Reid.Alexander.11.1.1941
From Livesretold.co.uk
Autobiographical life story started in January 2008.
Related life stories:
Father: Reid.Philip.12.1.1901
Son: Reid.Philip.30.1.1989
Daughter: Reid.Elisabeth.11.8.1992
Grandson: Creswell.Jocelyn.26.5.1999
Contents |
Introduction
I am starting my life story in January 2008 at the age of 66, living here at 27 Millington Road, Cambridge, England. I sit in my study on the second floor, at my grandfather's kneehole desk, with windows to the south looking out over St. Catharine's College playing fields and Grantchester Meadows beyond. We have had seven in the house over Christmas and the New Year: Sian and me, Sian's mother Anna, Hugh, Miranda, Philip, and Lizzie. Also Cesca our golden retriever. We saw my oldest daughter Anna before Christmas at her home in Ravenscourt Road, London, with her two small sons Edward and Bertie. Sadly we have not seen my second daughter Kate and her family (husband Alex, and sons Jocelyn, Sinbad, and Walter) since October, when we visited them at Alex's Foreign Office posting in Amman, Jordan. Their home, let out to a German family, is near us in Newnham, Cambridge. Before coming to me, a word about my parents.
My father Philip was one of three children of Sir Arthur Reid and Imogen (née Beadon). My father had two sisters, Hilda and Lesley, neither of whom married. Sir Arthur, who had been educated at Harrow School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, joined the Indian legal service, and rose to be Chief Justice of Lahore. His family, of Scottish professional descent, had served in the Indian Civil Service for several generations.
My mother Louisa was one of four children of Henry and Dorothy Luttrell. She had two brothers, William and John, and two sisters, Elizabeth and Catherine. Her father Henry, who became Liberal Member of Parliament for Tavistock in Devon, was a younger son of the prominent Luttrell family whose ancestral home is Dunster Castle in Somerset. The Luttrell family bought Dunster Castle and its estate in 1378. They were in continuous occupation until Geoffrey Luttrell gifted Dunster Castle to the National Trust in 1976. Louisa's mother Dorothy (née Wedderburn) was a member of a family which, like my father's, had strong Indian connections. Dorothy's father, Sir William Wedderburn (4th Baronet) served in the Indian Civil Service from 1859, becoming Judge of the High Court in Bombay. He retired as acting Chief Secretary to the Government of Bombay. He was one of the founders of the Indian National Congress, serving as its president in 1889 and 1910. He served as Liberal Member of Parliament for Banffshire from 1893 to 1900. A two volume history of Dunster and the Mohun and Luttrell families, by Sir H.C.Maxwell Lyte, was published in 1909 by The St.Catherine's Press.
Sir William Wedderburn's baronetcy has a colourful history. John Wedderburn was an advocate who in 1704 was created 1st Baronet of Balindean in the County of Perth. The fifth Baronet, Sir John, was a Jacobite who fought against the English at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, where he was taken prisoner. The Battle of Culloden, which brought the Jacobite uprising to an end, was the last battle to be fought in mainland Britain. Sir John was executed for treason, with his title and estates forfeited. His descendants continued to claim the title and in 1803 a new Wedderburn baronetcy was created to replace the one which had been forfeited.
Reaching back further in time, my relative J.W.Reid compiled in 1909 a Reid family tree (hung in a large frame on our top landing) which goes back 35 generations. The name at the top is Achaicus, alias Eocahan Fegusiana, sister to Hungus, alias Unust, King of the Picts. Six generations on we come to King Kenneth III, murdered in 994. Two more generations take us to Banquo, Thane of Lochaber, murdered by Macbeth in 1043.
Wartime
I was born on January 11th 1941 in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, during the Second World War. Johore Bahru is just across the straits from Singapore, where my father was serving as a gunnery officer in the Royal Navy. In January 1942, just weeks before Singapore fell to the Japanese, my mother was abruptly evacuated by sea to South Africa, with me and my two year old sister Griselda. My father was captured by the Japanese, and spent the next three years as a prisoner of war. One of my most treasured possessions is a nautical chess set, carved by hand as a present to my father by Capt. R.S.Herring MC, his friend and fellow prisoner in the Palembang Camp.
My mother describes the two month sea journey from Singapore to South Africa as scary, with everyone ready to take to the open boats if torpedoed in the tropical seas. We had our shipwreck bags always ready and were advised to include hats in them for fear of sunstroke. We all wore identity discs in case of separation.
We spent two and a half years in South Africa, frequently moving to any temporary accommodation that was available. In August 1944 we set off on another sea voyage to wartime England. The ship did not travel in convoy, and the risk of being torpedoed by a German submarine was very real. At one port we passed, we picked up a shocked boatload of survivors from the ship ahead of us. The ship's tannoy issued alarming announcements: 'You are now in submarine infested waters. In case of anyone overboard the ship will be unable to stop'. We arrived safely in Liverpool, and made our way by train to Somerset.
Earleywood School
Image:REIDABENCH1.JPG Image:REIDATEAM.JPG
My recollections between the ages of three and eight are hazy. I remember only my favourite books: the Babar books, and Sylvanus Goes To Sea. My father returned from the Far East in late 1945, after the Japanese surrender. It was a time of great rejoicing for us all. We lived first in a cottage in the Somerset village of Bagborough, then moved to Gosport in Hampshire, and then to Bath. My father was based at Admiralty offices which had been relocated during the war from London to Ensleigh, near Bath. I was a kilted pageboy at my aunt Elizabeth's wedding in 1945, and a year later started at Hermitage House school, where I evidently became a neat stitcher.
Image:REIDAPAGE.JPG Image:REIDAREPORT2.JPG
My vivid memories begin with my arrival as a boarding pupil, aged eight, at Earleywood School, Ascot. Due to a mix-up at the department store where we had bought my uniform, I turned up with a large silver lion embroidered on my blue school cap. Earleywood had no silver lion, and my cap was swiftly swapped by Mrs Aldrich Blake, the headmaster's wife. This was the first of several occasions in my life where I have turned up at important occasion wearing the wrong clothes. Others include a May Ball at Trinity College, Cambridge, where I was the only man among the hundreds there who thought it a good idea to wear a white dinner jacket (together with a rented dress shirt whose sleeves were unaccountably a foot too long). Years later there was a formal industry dinner at the Savoy Hotel in London where I found that I had failed to pack cufflinks, cummerbund, or the right shoes; I kept moving, hoping nobody would be able to focus on the details of my outfit. I still have recurring dreams in which I walk up to a podium to give an important speech, and realise that I am wearing no trousers. I have two other recurring dreams. One is that I am able to float about like a balloon, and demonstrate this at dinner parties. The other is that I save numerous lives by taking charge when an enormous chandelier threatens to collapse onto the audience in a crowded theatre.
Earleywood was a small, family-run boarding preparatory school, which my father had attended forty years earlier. Sergeant Buckle, the physical training instructor, was the one member of staff who taught us both. Ted Aldrich Blake, the owner and headmaster, was a kindly man who treated the fifty boys in the school as an extended family. My most memorable teacher was the inspirational Mr Johnson, who managed to get a lot of information into us, sometimes by throwing blackboard chalk across the room if you were not paying attention.
The main school building was an Edwardian house, set in parkland and with a small adjacent farm also owned by Ted Aldrich Blake. Across the boundary there were woods, in which we could make tree houses by hammering planks into trees with four inch nails. A respectable old people's home stood in its own grounds next door; we saw or heard little of them except during their summer garden party when a visiting brass band played patriotic tunes including Land of Hope and Glory. A patriotic note was also struck by the zigzag marks of a filled-in trench in the parkland to the front of the main building. It was explained to us that this had been dug during the Second World War, in case of German invasion. It always seemed to me that the Germans could have come round the side.
There was an open air swimming pool, a gym, and a carpentry shop in which I made an oak toast rack. There was also a small panelled chapel in which we held frequent services.
The school Prospectus included the following:
The School, especially designed and built for a modern Preparatory School, and since enlarged, is situated near Ascot on the well-known Bagshot Sands, in a high bracing locality amid the pines and heather. The grounds (70 acres), include football and cricket fields, and a large kitchen garden which supplies the school with fruit and vegetables. The farm, belonging to the school, provides pure milk and cream. The ventilation and sanitation have been carefully planned by experts in accordance with the demands of modern hygiene. All the class rooms and living rooms face South. The ground falls away from the house in every direction. The school buildings are lit throughout by electric light; they are heated by radiators. The water is supplied by the Egham Water Co.
Image:Reidacolditz.jpg Image:REIDAEAGLE.JPG
I recall forming an alternative lending library at the school. In contrast to the rather serious school library, it concentrated on popular boys' paperbacks, such as The Colditz Story and Sherlock Holmes. Our favourite periodicals were the Eagle, and Radio Fun.
Image:REIDASUBMARINE.JPG Image:REIDAEWCONJ.JPG
My other major enterprise was to launch and edit the Earleywoodian magazine. It was produced by typing or writing onto a kind of carbon paper of various colours. The sheet was then attached to the cylinder of a hand-cranked duplicating machine which, with the application of copious amounts of methylated spirit, printed out blurred but coloured pages. Each issue of the Earleywoodian started with an adventure story. One of my own efforts was called 'The Clue of the Faulty Statement'. Dipping into the story, we find that:
In the opposite corner was the trussed figure of Roger Smith, Mr Frobisher's newly-engaged secretary, gagged and bound on the floor, official papers, documents and wills spread out beside, beyond, and under him.
Later, under cross-examination, Smith confessed to being the accomplice of Isaac Burton in murdering Mr Frobisher by hitting him on the head with a typewriter. Other contents of The Earleywoodian included poems, jokes, crosswords, sports reports, and useful information on sign language, semaphore and conjuring tricks. Inspired by the Eagle comic, the centre spread would sometimes contain a cut-away drawing, for example of a submarine. I ended up producing most of the content, including a desperate call for contributions which began:
If this paper does succeed,
(That it will, is what I hope),
You must supply our greatest need,
(Thus enabling us to cope).
Some flavour of life at Earleywood is given in the two following letters written to my sister Griselda in 1954, when I was thirteen:
Dear Gris,
Thanks awfully for the two lovely long letters. I'm awfully sorry this is my first, but I'm awfully busy. We have been doing a lot with the new 'Earleywoodian Library Club'. Already we have made white paper jackets with the Club crest on for about thirty books. Several grown-ups have also taken out books - Matron, Nurse, Mr Townley, and Mr Johnson.
I have been making a survey of the school, which I am putting in the model exhibition. I have finished it now in rough. The school is such a funny shape that just to do the ground floor plan needed about !150! measurements with tape, indoors and out.
When Martineau left at the end of last term he gave as I think I told you a wireless to the captain's room. We have been having it on quite a lot. In the evenings we have been listening to some sponsored programmes on Radio Luxemburg, which are rather fun as its just like what it is in America.
A week from today is the first match. I hope that I will play right-half. It is a very nice day today and we will have a game of soccer. After break today, instead of doing lessons I marked out the soccer pitch which was rather fun.
Mr Townley, the maths master who left the term before last when Mr Headley came, has come back, as Mr Headley is very ill. Mr Townley has his degree, and now goes around in a long sweeping black gown, looking very like the assistant masters in my chess set! I gave the chess set [which I had made by turning wood on a lathe in the carpentry shop] to the captain's room the Monday before last, and everybody liked it very much. I am sorry that you never saw them. The captains, of which there are five, which is very unusual, are myself, Williams-Freeman, Dutton, Mason, and Phelps.
Dear Gris,
I am so sorry that I have not written for such a long time, but I have been awfully busy for the last 10 days making things for the exhibition at half term. We brought out an issue of the Earleywoodian, and we made one pound, three shillings, and threepence halfpenny on it. That is about twice as much as we usually get. I enclose a copy. The only thing wrong with it is the poem, which doesn't scan. I did the story, and most of the rest. Try boiling water in the box described on page eleven!
I have four things in the exhibition - an electrical quiz, two pieces of marquetry and a bombing range like we had on the ping-pong table at Bath. Due to excessive use, the bomber has given up the ghost, but was working alright most of yesterday. The electrical quiz was of words which are written up somewhere in the school. There are two rows of plugs, one with the words against them and the other with the rooms in which they might be. There are two wires with plugs on the ends, you put one on the words, and the other on the room in which you have seen them. If you are right, a green light will light up, and also the spot where the words are on a map lights up. All the electricity is taken off the mains with a transformer, so it doesn't matter how many people use it.
The marquetry consists of wood inlays. I am enclosing a piece of marquetry of the inn-sign the 'Cross Keys'. I hope you like it. This afternoon we played in the scout ground and let off lots of fireworks which were left over from yesterday evening. Then we had a fircone fight. It was all great fun.
Other cameo memories of my happy five years at Earleywood, from 1949 to 1954, include:
Cheesy Kraft's home movies
Mr Kraft (known as Cheesy) was an elderly member of the staff, who would occasionally offer to entertain us with showings of his silent black-and-white home movies. There being little alternative entertainment, such offers were eagerly accepted. This despite the fact that we had seen all Cheesy Kraft's home movies several times before, and they consisted entirely of lingering shots of his relatives, dressed in what looked like Edwardian clothes, milling wordlessly around on a lawn.
Jenkins sandpapering his nose
Jenkins was worried that his nose was too big, and tried to reduce it with sandpaper. He was restrained, and recovered quickly.
The rocket that did not rise
My most ambitious model-making project was a balsa wood rocket, shaped like something out of a science fiction movie, painted in purple and gold, and driven by a Jetex engine. Jetex engines were small aluminium cylinders into which you inserted a solid fuel pellet and a fuse. When assembled and lit they would go off with a great whoosh for about thirty seconds. They worked well on cars and boats, and I expected my rocket to rise until it was a speck in the sky. The launch took place on the cricket field. Dozens of boys gathered round at a safe distance, waiting for the rocket to take to the skies. I lit the fuse. Disappointingly, the rocket just sat there in a vertical position for the full thirty seconds of the Jetex burn, with a lot of whooshing but no vertical movement. It then fell over.
Bishop alert
The visit of the local Bishop to officiate at one of our Sunday chapel services was a big day for Ted Aldrich Blake, and provided an electrical opportunity. I was much interested in low voltage electricity, and had a set of bulb holders, switches, batteries, and buzzers. They came in useful because Ted Aldrich Blake wanted the organ to strike up just before the Bishop entered the chapel. The problem was how to signal to the organist that the Bishop was approaching. I volunteered to install a bulb holder beside the organ, connected by wires running the length of the chapel to a switch in the outer vestibule. Aldrich Blake fell in with this unlikely scheme, and I was excused from chapel in order to man the switch in the vestibule. When the great moment came I threw the switch, the light lit, and the organ blared.
When I bit my knee
We had to make our own amusements, and one of these was to hang from the first floor landing by our hands, then let go and land - bending one's knees - onto the floor below. This worked well until one time I bent my knees rather too much. My mouth was open, and I bit my knee deeply. I reported to Matron, who had not previously had to deal with a boy biting his own knee.
My brief religious conversion
My proudest possession at Earleywood was a black portable typewriter, given to me as a present by my aunts Hilda and Lesley. But one terrible day, while I was typing away, the printing end of the H key (about the size of a pea) flew off the typewriter and disappeared, who knows where, into the cluttered classroom. A fingertip search yielded nothing. Without the H key the typewriter was useless; it just produced a smudge instead of every H.
Having tried all else, I decided to try the power of prayer. I went upstairs to my dormitory, knelt down beside my bed, pressed my hands together very tightly, and prayed like anything to find the H key. I went back downstairs, and started looking. Instantly I found the H key, behind someone's tuck box. Instantly, I was converted. But my religious phase was brief. A few days later there was something else I very much wanted, such as a place in the cricket team. I went upstairs and prayed with great confidence. No luck. Disillusion. Other prayers over the next few weeks, aimed at other objectives, were equally fruitless. Perhaps I was asking for too much.
