The Nomad Letters

By Martin Thiebaut

The remarkable story of a friendship spanning six decades between two individuals whose careers could hardly have followed more contrasting courses beyond the Land of Hope and Glory: that of Graham Haigh, the expedition-mounting adventurer, who went on to make the Middle East and South-East Asia his professional stamping grounds, and that of Martin Thiebaut whose francophone roots led him to Belgium then Luxembourg and to rub shoulders with a stimulating mix of nationalities.

But given that this dual epistolary autobiography was conceived as a tribute to the author’s lifelong friend, the focus is on Graham and his richly varied experiences.

Not least among these, in view of a more than passing interest in pop music and the lure of the open road, was Graham’s encounter back in the 1960s with Roy Orbison on the Sussex coast, where the singer had come to collect a bespoke Harley-Davidson. When, many years later, Graham exchanged handshakes with a Kuwaiti billionaire, the memory of that warm greeting with the man who sang ‘You Got It’ trumped pressing the flesh with a Forbes list magnate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jan 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803134475

Book preview

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Also by Martin Thiebaut under his Graham Fulbright pen name

fiction

The Man with a Charmed Life

The Khazar Codex

The Milan Briefcase

Snowcub

humour

Driving Mad

Copyright © 2023 Martin Thiebaut

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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To the Memory of Graham John Winslow Haigh

‘No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.’

Robert Southey

‘When you are in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, Damn, that was fun.’ Groucho Marx

For Hilary, Alexandra, Morwenna and Guy

Contents

List of Plates

Preface

Introduction

Go East, Young Man

Wedding Down Under

Nomad Expectations

The Parting of the Ways

Bahrain

Hong Kong

Gathering War Clouds

The Philippines

Choices and Temptations

Land of Sun and Fun

The Human Factor

River of No Return

Addenda

Afterword

List of Plates

Preface

This is largely the autobiographical record of an exceptional young man, who decided that the ordinary life was not for him. Graham Haigh was blazing trails through Europe, the Middle East and Asia, when most of his contemporaries, myself included, were anchored to the country of our birth. Graham was not seeking fame or fortune (at most, he earned £1 200 from a single ‘Nomad Expedition’) nor was he driven to explore territories far beyond his island home merely to tick off boxes for the number of foreign towns and cities visited, No, he wanted to experience at first hand what the world had to offer on the far side of the white cliffs of Dover.

The following epistolary narrative traces the path through life of two staunch friends (Graham and the author) whose aspirations led them to follow quite different trajectories. As recorder, I have kept my communications with Graham to the minimum necessary to grasp the essence of what the two of us – despite our different character traits, cultural interests and recreational pursuits – had in common such that the ties of friendship stood firm against the gulf of geography and time. And since I began keeping copies of my own letters to my friend only as from the 1980s, the written history of the best part of the first twenty years of this relationship showcases Graham’s life.

In chronicling my friend’s colourful and often entertaining travel experiences, first as an independent voyager, second as an employee of two major American corporations, Graham’s newsletters offer a rounded picture of the man. Hence, they also turn the spotlight on qualities some may find less than endearing. But to take exception to my friend’s right-wing stance, redneck vulgarity and unashamed male chauvinism would be to forget that we are dealing with someone who rejoiced in hyperbole. Therefore, the MeToo movement should not jump to the wrong conclusions: Graham Haigh’s relationships with his women were clearly consensual¹. On the other hand, some might question how Graham managed to reconcile his appreciativeness of female subservience with his choice of independently-minded girlfriends and wives.

That being said, I have not put this work together with a view to passing judgment. Let the correspondence and my friend’s actions speak for themselves. No doubt, some will accuse me of talking up Graham Haigh through the distorting lens of friendship. But who among us, especially in today’s world where the media have thrown their impartiality rulebooks out of the window and where the Internet and its social mouthpieces make it possible for everyone from here-today, gone-tomorrow celebrities to the lunatic fringe to propagate one absurd untruth after another and to drum home, day-in-day-out, their biased opinions with the convincing tenacity of Joseph Goebbels … who can claim to be so free of self-deception as to profess to be without human frailty? Did the Sermon on the Mount not teach the Christians among us to wake up to the flaws in our own personality before reproaching others for theirs? As the satirist Samuel Butler observed: ‘Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only’.

In exploiting feelings of jealousy and envy towards the successful, the press encourages us to judge others by reductionist yardsticks. In doing so, it attaches disproportional importance to character defects, while glossing over sterling qualities such as steadfastness, generosity and camaraderie.

There will be some who discern in this friendship the immaturity of two grown men unable to shake off their boyhood memories of Wild West frontier heroics – enacted through cap and water pistol gunfights – nor of overcast afternoons spent playing one game after another: Monopoly, Totopoly, Scrabble, Astron, Battleships and more. Well, to those who view reminders of these as a reversion to puerility, I would reply, what is a life lived without its measure of remembered playful nonsense?

But to return to the subject of the present work: like, accept or recoil from him, warts and all, there can be no denying the idiosyncratic, get-up-and-go vitality which propelled Graham Haigh through his life on this earth.

Martin Thiebaut

Luxembourg, July 2022

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1 How he would have chuckled at the divide separating the last three syllables of this adjective from the word’s Latin etymology.

Introduction

Despite the fact that I had always intended to honour the memory of my friend by letting our joint autobiographical correspondence reflect much of his eventful life story, for sixteen years I left this task on the back burner while concentrating on Graham Fulbright’s fiction output. With the sands of my own life fast running out, I thought it time to correct this waywardness.

