“MARSHALL!” A parade-ground voice bellowed at him from somewhere to his left, its echo reverberating around the hall. “Sit down when the governor’s speaking, you ignorant shit.”

Looking even more harassed than usual, the governor glanced at Jack over the top of his half-moon glasses and, recognising his orderly, gave him a quick smile. “Yes, Mr Marshall, let’s do as the Chief says, shall we, there’s a good chap.” Then, returning to his prepared speech, he tried to look stern. “Now, men,” he said, “I’m taking this spate of suicides very seriously. I’m not having any more of them, not in my prison. They’re to stop right now, d’y’hear.”

After two years as his orderly, two years of looking after this tall, unworldly man even now teetering precariously on the tubular steel chair in front of a horde of grinning, hopeful faces, Jack’s initial indifference towards him had matured into a protective benevolence. The man’s genuine paternalism, the Victorian pattern of speech that was his without affectation, seemed to Jack just two of the many endearing features possessed by the senior governor of Uppandown Prison. But to the other inmates and to the majority of prison staff, they were anything but. Charles Ambrose Dixon irritated them almost to distraction.

Jack did as he’d been told and lowered his gaze. At least he didn’t have to watch. And he’d try not to listen. He put his hands over his ears. Then he thought of the last time the inmates had been assembled for one of the governor’s homilies. Good God, that one had turned into a riot, the dining hall wrecked. Refurbishment had cost the Home Office a packet. He sniffed, and caught the stink of fresh paint even with all the food smells around; another riot so soon and Charlie Dixon’s career in the Prison Service would be finished for good – with less than ten months to go to retirement. Then Henschel – Henschel the hateful Hun – would take charge. Jack shuddered, what a disaster that would be! The very thought!

The governor was in full spate now; prepared speech abandoned, he waved it expansively. “So if any of you coves are thinking of topping yourselves you can chuck the idea right now – right here and now I say.” The chair on which he stood wobbled alarmingly and just for a moment the hopes of his audience looked as if they were about to be gratified. But, arms windmilling, he regained his balance to continue unabashed. “So I’m giving you fair warning, one more attempt and it will be the worse for all of you. I don’t like to make threats, but the next man to commit suicide will lose all his privileges, every single one of them: home leave, visits, even free association. D’y’hear, any more of this nonsense and I’ll tighten this prison until it squeaks – until it squeaks, d’y’hear?”

But they hadn’t heard, not his last sentence anyway, it had been drowned by laughter, loud and prolonged. It was soon followed by tumuluous applause initiated by none other than the very prison officer who had ordered Jack to sit down. A moment later, fingers to his mouth, the same man was to let out a long piercing whistle. It was immediately imitated by half those present.

They were all on their feet now, including Jack. Charlie may be a fool but he doesn’t deserve this, he thought. He then watched helplessly as the governor did as most of his audience had been hoping and fell heavily when the chair on which he’d been standing slid out from under him. Jack rushed to his side and helping him to his feet, pleaded with him to leave the room. “Come on, Charlie, let’s get you out of here.”

The governor scowled at him; he didn’t approve of all this familiarity and his orderly knew it, he’d told him often enough. He said so as he dusted down his trousers. “And I can’t leave while all this bad behaviour is going on, you know that too.” He advanced on the jeering mob. “Sit down, all of you. Sit, I say.” It was unintentional but he could have been talking to his dogs.

Prison officers, serious now, followed his example. Prowling the big room, they quelled the disorder, weaker men first.

Two:

Very young and new to the job, Ellen Brough, the Education Department’s administrative assistant, was unsure about her next question; lack of enthusiasm for initiatives put forward by the boss might give a poor impression at this stage of her career. But his latest idea was a waste of tax-payers’ money surely. “Where will we find a teacher of Welsh in Norfolk, Mr Tudor?” There were only six Welsh inmates, two of them black, and none of them had shown the slightest inclination to learn the language when the subject was brought to their attention. To her mind, admittedly that of a mere admin. assistant, lessons in Welsh seemed an expensive luxury.

“We’ll advertise, Ellen, in the local free press. Our teacher doesn’t need to hold any formal qualifications and even a prison can look inviting at almost fourteen pounds an hour, especially if you’re on the dole.” He grinned displaying a gap in his upper jaw. He’d forgotten his dentures again.

Ellen shook her head. “But nobody wants to learn Welsh, Mr Tudor, there’s been no response at all from the men.”