Our secret weapon Lundberg
Lundberg was from Sweden. He did not shine in lessons, but he was very large. One reason he was so large was that he was about two years older than the rest of us, and seemed to stay on at the school indefinitely. This may have been because he was a crucial asset when it came to sports matches against other schools. Being a very small school, we would have faced hopeless odds if it had not been for Lundberg. We would arrive at away matches in a minibus, and us tiny boys with squeaky voices would pile out to the derision of the home team. Then to gasps of astonishment Lundberg would unfold himself from the bus and draw himself up to his full enormous height. It was like Hannibal producing his elephants.
Cold baths
For moral or medical reasons, or simply to wake us up, we were required to take a cold bath every morning. This involved standing naked in a shivering queue outside the bathroom, then stepping forward one at a time and briefly plunging full length into the cold bath. Rather like parachuting.
Liquid currency
Image:Reidasweet.jpg Image:Reidaheadphones.jpg
Life was not all hard. In contrast to the rigours of the cold baths each boy was given one boiled sweet, wrapped in a twist of cellophane, after lunch every day. In the same way that cigarettes become a currency in prison, these boiled sweets became our informal currency. If someone wanted to borrow someone else's football boots, or get help with his work, payment would be made in sweets. I did well in this primitive economy because my grasp of maths was a marketable commodity, but I got my comeuppance.
Having like Shylock accumulated a substantial hoard of boiled sweets, I decided that they were at risk of theft and should be placed in a safe place. I sealed them inside a large biscuit tin, wrapping it around with many layers of sellotape. I then crept out unobserved, over the boundary fence, into the woods. There, in a carefully calculated spot, I dug a hole and buried the tin. I spread leaves over the disturbed earth. I felt financially secure for life. But it was not to be. A few days layer I crept off into the woods to make a withdrawal. I dug the tin up, and opened it only to find that due to the cold or the damp all the boiled sweets had dissolved into a thin syrup of no commercial value.
Radio Luxembourg
I had bought by mail order a kit for a crystal radio set, which came with dark brown bakelite headphones, of the kind used by spies in the Second World War. It was a huge success. It required no batteries, and you wiggled a knob to pick up a signal. I very much enjoyed listening to popular music on Radio Luxembourg, under the bedclothes after lights out.
Never ending stories
An alternative to listening to Radio Luxembourg after lights out was to listen to a never ending story, told by one of the other boys in the dormitory. Some were extraordinarily good at this, making up interminable adventure stories, full of people riding motorbikes, capturing burglars, and clinging to the undersides of railway trains. After this had been going on for about half an hour, the narrator would ask 'Is anyone still awake?'. If even one person was still awake, he would continue. Then when all were asleep he would go to sleep himself, and take up the story the next evening.
Home
Image:REIDACRESCENT2.JPG Image:REIDACRICKET.JPG Image:REIDAPHILIPBEACH.JPG
Throughout my time at Earleywood we lived in our rented top floor flat at 30, Royal Crescent, Bath. A magnificent crescent-shaped terrace of thirty grand houses, the Royal Crescent was designed by John Wood the Younger, and was built between 1767 and 1774.
Recollections of Bath include the arrival of a large crew to make a film based on the Scarlet Pimpernel story. Called The Elusive Pimpernel, it was released in 1951 and starred David Niven, Margaret Leighton, and Cyril Cusack. One striking feature of their visit was that the large cast iron lamp posts around the Royal Crescent were uprooted and removed, with a crane, for the duration of the filming. They were apparently not of the correct period. Also red carpet was laid up the front steps of our house, which was decked out to receive visitors (in horse drawn carriages) to a fashionable ball.
We had an allotment in the parkland below the Royal Crescent. Part of this had been turned over to allotments during the Second World War, but has now been returned to grass. We had a rather grand white painted garden bench in it, brought from a previous house. My mother grew (and we ate) very large sweet corn plants, along with other vegetables.
I had an O Gauge Hornby clockwork train set, which monopolised the dining room. I fitted a battery and bulb into the engine, and much enjoyed switching all the lights out and seeing it crank round the track in the dark, with forward pointing beam. It was like an American freight train roaring across the prairie.
Another electrical project was the illuminated jelly at my tenth birthday party. My long-suffering mother agreed to cast a green jelly with a small inverted glass tumbler embedded into the base. I wired up a bulb holder and we secreted a pair of wires away to a concealed switch by the skirting board. Because the jelly was not entirely transparent, the electrical works could not be seen. Imagine the surprise of my small guests when the lights were switched out, and the jelly suddenly glowed brilliantly and greenly from within!
Image:REIDACONJURING.JPG Image:REIDAHAPPY2.JPG
I wanted to learn to touch type when I was about eleven, and my mother (who was keen to see us have a go at anything) enrolled me in a three week course in a secretarial college in the town. The other pupils seemed like grown-up ladies, but were probably about seventeen. We tapped away to music, to help our rhythm. My mother also arranged for me to spend some weeks as a juvenile apprentice in a metal working shop in the basement of a terrace in the town. They taught me to do exciting things, including operating a metal lathe, where the cutting bit had to be cooled with a constant stream of a white liquid that looked like milk. It sizzled fiercely, and curls of metal came off in twirly shapes. I made, as a present for my father, a turned brass pencil holder in the shape of a naval shell. I was also keen on conjuring, and was taught conjuring tricks (and 'patter') by Mr Donovan, a member of the Magic Circle who lived in the Royal Crescent. Later, when I had children of my own, the conjuring came in useful at birthday parties.
At weekends we would go out to the countryside in the car, and all get out to do what my mother called 'deep breaths'. This involved standing in a row, usually on an exposed hillside, drawing in and blowing out enormous breaths. We would also picnic in all weather conditions, on a check blanket, with soup served from a green wide-mouthed Thermos.
Several times a year I would visit London to stay with my paternal grandmother, Lady Reid. She and her two unmarried daughters Hilda and Lesley lived in a tall Victorian terrace house at 46 Tedworth Square, Chelsea, leased from the Cadogan Estate. Hilda and Lesley indulgently took me all over London on the top of double decker buses. We also played Happy Families; I liked Mr Chip the Carpenter, but found Mrs Bone the Butcher's Wife rather alarming. On one of my visits they mentioned their difficulty in removing the tight foil caps from milk bottles. This was during my lathe phase, and on the next visit I brought them as a present a device I had turned out of wood. It was a biscuit-sized disk which was flat on one side, and had on the other side an upstanding centre designed to fit the inside radius of the top of a milk bottle. You pressed this onto the top of the bottle, and the foil cap then lifted off easily.
Most summers we would go by ferry to Brittany for a seaside holiday in France. One of these trips provided material for the following travel article in the Earleywoodian, written when I was twelve. Its tone accords with the Englishman's traditional polite surprise at the strange ways of foreigners.
What one might notice on holiday in France.
Firstly, the advertising seems to be carried to a greater extreme than in England, no less that 14 firms giving away ash-trays to hotels and restaurants free, while 3 other firms throw notepads into house gardens, one firm gives away sheets of paper with the equivalent of a Tommy Walls strip on the back, another giving away cardboard and celluloid sun-glasses, and yet another gives away picture post cards.
As far as cycling is concerned, one will often see four, and sometimes even five, people on a bicycle, which is not against the law as it is here. Also children of down to about 8 years of age can be seen riding bicycles with motors attached, which are much more common than in England; bicycles can also be put on buses which have racks on their rooves, for also carrying luggage there.
To pass on to trains, a great majority of which are electric with overhead wires, the tracks are always on a level with the platform so there is a big step down, and in our case at Dieppe the tracks actually go through the ordinary streets. In Paris the Metro Underground is not nearly as deep as it is in London therefore one sees many places where the tracks are uncovered. Also one might be surprised to hear that a journey of one stage costs exactly the same as a long one.
Two highlights of our time in Bath were the Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951, and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. At the Festival of Britain I particularly enjoyed the Skylon and the Dome of Discovery. A simple but gripping exhibit within the Dome of Discovery was a large white panel, about twenty feet square, with a million black dots neatly arranged on it in rows. I stared at this for a long time, never having seen a million of anything before. The coronation involved much preparation, including the compilation of loyal scrapbooks which were specially printed and sold for the purpose. Mine contains carefully pasted cuttings of the Royal couple, the Crown Jewels, and the street decorations. We watched the parade from my father's club, the United Service Club in Pall Mall. I remember cheering myself hoarse in a patriotic frenzy.
Winchester College
I arrived as new boy at Winchester College in January 1955, having won a scholarship. In a severely meritocratic way, the College pinned up on the notice board in the entrance gateway a list of the scholars in the order of the entry examination marks. Top of the list was James Sabben Clare, who went on to become Headmaster at the College. I scraped in at number 11 in a list of 12.
We were referred to as 'new men' rather than 'new boys', because Winchester College has its strange private language, known as Notions. My book of Winchester College Notions, published in 1910, contains several hundred definitions. These include:
Abroad. Sufficiently recovered to leave the sick room.
Adam and Eve. A stream flowing from Birley's corner through Dalmatia, rejoining New Barge immediately below First Pot.
Apple Pie Day. The Thursday after the first Tuesday in Sealing Week, when College men got apple pies. On this day, which is always a Hatch Thoke, College Six play Commoner Six.
Bake. To lounge.
Batmugger. A wooden instrument used for oiling bats.
We were expected to learn this language in our first term, and were given an examination by the prefects. It is described in a letter to my sister Griselda:
Last night we had notions examina, which is an examination for the new men. It is held in the upstairs chambers, and there are lots of cucumber sandwiches, jelly, blackberries, hot sausages, soup and cider. The festivities stop around half past eleven, but the extra hour in bed this morning makes up for lost sleep.
Griselda was on an exchange in Paris with a family called Lehideux, with whom I had already stayed, and later in the letter I ask her to buy something for me:
I wonder if you could possibly get me a record?? I will pay you back when I see you next. It is the 45 rpm 7 inch, 'Cha Cha Cha No.2' with Enriquo Jorren's band. On the shiny cover (which is red and yellow) there is a cat grinning from ear to ear playing a tom-tom.
Several of the boys had classical records, which were played in the chambers. I remember going into a record shop in town to buy my first record and asking the advice of the young lady assistant. She was most helpful and recommended Mozart's Concerto for Flute and Harp in C Major, which I bought and much enjoyed. I was curious to discover that the orchestra included a glass harmonica - an instrument which, I later discovered, was invented by Benjamin Franklin.
I had a less happy retail experience twenty years later when I went into a classical record shop in Cambridge to buy tapes for my first car audio system. I said I wanted about five, perhaps by Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, or Tchaikovsky. I asked the assistant (who clearly preferred discussing with aficionados the finer differences between various recordings) which works he would recommend. He icily directed me to the appropriate racks, saying 'I think you will find them all perfectly satisfactory'.
The advantages of being a scholar, or 'College man' were that the fees were much reduced, and you lived in the beautiful medieval part of the school, known as College, in a tolerant community. The other boys, known as 'Commoners' lived in 'Houses' where prowess at sports and normality ruled the day. In College, by contrast, diversity was tolerated. Many College men had consuming, even obsessive hobbies. One collected leaves. Another memorised most of the UK railway timetable.
We were regarded by the Commoners as rather odd, not least because we were required to wear every day a most peculiar outfit. This consisted of a white shirt with detachable starched collar, black tie, black long-sleeved waistcoat, grey trousers, and a flowing black gown with puff sleeves. This feeling of being regarded as a curiosity took some getting used to. The sensation came flooding back fifty years later when I attended an Old Wykehamist dinner held at the Jockey Club in Newmarket - near my home in Cambridge. Most of the attendees appeared to be large landowners, much into country sports. I introduced myself to one of them. When he looked at my name badge, and saw I had been in College, he called out to his friends, saying 'Look! look! here's a College man. Come and see. I always wondered what happened to them!'
Image:Reidacollege2.jpg Image:Reidaclois.jpg
I count myself enormously lucky to have spent five years at Winchester. The College stands in wonderful grounds to the south of the city, with huge ancient trees, a river running along the boundary, water meadows beyond, and views of St.Catherine' Hill. The teachers were excellent, and every kind of extra-curricular activity was available.
The days were a busy mix of chapel services, classroom, meals, active afternoons, and evenings spent in the Chambers, around the College court. Each Chamber was a large room shared by about ten boys of all ages. Around the edge of the room were 'Toyes' which were open-sided wooden cubicles with a desk, a wall light, shelves, and cupboards. On one side of the room was a large stone fireplace with a coal fire burning in it. In the centre of the room was a big table, with newspapers on it, and chairs around. It was all extremely cosy and congenial. You could quietly sit in your cubicle, doing some work, or writing home, while keeping an ear open to the general conversation. Toasting forks were available, and cans of baked beans could be heated up in a saucepan of water on the open fire. Once one exploded because someone had forgotten to puncture it.
The dormitories operated on a similar principle of mixing all ages. The bathrooms were most unusual. There were three or four of these, alongside the dormitories on the first floor of the College court. The bathrooms were about twenty feet square, had a threshold about six inches high over which you had to step to get in, and were floored in waterproof terazzo, with a central drain. Pairs of hot and cold taps were arranged around the wall. There were no fixed baths as such. Instead there were portable metal baths, known as Bidets. In shape, these were like a frying pan without a handle, about three feet in diameter and about a foot deep. You would get undressed in an adjacent changing room, then drag a Bidet over to some taps, and fill it up. You took your bath in it, then when you were finished you simply tipped the Bidet up and the water went all over the floor. Occasionally, and illicitly, we would block the outlet and flood the whole bathroom with a few inches of water; you could then float around in the empty Bidets, using them as boats.
College men ate in the medieval dining hall. It was on the first floor adjacent to the Chapel in the College court, and was approached by a wide flight of stone steps. Two curious features of the dining hall were the square wooden boards we used instead of plates, and the coal fired stove in the centre of the room. It radiated a lot of heat, but it also served as a means of producing toast for breakfast. In a feudal process, the boys in the most junior year had to gather before breakfast every morning at the foot of the stone steps (while the more senior years were still getting up), each armed with a toasting fork. As the chapel clock struck the hour, all would rush up the steps, grab a piece of bread, and start toasting. The reason for the rush was that the first to the fire got the choice toasting spot at the centre of the fire. The last had to make do with the edge of the fire, where it was practically impossible to toast anything. The iron rule was that your first piece of toast went to the most senior boy in your chamber. The second to the second most senior, and so on. The toaster was last in this pecking order, and seldom got any toast.
The chapel services were numerous and pleasant, with much stained glass, oak pews, and hearty singing. Every morning, seven days a week, there was a service for the whole school in the main Chapel. Then every evening the College men had evening prayers in a tiny and delightful small chapel, called Chantry, placed in the centre of a medieval cloister adjacent to the main chapel. It had a first floor library above it, reached via a stone spiral staircase in the corner.
In the classroom we had to specialise quite early into one of three streams: Classics, Science & Maths, and Humanities. I found it difficult to choose between Science & Maths and the Humanities. I ended up doing Science & Maths, taking Physics, Mathematics, and Higher Mathematics as my A-level subjects.
The housemaster in charge of College, known as the 'Second Master' was the fiercely intelligent linguist and historian Tom Howarth, who had been a junior staff officer under Montgomery in the Second World War. He later went on to be the High Master at St.Paul's School, and later a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. While at Magdalene he wrote a book on Cambridge Between Two Wars, published by Collins in 1978. The assistant master in College was David Lutyens. We were much impressed when he left teaching in 1959 to become a newsreader on ITV, the first commercial television channel.
Extra curricular activities included pottery and carpentry, where I made a miniature oak table; it now serves as something to stand my computer on beside my desk. I also made a gramophone with record changer, buying the parts and making up a wooden case covered in simulated leather. I reported on progress (and on the Suez crisis) in a letter to my sister Griselda:
I have bought yesterday a sheet of that punched metal to put in front of the loudspeaker on my gramaphone. I am now waiting for the rexide to cover it in. Mummy is trying to get some in London. The Suez crisis is causing a lot of interest and discussion here. Last night most of the school went to a debate on it in School. Four dons made speeches, two for two against the government, and then questions were asked from the audience. It was very interesting, and clarified my picture of the situation quite a lot. Work is going well. In History we are doing the Industrial Revolution - you know, Crompton's Mule, Arkwright, Cartwright etc.