Consequently, I have at last transcribed the best part of Graham’s correspondence addressed to me over the years. These record my friend’s travels in the Middle and Far East as well as the changing fortunes in his private and professional life, first in England and later overseas. While evidencing undoubted literary flair, there is an ironic streak to these travel narratives, spiced with a rich if not wry sense of humour. Taking the edge off all bar the worst adversities, this lends a refreshing touch to reports highlighting my friend’s wanderlust attachment to places as diverse as Istanbul, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Australia

Of course, Graham never set out to be a travel writer on a par with Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin or Colin Thubron. And despite the fact that his early letters were often composed in cramped conditions – some on the front line of revolution or war – , Graham unerringly put fountain pen to paper with a fluency and calligraphic perfection (prior to the advent of personal computers and the worldwide web), which precluded the slightest alteration or scoring out.

The act of looking back over our close relationship and recounting Graham’s tale in his own words has inevitably opened up a wellspring of memories, many heartening but others immensely sad. Indeed, inasmuch as this narration mirrors two lives it is shaped not only by bright, life-affirming experiences but also by tragic, life-changing events.

*

Graham was far more than best friend to me. He was the brother I never had. We first met and grew up alongside each other in Saint Brendan’s primary school in Stanmore, Middlesex, on the northwestern outskirts of London. Whereas Graham had a younger sister (Hilary) and brother (Adrian)² – and grand-parents, I was without siblings or forebears, my only relative a kindly unmarried aunt on my mother’s side. Thus, what good fortune to find a kindred spirit at such an early age. Graham and I grew up in the 1940s, when The Goon Show had us laughing most evenings on the radio and Matt Dillon entertained us later in Gunsmoke on the goggle box. Thus, a shared sense of humour and an appetite for acting out, long before the advent of role-playing games, the exploits of the Wild West’s legendary heroes and villains cemented the bond that formed spontaneously between us.

Some twenty years after leaving secondary school, I was surprised to note, in flicking through the pages of my Old Boys’ magazine, the small number of my contemporaries who had broken free of the neighbourhood in which they had been brought up. For the most part, only the handful who had gone on to university had flown the coop. Yet, despite the fact that neither Graham nor I was groomed for further education, it was not long before both of us felt the need to break loose from the hallowed confines of Shakespeare’s sceptred isle. But whereas my modest move to Europe was scarcely up there alongside the expeditions of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Graham’s trailblazing did justice to the pioneering panache of Indiana Jones.

After primary school, Graham and I parted scholastic company, he to attend Harrow County School for Boys, I to take up a place in Harrow-on-the-Hill’s direct grant John Lyon School whose headmaster, the kindly polymath O.A. Le Beau, had, at the age of sixteen, earned the distinction of being elected to a Fellowship of the British Astronomical Association after discovering a new star. It was Le Beau who fostered in me a passion for short story writing already stimulated by my mother.

Apart from this most congenial of headmasters – soon to retire to a cottage down the road, where he was wont to welcome pupils for afternoon tea – and his successor Boyd Campbell, there were only a few teachers who left a lasting impression on me. One was George Weedon, our P.E. instructor and former British Mens’ Gymnastics Floor Champion from 1946 to 1948. Though I was inept at vaulting, rope climbing, medicine ball exchanges and cross-country running, it was impossible not to be infected by George’s good-natured encouragement. The other inspirational teachers were my ‘O’ Level History master, Gordon Blyth, my two ‘A’ Level English tutors, the gifted Chaucerian Donald Cowtan and the sharp-witted literary analyst Geoffrey Thornton, my enthusiastic ‘A’ Level French master (and keen footballer) Lionel Boardman and, last but not least, my Cantabrigian ‘A’ Level German tutor, Philip Davies (second master).

I never heard my father complain about school fees, but I regret to say that, notwithstanding its many strong points, back in the late 1950s John Lyon was not at the forefront of career counselling. Bill Cummings, my maths master entrusted with this task as part of his portfolio also happened to be my likeable House Master and our dynamic Sports Day supervisor. Unfortunately, his ‘your country needs you advice’ pamphlets were limited to a slender bunch of fact sheets advertising the armed forces, civil service, banking sector and, as far as I was concerned, similarly unappealing career paths. The material farmed out by him was intended for those either unaware of or considered unfit for the bright prospects offered by a university education. In retrospect, I feel that unless they deemed you Oxbridge material, my senior school teachers were content to leave you in a vacuum and would never have dreamt of pointing a finger towards third-rate redbrick destiny, the lowly depths of teacher training college or the rarefied sphere of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Had it not been for my poor showing in mathematics, my part-time career counsellor would have won my father’s approval by recommending I try my hand at accounting, auditing or the actuarial profession³.

When push came to shove, I was led to believe that signing on with the Bank of England would pave the way to golden translating prospects for someone with my penchant for languages. In other words, much like the apocryphal tyro newspaper employee obliged to start from the bottom up by sweeping the office floor, serving tea and running errands, before ascending to those giddy heights where I could hope to breathe in the heady knowhow of Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, I had first to process the sale and exchange of paper with none of the glitz of cigarette card sets featuring Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. Not one for the long haul and rapidly tiring of the intricacies of stocks and shares transfers recorded through the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’s kalamazoos, it was not long before I decided to pursue a career on the more level ground of teaching.

My father was a self-made man with more than a trace of the dashing good looks of Clark Gable, and neither he nor my mother, a real beauty comparable to Gene Tierney, had enjoyed a university education. The choice between further education and the job market was not helped by the fact that my poor mother was struck down by ovarian cancer towards the end of my time at John Lyon – a particularly cruel blow after caring for her own mother felled also by cancer.

As to Graham, despite my friend’s having a good word to say about only one of his teachers, perhaps he enjoyed more than a smattering of rudimentary English tuition at Gayton Grammar, as he dubbed the school up the hill from mine, because a local newspaper accepted one of his short stories for publication. Unfortunately, I heard about this only much later and so never got the chance to read the article. And though Graham tended to be dismissive of his scholastic attainments, I suspect there was an element of nay-saying bravado to this, because my friend was nothing if not quick-witted.