“It’s part of our heritage, Ellen, yours and mine, our British heritage. We should be able to offer it on our curriculum.” He moved closer. “And, please, call me Duncan.”

“But you’re Welsh and you’ve managed without it. If we can find a teacher, will you be joining the class?” She backed away from him putting the filing cabinet between them.

Mr Tudor looked disappointed. “I’m afraid not,” he said, “I just haven’t the time these days – a man in my position, you know.”

Ellen nodded. She knew all right; if he wasn’t away on so many visits to other prisons – pointless, unnecessary social visits from which nothing constructive ever seemed to materialise – he’d have plenty of time to learn Welsh if he wanted to. And if he spent less time in the pub at lunchtime. Yes, she knew all right.

It was eight-fifteen and the part-time teachers were starting to arrive. The first was Mr Ojibango. A large Nigerian, he seemed a very pleasant man but Ellen dreaded being alone with him. At least, he seemed to be a very pleasant man but she couldn’t be sure because she didn’t understand a word he said. Yet he purported to teach English. Ellen had asked Mr Tudor about it but his answer had confused her.

“Oh I know he’s difficult to understand,” he’d said, “but that’s not why he’s here.” Suddenly coy, he’d explained. “Like me with our Welsh prisoners, he’s a good role model for the black inmates. We’re lucky to have a black teacher.”

Being a mere administrative assistant, and only eighteen at that, Ellen had thought it patronising in the extreme to employ a black teacher no-one could understand – both to Mr Ojibango himself, now sitting opposite and smiling his pleasant smile, and to the black inmates of Uppandown Prison. But she kept it to herself, she could be wrong. She returned his smile warmly then shuffled a sheaf of papers. She felt sorry for him until she remembered the fourteen pounds an hour.

It was Friday – ‘AIDS day’. A morning lecture on AIDS/ HIV to which all prisoners had right of access at least once during their sentence, and it was Robert’s task to provide it. Robert – ‘Call me Bobby’ - Nixon, forty, coming on twenty-five, gave Ellen his usual hug before adjusting his pony-tail. None of the other male teachers hugged her, she wouldn’t have liked it if they had, but with Robert it didn’t matter. There was an innocence about him, a naivety she couldn’t explain. Once she’d met him in town and, much to her consternation, he’d hugged her in front of boyfriend Alex. He’d even kissed her. Yet Alex had laughed! Usually, Alex -ultra-jealous Alex – would threaten to punch heads if another man so much as looked her way – yet he’d laughed. And Robert had kissed her on the mouth! It was Robert’s gift, she supposed, it must be, he was such a friendly man. Right now he was smiling at Mr Ojibango. But they’d never met, had they. One of Mr Ojibango’s lessons had been rescheduled and this was the first Fiday he’d ever worked at Uppandown so he and Robert had never been introduced. Ellen did so now and, after the men had shaken hands Robert joined Mr Ojibango by the office window. But something was wrong. They were still holding hands but Mr Ojibango had stopped smiling. Ellen didn’t understand men, not yet anyway, but she’d keep on trying, they couldn’t be all that much different, surely.

Tweet

Then a king was moved to send all his men,
all of his horses too,
so who was this Humpty-Dumpty?
Was he plotting a coup?
Was he pushed when he fell off the wall?
Did he survive or die?
Has there been an enquiry?
We English don’t like to pry.
But to me, the biggest conundrum of all,
(it’s a question that’s always been begged)
with no mention of how he looked in the text,
why is he portrayed as an egg?

And as for that Georgie-Porgie,
he was after more than kisses.
Pecks on the cheek weren’t on his agenda,
George was serial sex-offender.

Tweet

Boasting goes against our grain, our modesty’s innate,
but all that’s best’s from Yorkshire  so let’s set record straight.

Shakespeare came from Barnsley, Einstein came from ‘ull,
Mandela comes from Doncaster, as did Jethro Tull.
Attlee came from Batley, and, though not widely known,
King Ethelred were Ilkley-bred, so was Saint Joan.
Our Queen was born in Bradford, a fate determined by her dad
so she could bat for Yorkshire if she’d been born a lad.

And from the myriad calls to battle rousing men to prove their mettle,
as a rallying call there’s none to touch the Yorkshire war-cry, ‘How much?‘

The noblest lines in literature, in poetry or prose,
were all inspired by Yorkshire, by the sign of the white rose.
So, though I live in Lincoln (and couldn’t live elsewhere),
I hail from Yorkshire, I’m a Yorkshireman, so there.