My two main extra-curricular ventures both took place in my penultimate year at Winchester, 1958. Both were joint ventures with my good friend Philip Steadman, who also went on to read Architecture at Cambridge. The first was the setting up of a Printing Society, whose largest project was a book of prayers for use at evening prayers. The second was the production of a satirical summer magazine called Three Short Legs.
Winchester College Printing Society
Phil Steadman and I set up the Printing Society to take advantage of the bequest of equipment by an Old Wykehamist who was a keen amateur printer. Two enormous cast iron, treadle operated, rotary printing presses, and a lethal guillotine, arrived in the art building. They were accompanied by numerous trays of moveable type. Phil and I volunteered to take charge of this and were assigned a large room for the purpose. We fitted this out with workbenches and shelving, and set about learning (by trial and error) how to compose type and operate printing presses. We started out printing headed stationery, and small invitations for personal or school events. The number of boys joining the Printing Society grew, probably because it offered, to the less sporty boys, a legitimate alternative to afternoon games. We organised the members into a strict hierarchy. Only Phil Steadman and I operated the printing presses. This was probably just as well, because their rotary momentum was huge. Their jaws opened and closed quickly and relentlessly. At each opening you had to remove one sheet of paper and drop another into exactly the right position. You could easily have crushed a hand if you had got your timing wrong. The next layer of boys were assigned to composing the type; picking up the type from the right little compartment, and stacking it into something called a Composing Stick. The third and most lowly layer of boys were assigned to sorting the type back into the trays after it had been used.
The great project of the Printing Society was the production of a 30-page book of prayers for use in the scholars' evening services. The previous edition had run out of print, and the College agreed to commission us to produce a replacement. The project was a joint effort of the 21 members of the Printing Society. It was a major undertaking, with all the hand typesetting, and with each page having to be printed four times (in red and black on each side). The first word of each prayer was in red. We chose for the text 14 point Perpetua type, designed by Eric Gill, with van Krimpen's Romulus type for the 36 point initial letter of each prayer. The books were professionally bound in red cloth or leather, with the title stamped in gold.
Three Short Legs
The Three Short Legs magazine was produced as a one-off summer publication, to be sold at the annual Eton against Winchester cricket match. The editors were myself, Phil Steadman, and John King, with a master (Count Nicholas Sollohub) pressed into service as minder. It contained no less than 60 paid display advertisements, mostly full or half page. We wrote off to local and national companies, and somehow persuaded them to cough up. As well as local firms, they included household names such as Austin Reed, the Royal Navy, Thomas Cook, Barclays Bank, and the Oxford University Press. The venture turned a profit, and I was able to buy an Olivetti portable typewriter (for £25) out of my share.
The contents included anonymous attempts at parody and humour, a contribution from the Punch author H.F.Ellis (which began 'The advantages of being very bad at cricket are not always clearly understood.'), a crossword, and two articles on the traditionalist design of the new school hall. One article, by Andor Gomme, criticised the scheme, describing the building as 'a severe disappointment'. The other article, in defence of the design, was by its architect Peter Shepheard.
The best piece was a rumination on proverbs by Phil Steadman, entitled 'It will be seen in the frying of the eggs'. The opening section follows:
The scientists have missed it; it has lain hidden in a cobwebbed tome; it has escaped their notice - the proverb. It alone has evaded the searching ray of the scientific method, has survived into this our marvellous mechanical age, a revered and musty oracle, soon to be struck down by ruthless men in white coats. But perhaps in some vast, clinical, impersonal building (should it be an 'establishment'?) the proverbs are even now fighting a losing battle; out-numbered, unarmed, they are falling prey to bespectacled monsters whose weapons are test-tubes and balances. Can we imagine the scene as each proverb in turn comes for trial into the spotless laboratory that is science's courtroom?
"Call the first proverb."
Down from his dusty home among once-handsome volumes bound n red morocco creeps the shirivelled emaciated thing.
"State your case."
"A horse stumbles that has four legs."
A low murmur goes round the laboratory. The experiment begins - horse after horse, black, white, piebald, thin, small, large - cart-horses and elegant ponies parade past the committee. The little proverb weeps silently in a corner as horse after horse fails to stumble, and prances along in perfect step.
The judge puts on the black cap and judgement is passed.
"Call the next proverb."
Down from his rice-paper home jumps a yellow-faced, slit-eyed proverb and bows low.
"Honorable sirs: beg to recite honourable proverb; a fog cannot be dispelled with a fan." (A lamentable lack of the Canute spirit here, one can't help thinking.)
The jury deliberates;
... a small fog ... an enormous fan ... absurd generalization ...
And so it goes on.
My own contributions to Three Short Legs have not stood the test of time so well. One was a three page commentary on school events parodying Time Magazine. It included a review of a recent school play which started:
Oedipus Tyrannus (Sophocles) is another stringy, unshaven utterance of the tragedy muse. Action plunges into long backlog of all the old works - curses, prophecies, plagues and riddles. Biggest riddle is to sort out where we come in.
and ended:
Audience, chorus, shuffle off in tears. Nicholas J.Richardson gives Oedipus punch, feeling, is handicapped by loose dialogue, heavy scripting. A.Patrick Minford [later to become a famous professor of economics], playing opposite Richardson, wheels out a spirited performance. Rest of cast carry along a script that lacks impact. Chorus of moaning oldsters palled, but took everything that author Sophocles gave them.
Other cameo memories of my five years at Winchester College include:
Acting as Lady Macbeth
Image:REIDAMACBETH.JPG Image:Reidafirefly.jpg
Tom Howarth, who was producing the College play, decided in my first year that I would make a good Lady Macbeth. There were a lot of lines to learn, and I felt rather silly dressed up in wig and dress. In the dress rehearsal of the sleepwalking scene I set fire to my wig with the candle. I managed to put it out.
Sailing on the Hamble
Being a disaster at cricket, I opted for sailing as an alternative. We would set out in a minibus for the Hamble River, under the care of Mr Darling. Darling was a physics teacher who was keen on sailing. Indeed he taught largely through the medium of sailing, explaining most physical principles (such as velocity, levers, pulleys, and relative motion) by drawing pictures of sailing boats on the blackboard. The College kept Firefly dinghies at the boatyard of Fairey Marine. We would sail around in the Hamble, and sometimes venture across to Cowes in the Isle of Wight, taking care to avoid the enormous ships heading to or from Southampton. We greatly enjoyed it, and came back windswept and smelling of salt.
Writing to The Times
I somehow came across the Purchase Tax regulations, and was interested to see that carpentry sets were exempt, whereas chemistry sets were not. I wrote a letter to The Times (which was published) suggesting that both should be exempt. I argued that while in the days of wooden ships the nation's security might have depended on carpentry it was more likely today to depend on science.
Battle Drill
My strangest memory of Winchester is something called Battle Drill. We did it in the College Cadet Force as part of our military training. We also did parade ground drill. For that we wore shiny boots and neat battledress uniforms which we pressed using solid irons heated on a gas ring. Battle Drill was quite different.
Everything about it was absurd. We dressed in sloppy denim uniforms, which were three sizes too big. Battle Drill took place not on a tarmac parade ground, but on the sports fields. Instead of marching around like proper soldiers, in Battle Drill you had to hold your rifle up horizontally in front of you in a position called the High Port. It was as if you were wading chest-deep through an imaginary swamp. You also had to lift your knees up very high, as if stepping over the high grass of the veldt. The whole effect was ridiculous. Every so often you had to stop, and the boy in front had to should out 'Observe!'. Then on you went. On another command, you had to prance off, knees lifted high, to gather round the boy playing the role of leader. When all were arrived, he would should out to the first boy: 'Rations!', and the first boy had to shout back 'No!'. Then the leader had to shout out 'Ammunition!' to the second boy, who had to shout back 'No!'. Then the leader had to shout out 'Rendezvous!' to the third boy, who had to should back 'No!'. So it went on. We assumed this ritual had mutated from a procedure on which your life would have depended in the Boer War.
Image:REIDATEMPLEKNOWE.JPG Image:REIDAGREENHILL.JPG
While I was at Winchester College, my sister Griselda was also in Winchester, boarding at St.Swithuns school. My father's job had moved from Bath to London in 1953; we rented a flat at Morpeth Mansions, off Victoria Street. We then moved to Kent, and up to Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow, for my father's last job in charge of a gunnery proofing range. My memories of the Morpeth Mansions flat are that it had an open outside lift serving the kitchen window, which I once travelled up in, and that my mother decided to change the look of the flat. This involved wallpapering my bedroom in a very Festival of Britain red wallpaper, and painting everything in the kitchen (table, chairs, cupboards, bread bin, walls) in a warm tomato soup colour. She also bought her first electric cake mixer; a man came to the flat to demonstrate it by making a Victoria Sponge.
During this time my father inherited a substantial house in the Scottish borders from his childless cousin Herbert Eckford. Herbert had emigrated to Canada as teenager before the First World War, and had made his fortune in the wild frontier town of Calgary, in Alberta. Key to this was a stake in Calgary's principal brewery. Herbert returned to Scotland, and set himself up in style. The house, called Templeknowe, was near St.Boswells, in Roxburghshire. It was in the Scottish baronial style, with a turret, battlements, and stabling for 12 horses. We used it for holidays for a few years, but my parents sold it in 1958, when they bought Greenhill, a Georgian house in the village of Thorncombe, near Chard in Dorset. My parents were 57 and 51, but Greenhill was, apart from Templeknowe, the first house they had owned.
A curious footnote
I was passing through Winchester some twenty years later, and James Sabben-Clare (now Headmaster at Winchester College) and his wife Mary kindly invited me to lunch. On my way to their house I popped into a small supermarket to buy something. The lady at the check-out handed me my change, then reached under her desk, said 'This is your free basketwork parrot', and handed me said parrot. She explained it was part of a loyalty scheme. On arrival at the Sabben-Clares I discovered that it was James' birthday, and gave him the parrot. It was green, and the top half came off, so you could keep things in it.
Cambridge University
After a severe illness in my last summer term at Winchester, which followed an emergency appendix operation, I went up to Trinity College Cambridge to read architecture in October 1959. I was in the first cohort to miss National Service. About half my contemporaries had done National Service, so were two or three years older (and about ten years more experienced).
A letter home, two weeks after I started at Cambridge, exudes breathless enthusiasm:
I am really enjoying myself enormously (don't think I'm trying to put a good face on things), and what I enjoy most of all is the architecture! All the dons are very good, and the lectures so far (2) have been extremely interesting. We each have a table in the studio and have had to buy some (I am very sorry to say) expensive equipment, e.g. adjustable protractors and a vast T square. Luckily I managed to get some things second hand. The drawing board with ebony edge I got for £5 instead of £8. Everything else, however, including sketch books, notebooks, exercise books, paper, pencils, ink etc etc etc is all on the house.
I have bought a very good bicycle for £2 from the cycle attendant. I had to get new brake blocks and a bell at woolworths, but well worth it. I have booked the morning coat outfit. Should I wear a hat? Please let me know immed. as I have to give them notice for the hat. I have joined several societies: the Architecture society, the Arts society, the Film society, and the Conservative Association. Let me know about the hat. If I don't hear I shall assume no hat.
My interest in design had been triggered by the study of typography into which I was led by my printing activities at Winchester College, and by a Buckminster Fuller lecture in London to which my mother took me as a teenager. The lecture, which took place at the Royal Institute of British Architects, lasted more than three hours. During the question period I asked the great man why, when all his designs were so revolutionary, did he wear a conventional suit. He replied that people took unconventional ideas more seriously if presented by someone in a suit.
Image:Reidachelsea.jpg Image:Reidasandy.jpg Image:Reidasavoye.jpg
I took to architecture like a duck to water, and much of my life during my three years at Cambridge revolved around the studios in the Department of Architecture in Scroope Terrace. Fitzbillies was conveniently placed about half way between Trinity College and Scroope Terrace, and I would call in for a sausage roll or a Chelsea bun depending on the time of day. We were hugely committed to the subject, and most of us worked very long hours, sometimes late into the night or all night. There were two explanations for this enthusiasm.
Firstly, it was immensely invigorating to be released from the passive learning of school into the active process of coming forward with one's own ideas. Secondly the teachers, particularly our year tutor Sandy Wilson and the head of school Leslie Martin, were truly inspirational. We hung on their every word, and we shared with them a worship of the leading masters of the modern movement: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Alvar Aalto. Leslie Martin kindly extended to students an open invitation for tea every Sunday at his splendid home/office, a converted mill in Little Shelford. It was stuffed with modern movement paintings and sculpture, given to him by his friends over the years. These included Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ben Nicholson. I also worked in his office as a junior draughtsman during two vacations, alongside his senior associates Patrick Hodgkinson and John Miller. One task was a meticulous ink drawing of the elevation of his residential building for Caius College in West Road, Cambridge.
Image:REIDASCULPT2.JPG Image:REIDATYPE.JPG Image:REIDAMOTEL4.JPG Image:REIDAMOTELBATH.JPG Image:REIDAROOMS2.JPG
Each term was a succession of design projects, carried out at drawing boards in the studio, and presented for open criticism at 'crits' undertaken by visiting teachers. In our first weeks we were asked to design a record sleeve, then a house within a redundant squash court, and a sculpture garden. The sculpture garden was to occupy the area of a tennis court; it was to hold six sculptures; it was to contain two levels, and a roofed area. My scheme, for which I made an intricate balsa wood model now lost, was severely geometrical. It received embarrassingly lavish praise in the 'crit' from the architectural theorist Colin Rowe.
Sadly, I don't think I ever did anything as good again. Looking back on it, there was a central paradox in the way we were taught. We were encouraged to reject old ways, and to think for ourselves. One of the reasons we all admired the heroes of the modern movement was that they had rejected the earlier orthodoxies and had come up with radically new design ideas. But, perversely, we were expected to adhere slavishly to the new orthodoxy, represented by Corbusier, Mies, Wright, and Aalto. If our buildings did not look somewhat like theirs, there would be trouble. One girl from Malaysia produced a design that included windows in curved Islamic style. She was quietly taken aside by the year tutor, who explained that this was not done. Her subsequent projects were rectangular.
My first signs of insubordination came when we were asked to do a measured drawing. Being enthusiastic about industrial design rather than classical architecture, I did a meticulous measured drawing of the plan and elevation of an Olivetti portable typewriter.
My real clash with the orthodoxy came when we were asked to design a motel for a roadside site between Cambridge and Trumpington. Reflecting the transient nature of road travel, and influenced by the work of Buckminster Fuller, I produced a design consisting of a string of spherical pre-fabricated plastic pods, which clipped together like popper beads. There were three types: an eating pod, a bath pod, and a bed pod. These could be combined in various combinations. Pods could be added or removed in response to seasonal or long term changes in demand. In the bath unit the bath and basin were all moulded into the pod, as in Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion bathroom. There were a couple of pods at the end for a caretaker, who could send guests breakfast through a pneumatic tube. It was described thus:
A motel is a service station for the body. Eat. Wash. Sleep. Sleep. Wash. Eat.
The motel consists of three different types of unit. The first is primarily for eating in, the second is primarily for washing in, and the third is given over entirely to the bed. Each unit is approximately 7'6" by 7'6" by 7'6". Large enough to stretch and reach and jump in; small enough to be easily prefabricated and transported. The motel does not try to disengage itself from the road; it clings to it. A car pulls into the motel as a car pulls into a lay by. It points always in the same direction. It is not forced into ungainly and unnatural manoevres.
I adopted an equally unorthodox approach to a project for new student rooms at Jesus College. In deference to conservationist constraints, and on the principle that most students only used their rooms to sleep in, I designed a single storey windowless building hidden behind an ancient wall. The drawings of the fitted furniture, in the style of an engineering blueprint, were remarkably detailed.
Unfortunately these schemes did not find favour with the visiting examiners, and I was severely marked down, resulting in a 3rd class grade for my second year (after a 1st in my first year). I produced more conventional work in my third year, and ended up with a 2(ii) grade overall. But whatever the ups and downs of my marks, I loved every minute of architecture at Cambridge.
