People and Places: A Life

By Richard Hyde

This is a book taking you from Dover to Douala, Islington to Islamabad, via Brazzaville, Brighton and Bangkok – possibly ending in Antananarivo. It is a mosaic, mixing love, half-baked philosophy, history, diplomacy, landscapes and cityscapes with little discernment. You will meet famous, infamous and, best of all, completely ordinary, unknown people. It is judgemental, prejudiced and struggles against egotism – in short, a man’s life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Hyde
• Release date: Dec 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311804679

Richard Hyde

Richard Hyde is a happily remarried 77-year-old widower living in Thailand. He is a belatedly retired ex-diplomat, translator, amateur architect, internet art collector and keen traveller. His current ambition is to avoid attaining BOF (boring old fart) status.

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People and Places – A Life

Richard Hyde

Published by Richard Hyde at Smashwords

Copyright © 2016 Richard Hyde

ISBN: 9871311804679

This is a book taking you from Dover to Douala, Islington to Islamabad, via Brazzaville, Brighton, Bangkok and Antananarivo – ending in Chiang Mai. It is a mosaic, mixing love, half-baked philosophy, history, diplomacy, landscapes and cityscapes with little discernment. You will meet famous, infamous and, best of all, completely ordinary, unknown people. It is judgemental, prejudiced and struggles against egotism – in short, a man’s life.

Please note that certain passages marked with an ‘x’ have been censored on instructions of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Nearly all of these relate to the monarchy as in my ignorance I had not understood that serving or retired British civil servants are barred from mentioning anything said by any member of the royal family or anecdotes involving them.

Smashwords Edition, License notes

Thank you for downloading this e-book. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

CHAPTER 1 – Deal

CHAPTER 2 – Otford

CHAPTER 3 – Dover

CHAPTER 4 – Ashford

CHAPTER 5 – London 1

CHAPTER 6 – Paris

CHAPTER 7 – London 2

CHAPTER 8 – Vienna

CHAPTER 9 – Rangoon

CHAPTER 10 – Brussels

CHAPTER 11 – London 3

CHAPTER 12 – Libreville, Douala, Brazzaville

CHAPTER 13 – Antananarivo

CHAPTER 14 – Yaoundé

CHAPTER 15 – Brighton and London

CHAPTER 16 – Dakar

CHAPTER 17 – Karachi

CHAPTER 18 – Antananarivo 2

CHAPTER 19 – Despair

CHAPTER 20 – Australia and Chiang Mai – Renewal

CHAPTER 21 – Chiang Mai

CHAPTER 22 – Books

CHAPTER 23 – Let the Show Go On

SUPPLEMENT – Diplomats – Are they Normal?

FOREWORD

Enough of procrastination – so many people have encouraged me to write about my life that I owe them my gratitude. Thank you Hilary, thank you Dag and thank you Oliver Tidy for helping me to overcome my doubts.

What has made me hesitate? Firstly I suppose that the British are inevitably wary about talking about themselves – the Englishman with his usual bloody cold as Paddy Roberts so memorably put it. Then am I going to bore the pants off my readers - if there are any? And finally how to avoid my words becoming either an excuse for self-justification or an effort to settle old scores – I will try my best to minimise both.

The past is often described as a country and this exploration of its highways and byways has been both an education and an exorcism but I hope for any readers not a too much of a self-indulgent journey.

I cannot improve upon the words written in 1673 by Sir Robert L’Estrange which perfectly express the aim of this book

‘Some other Man, in my place, would perchance, make you twenty Apologies, for his want of skill, and Addreff in governing this Affair, but thefe are Formal, and Pedantique Fooleries: as if any Man that firft takes himself for a Coxcomb in his heart, would afterwards make himfelf one in print too. (. . . . .)

Books and Difhes; there was never One of Either of them, that pleas’d All Palates. And in Truth, it is a Thing as little to be Wifh’d for, as Expected; For, an Univerfal Applaufe is at leaft two thirds of a Scandal. So that though I deliver up thefe Papers to the Preff, I invite no Man to the Reading of them: and whofoever reads and Repents; it is his own fault. To Conclude, As I have made this Compofition Principally for my Self, fo it agrees exceedingly well with my Conftitution; and yet, if any Man has a Mind to take part with me, he has Free Leave and Welcome. But let him Carry this Confideration along with him, that He’s a very unmannerly Gueft, that preffes upon another Bodies Table, and then Quarrels with his Dinner.