I don’t believe Graham’s school ran to a cadet force, whereas John Lyon did. Mind you, as soon as I got the opportunity I transferred to the air force cadets run by a highly motivated Gordon Blyth. Whereas there was scant enjoyment to be had from square-bashing, how not to be fascinated by the magic of aviation? Still, it was ironic that, whereas I had no intention of considering a career in the air force, Graham, his mind set on becoming a fighter pilot, had the misfortune to be turned down by the RAF after scoring famously for all his entry application assessments except one, the colour blindness test. It appeared he had drawn the short straw affecting from six to eight per cent of all males. All the same, I never heard Graham complain about getting confused between red and green traffic lights. Perhaps he simply took in the positional difference between illuminated and unilluminated. Nor did he joke about defending being pulled over for burning rubber on red by saying, ’Sorry officer, Timothy Daltonism’.

For someone as fired by ambition as was Graham, his failure to be accepted by the RAF proved a massive disappointment. Anybody crass enough to suggest ‘Pick yourself up, dust yourself down and remember the sky’s the limit’ would have been inviting a kick in the teeth.

I know full well what Graham would have thought of Field Marshal Earl Alexander’s pep talk on the tail end of inspecting our Combined Cadet Force in the late summer of 1957.

Instead of taking warfare as his preferred trope, the FM decided to embrace a different battlefield, the football pitch, telling us the ball was at our feet and we had to kick it in the right direction. Well, not even the dunces among us would have been dim enough to hoof the ball straight to the opposition or into the back of our own net. So, hanging on his every word, I wondered to which key player he would advise us to direct the ball. The answer came in the form of a move-the-goal-posts metaphor: we had to have a spark of the adventurous in our make-up (no. he didn’t suggest arsenal), ‘something of the pioneer spirit which inspired our ancestors to seek out the world and to build an Empire’.

If only Earl Alexander had stopped at ‘seek out the world’, he would have earned my and Graham’s unalloyed praise. But it so happened that our history lessons had not skipped over colonial resource plundering or subjugation of so-called uncivilised native populations – none of which had endeared us to the concept of empire-building⁴.

However, a few minutes later, the FM vindicated himself by saying how alarmed he was to note ‘the growing desire for the unadventurous life. The desire for nothing more than security and an easy existence’.

I recall Hemingway writing something to the effect that it was no good being afraid to step outdoors each morning because of having to look left, right, then left again before crossing the road in this most unpredictable of worlds. If you took the soft option of staying indoors, you could never be sure that your house would not catch fire nor the roof fall in on you. I thought this a pretty pathetic paradigm, coming from someone of Ernest’s stature: surely the macho bullfight fan could have come up with something a tad more striking by way of illustrating the pitfalls confronting those with no stomach for combating fascism or grappling with giant marlins.

Although Graham has pride of place in this context, it would be remiss to omit mention of my own nascent ambition to become a crime writer. At the age of ten, I was feasting off the exploits of one of my boyhood detective heroes recounted in The Sexton Blake Library. Yes, I wanted to travel the world but rather with a view to emulating Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ than to exploring fresh horizons. As well as falling under the spell of Poe from an early age, I was soon devouring Edgar Wallace’s ‘The Crimson Circle’, Sapper’s ‘The Final Count’ and Agatha Christie’s ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. It was not until I was twelve years old that I savoured my first taste of Sherlock Holmes (‘The Sign of the Four’). But after learning that Conan Doyle’s great criminologist owed his brilliance to smoking opium, and surmising that the man in the deerstalker shared this trait with his creator, I decided I was not cut out for the role of Britain’s next master crime writer

At all events, Graham, who had neither heard the Field Marshal’s pep talk nor read the Pullitzer Prize winner’s words, heeded the underlying precept. Not for him a life spent sitting behind an office desk twiddling his thumbs between shifting paperwork from the in to the too hard to the out tray. When, as in Graham Haigh’s case, you had your heart set on a specific career – and I am sure my friend had all the qualities needed to make an excellent RAF pilot – second best was unacceptable. Graham had caught the flying bug from an early age, channelling his enthusiasm for aviation into aeromodelling. Indeed, he crafted an impressive selection of mono and biplanes, before graduating to control-line stunt and more expensive radio-controlled models.

Rejected by the RAF’s flying corps and with no interest in signing on for a career in ground-based maintenance or logistics, Graham was at a loss as to where to turn next. Second best would have meant following his father’s advice and pursuing a career in accountancy, the same recommendation as that made to me by my father. In all fairness, I should add that Graham’s father was a benevolent soul, who wanted only the best for his son. Neil Haigh worked in the city, and when the family moved in 1958 from their base in Stanmore to Worthing on the Sussex coast, bore stoically the four hours’ daily commute to and from London in the knowledge that he had golf to look forward to at weekends on first-class links.⁵ But at Graham’s age, the thought of sweating away for years to pass exams qualifying him to balance somebody else’s books made about as much sense as expecting an aspiring mountaineer to sit in a roadside cabin all day conducting traffic censuses.

After heated refusal to heed well-intentioned patriarchal advice, Graham finally made it clear that it was not the distant Heron Tower that claimed his attention but fresh woods and pastures new beyond his back yard on the far side of that arm of the Atlantic between the Strait of Dover and the Pas de Calais known by our fellow island huggers as the English Channel and by the French as La Manche, because similar in shape to a sleeve.

This refusal to compromise sprang from Graham’s obdurate nature.

In short, the young boy, who ten years earlier used to race his homemade Juan Manuel Fangio soapbox against my Stirling Moss rattletrap, made, unlike his contraption, with paternal helping hands, could not sit still for long. This probably explained how later Graham became an unconditional fan of Harley-Davidsons, though I don’t believe he ever advertised this with the overused sticker, ‘I only ride my Harley on days ending with a y’.