Close friends in the same year included Richard MacCormac, Robin Webster (an accomplished cartoonist), Robin Spence, Sumet Jumsai and Dominic Michaelis. Image:Reidaruskin.jpg Image:Reidarobot.jpg Richard MacCormac went on to have a distinguished career. He established the firm of MacCormac, Jamieson and Prichard, won numerous RIBA Awards for his buildings, became a Fellow of the Royal Academy and President of the RIBA, and was knighted in 2001. Robin Webster and Robin Spence hit the headlines by winning, in their twenties, a huge and prestigious competition to design a new parliamentary building on Bridge Street, opposite Big Ben. Unfortunately, after much publicity and several years of work, the project was abandoned. Years later a parliamentary building did get built on the site, but it was designed by Sir Michael Hopkins. Both continued to practise, and Robin Webster later became head of the school of architecture at The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Sumet Jumsai was from Bangkok, and returned there to lecture and build up his practice. One of his most notable buildings is the Robot Building, Bangkok, for the Bank of Asia. It is 20 storey building in the shape of a robot, complete with two large round eyes. It was selected by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, as one of the 50 seminal buildings of the 20th century. Dominic Michaelis went on to qualify as an engineer as well as an architect. He and his architect son are currently in the news with proposals to build floating eco islands in warm climates around the world.
In the year ahead of me was Peter Carolin, who later worked with Sandy Wilson on the design of the new British Library at Kings Cross. He edited Architectural Design journal, and became head of the school of architecture at Cambridge. He is now, in retirement, a neighbour and friend here in Cambridge. Phil Steadman was in the year behind me. He turned to research rather than architecture, at Cambridge, the Open University, and University College London, where he is now a professor. I should also mention Jon Harris. A scholar at Winchester College in Phil Steadman's year, he read history of art at Cambridge, and went on to be a professional artist and art teacher. He has lived in Green Street, in the middle of Cambridge, for more than thirty years; he knows and loves the architecture of the city more than anyone I know. His beautifully annotated pen and ink drawings of places of interest are truly remarkable.
University friends not studying architecture included Simon Lister and Colin Perry (both of whom went on to do an MBA at INSEAD in Fontainebleau), Malcolm Cockburn and Roger Garside. Simon, who read engineering, spent most of his career working as a transport expert for the consultants Arthur D Little in Boston and London. Colin spent his career in industry, including as Managing Director of the Birmingham Mint. Malcolm worked as a civil engineer, then took over the running of his family farm in Dorset. Roger joined the Foreign Office, and wrote an authoritative book on 'China After Mao'.
Other cameo memories of my time at Cambridge include:
The world of cinema
The Arts Cinema in Market Passage, now converted to a bistro bar, ran a subscription cinema club every Sunday in term, with screenings at 2.30pm, 5.30pm, and 8.30pm. You would book for an entire term at one of these times, and enjoy an excellent series of classic films. They were generally in black and white, sometimes in French with sub-titles. They merge in memory into a flickering collage of Alec Guinness, Jaques Tati, Orson Welles, Gregory Peck, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Alfred Hitchcock, Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, and the Marx Brothers. Two scenes that are seared into my memory are one from 'The Wages of Fear' in which a lorry driver sinks into a quagmire so that eventually only his outstretched hand is seen; and a murder mystery in a spooky house in which a drowned corpse rises up terrifyingly from a bath.
I tried to get into film-making by joining the university film society. I reported on a Sunday afternoon to the senior undergraduate who ran the society in his rooms. I was most impressed to find him ensconced in bed with a beautiful young lady. This chimed with my fantasies about show business. Only slightly annoyed by the interruption, he handed me an editing machine and a cardboard box full of curly film clippings. He asked me to make something of the material.
Back in my own rooms I spooled through the clippings. They consisted of shots of a respectable looking middle-aged man repeatedly walking in and out of a suburban bungalow, and getting in and out of a car. There were no other characters. I decided to build my masterpiece around the theme of 'Setting off for a day at the office'. I carefully glued the strips of film together in logical order, so that the man first came out of the door, then walked down the path, then opened the gate, then closed the gate behind him, then got into his car, and then drove off. I took the finished work back to the film society supremo. He ran it trough a projector, gave it the thumbs down, and offered me no further work. I think he had been hoping for something more bizarre.
Braun salesman
Like the rest of the school of architecture, I was a fan of the Bauhaus, and an admirer of the clean geometrical products designed for Braun by Dieter Rams of the Ulm design school (the spiritual successor of the Bahaus). I bought a beautiful rectangular Braun cylinder fan heater, which I treated as a useful work of art. I was so taken with it that, in an entrepreneurial and evangelical spirit, I made an arrangement with a Cambridge electrical retailer to sell these heaters on commission to fellow undergraduates, like an Avon lady.
The open road
I bought a 50cc BSA motorbike in 1960, when I was nineteen. My first outing was on the A10, which runs long and straight through flat country towards Ely. It was unbelievably exhilirating; I was probably only doing about 35 mph, but it felt supersonic. My next purchase was an Isetta bubble car. It was the first car produced by BMW, was spherical, and had a single door on the front which had the steering wheel attached. Three people could squeeze onto a bench seat. I had seen it parked in a nearby street, and put a note under the windscreen wiper asking if it was for sale. It was, the vendor being Tim Eiloart. Tim had just founded the Cambridge Consultants consultancy, as an agency selling the time of University academics to industry. It grew into a substantial company with hundreds of staff and several spin-outs. Tim's other distinction is that he had, in 1958, taken part in an attempt to fly across the Atlantic in a hot air balloon. The following account of this adventure is from the Balloons Over Britain website:
The Atlantic Ocean was the greatest challenge in ballooning history for many years. A group of 4 British balloonists, Colin Mudie, his wife Rosemary, Bushy Eiloart and his son Tim, planned to take on the Atlantic crossing, using their experience as sailors. They decided to take an east to west route, leaving from Tenerife heading towards a central location on the east cost of the United States.
They had a basket specifically built for the journey. It was made from reinforced polystyrene and measured 15ft x 8ft. It had to be a strong, sturdy structure to make sure it would be able to withstand the impact if they fell to the sea at any point throughout the flight.
They named their vessel Small World. It took off on December 12, 1958 and travelled a mighty 1200 nautical miles, breaking all existing balloon duration records. Unfortunately, the 4 were caught in a ferocious storm and their attempt was brought to an early close. However, they completed their journey (another 1,450 miles) in the custom made gondola.
In 1961 I swapped my Isetta bubble car for a 1933 J2 MG sports car. The vendor pointed out that there was no speedometer, but said that you could tell when you reached 60 mph because the car would begin to shake to pieces. He also threw in a plastic macintosh, saying I would need this if it rained. I asked if the hood leaked. He said it did, but that the bigger problem was the large holes in the floor through which water would come up into the car. The plastic macintosh was to wrap your legs in. I sold the car in due course to my fellow undergraduate Henry Scrope. In 1962 I bought another J2 MG for £17 from a scrap yard in Royston, did some rudimentary work on it, and sold it on to a wealthy undergraduate for £110. I applied the profit to the purchase of my Rolex chronometer watch.
Romantic May Ball
The 1962 Trinity College May Ball was an enormous and enjoyable party, which went on all night. For me the special thing about it was that my guest was Sara Coleridge, whom I was two years later privileged to marry.
Outside term, my main university memories are of four foreign travels:
New York
My first visit to New York, in 1961, was an eye opener. I shall never forget the sheer throbbing, hissing, thunderous energy of Manhattan. I stayed in a cheap hotel near the Empire State Building, and saw the sights. I have been a lifelong fan of New York City ever since, my three favourite books about it being Meyer Berger's 'New York: A Great Reporter's Love Affair with a City', Jan Morris' 'Manhattan '45', and James Thurber's 'The Years with Ross'. I also devour the New Yorker magazine every week.
Touring with Shakespeare
In the summer vacation of 1960 I secured a very small part in a touring university production of 'As You Like It'. The undergraduate director was the energetic and versatile Michael Deakin, who went on into a career in film and television. His versatility was needed, because at each of the performances across France and Switzerland at least one of the actors would be missing - on account of a missed train, a broken down car, or an emotional crisis. Deakin would step in to replace the missing actor, male or female. In some cases he had to replace two or more actors who appearing in the same scene.
Another hazard of the tour was the risk to the lute. This priceless instrument had been lent by the Fitzwilliam Museum. Unfortunately the lutist was given to roaming the bars of the neighbourhood, with lute, after each performance. He would spend most of the next day trying to locate it.
Three of the other bit part players were, like myself, studying architecture. We did the journey in a Mini, and made architectural detours between performances. One of these was to Le Corbusier's famous chapel at Ronchamp.
French Romanesque architecture
My long suffering parents accompanied me on an architectural study trip to Romanesque cathedrals in 1962. My mother was a voracious sightseer, but I my father must have got very bored as we traipsed round one ancient building after another, in Angers, Poitiers, Perigueux, Beynac, Cahors, Moissac, Auch, Toulouse, Carcassonne, Arles, Avignon, Valence, Cluny and Beaune. We stayed in pensions, and had to fill up the car radiator frequently. The following extract is from a high-faluting essay on Romanesque architecture, written on my return:
French Romanesque architecture is indubitably centrifugal and diverse; indeed one may be forgiven for thinking that had its complexity not been shot through with the unifying influences of Burgundian monasticism and Spanish pilgrimage, we would do better to consider it as a group of separate styles.
To Jerusalem and back
Image:Reidalandrover.jpg Image:Reidacrac.jpg Image:Reidapetra.jpg
In May 1961, over a spaghetti bolognaise, Colin Perry told me that he had bought a motorbike with the idea of driving it to Istanbul during the summer vacation. He suggested I join him, which I was pleased to do. I bought my 50cc BSA motorbike, and booked a test. Unfortunately I failed it. You could not drive abroad with a provisional licence, and no re-test was available until months later. Luckily for me a member of another expedition (to refugee camps in Jordan by Land Rover) had failed his exams and could not go. So we merged the two ventures. I travelled in the Land Rover with Tony and two others, and Colin rode ahead on his motorbike. We had everything you could want in the Land Rover, including sunhats, refrigerator, mosquito nets, snake-proof tent, lettuce shaker, toilet paper, tinned food, a collapsable Calor gas stove, and an economy drum of orange processed cheese. Colin's motorbike gave up the ghost in Ankara, and from there to Jerusalem we squeezed five into the Land Rover.
Vivid memories of the trip include Venice, the bustle of Istanbul, the dome of the Hagia Sophia Mosque, the Crac des Chevalier crusader castle, Jerusalem, Petra, and the heat, the dust and the rutted roads. Colin went in front because he quite often came off his motorbike, and we would then rescue him. One of our party, Richard Warren, was a medical student, who brought his medical kit. His studies had not yet got to the stage of operating on humans, and he hoped to have the chance at least to inject Colin, and ideally to carry out a minor amputation. When Colin came off his motorbike, however badly he was hurt he would always find the strength to shout out 'Keep Richard away from me!'.
Image:REIDAJERUSALEMPC.JPG Image:REIDAJERUSALEMPC2.JPG
In a letter home I described a sighting of President Tito in Yugoslavia:
There were tremendous preparations, all the schoolchildren out with little paper flags, innumerable policemen marshalling the crowds. Big slogans across the road, and large flags from public buildings. It turned out that a political delegation from the Sudan was coming along with Tito. This was great excitement, as Tito is everywhere in Yugoslavia. His photograph in every restaurant and shop window, Tito whitewashed on cottage walls and cut into the stone on the hillsides. The procession eventually arrived, preceded by wailing police cars, army lorries, and ambulances. Sinister men on motor bikes dressed in black leather with white holsters shot by. Finally large black American cars began to appear, followed by an arrowhead of motor cyclists. Tito and the Sudanese Prime Minister sailed by in a shiny black Rolls Royce.
and our arrival in Jerusalem:
I must confess I was considerably disappointed with the first sight of Jerusalem, which for some reason I had expected to be perched on top of a sheer rocky eminence. In fact it seemed to hug the top of a gentle hill. However once inside the city itself one could hardly be disappointed. The little narrow winding streets, with steps every few yards, and bright busy little shops on either side. Awnings to keep out the sun over the narrow streets, and where the streets are wider, wires strung across the street at first floor level like clothes lines, with cloth screens hung on them which can be adjusted as the sun moves across the sky. At about midday the squatting peasants selling plums, grapes, prickly pears and all sorts of other produce get up and shift across to the other side of the street to get the shade.
Tony Fearnehough came from a Sheffield steel-making family. Local firms had contributed supplies for the expedition, including a large quantity of scissors. The idea was that we could give these out as gifts from the city of Sheffield, but the weight did rather slow us down.
On our return journey we spent two nights Budapest, still under Communist rule. In order to get a visa you had to buy coupons entitling you to sleep and eat in a grand but dilapidated hotel. We felt we must use up all our coupons. This involved eating a lot of large meals in the hotel restaurant. For each dish the menu had two prices - with or without a gypsy violinist. The only way we could get through the coupons was to order music with everything.
Space does not allow descriptions of the time we camped in a convent in Beirut, how we towed some Germans through a Turkish river, or how we had to roll the spare wheel into our hotel lobby in Istanbul on account of the thieves.
A curious footnote
A curious footnote to my time as an undergraduate at Cambridge occurred when, fifteen years later, I attended a ceremony to collect my MA. This simply required a prescribed passage of time after getting one's BA, and the payment of a small sum. On the way back from the Senate House to Trinity College I walked alongside the other mature graduand, both of us proudly clutching our scrolls. He explained he had come from Esher, and went on to say that it was a pleasant area except that the recent arrival of Hitler and his entourage had driven up house prices and had resulted in long queues in the shops. Arriving at Trinity, I took aside our host, the Senior Tutor, and mentioned this. "Oh!', said the senior tutor, "I wondered if you would notice. Fact is, he's on day release from a mental hospital. When we got his application we weren't quite sure what to do and consulted the Statutes. They say the graduand must of good character, but there is no requirement to be of sound mind."
Royal Navy
After Cambridge I decided that instead of continuing my architectural studies I would take a break and apply for a five year Short Service Commission as a helicopter pilot in the Royal Navy. Having been a weedy swot at school, I wanted to prove that I was capable of doing something manly and dangerous.
Dartmouth
Our first six months of officer training was at the Britannia Royal Naval College in the Devon fishing village of Dartmouth. Part of the induction in the first few days was to queue up in the gym to spend a few minutes with one of the chaplains who were stationed in side rooms. We were marshalled into separate queues for the Church of England, Roman Catholic, and Free Church chaplains. As I joined the Church of England queue, I noticed one of the cadets going up, in an embarrassed way, to the Chief Petty Officer in charge and explaining that he was agnostic. Quick as a flash the Chief Petty Officer replied 'Fall in with the Church of England'.
There was a great deal of fresh air and physical exercise. Sailing and rowing in the River Dart went on around the year. My Boatwork Log Book for 8th December 1962 records: 'More pulling practice for the regatta. I am now finding it easier to take a long steady pull. It rained heavily throughout which added to the usual pleasure in stopping. Wind Force 1. Tide ebbing.' Another entry reads 'We had several times to leap out waist deep in water, knee deep in mud, to push'.
We had to run between classes, where we were taught naval history, seamanship, and knots. We polished our boots to a high shine, made our beds meticulously, and folded and stacked our clothes with equal care. We did parade ground drill, sometimes in weather so cold that one's hand almost froze onto the rifle.
Those of us who were on our way to being pilots were given initial pilot training at the nearby Roborough airfield. We flew in Tiger Moth bi-planes with open cockpits, wearing leather helmets and goggles. After about ten hours of instruction we were sent out on our first solo flight. It was a nerve wracking but fun experience.
Yorkshire
After six months of the rigours of Dartmouth I moved in spring 1963 to my fixed wing flying training at Linton-on-0use, an RAF airfield near York. It was six months of sheer pleasure. There were interesting morning lessons covering aerodynamics, the mechanics of aircraft, and meteorology. Then in the long summer afternoons we would have an hour of flying and several hours of sitting in deep armchairs in the crewroom (or on the grass in the sunshine) reading and dozing.
We trained on Chipmunk monoplanes, which looked a bit like Spitfires. The training included not just taking off and landing, but also aerobatics and formation flying. The aerobatics included barrel rolls and looping the loop. It was strange, in formation flying, how you could lock onto another aircraft just a few feet away. We also did instrument flying, where the cockpit windows would be covered in yellow perspex, and the pupil wore blue goggles. This meant that the pupil couldn't see out at, and had to rely entirely on his instruments.
