelming storm drains and trapping us inside for days on end. Our Bodrum gaff was only saved from flash floods and floating cars by stout stone garden walls. They don’t tell you that in the guidebooks.

Norwich may well share the same latitude as Calgary in Canada, but the Gulf Stream flowing up from Mexico keeps our islands relatively warm, winter-wise. It also keeps them damp. But enough is enough. We’ve just endured the wettest winter since 1836, and so far this spring, hardly a single dry day has gone by. It’s not big weather, it’s boring weather. Even the ducks are pissed off.

But to provide some cheer, I finally got to see seven swans a-swimming. Two proud parents and five cygnets were spotted mucking about in Loddon Staithe*.

The photo is courtesy of Loddon Town Council

*A staithe is a riverside dock traditionally used for loading and unloading cargo. These days, they’re used for mooring leisure boats.

Bottle and Basket, Booze and Bunting

After tripping the light fantastic along Tooting High Street, I took Liam even further down my memory lane with a short hop to Wandsworth Town. I showed him where I was a shoe shop Saturday boy, the primary school where I was a knotty-haired happy chappy, and finally, my digs from the age of ten until I ventured out into the wicked world – my ‘days on the tills, nights on the tiles’ moment before marriage and a mortgage.

After my Dad retired from the British Army, my parents ran a backstreet shop, one of a parade of four. Ours was a ‘bottle and basket’ selling booze and bread and all things in between, and we lived above and behind. It was a good little earner. Even during the dark days of the 1974 three-day week, Dad kept the lights on with candles from the cash and carry. It was a cold and miserable time and people hit the hard stuff to get through it – a bit like the recent lockdowns. On a happier note, as part of Her Maj’s 1977 Silver Jubilee celebrations, Mum helped organise a street party. The till rang non-stop as the red, white and blue bunting fluttered in the summer breeze.

Of the other shops, next door was a butcher’s with a newsagent’s at the end. I can’t remember what the third shop in the parade was. It hardly matters now as they’re all gone – long-since converted into gentrified houses that fetch a king’s ransom.

Here’s a very rare picture of me from that bygone era. Our first-floor parlour was a riot of clashing colours and patterns – very de rigueur at the time. I’m sure it’s much more tasteful today. But why was my chopper bike propped up against the sofa?

A Trip Down Malaysian Memory Lane

In 2016, I wrote a little piece about my semi-colonial life as a forces child in Malaysia back in the swinging sixties. The post – Reflections of an Army Brat – featured a blurry old black and white image I found online of Mountbatten Primary School, the school I attended. It started quite a conversation between ex-pupils, a conversation which continues to this day.

The post from way back also took me to a Facebook group called  ‘We are Terendakians’ – Terendak being the name of the army camp originally built for the 28th Commonwealth Infantry Brigade which consisted of soldiers from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The Facebook group is a place to reminisce and interact. And reminisce and interact they do with some wonderfully evocative pictures of a bygone era. Sometimes it even gets up close and personal.

This might be me aged around 7:

And this is almost certainly my mother on the ladies badminton team:

And this is definitely my brother:

A bit spooky really.

It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum

It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum

Overwhelmingly, most pansyfans hail from Britain, Turkey or the States so you can imagine my delight when I noticed that someone from Malaysia was pushing the numbers up by having a good old root around the blog – 334 posts and rising. In the late sixties, I spent nearly three years in Malaysia as a young army brat on a base just outside Malacca. My memories of life in the tropical sun are vivid and glorious. In fact, both my sisters were born in the country (at different times – my sergeant major father was posted there twice). I hope to pop back one day, as my eldest brother has done. So, whoever you are my Malaysian friend, I thank you. You’ve provided the perfect excuse to fish out some ancient time-worn snaps and take a skip down memory lane.

Stand By Your Beds!

The IKEA Room Set

Chrissy turned up to check on our home making progress. Actually, it felt more like a military inspection, and we dutifully stood by our beds. She nodded general approval as she moved from room to room though was strangely dismayed by the lack of bedside tables. “But, bedside tables are so last year!” I insisted. She glared at me in sheer panic before composing herself to suggest we might secure the services of a cleaner, “so good for local employment.” How quaintly colonial, I thought. I haven’t had one of those since my days as a sixties army brat in the Far East. However, that was before Britain had withdrawn ‘East of Suez’ and assumed a diminished role in the World.