“Well, you seem to have done quite well this last year.” The middle-aged man from the BBC personnel department leant back in his chair. He glanced lovingly at the briar pipe on the corner of his desk. He found it a bore to have to give annual interviews to young employees.

“Mum! Can you teach me to read?”.

“I’m not going to waste my time on that. You’ll learn that at school.”

“Well if they are going to start bombing around here, don’t you think it would be a good idea to rent a cottage in the country, like Devon?”said Maggie. Her sister Nell nodded her approval, so they set off; Maggie, Nell and their two children Mary and George for a small wooden cottage in Dawlish Warren.

Two young boys rolled on the tarmac of the school playground, hitting each other viciously. George ended up on top and he continued to punch the other boy’s face, who could do nothing about it, being restrained by George’s weight. It was very unfair.

“Come lie with me and be my love
And we will go where white owls fly
And cry to the gods to bless our troth.

Miss Hall, the English mistress, got the good readers in the class to stand up and read aloud some ‘Just So Stories’. “Now I know you don’t expect to get homework until you go up to a senior school, but I would like you all to write me a Just So Story at home tonight, and we will read them all out tomorrow.”

George was now 14. He was not only good at art; he had a good voice, so he was in the school choir.

There was a festival of local choirs coming up at the town hall. Their choir practiced very hard after school every day, and they were building high hopes.

The band became very popular, doing a lot of local gigs. However the drummer and the Base player were stolen away by another band from the next town. They would have to get two new players. They did; both from South Africa.

The music master, Mr Jones, brought in one of the new portable wind-up gramophones, and played the children a 78rpm recording of Aire on a G String.
George loved it.
“Sir. Can we sing it?”

“No. It’s for string players.”

George hoped it would rain. Morning break was coming up and if it rained, they would not all have to go out to play in the playground. The playground was noisy and he did not know anyone.

“Waiter! Waiter! What soup is this?”

“It’s bean soup sir.”

“I don’t want to know what it’s been. I want to know what it is!”

“I don’t like European art. It doesn’t dance,” said Kin “I like bright patterns; colourful masks, and bright flags that blow in the wind, pictures and objects that cheer you up.”

George had been sent home from school as he was not well. He sat drawing. His mother’s friends had come round for a cup of tea. They chatted. It happened most afternoons. The house was changed from day to day,  but today it was their house’s turn.

Kin was very concerned. The news from Somalia was ever more depressing.

“Now I have got some A levels, thanks to your teaching, I think I am going to get some training as a medical auxiliary. I need to do something worthwhile with my life.”

George bumped into Sue whilst shopping.

“I’ve told Victor about your paintings, and he would like to see some.”

“What! The chap who owns Gallery One.”

Dick had more degrees than a thermometer. His father had been a doctor in a poor part of London, and he had not always charged for his services. Consequently the family had been poor all his childhood. Although sympathetic to his father’s position he was not going to live like that now he was master of his own fate.

Bernie met Dick at one of George’s dinner parties.

He appeared as a revelation to Bernie. “How does he get such a beautiful girlfriend?” he said, staying on after the dinner, “Let’s face it, he’s fat and has what can’t be called a handsome face.”

The weather forecast said winds 4 to 5 going up to 6 in the Thames area in the late afternoon.

“We’ll be there by then. Let’s go.” said George to his mate, Jim.” She’s a good boat and will do 9 knots, if we put up enough sail.”

Next to the entrance to Highgate underground station is a pathway leading down steps to a secret wilderness in the middle of North London between two tunnels,. Tucked in it is an old disused railway station.

George was visiting and playing chess with Victor in his house behind George Street in Hastings. The front door bell rang. As the house stood back off the road and was difficult to get to, it had to be someone who really wanted to see Victor, and as he was about to win he got up and answered the door.

John had read the whole of Proust and announced it was boring. That was not the only thing he had read. In fact he was probably the best read character in Hampstead. His full time occupation was reading, with breaks to prop up the bar in several local pubs; the Roebuck, the Magdella and the George, at various times in the day and the week.

Caroline was beautiful and intelligent. Her husband Karl, was a giant. People said that he was proof that Homo Sapien had interbred with homo Neanderthalis, His bald head sloped backwards and he had immense strength. His wrists were as thick as most people’s thighs. Nearly every evening he frequented the pubs of Hampstead where he cadged drinks off acquaintances.

Michael de Boise was a very good chess player. He had just beaten his girlfriend, Jane, when George arrived. Jane shared a flat with George’s friend Pamela, on the edge of Parliament Hill.

“Do you play? How about a game?” said Michael as he set out the pieces. Much to both their surprise, George beat him.

Ginger was six foot tall with bright red hair. He was Brian’s best friend during his national service. They were both good shots, although Ginger was better than Brian. He was even chosen to represent the RAF at the annual services shooting competition at Wisley, but they both got paid an extra shilling a day and wore a marksman’s badge. Brian balanced Ginger’s superiority in that he was trained as a wireless operator and had learnt the morse code.

By the time Brian was in his early teens his father was working as a refrigeration repair man, servicing most of the big hotels in London’s West End. He had been hit in the head by an undercarriage of an aircraft in Dehaverland’s factory during the war and after coming out of hospital he had got a job repairing the coldrooms of ships damaged crossing the Atlantic.

Brian had not taken to military life. He was fed up with sergeants shouting at him and having to polish his boots so that thy shone like a mirror but probably would let water in. By the time he was demobed he was depressed. He did not know what to do. He did not want to go back down south. He had begun to appreciate Northern life. He wandered through the countryside.

George was up late and with no time for breakfast he set of into a misty morning to catch his train to school. Buses were not running so he ran all the way to the station only to find his 8-15 had not yet arrived. The mist had turned to fog and everything was delayed. His mate Johny was waiting on the platform, and they discussed the weather and how it came about.

As usual George had not done his homework so he was leaning against the wall in the playground reading. He had been there for some time as he was not a very good reader. First formers were playing cricket out in the center, and there was a workman sawing and repairing lengths of cast iron guttering.

George was working as a sound man doing interviews in Iran, Persia. He found the country most interesting. Although he spoke some Farsi, it was not as fluent as it could be, but he had no need to worry as any child under 12 had learnt English at school and was only too pleased to help and show off  how good they were. Nevertheless he was very popular in the crew who liked to take him shopping with them.

As he was about to leave Iran, Brian got a message saying they wanted him to go to Afghanistan. There were relatively few Englishmen that could speak both Farsi and Russian.

He got a plane to the north of Iran and then a taxi to the border. It was going to cost his handlers a lot of money. It had taken much longer than he expected and he arrived at the border at dusk. The taxi driver would go no further however much Brian offered. He went back to Tehran.

Brian was confronted by a desolate Afghanistan. The border was just a dry ditch. On the other side the road stretched  a road, a straight line into the distance across a flat plain with hills some way back on either side. The whole view was a greyish brown. Two large lories stood on the other side of the ditch, waiting to cross into Iran the next morning but nothing else.

George learnt to read very quickly, but he was rather slow to learn to write. He liked O. It was round and perfect, but he had trouble with R and T. They were jerky, and Q spoilt his favoured O. However he enjoyed the process, and practiced a lot.

Trevor was born in Chalfont St Peter in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, although he had nothing to do with that..Later it had a reputation for being a dormitory village for city ‘high flyers’and investment bankers.

It was not the first time I had visited Portugal. In my teens we had sailed down there pretty well every year, We would fist sail west to the Isles of Scilley, and then turn south, to avid the large waves in the shallow Bay of Biscay, and to give us a broader tack in the predominately south west winds.