An alarming feature of the fixed wing training was something called Unusual Attitudes. You would fly up to a reasonable height of say 5,000 feet. The instructor (who sat in front of you, with dual controls) would take control and tell you to shut your eyes. He would then put the aircraft into an Unusual Attitude, that is to say into a forbidden and dangerous combination of speed, angle, and control settings. For example he might put the aircraft into a downward vertical spin, so that it was upside down, dropping like a stone, with the rudder and joystick controls in the wrong position. He would then calmly say: 'Open your eyes. You have control'. You had within seconds to work out what was going on, to recall the right corrective actions, and get the aircraft back into level flight.
The reports I received at the end of my training at Linton-on-Ouse were mixed. The Commanding Officer wrote:
He is at his best when breaking new ground, reaching very high standards easily and quickly, e.g. he soloed in almost record time and his knowledge of his aircraft was 100%. He is occasionally prone to criticise and he would be better advised to turn his talents to furthering and improving. He will not find dealing with sailors comes easily but it will do him a world of good. Should he remain in the Service he could be an outstanding officer with a very bright future. He would, however, need to embrace the Service completely, not just take it gently by the hand as at present.
But the Chief Ground Instructor was more critical:
Reid's previous education has given him a remarkably brilliant brain, and the industry to go with it; sadly, he knows this. He has acquired the University's habit of questioning beliefs, tenets and authority which is complicating his adjustment to naval discipline.
Cornwall
Image:REIDAWEDDING1.JPG Image:REIDAWEDDING1B.JPG Image:REIDALOTUS2.JPG Image:REIDAPILOT3.JPG
Then to RAF Culdrose in near Helston in Cornwall, where we did our helicopter training. We started in little Hiller helicopters: a clear bubble with a stick coming out of the back carrying the tail rotor. Their great advantage was that you could see all round, including downwards. Flying a helicopter is completely different from flying a fixed wing aircraft. The key skill is learning how to hover, ie hang stationary in the air. This requires demanding coordination of eyes, hands and feet, but you eventually get the hang of it, rather like riding a bicycle. We then moved on to Whirlwind and Wessex helicopters. By comparison with the Hiller they were great lumbering beasts, more like lorries of the air.
Image:REIDAKITE.JPG Image:REIDAPORTHLEVEN.JPG
There were two sub-specialisms for helicopter pilots: anti-submarine and commando. I was assigned to commando, which is the transport of men and machines, formation flying, and low flying. The low flying was designed to afford protection from ground attack, and was particularly exciting. You would fly at about 100 mph only six feet or so above the ground. If you came to a hedge you had to rise up to clear it then drop down again. You had to keep a careful lookout for telephone or power lines, which could be lethal. To help while away the hours in the crewroom we got into a craze of making very small box kites; surprisingly these could fly when they were as small as two inches on each side. I bought a Lotus Elite, my dream sports car. It was red, but I had it re-sprayed a severe grey. It went like a rocket. I also bought a speedboat which was used for water skiing on the Helford river.
In 1964, during my time at Culdrose, Sara and I were married in the Church of Ottery St.Mary in Devon, with my fellow pilot Mike Thompson as best man. No married quarters were available at RAF Culdrose, and rented accommodation was all booked up for summer lets. So we bought a tent and a Dunlopillo double mattress, and negotiated with a local farmer to pitch camp in a field close to the airfield. Each morning I would get into my naval uniform and bicycle off to work. In the evening we would cook supper over a camp stove. Come the autumn rented accommodation became available, and we took a cottage right on the shore in the fishing village of Porthleven. It was almost like being at sea, with salt water blowing through the windows on windy days. In good weather it was idyllic, with the beach below and green hills behind.
It was during this time that I volunteered for a one month course in Malay in London. My tutor, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, did his best to teach me Malay, but I have no aptitude for languages, and he had little success.
We also undertook parachute training. I greeted this prospect with mixed emotions. I was terrified of jumping out of an aeroplane, but I hoped that having done so I would become irresistibly attractive to women. Neither expectation was fulfilled. For the first session, instead of being taken up into the skies we were shepherded into a gym, and were taught how to strap on a parachute. A parachute is an ungainly thing, and when you are wearing it you have to hunch forward in an unheroic way. The Chief Petty Officer lined up his hunched pupils in a row and said: 'When I say fall over, fall over'. He then shouted 'Fall over!' and, feeling ridiculous, we fell over. End of first session. Next week we went through all that, more quickly. Then the Chief Petty Offer said: 'Each man get a chair. Stand on the chair. When I say fall off, fall off'. We did as he said, feeling even more ridiculous. End of parachute training.
Another part of our education was signals training. I had seen war films in which rugged pilots with deep baritone voices shouted out 'Bandits nine o'clock!', or 'Mayday! Mayday!'. I had been looking forward to doing the same, but it was not to be. The signals instructor explained it was compulsory when in the air to talk in a very high squeaky voice, the better to cut through the static. We had to practise this, with the instructor (who could achieve a remarkable falsetto) urging us to talk higher and squeakier.
Our daughter Anna was born on 15th January 1965, and started her life in our cottage in Porthleven. But after a few months my helicopter training was completed, and I was set off to sea on the aircraft carrier HMS Albion for an 18 month tour of duty in the Far East. Sara refused to be left behind, and joined me in Singapore before too long.
HMS Albion
Image:REIDAHOOK.JPG Image:REIDALANDING.JPG
My 18 months with HMS Albion was the most adventurous time of my life. We sailed out via Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Aden, Mombasa, Gan and the Seychelles Islands to Singapore. We visited Hong Kong, and I was posted for three months ashore in Borneo. Part of this was spent at a forward base called Nanga Gaat, 100 miles from shore and deep into impenetrable jungle. It was during the confrontation between Malaysia (which incorporated northern Borneo) and Indonesia (which incorporated southern Borneo). I never saw a shot fired in anger, but the flying was very hazardous, and many of my colleagues were killed in flying accidents. There were 30 pilots in our squadron, and during the two years I was in the squadron more than 20 died. Some died in flying accidents in the UK, before we joined HMS Albion. Some died following engine failure over the jungle; some on landing or taking off; some in mid-air collisions; and one, our youngest pilot Tim Wootton, in an accident in the aircraft carrier's hangar. He was buried at sea in a moving ceremony.
Image:REIDAALBION3.JPG Image:REIDAGIB.JPG
In addition to personal letters home, I wrote circular letters to friends and family. In one of these I described the passage from England through the Suez Canal to Aden:
So, down the Red Sea to Aden. This is a town of extreme contrasts. the most obvious is the irony of seeing shops (usually with fake-English names, such as Bonny Look Stores, Harbour Heart Shop, or Scotland Bazaar) bursting with the most modern and expensive electronic equipment; while only a few feet away mangy goats and cats are scrubbing about in garbage-ridden streets. It is an artificial town, living on the tax free spending of warships and cruise liners. There is one road which leads along behind the harbour. The shops there have a certain standard of cleanliness and restraint. The shopkeepers wait for you to come into the store. Behind this crust there is a seething layer of smaller shops, tattier and cheek by jowl, whose staff are more in the nature of travelling salesmen, roaming the streets to accost any European passer by and lure him in. Their stock is fluid, and the area seethes with underlings fetching and carrying radios, hair dryers and telephoto lenses to and fro between the shops. This hive of activity is only one street thick, and beyond that is shanty town.
I bought a Pentax single lens reflex camera, and while we were sailing through the Indian Ocean I made a fitted hardwood box for it in the ship's carpentry workshop. I used the Pentax to take many of the black and white photographs which follow. They have been scanned from prints which I made at sea in the ship's darkroom.
We were unexpectedly diverted for four days to Mombasa, on the coast of Kenya. This provided an opportunity to travel by rail to Nairobi, where some friends of my parents who ran a coffee plantation had me to stay. Their house had been built many years before in stone, for all the world like a Cotswold manor house. Every evening a roaring log fire was lit, and we had a most comfortable time.
The train journey each way was an overnight one, and I shared a sleeping compartment. I took advantage of the conversational opportunity, and wrote the following pen pictures of each companion in a circular letter to friends and family:
Karl Pollman. 50. Red crinkly hair, round build, freckles, ready smile. German. Ran away from home (in Nairobi) at eleven, never to return. Worked as a grease monkey in a garage, living with proprietor. Then on farms to age 21, when he admired a motorised caravan in a Nairobi street, struck up acquaintance with its eccentric millionaire owner, who had driven out from Switzerland to make a film. Director, producer, and hero of film: the eccentric millionaire. Entourage comprised himself, his wife, his previous wife, a cook, a servant, a Swedish couple, a tame panther and a wild parrot. Necessity for driver of second vehicle filled by Pollman, who doubled as cameraman and mechanic. Thousands of feet of film and many vicissitudes later Pollman is back in Nairobi, where he reverts to farm managing. War. As a German national interned and sent to South Africa. Internment camp boring? Not at all. Each internee has allowance of 30 shillings per month. No laundry. Pollman and cronies charge 8 shillings per month irrespective of quantity and spend two years manually washing clothes for their 800 customers. Returns to farming postwar, and build up a small clientele (rich Germans and Americans) as a safari guide.
Now, five years later, he is the head of a prosperous tourist business including filling stations. Next year he has 4,500 tourist booked for his photographic safaris. Speaks fluent Swahili. Kenyan citizen. He bursts with an irresistible joie de vivre, is a great admirer of Kenyatta, and rightly optimistic for the future.
And on the return journey:
Mr Halford Smith. 67. I shared a compartment with him on the night train back from Nairobi to Mombasa. No question of who takes the top bunk, for he has an enormous paunch and a weak chest. Even the effort of taking off his trousers requires a few minutes of sitting on the bunk wheezing and panting to recover.
He has not been able to adjust to the idea of the Africans ruling Kenya. In fact so totally unable to grasp the idea that his face has been frozen into an expression of continuous pained surprise. Macmillan was the real culprit. What did he want to do making trouble with his wind of change speech? The Africans are alright of course, nothing against them at all, as good as the next man. But to have Africans in Parliament, to have an African President - preposterous.
Mr Halford Smith is the ex-managing director of a British owned Nairobi brewery. His world has collapsed about him. But there is one thing to do. To leave Kenya. That is what, with his battered leather suitcase lettered 'Halford Smith' and his briefcase, he is doing. Not to England, for although he is English to the core, England is not quite English enough nowadays. Mr Halford Smith has decided to settle in South Africa.
An unusual feature of my visit to Mombasa was that I returned to HMS Albion the proud possessor of a secondhand autogyro. This is a minimal helicopter, of a type used by James Bond in one of his films, which resembles a go kart with a rotor on top. I spotted it in a hangar at Mombasa airport. I was told that it had been imported by a wealthy local two or three years ago. He had taken one flight in it, and had been so scared it had not left the ground since. I bought it, for about £100. As we flew our helicopters back to HMS Albion, we had with us various souvenirs such as carved gazelles and beadwork mats. I somewhat upstaged my colleagues by returning with the autogyro hanging from the lifting hook under my helicopter. The authorities kindly agreed that I could store it in the hangar for the onward journey to Singapore.
While we were crossing the Indian Ocean we did a lot of flying, including night flying, from the deck of the aircraft carrier. Two huge sections of the deck, about forty feet square, could sink down as lifts into the hangar below. Our helicopters, with their rotors folded, would be wheeled onto the lifts, and brought up to the deck to be returned below again when flying was complete. In one of my circular letters to friends and family I gave an account of the preparations for a night flight on the aircraft carrier:
Image:REIDANAPKINS.JPG Image:REIDAWESSEX.JPG
As an example of what the flying itself is like, let me take you through a typical evening's night flying. Wander into supper around seven o-clock, dressed in white shirt with gold epaulettes, black trousers and cummerbund. Take your napkin from the rack and sit down. A Chinese steward (one of 70 we carry) materialises with a menu. You ask for the mushroom soup, followed by pork cutlet with bean sprouts and duchess potatoes. You move onto Mousse Royale and Angels on Horseback, and round off the meal with as much fruit as you can eat.
Down to your cabin to change. Mine is on 5 deck, against the ship's side, so that one wall slopes at about 60 degrees. There is a rich orchestration of noise. The slowest and loudest rhythm is that of the waves banging like barn doors against the ship's side. Only slightly lighter and quicker is the throb of the propellor shaft. The engines themselves cause the whole ship to quiver under one's feet; a vibration which is picked up and amplified by the light fittings and cupboard doors. On top of this there is the high-pitched hum of the air-conditioning, intermittent squawks from the public address system and Muzak.
So put on your jungle green flying suit, which is like a boiler suit, except that it's covered with specialised zip-up pockets on the legs, sleeves, knees, shoulders, and has a note pad built into one knee and a quick release sheath knife (attached with a long nylon cord) on the side of the leg. A green towelling cravat and calf length black leather boots complete the ensemble.
For the sake of the pilots' night vision, the briefing room is lit only with red lights. It is fifteen feet by twenty, with rolling blackboards covering one wall, and tiered benches across the other. As the hand of the plastic wall clock jerks to 7.30, the assistant operations officer (Ops II) rises from his front row seat. 'The time in fifteen seconds will be nineteen thirty. The time NOW is nineteen thirty. Met please.' The meteorological officer rises and gesturing at his elaborate perspex wall board, which displays winds at different heights, sea temperatures, humidity, and cloud cover, he gives us a run down on the likely weather. Ops II stands up again: 'Your task this evening: two aircraft for external loads from spots one, four and seven. Two aircraft for circuits, homings and GCAs. Channel one for take-off, channel three for the homings, channel four for any work with the escort, Brighton. Listen out on 3456 k/cs upper sideband. Aircraft callsigns are side letters, our callsign Sideboard, Brighton's callsign Papa Six. All aircraft squawk one. Squadron briefing please.'
The squadron senior pilot, a needle-sharp character in his thirties, with crew-cut hair and very neat handwriting [Peter Deller], stands up. 'Right, quite straightforward tonight.; the external loads will be the 2CV Citroens. Put on your downward ident light when you're ready to pick up. Obey the marshaller. Remember to switch off your hook master switch as soon as you're over the deck. I.F. aircraft keep well to the north, try to get in four approaches, and break off at 300 feet on the let-down. All aircraft are fitted with Schermouly flares, so don't forget the no-volts check before take-off. Lights on the ship are as usual; red floods on the deck, white steaming lights on the island, red lights down the port side and across the stern. The glide path indicator is alongside four spot. Run through the start up signals, Metcalfe'. One of the pilots recites: 'Get in, on anti-collision light. Ready to start port engine; rotate red wander light. Disconnect ground supply; nav lights to steady dim. Ready to start starboard engine; rotate white wander light. Ready to engage; nav lights to steady bright. Ready to take off; flash nav lights. Hoist light to summon ground crew'.
Your flying suit is only the beginning of what you wear when you go flying, and now you have to put on the rest. First your bright yellow Mae West lifejacket. This inflates from a built-in carbon dioxide cylinder, has a battery operated radio beacon to home rescue aircraft onto you, a small talk-recieve radio, a whistle, a heliograph, a razor blade, a battery operated light, a set of distress flares, a flourescene dye pack, and shark repellent. Surprisingly it is hardly bulkier than a conventional man's waistcoat. The bulky thing is the dinghy which you strap onto your back. This is also yellow, the size of a pillow, and inflates automatically into a cosy one-man boat. Your hat is real astronaut-type; hard white plastic with lining of soft leather and blue silk, glycerine-filled earpads and a tinted plastic vizor which slides down over your face. With white chamois leather gloves and a throat microphone, you are ready to go.
All day the maintenance ratings have been working to prepare your aircraft [a Westland Wessex 5] for this one hour flight, and their work is recorded between the hard blue covers of the 700 book. It is a sacred rule that the pilot must initial the aircraft's 700 before take-off, so after a check of the fuel state, the limitations log, and the list of acceptable deferred defects, you do so.