Tweet

              Dandelion-and-burdock, lemonade, even medicines

              would be measured glass against glass.

              To each his equal share.

              Anything else would have been ‘not fair’.

             With sweets it was “One for you, one for me,”

             no need for a referee,

             and in our shared double bed

             encroachments were rare.

             “You’re on my side” would have been ‘not fair’.

             As children identically dressed,

             then, once we’d flown the nest,

             out there, in our wide Air Force blue yonder,

             brothers-in-arms in the same bright-buttoned uniform,

             again we would conform.

             But Death didn’t know the rules.

             Intruding into our lives one dark autumnal afternoon

             he took you away on a motorbike.

             We were only eighteen.

             He came too soon.

             And he had no sense of propriety.

             It should have been me.

             I was the first-born, fifteen minutes older than you,

             I’d taken more than my due.

             I am now sixty-nine

             and with fifty-one years (and fifteen minutes)

             longer than you already,

             the gulf of ‘not fairness’ widens year on year,

             as does a strange sense of self-reproach:

             the irrational guilt of the survivor.

             But I am an infidel

             (what else would I be?)

             so I can’t believe that when my time comes

             I’ll find you waiting with

             “It’s not fair, you had more than me!”

Tweet

Through the dispersal hut window I look out onto concrete where, fifty yards away, a Handley Page Victor SR2 is being prepared for take-off. Her crew-chief, not much more than a silhouette against the yellow glare of the sodium lamps, gives me the thumbs-up confirming her readiness to fly. I dial the Ops Centre to inform her crew but they’ve already left. It’s been a long detachment and they too are eager to be home. Walking out to the aircraft, I seek out my corporal to take his place on the seeing-off crew. He tries to dissuade me but I insist. ‘You did the pre-flight checks, Mike, go get yourself a drink.’

It’s Dawn Patrol time and two of RAF Tengah’s resident Lightnings taxi past. Both pilots wave, gloved hands green in the glow of their illuminated instrument panels. The paraffin smell of half-burnt Avtag hangs in the air. A twilight take-off by two Lightnings is the nearest thing to a space-launch, so along with the rest of the team, I climb on to the diesel generator for a better view. We’re not disappointed. The early morning peace is shattered as four after-burners are ignited simultaneously. An explosion of thunderous sound. Blue flaming daggers crackling and snarling from glowing jet-pipes. Seconds later, sitting on their plumes of fire, they’re vertical and disappearing fast into the apple-green, rapidly lightening sky. Our young engine mechanic laughs out loud. ‘Wake up, Singapore,’ he yells, ‘it’s reveille!’

The sun must have heard him. Like a soft pink balloon, it rears up over the distant trees and we’re suffused with roseate light. Hushed into awed silence, we watch its progress.

It’s fifteen minutes later and the captain, strapped in with the rest of the crew, runs through his check-list. The servicing chief, connected via intercomm, talks to him from outside. Electrics, instruments, avionics, all systems are go. Engine start is imminent. Armed with a fire-extinguisher, I move in closer.

But something’s amiss. Situated directly below the pressurised crew-compartment, the streamlined radome accommodates the radar scanner for the Navigation and Bombing System plus its transmitter and associated black boxes. I hear the familiar whine of the big rectangular dish as it rotates, but along with it, there’s another sound, a faint rhythmic clunk which shouldn’t be there. Something must be hanging loose. The crew-chief agrees.

‘Tell Nav Radar to switch off,’ I say.

He nods, speaks into his throat-mike and gives me the thumbs-up for the second time this morning. I take a torch and screwdriver from the tool board, open the access-panel and within seconds I’m in the radome. I was right: one of the four wire straps used to restrain the gimbals-mounted scanner platform during black box changes has snapped and is dangling within the orbit of the radar dish. The curved aluminium rectangle has been slapping against it twice each revolution.

But there’s something else. In the light from my torch I see a fine trickle of powder spilling down from the scanner mounting spider and when I direct the beam on to the grey radome floor, find it dusted with the same white substance. With four years on the Victor behind me, this is something new. Number one engine starts up, its howl bouncing from the concrete and in through the open hatch to reverberate around the radome. I curse the fact that I’ve left my ear-defenders on the tool-board but I need to examine this powder. Now the dish has stopped rotating, a small pile of it is growing on the radome floor. I take a pinch. It looks and feels like talcum-powder, but as number two engine is winding up and my nostrils are permeated by the perfume of unburnt Avtag, I can detect no smell. Numbers three and four light up now and, within these curved walls, the jet noise is beginning to hurt.