It followed that, with his flying ambitions shattered, Graham was determined to cast off the shackles tying him down to any one place in order to get out there and see what the wider world had to offer – this before the days of ‘Lonely Planet’ ⁶ and ‘Rough Guides’ ⁷. For it was not just the lure of the open road that motivated Graham to break free of the conventional but the itch to experience life more fully. Escapism? Perhaps, but outweighed by the thirst for adventure.

*

According to Steven Pinker⁸, the twentieth century was far from the bloodiest in the world’s history compared to the Middle Ages. This might be hard to believe, given two world wars, the IndoChina, Arab-Israeli, Korean, Vietnamese, Bosnian and Kosovan wars as well as Stalin’s Great Purge and Pol Pot’s killing fields. However, when Graham decided to cut loose with his inaugural ‘Nomad Expeditions’, the Middle East, in particular, was certainly nowhere nearly as war-torn as was to become the case with the subsequent Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq and the bloodbath in Syria. And though terrorism is not a new phenomenon, it was by no means as prevalent in Graham’s and my youth as in recent times. Therefore, though windows of opportunity remain open for likeminded adventurers today to follow Graham’s example on a shoestring, those windows have become decidedly narrower.

In common with most twenty-year olds of our time, Graham was indifferent to the pursuit of wealth. Provided he had sufficient funds to get by on, he was happy to take each day as it came, albeit without neglecting to set savings aside for future travel plans. The little he earned in those early days fresh out of school came from his work in Chichester’s County Hall or from helping out as a motorcycle and vehicle repair mechanic in a Worthing garage run by an outgoing Welshman bedevilled by dermatitis. Graham became a mine of information on carburettors, crankshafts and hydraulic manifolds; it explained why he got on so well with my father because of a shared interest in reconditioning vehicle engines and a love of batting along roads at breakneck speed, be it on four or two wheels.

In fact, in his twenties my father came within an ace of suffering T.E. Lawrence’s fate when, while racing his motorcycle along a quiet country road he swerved to avoid a fallen branch, ran into a ditch and was thrown over the handlebars to land, badly concussed, by the roadside. I might not have been here today to tell this tale had not a passing motorist drawn to a halt a few minutes later. This Good Samaritan and his brother lifted my father onto the back seat of their charabanc and drove him to the nearest hospital.

My first and fondest memories of the motor cars owned by my father come from climbing into what to my mind was a Prohibition era vehicle of the kind driven by Chicago mobsters. Hand-cranked, this superb automobile sported running boards and a side-mounted spare wheel with neat white rim, plastic yellow indicators and outsize headlamps. There were two halves to the bonnet which could be folded open together or separately, while the windscreen, hinged at the top, could also be opened to admit fresh air. I can’t remember the make. A Riley, perhaps, or a Daimler.

During late adolescence, Graham became a fan of Chevrolets, Cadillacs and Plymouths, their bumpers and tail fins agleam with freshly polished chrome. He saved one such (a Plymouth, I think) from the scrapyard, giving it a fresh lease of life after long hours spent overhauling everything from bonnet to boot, frustrated by one setback after another – sometimes obliged to fashion spare parts out of seemingly unrecyclable junk metal.

Another characteristic shared by my father and Graham and which would invite heavy criticism nowadays was reluctance to put their trust in Britain’s public transport system. I think the only day my father ever boarded a bus was when he had to go into hospital for minor surgery in his late forties. I never knew him to travel on the London Underground or to take surface rail transport⁹. That being said, despite being mechanically self-sufficient, he paid his annual membership fee to the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). I believe Graham’s father, who also knew his way around a car engine, belonged to the Automobile Association (AA).

But it was perhaps my father’s position as director and managing engineer of a catering firm, specialising in Modernice ice cream and Crusoe’s fish and chips marketing that set the seal on the popularity with Graham of the gentleman to whom my friend later respectfully referred in his correspondence as Thiebaut Sr. There was that memorable occasion when we two schoolboys were invited on a hot summer’s afternoon to Chelsea’s Church Street Modernice factory to be given a demonstration of the factory’s production lines. These turned out wafers, cornets, strawberry, vanilla and coffee ice cream, vanilla ice cream bars coated with chocolate and, last but not least, lollipops Impressed as we were by the technology, how patiently we awaited firsthand sampling of those mouth-watering vanilla bars sandwiched between two wafers.

If there is some substance to the legend that we have a chef in Napoleon’s army to thank for the invention of ice cream during the build-up to Marengo (Italy, June 1800) or Austerlitz (Germany, December 1805), it was perhaps appropriate that my father, educated in France and no mean cook, should have gravitated towards the ice cream industry. He even applied his engineering skills to inventing the pop-up cornet dispenser, though omitted, for some reason, to have this patented.

I still vividly remember blushing up to my ears on my first day at Saint Brendan’s, when our glamorous Stanmore primary school induction teacher, asking each pupil about their dad’s profession, responded to my answer with, ‘Well, he certainly made a nice ice cream cornet out of you’.

It follows that, despite my GP’s dire warnings about the risk of clogged arteries making for circulation problems worse than rush-hour congestion on the North Circular, I have been unable to shake off a weakness for ‘glace à la vanille’. But if you were to ask what I thought of today’s Wall’s, Möwenpick, Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream compared to my dad’s of yesteryear, I would have to say that Modernice knocked spots off the lot – well, I am biased.

But to return to Graham: my father’s popularity was enhanced when my eleven-year-old friend was invited to accompany this ten-year-old and his dad to explore the Festival of Britain’s South Bank exhibitions, where Graham made the most of the hands-on opportunity to sit in front of the cockpit controls of a Spifire. I have to confess that I was more taken with the annual Boys’ Own exhibitions where, in addition to admiring a space-suited Dan Dare lookalike treading the sands of Mars, I could splurge my pocket money on cigarette cards, stamps and fun items ranging from yo-yos to miniature finger guillotines.