It's a dark night, and having inspected the outside of the aircraft to make sure nothing's missing, you grope ten feet up its side into the cockpit, and strap yourself in. Now begins the pre-start ritual. This is a memorised check of the hundreds of instruments and switches, starting: 'Brakes, battery master, lights, intercom, computers, ASE switches up, up, up, up, central, central, and to pitch and guarded. External master on, anti-coll on. Radio channel to one and off, IFF off, squelch disabled ...' and ending, some minutes later ' ... main drive out and indicating out, starter select to port, speed select levers back, both servos on, ready to start'.
You are wearing your helmet, so you don't hear the deafening whine of the port jet engine starting, nor the scream of metal and beating of wings as you engage the main rotor. All you can hear is the crackle of the radio and intercom systems fed into your headset. The rotor is heavy, the aircraft is light, and as you spin up to a rotor tip speed of some 400mph, the whole fuselage sways on its wheels, the tail tries to kick, the pneumatic undercarriage sighs and settles back again. After another twenty pre-take-off checks you are ready to lift off. 'Flyco, this is Victor Juliet, request take-off'. There is a marshaller in front of the aircraft, a luminous wand in each hand. On an unheard signal from flying control, he beckons you off the ground. Stab in the auto-pilot button; the aircraft lurches in response as gyroscopes operate micro-switches which activate tiny pilot valves in the hydraulic control jacks, which can sense the role and pitch of the ship, and are trying to keep you in a constant attitude in space. A last-minute check of your control frictions and safety harness. The marshaller, a monklike figure in surcoat and hood leaning against the wind, is no more than a black blob against the red-floodlit deck. Ahead of you and to your right there is blackness. With your fingers and toes poised to anticipate the kick as the aircraft responds to the wind over the deck, you lift her off.
This great thing, five tons of thin magnesium alloy, a ton of aviation fuel, and producing two thousand shaft horsepower, grinds its way into the night sky like a monstrous bird of prey. As you have left the deck, you eyes must lock onto the softly illuminated instruments, for orientation can play tricks with you at night. Set on 2500 lbs of torque, one degree nose up, check your heading, and she climbs away.
Our routine was broken in the middle of the Indian Ocean when we picked up a distress signal from a Russian merchant ship with a seriously ill man on board. We diverted to rendezvous with the ship, and as I was taking a correspondence course in Russian, I was pressed into the boarding party as interpreter. My account of the adventure was published in the ship's newsletter:
The boarding party was a motley crew. Led by Surgeon Commander Hayes, it consisted of a Marine, a Naval LSBA, and a pilot. We assembled in the seaboat to start the long vigil as Albion closed the Russian tanker 'Poti'. Swaying insecurely over the ship's side we felt very much like astronauts awaiting the countdown in a Gemini capsule. After what seemed an eternity, the order came to lower the seaboat. To the accompaniment of a host of naval orders, and the derisory cheers of a few well-wishers, we hit the water.
In no time at all we were making passes at the Poti's gangway. It was small and the swell was big, but eventually we all scrambled on board. The sickroom was small and hot, and apparently occupied by about half the ship's company including four female passengers on hand-holding duty. Since we had come aboard with colloquial Russian translations of suitable phrases such as: 'If we fly him he will die of shock', 'If we move him he will die of shock', and 'He will die of shock', communication was no problem. None of the crew spoke any French, or more than the merest English. I tried my Russian, which they clearly took to be a strange foreign tongue.
Luckily the patient was not in such a bad way as we had feared and after some quick treatment it was decided we could return to Albion, leaving the 'Poti' to run to the Seychelles.
However, no cure is complete without a celebration, and in an atmosphere of great goodwill we were ushered into the Master's cabin for a farewell drink. Cream paint, with wooden panelling up to waist height, was set off by plum coloured and tasseled curtains over every porthole. The table was draped in dark red velvet, and even the television was modestly hidden under a small coverlet. The decorations consisted of a notice board with small posters of soaring graphs, and a two foot by three foot portrait of Lenin. The furniture was extremely solid and made out of peanut coloured wood.
The Master clapped his hands for the stewardess, who produced vodka, mineral water, dried fish, cheese, and bread. We stood up, clinked our glasses, shouted 'Ha' and downed the vodka. We clinked up, stood our glashes, shouted 'Ha' and downed the vodka. We clood up, stinked our glashes, should 'Vod' and downed the haka. After a few drunken choruses of the Volga boatmen's song we were extricated by Marine Bennett, boarded the seaboat and returned to a hero's welcome.
These were the excitements. But there were also long periods to while away at sea. We played cards and long games of the board game Risk. Having recently read John Le Carre's 'The spy who came in from the cold', in which it was always unclear whose side anyone was on, I devised a board game on the same principle. It was like Monopoly, except that each player (Europe, China, USA and Russia) had three pieces - a male spy, a female spy, and a master spy - which they moved around the board on the throw of a dice. The spies had colourful names; for example the European spies were Mad Count Hildersen, Charlie Higgs, and Helene 'Allo' Dufy. Instead of collecting properties you would collect secrets (warhead, guidance, propulsion, blueprint) and the winner was the person who had collected all the secrets of another country. Instead of Chance or Community Chest you might land on Torture or Death. The twist lay in the fact that the three spies in your pay were not necessarily those that appeared to be working for you. Each player knew who was in their pay, but not who was in the pay of the others. I was the only person who understood these arcane rules, and after I had won a few times it became difficult to persuade others to play.
A more useful invention was a curious spanner. I devised this when I was night duty officer. My duties involved walking all round the ship at hourly intervals to check all was well. At 1am I found in the hangar a team struggling to undo a very large and inaccessible nut that held a helicopter's engine in place. Two hours later they were still struggling. I sketched a design for a self-gripping spanner which I thought might work. An hour later they had welded one up, and it did the trick. After twelve months I got a surprise cheque for £25 from the Admiralty as a thank you.
To help pass the time I did some writing for my own amusement. The following piece was inspired by a Reuters news report of a fracas at an Indian restaurant:
'Robert Prigg was settling down to a meal of curried rice and chicken in an Indian restaurant here when a stranger came up and insisted on showing him how to mix it. Prigg watched with interest as his helper got to work, asked him politely if he had finished, then picked up the plate of food and pushed it into the stranger's face. The stranger, William Fleming, 28, was fined £5 yesterday for hitting Mr Prigg over the head with a chair' - Reuter report.
Although bereft of dateline, and woefully haphazard in detail, the story has the completeness of Greek tragedy. The first sentence sets the scene and introduces the characters, both of them faceless at this time. In the second, the action fairly gets under way, and in the third, with a neat twist of plot, the grisly episode is brought to sober conclusion.
Yet it is riddled with uncertainties. The tantalising insertion of the word 'here' in the first sentence cries out for a dateline, in view which lack we are forced to grope about for clues as to where it all took place. It could hardly have been in India, or it would not have been necessary to point out that the restaurant was Indian. Both names sound English, and the use of £5 suggests as much, but surely we would not have been expected to do a quick mental conversion from Dinars or Fils if it had taken place in Yugoslavia or South Arabia.
Then again, what are we to make of this man Prigg? Could it be that having been persecuted all his life with a name like Prigg his psyche was screwed up to a point that it only required a meddlesome curry expert to snap? Yet, of course, we cannot be certain that Fleming was a curry expert. At 28, he was hardly old enough to have that grasp of curry mixing which is born of years of dividing two chicken biryanis, one Ceylon curry and four portions of fried rice equally among three people.
Prigg is either very deep or very impulsive. His polite remonstrations as Fleming leaned over and started the demonstration would fit either case. But in what spirit did Prigg sit by and 'watch with interest as his helper got to work'? When he 'asked him politely if he had finished' it could mean two things. Either Prigg was proud and silent, containing his wrath as Fleming laid into the various dishes. In this case the question would have been icily restrained, loaded with all the bitterness of a mature man driven beyond endurance. Alternatively his reaction may have been no more than a sudden whim. After all we are told that he 'watched with interest as his helper got to work'. Perhaps Prigg was a youth of 17, who had never been into an Indian restaurant before, genuinely curious as to what all these disgusting looking brown liquid dishes were. In this case, the unexpected use to which he then put Fleming's masterpiece can be attributed to mere boyish high spirits; a zest for life and living which he no doubt expected Fleming to share. If so, he gravely underestimated his man.
In the third paragraph, Fleming, till then a sketchy character, springs instantly to life. If we admire Prigg for his bold action in shoving the curry in Fleming's face, how much more we must admire Fleming's resourcefulness in what must have been a difficult and indeed embarrassing situation. Whereas Prigg had all the time in the world to plot and scheme his attack, Fleming was taken totally unawares. He more than rose to the occasion. He did not, as you or I might have done, return disillusioned to his own table. No, blinded with curry and stung into revenge, he ups with the nearest bentwood chair, takes his aim, and bops Prigg over the head.
It is just at this point, where the encounter was promising to escalate frighteningly, that our reporter leaves us in suspense. Did Prigg, his blood up by this stage, return to the attack, perhaps pressing Fleming's own curry into his face? At what stage did one of the participants resort to that stock-in-trade of slapstick, namely sweeping the tablecloth, crockery, cutlery, curry and all off the table? What was the reaction of the other diners? Did they, as in the standard Western saloon fight, cower behind their tables? Or did they turn partisan, using what dishes they had not already eaten as weapons?
All we know is that the affair ended in the police court. It would be nice to think that after judgement had been passed they were persuaded to shake hands, and left the courtroom to patch things up over a quiet curry lunch.
Far East
Singapore
Image:REIDAANNAALEX.JPG Image:REIDASINGAPORE.JPG
On arrival in Singapore our squadron disembarked to be based for several weeks at an airfield on the island. Sara (together with Anna, only a few months old) had beaten me to it. Ours was not an 'accompanied posting' in which case travel and accommodation for families would have been provided. The Navy did (reluctantly) allow unaccompanied families to hitch rides out to the Far East in RAF transport planes, on something called 'indulgence flights'. This required Sara to hang around for days at RAF Lyneham, with little Anna, hoping that there might be a spare place on a flight to Singapore. She was eventually lucky, had got to Singapore, and had installed herself in a small rented flat. It was wonderful to see them both again.
We bought a Honda 50cc scooter, which we used for nipping around Singapore, and for expeditions over the causeway into Johore Bahru and points north. Sara had a small basketwork seat she could strap to her back for carrying Anna on the scooter. It would not have complied with any modern safety regulations, but all three of us were young and carefree. I did come off the scooter once, and still bear the scar on my left elbow, but that was our only accident.
Sara and I were on one of our scooter expeditions to Johore Bahru when we passed a lavish modern house, with iron gates and a guard. I explained to the guard that I had an interest in modern architecture, and asked if it might be possible to look more closely at the house. He went away to consult and came back to welcome us in. It turned out that the house belonged to the Sultan of Johore; he was in residence, was very Anglophile, and was happy that we be shown round. I wrote up at the time the following account of the visit:
The Sultan was supervising the rearrangement of some large potted plants in the garden of his latest palace. This is an ultra modern affair, all plate glass and concrete cantilevers, which has just been completed on a hilltop site overlooking the straits of Johore.
Shortly after we arrived some of the guards caught a snake, which was deemed to be rare and poisonous. The Sultan instructed the guards to catch it alive and put it into a polythene bag. They eventually completed this dangerous operation by wrapping their hands in old newspapers. What, under these circumstances, do you do with the snake? Of course you send for the Royal Snake Keeper, who arrived minutes later in the Royal Snake Keeper's Van. He reputedly could go for three weeks without food and could handle even the most deadly snakes without danger.
We were then shown round the new palace by the Royal driver. He, like all the other guards, had developed a splendidly undeferential attitude to his Highness, and his Highness' belongings. He sauntered into the building puffing at a cigarette, and showed us all round it with great pride, not forgetting the bedrooms, bathrooms, and all. On the way out he casually tossed his cigarette end into one of the flower beds, and took us back to the Sultan who kindly invited us to stay on for supper.
Image:Reidabukit.jpg Image:REIDASINGAPORE2.JPG
To fill in the time before supper, we were shown round the large pre-war palace built by the Sultan's father. Only about a mile away, and built on an even more dominating hilltop. It is built in the Hollywood Baronial style with vast steep green tile roofs, pillared entrance and baroque staircases leading from one enormous chamber into another. At the entrance to the drive of this palace are the Royal stables and garages. The Sultan maintains a polo ground and stable some four miles out of Johore Bahru, where sixty snow white horses are kept in immaculate stables. However, the Sultan likes to keep horses around, and in his palace stables there are eight beautiful white horses.
Nor are the Royal garages any disappointment. Behind heavy sliding wooden doors, and in immaculately polished array, lie the Sultan's stable of thirteen cars. Up front, a 1965 Cadillac brushed chrome with an equally unmarked 1964 Cadillac. Like some kindly uncle, a 1939 Cadillac, a real Al Capone car, brought up the rear. Alongside, a vast bulgy 1962 Daimler limousine with rear facing seats and a flagpole on the bonnet towers over a beautiful white convertible 1938 Mercedes, with snaking external exhaust and eight cylinders. As companion cars to this Mercedes, there are a 1938 open Lagonda, and a Jaguar of the same year, all immaculately maintained in running condition. A touch of the ordinary is provided by a large standard Mercedes Benz 1963 saloon, no doubt used for fetching the luggage from the station. But to round off the line in Mercedes is the Grand Mercedes 600 belonging to the Sultan's son, a great lorry of a limousine in which everything is automatic, and you can lie down on the floor in the back if you want to. If you feel that the tone so far is rather stately, consider the open scarlet E-type Jaguar lurking modestly at the back of the garage, and the matched pair of brand new P1800 Volvos. That makes twelve? Oh yes, I forgot the Rolls Royce.
We enter the main palace, as dusk was falling, through a monumental doorway that would be more appropriate to a court of justice, into a dark and spooky mausoleum of a room, stuffed to the rafters with strange furniture, curios, and ancestral signed photographs. The room rises to a vast height, and has a great winding stairway going up one side.
Here my account ends, but I remember more about that day. As we went up the stairs we were startled by three or four bats wheeling past us. We were shown everything, including the Royal bedrooms and dressing rooms. In the Sultan's dressing room there was a wardrobe-sized American fridge; our guide opened the door to show that it was completely full of oranges. On our way out we were taken past a well stocked private zoo, which occupied part of the grounds.
I remember that we then set off with the Sultan and five or ten companions to an expensive local restaurant. A table had been reserved, and we were ushered in with much bowing and scraping. Two things stick in my mind about the meal. Firstly, over coffee we were entertained by two exotic dancers. They turned out to be a young couple from Liverpool, who had made this their profession. They were both skimpily dressed and acrobatic. The husband's star turn was to make his stomach muscles oscillate in time to the music; this provoked sustained applause from the Sultan and his party. The other memorable incident was when an underling entered the restaurant, and approached the Sultan to deliver an urgent message. I heard him say 'The porcupines have arrived'. I wondered for a moment whether we were to be served roast porcupine; but no, he was reporting some new arrivals at the Sultan's private zoo.
After the meal we returned to the Sultan's palace, thanked him warmly for his impromptu hospitality, and drove home on our Honda scooter.
Image:Reidaangkor.jpg Image:Reidacambodia.jpg
Sara and I undertook an ambitious expedition by train to visit the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. This involved passing through Bangkok to the Thai/Cambodia border at Poipet. Because there was diplomatic tension between Thailand and Cambodia no public transport crossed the border at Poipet. You had to get out of the train, and walk across the bridge carrying your suitcase, to pick up another train in Cambodia. This worked smoothly on the way out, but on the way back things became more complicated. May account reads:
Since the single track railway from Sisophon to Poipet had been blown up the night before with a plastic mine killing the driver of a goods train, the only way to make the journey was by bus. We had not been waiting for more than an hour before a twelve seater contraption staggered into the dusty main square and expired. Concocted from an American truck cab and a fairground caravan by some vehicular Frankenstein, it nevertheless cut a certain dash what with its bouquet of flowers on the radiator cap and stained glass windows.
The bus company's business methods were as bizarre as its equipment, for we soon discovered that in order to provide a truly personal and economical service they had discarded fixed timetables, fixed seating plan, fixed route, or even fixed stops.