CHAPTER 1

DEAL

There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Lisa – Anon

Where our young hero avoids German bombs, learns to read, becomes a successful greengrocer, attempts to extort money from a bell ringer and buys an egg

My first conscious memory is of the war – the sounds of explosions and being hurriedly taken down to the Anderson air raid shelter in the garden by my mother. For some reason I enjoyed chewing bacon rind and, although I don’t know how she could have got hold it during the rationed war years, I contentedly chewed and ignored the sounds of the bombs. Although I have no memory of it, when she was in Manchester during an air raid my mother grabbed me when a bomb exploded nearby, blowing out all the windows and sending a brick down the chimney covering her in soot. After this I was evacuated to Somerset with my grandmother, curious about the bright flames in the steam locomotive at Victoria station and being frightened by a group of singing soldiers on an armoured car.

Our Anderson shelter was in the garden of St Andrew’s rectory and I have many vivid memories of the enormous garden. At the end of this garden a high wall separated us from a sawmill. 60 years later I rediscovered the sounds of the screaming wood saws here near our house in Madagascar where there are a number of nearby sawmills. Another sound is common to both countries – that of the ambulant tradesmen, shouting out their wares in precisely the same tones – vegetables or knife grinders. For a short time when the family finances allowed we were lucky to have a gardener a couple of days a week. He was nearly toothless but one day one of his remaining teeth was hurting. He promptly came into the kitchen, asked my mother for some cotton, attaching one end to the offending tooth and the other to a door knob. He slammed the door and that was the end of his toothache. We also had a maid – Violet – who did not last very long as she carelessly smashed much of our crockery. In a fit of annoyance I told her that when I grew up I would not marry her; perhaps my threat was not very effective.

The rectory itself was a large and handsome late Georgian building on the High Street but completely bereft of creature comforts. With no central heating and high ceilings the winters, particularly that of 1947, were so severe that they put my mother and brother in hospital with pneumonia. My parents rented out a flat on the top floor and another on the ground floor let to my newly married aunt Primrose and her husband. My father took delight in repeatedly singing a slightly unkind psalm in plainchant ‘When I get up in the morning I must feed my baby’. St Andrew’s church was on the edge of town and served a mainly working class population. I was great friends with Mrs Ballard who rang the church bell before mass and at the moment of consecration; she also pumped the enormous bellows for the organ. Every Sunday she gave me sixpence – a considerable sum for me - however on my return from being away on three weeks holiday I informed her that she owed me one shilling and sixpence and I still cringe at this memory.

At the age of 6 six Deal was also the scene of my sole successful venture into commerce when I had discovered some turnips thrown out by the gardener. Setting out my total stock of four on a chair in front of the house, I waited for customers. The very ancient Mrs Hoskins, one of my father’s parishioners, stopped in front of my display; ‘How much are they’ she asked. Sixpence a pound I replied. ‘Where are your scales? She asked suspiciously. ‘Oh four make a pound’ I confidently replied. Mrs Hoskins obviously knew when she was onto a good thing as the vegetables clearly weighed at least two pounds but the transaction was completed to the satisfaction of both parties.

A great annual joy for me was the visit of Forrest’s Fair on the sea front. The giant octopus, the roundabout and the other rides fascinated me for hours and I was always curious about the Turkish Delight tent, forbidden to the under 18s, the paintings on the outside promising the spectacle of semi-naked houris to the goggling post-war youth of Deal. I found the Freaks tent with its bearded lady disappointing and the only memory I have of it is of a sad looking sheep with half of an extra leg.

Deal was odd in that the seafront was at a higher level than the High Street, running in parallel to it and during the neap tides seawater occasionally flowed down to the town centre. Between the High Street and the Sea front was Middle Street and the supreme social insult to us children was that we should never behave like ‘Middle Street kids’. I had somehow made friends with Annie who was of that ilk and my embarrassed mother attempted, without much success, to educate me in the town’s social niceties.

To a small boy Deal was delight - a seaside town with a pebble beach, a handsome Tudor castle, fishing boats and a life boat station. The Goodwin Sands with their crop of wrecked ships was couple of miles offshore resulting in the ships coming very close to the coast. The mournful sound of their foghorns is another aural souvenir of this period. The Royal Marines put on an annual and spectacular military tattoo in their barracks. The town’s hinterland was marshy with reedy waterways full of sticklebacks and even the occasional pike. The town also prided itself with a claim – much disputed - that Julius Cesar had made landfall there before going on to conquer the rest of the country. Its other claim to fame was as the home of the comedian, Norman Wisdom who loyally sometimes managed to squeeze a reference to Deal in his films to the great joy of cheering cinema audiences.