My father’s warmest and most generous offer to my friend and me came on the heels of my mother’s death. It took the form of a holiday to Spain in the summer of 1959. These two late teenagers were driven onto the car ferry at Dover, then all the way down through France to Alicante, where we visited the Elche palm grove, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, famous for its abundant North African date palm orchards. There over a glass of fruit juice (or more probably sangria), we befriended a couple of Spanish girls out of whom Graham coaxed some passable words of English in the course of chatting them up. It is worth pointing out that my friend was no late starter in developing the composition of his mental, if not physical, harem. The copy of the photo Graham sent me later was, I thought, taken in Elche, though he suggested farther on down the road (see Plates). Graham would have been approaching his nineteenth birthday at the time.

*

A few words about how I, in my role of recorder, have gone about transcribing Graham’s correspondence.

Repetition is inevitable when two people are writing to each other over a lengthy period, their memories jogged by recall of familiar circumstances while forgeful of earlier mentions. How often in everyday life do we bump into people who retell the same story they treated us to only a few days ago? But unless one is a doctor, the mere fact of having to write while sitting down tends to prompt a more measured approach. Therefore, as Graham rarely relates the same story or opinion word for word, I saw no need to give his writing a metaphorical short, back and sides. Hence, the iterative remarks about dental hygiene, open-toed-sandal environmentalists, corporate empty suits and political correctness. I like to think whoever first penned ‘errare humanum est’ had it in him to forgive his race’s weakness not only for straying off the beaten track but for treading it time after time. So I’m not sorry, I’ll write that again.

Some will be amused, others unsettled by Graham’s unrestrained use of expletives and generally rebarbative comments. I would refer the offended category to one of Mark Twain’s irreverent adages: ‘Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer’.

On the other hand, I have bowed to the politically correct by expurgating the rawest of my friend’s redneck remarks. But then, have I done the remarkable GJWH an injustice? For if, as claimed, Graham really did achieve those three canonisation miracles, would not the repentant sinner be aggrieved to see all traces of the trademark outspokenness associated with his doppelgänger Growler self airbrushed out?

I am glad to say it has proved possible to keep a fairly seamless record of Graham’s correspondence, save for the later years when a hard drive crash wiped out a cache of my friend’s communications. As already noted, the records on my side are thinner insofar as I kept no copies of my letters to Graham in the early years. That is all too the good, seeing that the focus of this narrative is on the life and times of my friend, while remaining true to their connections and intersections with my own. Despite the large number of footnotes, I have drawn the line at demystifying Graham’s every remark in response to points raised by me in letters long lost, all the more so since Graham suffered far worse losses when a domestic bakery fire badly damaged his home in the Philippines¹⁰.

Finally, I regret to say that two inexplicable cases of amnesia have left their mark on this work: I have no memory of my stay with Graham, Mila and Alexandra in their Spanish holiday property in Pals in late 1999 nor of my visit to the couple’s home in Manila from 26 April to 10 May 2001. In the absence of diary, e-mail or photographic records to trigger remembrance, might hypnotic regression therapy in the hands of a serious practioner throw light on these mental black holes? I fear the charlatan in me would spoil everything by suggesting descendance from Jesse James.

Now that I have completed a summing up which Graham would be happy to see has nothing in common with W Somerset Maugham’s Petri dish analysis of his childhood, travels and philosophical recollections, it is time for GJWH to occupy centre stage and tell his story in his own words.

---

2 While I was putting this narrative together, Hilary told me that when she and Adrian first appeared on the scene in 1944 as fraternal twins, Graham was really put out, exclaiming, ‘But, Mummy, you said there was only going to be one baby’.

3 Whose practitioners, one of whom was his own father, Graham delighted in deriding as bean counters.

4 Given Great Britain’s rapacious, self-serving past, both of us were disdainful of the jingoism embodied in the national anthem’s outdated ‘Send her victorious’. As to ‘Rule, Britannia’, I remember suggesting rewording the concluding line of each verse, ‘Britons ever will be knaves’.

5 Neil Haigh put some of this time to use in tackling The Daily Telegraph’s crossword puzzles. He fuelled my own interest in cryptic crossword clues, leading to participation in the Cutty Sark/Times National Crossword Championships.

6 Founded in the early 1970s by a married couple following the same overland route through Europe and Asia to Australia as that taken in the mid-1950s by six Oxford and Cambridge University students on an 18 000-mile Far Eastern Expedition to Singapore, which they reached by Land Rover six months and six days after setting out.

7 Founded in the early 1980s and originally designed for use by backpackers, these guides subsequently catered for low and high-budget travellers.

8 ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’, 2011.

9 How fortunate his son is today, living in Luxembourg: on 29 February 2020, the Grand Duchy became the first country in the world to make all internal public transport by tram, train or bus free of charge to users.

10 I do not believe the details of this were lost when my hard drive crashed. If Graham failed to report on matters at the time, it was probably because Mila’s and his affairs were in a state of chaos. And given the tricks memory plays on us, it is not impossible that whenever Graham referred to this incident later on he was under the impression that he had told me the full story.

Go East, Young Man

It was not too long before Graham had amassed enough shekels (his short form for pay packet) to strike out on his first expedition abroad. Rather than going it alone Graham, who was a social character and never one to fail to appreciate female company, decided to pair up with his cousin Morwenna. Two years older than he, Morwenna was a bright-eyed, intelligent young woman, full of vigour and stunningly attractive. She and Graham were kindred independently-minded spirits¹¹.

This expeditionary duo teamed up in the spring of 1965 for the first of several overseas outings. At that time, I was living in digs in Putney where Graham mailed me a postcard from one of the most ancient cities in the Balkans known as the gateway between East and West:

Sorry haven’t written before we left. Fevered activity precluded much else. Morwenna and I now in Nis, not Belgrade as in the picture¹². Uneventful journey (mishapwise) so far – but plenty to recount. Letter to follow giving details in full of the wandering vagabonds. Regards to Elaine and your parents and all luck for 17th July¹³.