The bus could not leave until it had an economical load. This consisted of not only two compressed lines of passengers facing each other along the hard little benches which ran down each edge of the bus, but a third line squatting on a raised plank which itself scarcely fitted between our knees. The few gaps were neatly filled with babies and small animals. The crew comprised two drivers sitting on the same seat working in shifts, and four conductors who clung to the rear running board or sat on the roof kicking you in the back of the neck with their heels. Beyond this there was a floating population of casual passengers including irregular troops wearing peculiar hats and sidearms. Economy also demanded that the bus carry a full lorry load of sugar cane, wooden planks, coconuts, bicycles, earth, contraband and offal on the roof.
The route was the lowest common multiplier of anywhere that anybody wanted to go. We detoured for miles along a cart track through a Chinese cemetery to pick up three bags of rice. As for bus stops, these were not only where anyone wanted to get out, but also where anybody looked as though they might conceivably want to get in. At one point the owners of the load of planks climbed onto the roof of the bus, threw the planks one by one into a nearby river, then jumped in after them. Another stop was occasioned by a bridge so rickety that all the passengers had to get out and walk across to lighten the bus.
Towards dusk the driver incautiously let his revs drop going over a hump-backed bridge, and the engine stalled. The crew flung themselves under the opened bonnet and beat the engine with huge tools. It started up again, but a few miles further on gave up the ghost for the second time. This broke the spirit of the crew. Not even bothering to open the bonnet, they lay down in the road in the dark and went to sleep. After a while the passengers realised that something was amiss. Seeing that nothing would happen for some time they all got out and hobbled about slapping their calves to get the circulation back. In fact the bus had run out of petrol, and half an hour later a fast runner arrived from the nearest village with a can. When the passengers had been squeezed back into place, we shot away at an exhilarating pace which did not slacken until we reached Poipet. The thirty two mile journey had taken almost three hours.
Back in Singapore I had one very hair-raising flight in the autogyro. It came with a small instruction leaflet, which alarmingly advised wearing heavy boots in case you needed to cushion the landing with your legs. The leaflet explained that before attempting free flight it was wise to attempt towed flight behind a vehicle. Accordingly my fellow pilot Dave Baston drove along a Singapore airstrip while I bumped along behind in the autogyro at the end of a long rope. The rotor started turning, and then promptly dipped down and chopped off the plywood tailplane. We took the autogyro back to the ship, where the workshop made a new tailplane. A few days later we made a second attempt. I got airborne to about forty feet, but was completely terrified and made desperate hand signals to Dave Baston to slow down. This he did, and I landed without injury. I never flew the thing again, and we managed to sell it to a daredevil. To drum up interest in the sale Sara got herself photographed with it in the local newspaper.
Borneo
Image:REIDANANGA.JPG Image:REIDANANGA2.JPG
Borneo, which lies in the South China Sea to the south east of Singapore, is the third largest island in the world. It is about five hundred miles in each direction, with the land rising to a mountainous ridge, up to 13,000 feet high, along the centre of the island. It is completely covered with dense rain forest.
The northern part of Borneo (less the tiny enclave of Brunei) forms part of Malaysia. The larger southern part forms part of Indonesia. In 1965 there was a low level conflict (known as the Confrontation) between Indonesia, which claimed the whole of Borneo, and Malaysia. Malaysia, as an ally and former colony of Britain, was defended by British forces. Although normally helicopter support to inland operations would be provided by the RAF, a shortage of RAF helicopters and pilots led to HMS Albion's helicopter squadron being pressed into service in Borneo.
We were stationed at a forward base called Nanga Gaat, which was about 100 miles inland. The only way in and out was by helicopter or light aircraft, and most of our food and other supplies were dropped by parachute. This my account of arriving for the first time at Nanga Gaat:
Nanga Gaat is a 75 minute trip [from the coast] along a broad river which is a hundred yards wide for most of the way. Long stretches of increasingly precipitous jungle are only interrupted every 25 miles or so by small towns on the river: Kapawit, Song, Kapit. These consist mostly of a mission school, a hospital, a playing field, a few administrative buildings and a scatter of flimsy asbestos roofed houses clustering at the river bank. Between them are several longhouses on the sides of the river.
Arrival at Nanga Gaat, and as we get out of the cab, we are surrounded by a motley crew in a mixture of khaki and jungle greens. We are shown to the officers' sleeping quarters, which are constructed out of a frame of rough hewn logs, about as thick as your arm. These are covered, roof and walls, with coarse rush matting. The floor, which is suspended some four feet above the ground, is of split bamboo with big gaps between.
There is no lack of humanity, nor indeed animality. A company of the Royal Malay Regiment, a topographical survey team, 40 assorted naval personnel, Ibans, Chinese and Dyaks who work here as manual labour, cows, goats, cats, chickens, dogs, deer and insects compete for every available inch of horizontal space. The animals roam at will between the aircraft, under the dwellings, into the armaments store, or wherever fancy takes them. The Ibans are tiny and dark brown, as tough as cocks, with bandy legs, hair fringed in front, eighteen inches long at the back (sometimes plaited) and tattoos all over.
We were based for about two months in Nanga Gaat, flying for hours every day over the surrounding jungle. We would do the rounds of jungle clearings, close to the border, delivering stores or equipment to forward patrols, evacuating casualties, and as part of our 'hearts and minds' campaign taking sick local people for emergency treatment in hospital. Some of the clearings were hardly big enough to allow a helicopter to land. If, in trying to land, one of the helicopter rotor blades was to hit a tree you would almost suffer a fatal crash. This is because the rotor blades would become unbalanced, and their enormous rotary energy would spin the helicopter into the ground. On one occasion, trying to land in a very small clearing, one of my rotor blades did indeed hit a tree, but luckily it only clipped it with the soft aluminium tip of the rotor (which I have kept as a souvenir) and I did not crash. A few inches further and this life story would have ended there and then.
Hong Kong
Image:REIDAWASHING.JPG Image:REIDAABACUS.JPG
HMS Albion then moved on to Hong Kong, to which Sara made her way separately. En route to Hong Kong, we anchored off the Borneo shore to entertain the local Iban Chieftain. I was alarmed, as a very junior officer, to be invited to the formal dinner to sit between the Captain and the Chieftain as a Malay interpreter. This arose because I was the only person on the ship whose personnel record showed any language training in Malay. I brushed up on my Malay, extending my vocabulary from about ten words to thirty.
The captain of the Albion, Captain B.C.G.Place, VC, DSC, had won his VC as a young submariner in the Second World War for the successful attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in a midget submarine. He, I, and the other naval officers were smartly dressed in the naval equivalent of dinner jackets, with gold braid and black bow ties. The chieftain outshone us all; his ceremonial garb included a flowing leather cloak and hat covered in brilliant feathers. I inserted myself between the Captain and the chieftain, and soup was served. Captain Plaice turned to me, and said 'Reid, please explain to the Chieftain that HMS Albion is a Centaur class light fleet carrier of 22,000 tons, which was built on the Tyne by Swan and Hunter, and was launched in 1947. Her engines produce 80,000 horsepower, and she is capable of 27 knots. She has a complement of 900, carries 19 Wessex 5 helicopters powered by twin Bristol Siddeley Gnome gas turbine engines, and can accommodate up to 1,000 troops'. Summoning all my knowledge of Malay, I turned to the chieftain and said 'This is a big ship'. He did not understand. Whatever dialect of Malay he spoke, it was clearly far removed from that which I had been taught in Bloomsbury. I repeated the same sentence many times, with gestures. Captain Plaice was impressed by this sustained conversation. Eventually, the Chieftain's face lit up with a huge smile of comprehension. He embarked, presumably in colloquial Malay, on a stream of enthusiastic conversation, of which I could not understand a word. Captain Plaice turned to me and asked what the chieftain was saying. I had to improvise. 'He is saying, sir, that it is a privilege to have your great ship visiting his shores, that the food is delicious, that he is most impressed with the smart turn out of the men, and that he and all his people welcome you warmly. He is a great admirer of the Queen and Prince Philip, and asks that you send them his regards'. This process repeated itself several times, among much clinking of glasses. Captain Place and the Chieftain came away with the impression that they had had a long and useful conversation. I did not disillusion them.
On arrival in Hong Kong, Sara and Anna and I were welcomed by Sara's brother Syndercombe (Sinbad) Coleridge. He was a career officer in the Royal Navy, who had been posted there as Flag Lieutenant to the Commander in Chief. My account of Albion's arrival in Hong Kong:
Image:REIDAHONGKONG.JPG Image:REIDABULLET.JPG Image:REIDASONY.JPG
Dawn, January 5th 1966. HMS Albion is sliding into Hong Kong waters. Stand on the broad overhanging bows and look down at the mill-pond sweeping underneath you. There is no noise, no wash, not even any vibration. The sensation is simply of being borne inexorably forward into a scene whose grey serenity outdoes even the rock-steadiness of the ship.
All night the fishing boats have been luring their catch with massive kerosene lamps. We had approached them in the pitch darkness, their bright lights defining an otherwise invisible horizon ahead of us. Our arrival amongst them coincided with the inklings of dawn, and their lights paled in comparison. Now the fishing boats stretch in a dense constellation for miles around us, their brittle sails becoming clearly visible as one by one their lights, like candles on a Christmas cake, are carefully blown out.
Round the corner of the straits between Hong Kong and the mainland everything changes. The northern side of Hong Kong island is clothed in huge blocks of flats and offices built on precarious ledges dug out of the mountain. The whole city is a dancing facade of activity, its neon feet rising out of the busiest harbour in the world. One is assailed by noise, colour, smell, motion. The sun, which has been gathering strength behind the mountains, slams into view; another hot bright Hong Kong day has begun.
During our time in Hong Kong, Sara and Anna visited China (I, as a naval officer, was not allowed to go) and also made an expedition by sea to Australia to visit her cousins there. I did a trip to Tokyo, where I travelled on the bullet train, and was taken to a Sumo wrestling match by Andrew Maclean Watt. He had been head boy at Winchester, and was working in Tokyo for the J Walter Thompson advertising agency. I also visited a Sony factory, with rows of young ladies diligently seated at a production line.
In August 1966 HMS Albion completed its Far East tour of duty, and we sailed back to Portsmouth via the Seychelles, Mombasa, and Aden. Noel Coward was holidaying in the Seychelles, and came on board for our cocktail party. He described the Seychelles as 'ropy but unspoilt'.
Portland
On returning to England I was transferred for the last year of my naval service to search and rescue duties at Portland in Dorset. Sara, Anna, and I settled into modern terraced married quarters in Wyke Regis, between Portland and Weymouth. Our second daughter, Kate, was born in Dorchester hospital in April 1967.
The search and rescue work involved a practice flight every morning, and then much time reading in the crewroom awaiting an emergency call. We were equipped not with the modern twin-engined Wessex 5 helicopter we had flown on HMS Albion, but with the much older single-engined Whirlwind. I had on various occasions to lift people on and off ships, using a harness lowered down on a winched cable. Another task was to clear pleasure sailors away from areas of sea being used for gunnery practice. Because we had no way of communicating with them by radio, we had to hover close to the yacht, and the crewman in the back of the helicopter would hold up a blackboard on which he had written 'YOU ARE STANDING IN TO DANGER'.
It was during my time at Portland that I experienced the alarming experience of crash landing in the sea. The head of Portland naval base, Captain Turnbull, was leaving and a ceremonial flypast of nine helicopters had been arranged. We were to form up in a T formation, with five across and four forming the stem of the T, to fly over his house on Portland Bill. My helicopter was the last in the stem of the T. We approached Portland Bill over Weymouth Bay at about 1000 feet. Suddenly my Whirlwind's single engine stopped, and there was a deafening silence. There was no way of re-starting the engine without ground equipment, and in the case of an engine failure you had to land in the sea.
We constantly practised engine failure procedure, which was complicated and critical. First, you had to slam down the Collective Lever (which varies the collective pitch of the rotor blades) within seconds of the engine failure; otherwise the rotor blades would slow down and fold upwards, and the helicopter would drop like a stone. With the collective lever down, the helicopter would 'autorotate' down, rather like a sycamore leaf. In the minute or so available, you had to work out the direction of the wind, and turn the helicopter into the wind so as to reduce the relative ground speed. You also had to carry out numerous checks on the way down, dictating what you were doing over the radio so that the control tower could correct you made a mistake.
Finally, there was the critical business of pulling up the Collective Lever sharply at just the right moment - about ten feet above the water. This would provide a once-only slowing down of the rate of descent, enabling the helicopter to settle gently on the water. If you pulled up too soon the helicopter would pause, then crash violently into the sea. If you pulled up too late, you would crash violently into the sea. More by luck than good judgement I got the timing right. You then slammed on the rotor brake, and sat tight in the helicopter while it started to sink. This was because if you got out before the rotor had stopped turning you would be likely to be hit by it. When I was up to my waist in water the rotor stopped turning. I climbed out into the sea and inflated the dinghy I was carrying on my back. I climbed into it, and within seconds one of my colleagues was hovering above. He lowered a strap into which I climbed, and was winched up to safety. The helicopter sank to the bottom of Weymouth Bay.
University College London
Image:REIDAKATEANNA.JPG Image:REIDAFLOWERBED.JPG
I spent the five years 1967 to 1972 at University College London, the first two doing my MSc at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the second starting my PhD, and the last two as Director of the Communications Studies Group.
Home
In 1967 Sara and I bought our first home - a Victorian two storey terrace house at 41 Festing Road, in Putney. It cost £4,250. We fell in love with Festing Road, which ran down to the Thames. The embankment was lined with rowing clubhouses, and it was a scene of constant activity with rowing and sailing boats being put in and out of the water.
We did an unconventional refurbishment of the house. We opened out the first floor so that the living room at the front made a continuous space with the stairs and the rear part which became dining area and kitchen. The central room upstairs was my study, to which I fitted a thick sound-proof door. We had two proper bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground floor, and a back room which could be used as a spare room. There was a tiny garden. There was also a small park, Leaders Gardens, at the bottom of the road. It was there that Anna, and later Kate, learned to ride a bicycle.
We hired a builder, but I did much of the work, including installing the central heating. When first turned on it leaked everywhere, producing a gentle drizzle throughout the house. The builder put this right with a large spanner. Every time I brought some item of building material into the house he would ask how much I paid for it. He would then whistle through his teeth with astonishment at how I had been swindled. The only way to avoid this was to lie and give a figure of about half what I had paid. The house was quite small, and we tried to make maximum use of the space, on nautical principles. Our bed was three feet in the air, supported on four whitewood chests of drawers. And in the living room I constructed a built-in sofa along two walls of the room, with wooden structure, rubber webbing, and foam cushions covered in a buff corduroy.
It was while we were living at Festing Road that we bought for £1,000 a small cottage near Sherborne in Dorset from my friend Malcolm Cockburn. He had been at Cambridge with me, and the cottage ('Remedy Cottage') was on his family farm. It made a wonderful holiday retreat, and we went down there many weeks a year. The fields were full of sheep, there were woods to explore, and hills to toboggan down in winter. The only form of heating was a log fire.
Bartlett School of Architecture
I was offered places to continue my architectural studies at both the Architectural Association and the Bartlett School of Architecture, which is part of University College London. I opted for the latter, drawn by the range of subjects on offer.
After five years in the navy, it was a pleasure to be back in architecture school. I made new friends including Robin Nicholson, who became key figure in Ted Cullinan's practice. It was good to work with Robin twenty five years later when he was a Vice President at the RIBA.
The first year routine was similar to Cambridge, with most of our time spent in the studio working on design projects. Our two main projects were for schools in the new town of Milton Keynes, and a multi-storey car park in Walthamstow, north London. One reason for choosing Milton Keynes was that the head of the Bartlett, Richard Llewellyn-Davies, also ran a successful architectural and planning practice, which had produced the master plan for Milton Keynes. He and his wife were both made Labour life peers. I was impressed that he came and went in a chauffeur driven Mercedes.