But my discomfort is suddenly forgotten. I know what the powder is. I’ve never seen it before, never had dealings with people who have, yet I just know! I slide under the scanner, directing the beam upwards as I do so and find a cardboard box taped to its frame. As though pierced by a knife, its underside is punctured. The cascading powder clings to the lens of my torch, softening its light. The hole puzzles me but on noting the jagged end of the broken restraining cable dangling under it, I can guess what’s happened. Still hooked up when the scanner was switched on, the thin cable had been snapped by the powerful, gyro-controlled pitch and roll motors and ten inches of sharp steel wire had been catapulted upwards to rip into the cardboard, puncturing the polythene bag inside.

On a squadron which operates overseas as much as ours does, with aircraft as big as the Victor, smuggling is deemed acceptable. We turn a blind eye to it, even the officers. It’s one of the perks. And with a box of King Edwards for my father stashed inside a piece of test equipment, a watch for my wife stowed in with the spares, I’m as guilty as the next man. But nobody touches drugs. It may be the swinging sixties but the RAF don’t do drugs. Nobody in the British military does, not yet, anyway. Especially heroin.

There are only two radar technicians on this detachment: Mike and me. This radome is our domain. No one else would know to strap up the scanner platform. But Mike is not just my subordinate, he’s a friend. Our wives are friends. They live in married-quarters not far from our own. So how’s my wife going to react if I turn him in? I think of the consequences: the investigation by RAF Police, the inevitable court-martial followed by years in a military prison, a dishonourable discharge at the end of his sentence. I don’t know whether jet noise is affecting my thought processes or if it’s the enormity of the decision I have to make, but right now I’m incapable of reaching it. Never have I been in such a quandary. Suddenly I’m angry. What the hell was he thinking about? How dare he put me into this position?

But the decision may not be mine to make. The noise level drops slightly and the radome darkens as the bulky figure of the crew-chief shuts out the concrete-reflected sun. He leans in through the hatch to shout over the whine of four Rolls Royce Conways. ‘What’s the problem?’ he yells, ‘The skipper’s getting impatient.’

But my mind is racing now. It would be so easy to tie up the broken strap, to pretend I haven’t seen the powder. It’s not as if any of it will be left by the time they get home. I could widen the hole to make sure. And the police won’t stop at the radome, they’ll open every panel on the aircraft, search it from nose to tail. Dad will lose his cigars, Sheila her watch.

But who are Mike’s suppliers? Drug dealers don’t play around. Will they believe it just blew away in the slipstream, was lost in the ether somewhere over the Indian Ocean? No, of course they won’t. I feel a sudden chill, even in this heat. I turn Mike in: he loses a career; I don’t: it could be his life. I now know what I have to do. There is no choice after all.

I turn to face the crew-chief. He lifts one of his head-phones and I shout into his exposed ear. ‘It’s worse than I thought,’ I say, ‘much worse.’ I make the cut engines sign: straightened fingers chopping across my throat. ‘Tell him to shut down.’
 

Singapore Sunrise

Tweet

                         hypochondriacal notions,

                         pustules, piles,

                         prescriptions, potions,

                         pills and epidermal lotions,

                         doctors’ visits, well-man check-ups,

                         flatulence and heartburn, hiccups.

                         Dishevelled clothing, three-day stubble,

                         to smarten-up’s just too much trouble.

                         No more the shout, “Make mine a double!”

                         this erstwhile sparkling wine has lost its bubbles.

                         Oh, he’d retrieve them if he could,

                         but they’re reserved for younger blood,

                         there’s no regaining champagne’s fizz,

                         so he accepts life as it is:

                         the golden days have gone for good,

                         this ennui is here to stay,

                        a one-time bold old dog has had his day.

Tweet

And kick him out, the brute

Rudyard Kipling

The vehicle’s new, in fact not quite finished, and you’re yet to see what it can do. You think the road ahead is clear. But it’s a high performer, it’s temperamental and you’re not quite au fait with the gears.

So it is with youth on its way to maturity. And leaving home to join the Air Force as I did at seventeen, there was no parent in the passenger seat advising me to slow down, no back-seat older siblings pointing the way.