Food was often in short supply and my mother’s efforts to occasionally produce miniscule amounts of tough steak or tiny lamb chops merely highlighted our difficult finances. I even remember once spending the whole of my 3d pocket money on a single egg. However Deal was a fishing town and fish was cheap; my particular favourite was hake (locally known as rock salmon or dogfish). Scallops were also affordable and often on our table and, in my memory, far larger than the ones seen today. The shells were used to border flower beds but also, once equipped with a silver handle, as dippers for baptising babies.

There are a few darker memories too – as a five-year old boy hiding under my pillow to stop the sounds of my parents quarrelling; my father’s unending whining tones and my mother’s quiet responses. Money was very tight and this perhaps was why they argued. Although I was rarely spanked it was always something of a theatrical production. I would be called into the study, trousers down and the inevitable ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’. I had an intense dislike for my paternal grandfather. He always smelt strongly of the small Turf cigarettes he smoked and which killed him shortly afterwards. He had a lady friend, discreetly known as his housekeeper, who I was very fond of. Ada was dressmaker living in a flat above a newsagents in the High street and often looked after me on my return from school. She was generous in her supplies of tea and biscuits and the milk jug always had a lace cover weighted with glass beads to keep out the flies – another item we use daily here in Madagascar. I learned later that my grandfather had objected to my parent’s marriage on the grounds that my mother’s family was not good enough for him. This coming from a failed businessman and incompetent architect, although in fairness he was a talented watercolourist.

Both my parents were viscerally anti-American, my father often quoting the insult ‘Over paid, over-sexed and over here’. I sometimes wonder if this was not a result of a GI having made a pass at my mother. They saw the Americans as brash, vulgar and uncultured. This prejudice extended to their dislike of jazz but my aunt Prim was a real fan, enjoying all jazz, particularly the music of Johnny Dankworth and Chris Barber. It is only now, in her 90s that my mother is getting some enjoyment from this music. My mother was also a talented pianist and went on to learn the organ in the undercroft of Canterbury cathedral and is still playing well into her 90s.

However I had deep affection for my maternal grandfather. He had been a civil engineer, building railway bridges in Argentina but his main claim to fame – for which he was awarded the Military Cross – was as a spotter for the Royal Artillery during the First World War. This entailed him going up in a balloon above the German lines to signal their gun emplacements. His wartime experiences caused him to have several bouts of mental illness and, as my grandmother seemed incapable of running the family, it fell on my adolescent mother to take on this responsibility. Grandad Adams was gentle, patient and always courteous. He loved gardening and I still remember some of his hints in looking after our own garden here in Madagascar. I seem also to remember that apart from playing endless games of patience with small, greasy playing cards, he also chewed tobacco.

My first school was Lealands in Walmer run by two kindly ladies. My father often used to remind me of my performance at one Lealands sports day when, in the middle of a race, I stopped to admire a butterfly. I remain rather proud of this incident and only now realise that this was symptomatic of my grasshopper mind. Here I learned to read and, by the age of four, was devouring everything I could get my hands on. One particular book was Noel Cromarty’s Neither had I Rest, a detective novel for grownups which both frightened and fascinated me. Comics were not allowed by my father but I was bought the weekly Children’s Newspaper. This publication irritated me partly as I found it too childish but mainly because every other word was hyphenated to make it easier to read. I always preferred Film or Radio Fun and would occasionally get hold of the Beano which my mother and I read and enjoyed in secret. I found a dog eared copy of Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys and was thrilled by the ideas brought back from his time in South Africa of tracking wild animals. The book also taught me that ‘Scouts are as Pure as the Running Water’, a concept roundly denied sixty years later by a scoutmaster when, as consul, I was asked for advice on sending a scout troop to Madagascar. I was encouraged to read the Jennings at School series but found him an unbearable prig, preferring Richmal Crompton’s Just William books. Glancing at the latter I am surprised at the wealth of his vocabulary which is far wider than that of today’s children’s books. My father also encouraged me to read an Anglican church propaganda series called Ronnie and the Ten Commandments or Ronnie and the Sacraments. Ronnie proved to be an even more unbearable prig than Jennings.

Deal was blessed with three cinemas. There was the respectable but boring Odeon where I saw the wedding of Elizabeth and Philip – the scene of the two of them walking through the rain remains with me even now. There was the less respectable Royal where, as I had to be accompanied by an adult, I persuaded my mother to take me to see a film advertised on the hoardings with scantily clad ladies imprisoned in iron cages suspended from the roof of a cavern. Actually I think she thoroughly enjoyed it. The third was the Rex on the sea front and had a storm cone on its domed facade which was raised during bad weather. However its main attraction was that I knew the projectionist who let me into the projection room. I am certain that these cinemas started off my lifelong love affair with film.