Your slivovitz-swilling Graham

If the bulky, depressingly socialist-realist urban architecture espoused by the former Yugoslavia as pictured on that dull postcard was anything to go by, small wonder that my friend was into the plum brandy.

Graham’s next postcard was penned in Thessaloniki on 10 June 1965. Wearing a white neck ruff and with a brown velvet semi-circular cape draped around his shoulders, the baldheaded, bearded fellow depicted on the single postage stamp resembled a Spanish inquisition ascetic rather than the learned Grecian celebrated by the stamp designer.

Now on our way to Turkey, having been down as far as Corinth. Went and saw your Acropolis and had the same trouble keeping tourists out of the photos¹⁴. It’s very, very hot indeed. Although Morwenna and I both like Greece, it’s a highly expensive country. Still, must move on – me shish-kebab will be getting cold waiting for me.

Regards, Graham

The promised letter was finally penned back on home soil in Worthing on 2 November 1965:

My dear Martin,

Well – here we are! Racked by tropical diseases, scarred by Pakistani shellfire and carrying a tiger skin over my left shoulder, I arrived home on Sunday.

Not knowing your address in Rugby, I sent a couple of letters to my mother for you with instructions for these to be forwarded. However, it seems that many of my letters, largely those posted from Kashmir and other parts of India failed to reach home. You must have been wondering what in hell I was up to.

I’ll give you a very brief résumé now of what Morwenna and I got up to from Iran onwards, which is from where I believe my last letter to you prior to reaching India was sent¹⁵. The full story I hope to recount to you personally by coming up and paying you a visit before too long. Always at the risk of becoming a crashing bore – ‘when I was in Poonah, etc’. I regret to say I was in Poonah – on the train passing through.

Anyhow, from Iran Morwenna and I took the desert road through the wild, nomad country of Afghanistan – truly a fascinating land of tall, hawkeyed warriors and Kipling scenery. Thence through Pakistan to Lahore. Pakistan was too utterly filthy and godforsaken for words! Ten days in steaming India at the height of the monsoon, and conditions drove us across the Punjab to seek the cool, high mountains of the Gurkhas of Nepal, where three weeks were spent in the Himalayas. Here we sold our faithful van at a stupendous profit, flogged or jettisoned our excess baggage and took a plane and a few trains up to Kashmir.

In Srinagar, capital of Kashmir State, we spent thirteen days in what is the only part of India worth seeing! We lived in a houseboat, had a servant, and spent our days lapping up the comfortably warm sunshine, boating, water-skiing and eating.

Thence to Delhi, after finally getting through the cordons of armies and tanks, where the British embassy informed us there was no hope of returning via Pakistan. Military activity was then at its height. All the reports you have heard were grossly exaggerated, because if ever there was a phony war, this was it¹⁶. So our only course was to go by sea from Bombay, which we did, arriving in Basra, Iraq, on 7th October. From here, we crossed Iraq – stopping in Baghdad, only to be bitterly disappointed with what we saw: filthy industry replaces the spires and minarets of old. From here across Syria and Turkey into Istanbul. On this, our second visit, we remained eleven days. Istanbul is possibly our favourite city, combining just enough of the atmosphere of the East with sufficient Western amenities to make it bearable.

We came across Northern Greece, Yugoslavia and Austria as far as Vienna by train. Last Wednesday, we left Vienna with six pounds each to hitchhike home separately. Morwenna went across Germany to Luxembourg, then Dieppe. I went also across Germany to Luxembourg and then through Belgium to Ostend, and on Sunday night we arrived home separately within fifteen minutes of each other.

So, five months and twenty countries later, here I am, waiting only for the chance to make enough money to do it all again. We were indeed, as you hoped, treated royally in every way, and what I have to recount to you will give you many a chuckle, I know. Travelling by the methods we used was undoubtedly pretty rough and tough but eminently worthwhile.

Many a time you have crossed my thoughts – once or twice that fast gun of yours would have been might handy. (Graham was referring to my .22 target practice Smith and Wesson, its pearl handle and holster fashioned by my father.)

Belated wishes for the very best on your birthday and good luck to you and Elaine in everything¹⁷. I still shake my head in wonder at the thought of fire-eating ‘Doubles’¹⁸ Thiebaut leading a sedate and law-abiding existence! Having no transport now, I’m a bit tied. However, I have no work either, so my time is my own, and I’ll be in touch about paying you a visit soon.

Yours ever, Graham

With events conspiring to keep us apart, I quickly wrote back to Graham, who replied on 6 November 1965 faster than I could send my IBM golf ball spinning:

Dear Martin,

Grand to get your letter – judging the products you would have had me bring home you have a better knowledge of what gives in an Easterly direction than I. Don’t you think I had enough trouble getting my Central Asian knee-length goatskin bow tie embellished with curved ivory toothpick and hand-beaten copper monogram past the Customs as it was? The 80ft Afghan rifle was no trouble – this I merely placed nonchalantly in my breast pocket. However, my collection of shrunken heads, Tibetan prayer wheels, yak horns, camel bells, Gurkha knives, chocolate buddhas, Turkish swords, alabaster miniatures of the Taj Mahal and Premier Shastri, Arab headdresses, Nepalese swordsticks, gem-encrusted replicas of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, chest of jewels, gold doubloons and Maria Theresa dollars presented to me by the Sheikh of Kuwait, and 20 x 10ft hand-woven Persian carpets presented rather more of a problem. Ever quick to find a way out of the trickiest situation, I placed these in a week-old copy of The Times, thus presenting a spectacle of the utmost respectability, donned my cardboard bowler and strolled out of Dover docks unchallenged.