Image:REIDASCHOOL1.JPG Image:REIDASCHOOLLAYOUT.JPG Image:REIDACARPARK1.JPG Image:REIDACARPARK2.JPG
For Milton Keynes, I proposed two types of school: 'base schools' serving a population of between 900 and 1800, and specialist 'activity centres' serving a population of 30,000. As the child grew up, it would spend a decreasing proportion of its time at its base school, and an increasing proportion at an activity centre. My proposal for the design of the base schools was unorthodox:
The proposed design for the base school consists of a large double height enclosure at first floor level, 47m square, within which four staircases lead down to four self-contained suites of rooms at ground floor level. The main space of the school is divided by a continually changing pattern of cardboard partitions of variable height, which can be stapled up and demounted by the teachers and pupils. Support, storage, and entry to the cardboard enclosures is provided by movable wooden storage units. The rooms on the ground floor are used for activities requiring sound insulation or privacy, such as cloakrooms. An upper level walkway runs through the building complex, and is reached by spiral staircases at selected points.
We were also asked to propose ways in which the base schools could be combined with shops and flats to produce neighbourhood centres. My proposal was described in the crit as inflexible. I was stung by this, as I believed it was capable of many variations. To demonstrate this, for the next crit I produced a bound folder entitled 'One million feasible layouts'. This consisted of a ten page A3 book. The first page showed one particular layout. But it, and the following nine pages, were each cut into six horizontal strips. The book could therefore be opened in a million different ways (10 to the power of 6). Careful attention to adjacencies ensured that however you opened the book, the layout made sense and the walkways connected up properly.
The other major project in the first year was a multi-storey car park in Walthamstow, near the Blackhorse Road underground station on the newly opened Victoria Line. It was to provide park and ride facilities for 1250 cars. The other students produced, as expected, a conventional five or six storey concrete building with access ramps. Determined to do something more imaginative, I proposed a huge ferris wheel:
This is designed as a continuously rotating drum 124 metres in overall diameter. Structurally, it is a rigid lattice steel rim in compression, cross-braced with tension cables. The cars are held in a series of gondolas suspended on the outer surface of the drum. the whole is recessed 8 metres into the ground, enabling mechanical insertion and extraction of the cars to occur mechanically at ground level.
The unique feature of this design is that apart from its use as a commuter car park during working hours on working days, it has a complementary use as a drive-in 'sky ride'. In the evenings and at weekends the speed of rotation is reduced from one revolution every 5 minutes to one revolution every 45 minutes. The customers remain in the cars and are silently lifted 350 feet above the ground to enjoy from the comfort of their own cars a spectacular view over the Lea Valley and central London.
I spent hours in my study at Festing Road making a balsa wood model of the car park, three feet in diameter, from hundreds of narrow balsa wood rods. It photographed well, but it became brittle and only the baseboard has survived, hung on my study wall.
In the second year of the Bartlett course, we concentrated on a written thesis. Having become interested the social and economic aspects of transport, I chose as my topic 'The Journey to Work in Central London'. The thesis was organised into four sections: historical, economic, human, and geographical. The following extract is from the introduction to the thesis:
In architecture, individuals who differ acutely over other matters have arrived at a common conviction that buildings should be approached not as finite objects created at a point in time, but rather as the receptacles for continuously changing and open-ended sets of activities.
In this situation of uncertainty the one thing of which we can be certain, and in fact the thing that lies at the root of the high rate of change behind the uncertainty, is the accelerating flow of messages, persons, and goods. That is not to say that each of these categories will necessarily increase; new technologies may enable substitutions to be made between, for example, personal travel and electronic communications.
At Cambridge I had worked hard but somewhat frivolously. At the Bartlett I worked hard and seriously. I was now a married man with two children to support. My diligence paid off, and I was awarded an MSc with distinction, and also the Sir Banister Fletcher Prize and Medal for the architecture student with the highest marks in the final exam. The medal is a about the size of a digestive biscuit, and is not designed to be worn; one friend suggested that although you could not wear it at formal occasions, you could perhaps take it along and pass it around from hand to hand.
My only wearable medal is the Borneo Medal awarded to all who served in the Borneo theatre during the Confrontation. I lost it, and years later in Cambridge was invited to a formal dinner whose invitation stated that 'Medals will be worn'. I decided to buy a replacement, which turned out to be surprisingly easy. It only needed a telephone call to Spink & Sons. But the gentleman from Spinks did throw at me one of the most baffling questions I have ever had to answer. When I explained that I needed the medal for evening wear, he replied 'Certainly sir. Do you wish it fixed or hanging free?'. Unable to envisage these options, I asked what he would advise. 'I would advise, sir, that it hang free'. And so it did.
PhD
In the course of writing my MSc thesis, I had become intrigued by the question of whether new developments in telecommunications, particularly the video telephone, would reduce the need for travel. For example, if people could work from their homes or from neighbourhood work centres, the need for commuting, and indeed the argument for great cities as working centres, might be reduced. The issue hinged on whether people would find the videotelephone a satisfactory substitute for face-to-face contact. I found that among those concerned with this question great controversy raged. The techno-enthusiasts said yes, the traditionalists said no. Because videotelephone systems were not yet in use, no side had any evidence on which to base their views.
I decided to tackle this question as the subject for a PhD. Specifically, I proposed to undertake controlled experiments, with pairs or groups of participants, to measure differences between communication by telephone, by videotelephone, and face-to-face. I found an academic home for the project at the Joint Unit for Planning research, a joint venture of the Bartlett and the London School of Economics which was headed by Prof. Peter Cowan.
Through a personal contact, I approached the Philips group to see if they would be prepared to fund me to undertake the research. They sent me over to their laboratories in Eindhoven, Holland, for interview. Philips did offer to fund the research, but only if I joined their research department at Eindhoven, and undertook the work there. Through another personal contact, Martin Elton, I was introduced to the British Government's Civil Service Department, which was evaluating proposals for a big move of Government jobs out of London to regional centres. The study had thrown up as a key uncertainty the question of whether the videotelephone could be used to substitute for face-to-face meetings between London and these regional centres. The CSD offered to fund my work and I accepted their offer.
Image:REIDACHERRY.JPG Image:REIDAARGYLE.JPG
During the first year of my PhD I read voraciously on the subject, making careful notes of several hundred relevant books and research papers. I found that study of human communication had been undertaken by two very separate groups of people: electrical engineers interested in signal processing, and social psychologists interested in how people behave. A leading figure in the first group was Prof. Colin Cherry, an electrical engineer at Imperial College London, who had written a famous book called 'On Human Communication'. A leading figure in the second group was Prof. Michael Argyle, a social psychologist at the University of Oxford, who had written an equally famous book called 'Social Interaction'. But their worlds hardly intersected. An indication of this was that each book had a long list of references, but I found that only one reference was common to the two books - 'Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort' by G.K.Zipf.
In addition to the reading, I undertook in my first year one controlled experiment, ably assisted by David Prichard, an architecture student at the Bartlett who later became a partner with Richard MacCormac in MacCormac Jamieson Prichard architects. The controlled experiment compared efficiency of communication between pairs of people communicating by telephone and face-to-face. It did this by giving the pairs a set communication task, and afterwards measuring by questionnaire how accurately the recipient had understood the communication. Social psychologists had studied for decades the non-verbal cues used by people in face-to-face conversation, including facial expression, gesture, and posture. They had assumed that these played an important functional role. It was therefore surprising that our experiment showed no statistically significant difference in performance between those communicating by telephone and those communicating face-to-face.
Part way through the first year of my PhD I approached Post Office Telecommunications to seek additional research funding. My approaches included a telephone call to James Merriman, the Board Member for Technology. I managed to get past his secretary and spoke to him. I discovered much later, after I had joined British Telecom, an internal memo which he wrote following our telephone conversation:
A Mr.Alec Reid telephoned to-day. Reid is aiming in his three-year project to seek to understand the relationship between telecommunication and human behaviour as telecommunications changes from voice only to voice+vision and data. I suggested that if he felt that he had a strong case for associating his work with us, I would certainly consider it. I took this view because it seemed to me even from a brief telephone conversation, that he was approaching this problem in a very business-like and understanding way.
In the light of his interest, I prepared an ambitious three year research proposal, in which I would lead a team of six researchers - three social psychologists to undertake the experiments, two electrical engineers to forecast technical developments, and a mathematician to model the comparative economics of telecommunications and face-to-face communication. We were all to be paid salaries over three years, and the total cost including the necessary equipment came to £75,000; equivalent to about £850,000 in 2007. I put the proposal to the Civil Service Department and British Telecom, and they agreed to fund it jointly.
Communications Studies Group
With this funding secured, Peter Cowan agreed that we should set up the Communications Studies Group, of which I would be Director, within his Joint Unit for Planning Research. I was lucky to recruit a highly talented young team: Brian Champness, John Short, Ederyn Williams and Martin Davies as social psychologists, Barry Stapley and Hugh Collins as the electrical engineers, Stephen Connell in charge of surveys of face-to-face meetings, and Roger Pye as the mathematician. The work involved surveys of the frequency and type of face-to-face meetings within the Civil Service and experiments with numerous different types of communication task. These included information transmission, negotiation, and lying. Surprisingly, as in my first experiment, we found that the visual channel added negligible measurable benefit. Roger Pye built models estimating the shift that would occur from face-to-face to telecommunication, using techniques of modal shift analysis that had been developed for transport forecasting. The work was written up in a book by John Short and Ederyn Williams called 'The Social Psychology of Telecommunications', published by John Wiley.
Image:Reidaholmdel.jpg Image:Reidaholmdel2.jpg
It was gratifying that our work caused interest in the USA. I was invited to spend a month working with Ed Klemmer, of the human factors department at Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey. He and his wife Ruth made me enormously welcome, having me to stay in their own home. It was equipped with central vacuum cleaning, an intercom to summon the children to meals, and an electric rubbish compressor under the sink. Bell Laboratories was breathtaking in its scale and style. We worked in a huge glass building, accommodating more than 5,000 researchers, which had been designed by Eero Saarinen. There was a lake in front, with tall fountains, and at dusk the great building glowed from within like a spaceship. The visit included a trip to Chicago, where the first field trials of the Bell System Picturephone (which had been launched to great acclaim at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York City) were taking place.
I was invited to speak at various telecommunications conferences in the USA, and through those contacts we were offered additional research funding by two US government departments: the Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. We were also given funding by the central laboratories of General Electric at Schenectady, New York. I was impressed that in their canteen the paper place mats were printed with graph paper, linear and logarithmic. The sponsorship from the USA enabled us to grow our team to twelve - exciting times for a lowly PhD student.
Image:REIDALOUD2.JPG Image:REIDARMT.JPG
The programme of experiments expanded under the leadership of Brian Champness, with Steve Connell continuing the survey work and Roger Pye further developing his economic models. Meanwhile Barry Stapley, Hugh Collins and I worked on the development of a novel audio conference system. We had concluded that a drawback of using a simple loudspeaking telephone for meetings was that it was difficult to tell who was speaking at the far end. Our Remote Meeting Table overcame this by constructing a pair of circular tables, one for each end of the link. At each table there were six places for local people, with microphones, and six places for remote people, with illuminating nameplate and loudspeaker. Ingenious circuitry designed and built by Barry Stapley detected who was speaking by comparing the strength of the signal in each of the microphones; a signal sent to the far end activated the appropriate loudspeaker, and lit up its nameplate. The Civil Service Department paid us to build a pair of Remote Meeting Tables to connect the London and Edinburgh offices of the Scottish Office. They worked fine. We took out patents, which we sold to the electronics company Plessey for £25,000, equivalent to about £380,000 in 2007. Sara and I invested our £8,000 share in the purchase of a house to let in Norwich Street, Cambridge.
For acoustic reasons, we had in both London and Edinburgh to build a room within a room, with absorbent ceiling panels and heavy curtains on all walls. This involved, in the case of the Scottish Office, in Whitehall, some sawing up of timber on the pavement. I was sweeping up the sawdust, dressed in my boiler suit, when I was hailed by a passer-by who had been at Cambridge with me, now a rising star in the City. He was surprised to see me working as a street sweeper, and I had to explain.
Our offices were in a neglected outpost of University College London in Tottenham Court Road. We had a lot of laughs, which got us into trouble, as one of the offices on our corridor was occupied by a clinical psychologist. One day, when we were laughing about too much, the psychologist popped out of his office, saying: 'Please stop laughing, I have a severely disturbed patient in here'. We tried to keep straight faces. There was an amiable old boy who acted as porter and boiler stoker. One of his tasks was to sort the mail coming into the building, and deliver it to the appropriate people. This was an impossible task, because the population of researchers was a shifting one, and most of the letters were addressed to people who were no longer there, or were off on months of fieldwork. The porter saw it as his task to find a home for every item of mail, and he would plead with you to accept mail not addressed to you. Some mail carried exotic foreign stamps, and was reputed to contain samples of dried excrement being collected by a researcher on zoological fieldwork in East Africa. Another researcher, leaving for months of fieldwork, entrusted to me a cardboard box full of his life's work which he asked me to guard with my life until his return. It consisted largely of long spools of paper produced by mechanical thermometers which he would attach to the outside of native huts. He said that by examining the temperature changes he could deduce the activities taking place inside the hut, including eating, sleeping, and lovemaking.
There was another cardboard box incident when I was clearing clutter from my own office. I found a cardboard box marked 'Henshaw', with some old papers in it. I was about to throw it away, but was stopped by someone who knew better. It turned out that Henshaw was a tenured member of staff at the Bartlett. He had succumbed to a clearing out of dead wood initiated by Richard Llewellyn Davies when he took command. Llewellyn Davies could not legally sack Henshaw, but agreed with him a legal fiction whereby Henshaw would nominally continue to work at the Bartlett (thus preserving his entitlement to salary and pension) but would not actually turn up. At first Henshaw was assigned an office as his notional base. Then, with pressure on space, this shrank to a desk. By the time I arrived Henshaw's presence had shrunk into the cardboard box. We looked after it carefully.
As the Communications Studies Group expanded we took over more rooms on the corridor, some of which were assigned to other departments but did not appear to be in use. These became a kind of no man's land in which we could squat. Periodically some other department would be sent round to see if they wanted to occupy these officially vacant rooms. We tried to discourage them, and I remember that on one occasion, being notified in advance of such a visit, we poured milk down the backs of the filing cabinets hoping to generate a deterrent smell.
Image:Reidaselectric.jpg Image:Reidagolfball.jpg
Because we were sponsored by large organisations, who sometimes visited us, I tried to present ourselves as a modern, well-organised unit, rather like Bell Laboratories on a tiny scale. It was an uphill struggle. Our own rooms were ferociously neat, and equipped with new furniture and IBM Selectric correcting electric typewriters. These had a second, sticky, ribbon which would actually lift the plastic ink off the page to correct an error. But the meeting room, which we did not control, had become a junk room, full of broken furniture. We had to use this room for a small seminar which I had organised on the future of telecommunications. We invited people from leading manufacturers, hoping they would give us money. My star guest was a senior research manager from the General Electric Company. I cannot remember his name, but let us call him Dr Schwartz. I had tried my best to tidy up the meeting room, pushing the debris back into a heap around the walls. We set up a table, and managed to find a dozen serviceable chairs.
The event was a disaster. I, my colleagues and other guests were gathered in the meeting room at the appointed time, but there was no sign of Schwartz. After about 20 minutes, I thought I should go out and look for him in case (as was likely) had been misdirected by the porter. I stepped out of the meeting room into the corridor, to hear a strangled cry and a crash as the door of the cleaner's cupboard opposite flew open, and Schwartz burst out like something in a horror movie. He was wrestling with a broom, and had a bucket stuck on one foot. He had indeed been misdirected, into the cupboard. I disentangled him from the cleaning kit, and apologised profusely. I reached out to shake hands, to find that his right hand was covered in black grease. He explained, in a shaking voice, that he had caught his hand in the heavily greased concertina gate with which our ancient lift was equipped. He recovered himself, and I took him into the meeting room, where he was introduced. To flatter Schwartz, and to help him recover from his unpleasant experiences, I invited him to start the discussion. I vividly remember the next few moments. Schwartz, who spoke with an impressively scientific German accent, led off by saying: 'With modern technology, everything is possible'. As he said 'everything is possible', the two right hand legs of his chair slowly collapsed, sliding out sideways. Schwartz kept talking as he rolled gracefully and inexorably onto the floor. I helped him up, threw the broken chair onto the heap of junk, and offered him another. He sat down very carefully. We did not get the money.
To be continued.