Indoctrination on religious separatism began at the earliest age. Of course the one true faith was that of High church Anglicanism. In order of validity these were followed by an obscure breakaway catholic sect – the Old Catholics. Then came the Roman Catholics who were ok at a pinch and the Orthodox churches. The non-conformists – Methodist, Congregationalists etc - were beyond the pale, but the worst of all were the evangelicals of the Church of England. Unitarians were of course heretics and Quakers simply odd. The principal parish church in Deal was the evangelical St George’s where the mayor and his Council cronies worshipped and where the Scouts, the Girl Guides, Cubs and the Boys Brigade disported themselves on Remembrance Day. It is difficult today to imagine the amount of enmity between these various followers of Christ. There existed a degree of lip service towards ecumenism but this was only skin deep. Even so it did not prevent Dad from sending my brother Tony to the local Catholic convent kindergarten. However when the nuns decided to lock up the 6–year old Tony in a cupboard he was speedily removed. Later on my sister Hilary attended the Ursuline Convent in Dover where the nuns rarely missed the opportunity of accusing the non-Catholics of ignoring the true faith. And she has reminded me of more evidence of the religious intolerance of the time when my father refused to give away my aunt Joy because the wedding ceremony was to take place in a catholic church.

One of the few advantages of High Anglicanism was that there was no nonsense about being teetotal. At a church fete held in Deal Town Hall there was a Temperance Society stand. They fell upon the clever idea of handing out free painting books if the children signed the pledge at the back of the book. I did so and proudly showed the book to my father who was furious and told me that as this was bribery I must never feel bound by my promise to eschew strong drink. Dad used to talk with glee about a distant relative who, as an evangelical non-conformist, never touched alcohol. He then graduated to Anglicanism and allowed himself a beer on Sundays, finally taking the plunge to Catholicism when wine became the rule at his table.

Dad hated Deal and rarely stopped complaining about the town making him ‘liverish’. I never discovered exactly what this malady was and for my part I enjoyed the town. It was only after spending 13 years as rector of St Andrews that he discovered that Deal was perhaps not a bad as he thought and on his farewell celebrations kept on repeating that his parishioners ‘were so kind’.

CHAPTER 2

OTFORD

Rock around the clock- Bill Haley and the Comets

Where our young hero is unfazed by a paedophile, is frequently beaten by a cruel priest, learns a lot about sin, meets rock and roll, goes to Belgium and is told the facts of life on the back of a motorcycle

At the tender age of 8 I was sent off to boarding school. This was St Michael’s Preparatory school in Otford on the Kentish Weald and a very high church Anglo-Catholic establishment, paid for in part by a grant from the Sons of the Clergy charity (I have not managed to trace any Daughters of the Clergy so my less fortunate sister Hilary was stuck with the Deal Parochial school). My father was somewhat nervous about my qualifications as the pupils had to know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the 10 Commandments by heart; he tested me on them on the train to Otford. I found myself in the Junior School run by a fearsome and unkind lady, Miss Keach who enjoyed punishing her charges with the sharp edge of a ruler. Even so we carried the resulting blood blisters on the back of our fingers with some pride. Thankfully Miss Keach retired shortly after my arrival, to be replaced by a warm-hearted and maternal war widow, Mrs Wagg.

The first shock was the food which was revolting. The meat was very bad quality and full of fat and gristle which made me gag. My attempts to hide it in a corner of my mouth to spit out late were not always successful and the matron made me chew it until it disappeared – sometimes well after the other boys had left the table. My mother told me later that as a girl she had solved this problem by hiding any inedible food in her knickers. Another of the more revolting meals was meatloaf in the shape of a bowl with numerous unidentified ingredients. Those with wealthier parents had cereals for breakfast but the rest of us had to put up with porridge. This was cooked overnight so by the morning it had a thick, indigestible rind on the top which was mixed in rendering the porridge lumpy and even more off-putting. I once had to spend a week in the sickroom which had its own open fire and the porridge went onto the fire every morning. Once cured the matron remarked that she could not understand how I had seemingly enjoyed the porridge when I was ill but now I was reluctant to eat it. During the cabbage season this vegetable was always poorly washed and full of dead caterpillars; one boy who arranged 11 of these insects round his plate was told to stop playing with his food and