How right you are. After weeks of staggering through blazing deserts, steaming jungles and monsoon puddles, without proper food, sanitation and seldom a wash or a bed to lie on, cursing the wog¹⁹, the heat and the filth in turn, racked with disease and wondering how the hell I could have been so stupid as to leave my nice comfortable home – on my return I can only find myself busily scheming up ways of going off again. This I intend to do, having suddenly found a hundred places I want to visit, as if France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Muscat, Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria and the Edgware Road weren’t enough..

However, having no earthly reason not to go, I don’t see why, as soon as finances permit, I shouldn’t find out for myself whether the Pyramids really are round or just clever replicas erected by Israeli spies.

There is, of course, a wealth to recount to you, and I couldn’t begin to put it all down on paper. Before I can come and see you, I must find me some transport and a job. Like you, I am in the market for a fifty pound car.

For your part, an auction is undoubtedly the best place to find a bargain well under the price normally asked by a garage. However, unlike a garage, you have, of course, no comeback should your purchase prove an embarrassment. Just as much rubbish passes through an auction as good stuff. Nevertheless, if you can find someone who you are convinced really does know good from bad and who is proposed to vet your proposed choice thoroughly (there is ample opportunity to do this before the auction) then you do stand a chance of getting a good vehicle well under market price.

Very often I have seen vehicles which are mechanically excellent and bodily sound go for a song merely because of rusty chrome, dull paint or faults which need only a couple of weekends and a few pounds to fix.

I would aim at a common, well-proven model. Unusual cars always sell cheaply, but mean trouble with spares etc. when something goes wrong. Morris Minor (early models), Austin A30s and Ford Populars are uninspiring but excellent choices, because repairs and spares are invariably cheap, easily obtainable and, in addition, these cars are economical. Disregard the mileage on the speedometer – this doesn’t mean a thing and doesn’t necessarily bear any relationship to the condition of the car. Provided – very important this – the body is free of major faults and rot (you’ll have to get underneath to ascertain this properly) and the transmission is quiet (strange whines and grating noises are pretty obvious), then the vehicle should be O.K. Clearly, tyres should be in reasonable condition. These are expensive. A noisy, smoky engine is not so important. Engines are the easiest and cheapest items to repair.

Buying a car this way, I should allow another £20 over and above what you intend to spend on the car itself for initial repairs, because auction cars lack the titivation that the average garage normally carries out before displaying the car – hence, their cheapness. But I think the average driver is quite capable of telling from a test drive whether a vehicle is basically sound with a few things requiring to be tidied up or whether things are drastically wrong

Lastly, do not be tempted to fall for a Dauphine. These are invariably cheap and often sprayed over very prettily, but underneath they are the biggest rot-boxes imaginable. Likewise a rebuilt crash job: ripples along the bodywork when viewed against the light give the game away. In fact, steer clear of anything which seems to be too good to be true at the price. Don’t rule out a small van, if you find one – very often, nice vans can be picked up cheaply. But insist on a drive first.

Which is about all the help I can offer without confusing you. But auctions are usually fair and honest procedures. Moreover, the firm holding the auction has no interest in the vehicles, which is an advantage. Set your price in your mind and stick to that. If the bidding for any vehicle you fancy goes over that price, then forget it and don’t allow yourself to get involved in a reckless competition bidding against someone else²⁰.

At present I’m busily engaged in bashing out a synopsis of our drive to Nepal for the Bedford Transport magazine, who were chuffed to death to think a Bedford product was still capable of such punishment without complaint after six years of normal use.

So I, unfortunately, cannot think of a means of getting to see you before Christmas, but rest assured you’ll find me on your doorstep, after due warning, of course, before much more water has collected behind the Aswan Dam. My suntan will have gone by then, but not me shaggy whiskers or me sanity, I hope.

Although what the M-48 tanks and F-104 fighters of Pakistan couldn’t do, the English winter will, if I don’t get myself some trousers in place of my pukka sahib shorts.

As ever, a fistful of luck to you both. Morwenna thanks you for your good wishes and … is scheming to return to the Sheikh with whom she fell madly in love – or was it with his oil wells?

Yours, Graham

P.S. I can’t claim to have mastered the languages you mention, but I know five Hindi words, one Urdu, seven Farsi, three Arabic, five Turkish, no Greek and a little English. I’m working on it.

*

It was not until 28 March of the following year 1966 that Elaine and I next heard from our travel-hungry adventurer:

Dear Martin,

I believe it’s my turn to write – my correspondence is in its usual chaotic state, and right now I’m having a purge on it.

Main reason for writing is to enquire about the chances of paying you and Elaine a visit – I seem to remember your saying you were tied up with school activities until April. Now that month is almost here, I’m looking forward to seeing your evil old mug again. And in particular to learn of the results of your efforts to inculcate all manner of wisdom and learning into the heads of the present generation, and of course to learn of Elaine’s efforts to keep you on a respectable law-abiding path – no less arduous! Also to examine this limousine of yours.

Here you are one up on me, since nowadays I don’t have a car and am stoically resisting all temptations to buy one. For somebody as lazy as I am, this is hell, but in view of the necessity to conserve funds for a bit more globe-trotting, I just can’t afford it.

But I think I can con my faithful father into extending me the loan of his car to use to pay you a visit, so let me know a convenient date when you won’t mind being bored to tears by a recital of adventures.

It’s surprising how few people are interested in what goes on beyond their immediate horizons – one can’t really blame them. But there are really very few to whom Morwenna and I have been able to talk about what we saw and did, and because of this it will be good to meet you again and recount the long tale.

I keep receiving letters from various friends I made whilst travelling, telling about their experiences – some so fascinating it makes our puny few months’ wandering seem very tame and sets me to cursing myself for ever coming home.

Of all the criticisms and ‘sage’ advice we received before setting out, two were the most oft-repeated. First, that we would suffer such hell from stomach disorder that we’d wish we’d stayed home, and second, that we should undoubtedly be held up at gunpoint in some vast desolate waste. Well, as I think you know, both of these prophecies came to pass, but although there were occasionally a few misgivings, I for one can’t wait to set out again and go further afield.

Obviously, the big attraction is the great feeling of freedom which suits me, as an irresponsible wretch, very well. Then, of course, the constant interest.

So I can’t wait until next October to get moving again. Morwenna has more sensible plans – she hopes to get a job with a firm or embassy somewhere in the East. My problem is how to fit in all the places I want to see in addition to spending more time in some of the countries I’ve already seen.

One place I loved in particular, as indeed I believe I told you, was Istanbul. All in all, since we visited it on both the outward and return journey, Morwenna and I spent about a month there. Was it because it is virtually the first place with a taste of the Orient one encounters going eastwards and seems somehow more Oriental than anywhere else despite still being in Europe?

Well – all this you’ll hear when we meet again. As I said, I’m hoping to learn all your news as well. I’m very interested in how things are going for both of you.

Morwenna wishes herself remembered to you. She and I keep frequent contact, since she lives now in a bedsitter not far from where I’m working. Once a week, I descend on her for tea, and we concoct ourselves some strange dish. Never curry, however. This word is never mentioned between us.

Please remember me to Elaine – I hope the never-beaten ‘Doubles’ Thiebaut hasn’t cowed that fine Welsh spirit! And as for you – I still bear the scars of all that fightin’ and feudin’ we used to do.

Graham

More promising news came in the next letter dated 23 July 1966 after Graham had sympathised with my tale of a wet camping weekend at a time when I was sounding out a change of teaching post:

Dear Martin,

My mother showed me your letter – I’m sorry your enthusiasm for the nomad life was dampened by that unfortunate weekend spent by yourself and Elaine at Chichester. In all my camping expeditions I’ve only been flooded out twice – which in England must be something of a record. But it’s pretty unpleasant and at the very first attempt I should think pretty shattering as well. What a shame.

The Headmaster who insisted on grilling you about various countries’ different flags reminds me irresistibly of Peter Seller’s portrayal of such a character on record²¹. But the Chichester area, as I know well, is very much part of our ‘Country Life’ heritage, and I don’t think you would find living thereabouts exactly exhilarating. Have you actually given in your notice or are you just looking around²²?

Deplorable as it is, I have never written to thank you and Elaine for that highly pleasant weekend you gave me in April. The incredible weather helped to make it the brightest spot of my summer, which has otherwise been spent in restraint and asceticism, as a necessary adjunct to hard saving. That’s some grand countryside you have up there – it’s a pity that life is dull for you both. Hard-bitten English reserve dies hard.

Bad luck about your exam²³. I appreciate there has to exist some sort of yardstick on which to base qualifications, but have never considered a few hours spent sweating in an examination hall answering a few questions devised by apparent lunatics as a fair way of doing this. A convenient attitude for one who failed most of his exams by sheer laziness, crass incompetence and a complete lack of interest induced by masters who failed, for me, to inject the subjects I took with any interesting matter²⁴! Keep me posted regarding future developments – for one who leaves no stone unturned in the search for a better job these must be bright. The main thing is not to stagnate, and I know you’re both very conscious of this.

I think this is an appropriate moment to insert a tellingly amusing note of my own about my chequered examinations performance. Indeed, I stand in that rarefied class of pupils who had, later in life, to resit my driving lessons as many times as I had years before resat ‘O’ Level English Language. Yes, how many can admit to needing four bites of that pushover of an exam before achieving a pass mark? And why, this disgraceful showing in my case? Quite simply because I used to doze off during grammar lessons, bored out of my mind by correct use of the apostrophe, parsing, improper pronouns with nothing risqué about them, and the difference between the active and the passive voice (totally unrelated, believe it or not, to shouting and whispering). Anyway, the fact that I consistently achieved good marks for my essay writing meant little to examiners, who wanted to see if I knew the difference between a conjunction and conjunctivitis, syntax and thumb tacks or a reflexive pronoun and Galvani’s experiments with frogs’ legs.

Much later in life, I had a further embarrassing experience when sitting an advanced University of London French-language oral test with a very attractive examiner. Thinking that, despite my name’s French origins and the fact that I was living and working abroad in a francophone environment, I still related closely to my English roots, she chose to get me to interpret and to give answers to questions about Prince Charles and Princess Diana. As it happened, I had little interest in the doings of my birth country’s monarchy²⁵, the only member of the British royal family of whom I approved being Prince Philip for his blunt outspokenness. It followed that I had been one of the handful of British subjects not glued to their television on the occasion of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The realisation that I had erected this preposterous barrier between myself and anything smacking of pomp and circumstance sufficed to cause me to seize up in the face of this most charming and well-meaning of examiners.

The same prejudice led me to act churlishly on the occasion of HRH’s state visit to Luxembourg in 1976, when I declared that I had better things to do than to line the streets together with Elaine, our children (Morwenna and Guy) and hundreds of other loyal expats, waving a miniature Union Jack supplied courtesy of the British Embassy, the British Ladies’ Club or Luxembourg City’s Konvikt Chapel.

Enough of these asides. Time to let Graham resume where he left off:

Recently my fortunes have been bright. A month ago, I let it be known through the ubiquitous grapevine which exists in the motor trade, where experienced staff are hard to come by, that I was after a better job. Within days I had two offers and consequently now find myself as a member of the senior staff of a motor factory not far from my home. This is a company run in a very dynamic fashion by youngish people who really are a grand crowd to work with – their attitude is entirely free of the fogeyish attitudes which have dogged and stifled other firms I have worked for, and really gets results.

The managing director is a very popular character who pays his staff pretty well and looks after them, and met my wage demand and more. It’s a pity that I’m not intending to stay there, for I