Fresh out of training, I was posted to RAF Marham in Norfolk to help maintain radar equipment fitted to the Vickers Valiants stationed there at the time. Flight Sergeant George Tomkin, known as Tommy to his subordinates though not to his face, was my boss.

I’d enjoyed basic training. Having read my Kipling and Kersh, the days on the parade square, the spit and polish, none of it had come as a surprise, and as I’d expected to be screamed at from six inches away, the drill sergeant’s saliva spraying into my eyes – ‘STOPBLINKINGYOUORRIBLELITTLEMAN!’- neither was I intimidated by the NCO’s.

So, to me, Tommy’s bad temper was acceptable: he was a Flight Sergeant – it was his job to be angry. Why he was universally disliked by everyone else was a mystery. Anyway, once I’d learned he’d been taken prisoner in Singapore, had spent three years on the Burma Railway, I would have forgiven him anything. I was a young seventeen and, still retaining my schoolboy, eager-to-please attitude to those I respected, would defend his name against insult, find any excuse for his boorishness.

I was employed in a large electronics bay as half of a two-man team servicing radar scanners. Actually, it was a one-man-one-woman team because my partner was a corporal WRAF who allowed me, when Tommy was out of ear-shot, to call her Judy. All these years later, in my mind’s eye, I see her as a beautiful, raven-haired young woman of about twenty-three-or-four. At the time, she was an unassailable older woman, the goddess I worshipped unashamedly. She knew it, the whole squadron knew it. And so did Tommy. I remember the straining button-holes on her blue RAF shirt and the playful cuffing I’d get each time she caught me ogling. She must have recognised my juvenile lust, though I suspect she rather enjoyed it.

But we made a good team: she with her fitters-course training and experience, me with my youthful strength and dexterity. And my Grammar School education of course. Any paperwork: incident reporting, requisition letters, all of it came my way. So the quality of the work we turned out was always of the highest standard, a fact that Tommy was aware of as much as anybody.

However, in my self-appointed role as squadron jester, I suppose I must have been a bit of an irritant, always first with the ‘witty’ retort; anything for a laugh. But my fellow airmen enjoyed it, Judy too, though a finger would fly to her lips should I sail too close to the wind, should I take my eye off the road for a second too long.

I’d passed my Senior Aircraftsman exams and was promoted – bliss, Judy kissed me – so it was time for my fitters course. But before that came the lead-in: ten weeks of mathematics, physics and English at Number Two Radio School, Yatesbury. With my education, it was a ten week holiday. High on the Wiltshire Downs, I enjoyed the summer of 1960.

Back to Marham again, and Judy’s undisguised pleasure at finding me waiting for her that first morning pleased me more than I can say. Having done well on the course, gaining a pass with distinction, I was also looking forward to what Tommy had to say. When it came, it wasn’t what I’d hoped for.

Those early roads we travel may seem straight at the time, but they’re narrow and walled on both sides. At that age, you’re accident-prone. It might be the distraction of a pretty girl, your own face in the driving mirror or something as innocent as an unexpected sneeze. But at the speed at which you’re driving, scrape those walls and there’ll be bits left behind for sure. Those walls are old, established.

‘So you’re back, are you. Have you grown up while you’ve been away or are you still a little boy?

All those years ago yet I can still hear those last three words. Surrounded by my peers, with Judy at my side, never, before or since, have I felt so humiliated, so hurt. So this was how loyalty was repaid!

But he was right. I was still a boy; tears certainly pricked at my eyes, and the smile I’d had waiting for this man I’d liked and admired froze to a grimace on my lips. Nobody moved; only Judy spoke.‘Welcome back, Davy,’ she said, squeezing my shoulder, ‘come and tell me about the course.’

But I didn’t feel like talking so after a few questions she left me to my thoughts. Tommy, however, pleased with the pain he’d inflicted, wanted more. Loud and clear from his glass-panelled office, he observed several times that morning that the little boy was still sulking.

Superficial damage to a new car – it could be no more than a chip in the paintwork – is lamented far more keenly than it would be on an older model.

 I suppose, although I didn’t realise it at the time, that what hurt me most was his exposure of a fact I’d thought only I was aware of: I was still a boy. But at what age does manhood arrive? We all mature at different rates. And in our culture, there are no rites of passage.

 You may swerve back on line and continue along the road apparently undamaged. But the chassis may have been twisted, affecting the way it drives.

In fact, Tommy’s remark became my watershed; it changed me. Virtually overnight. No longer Jack-the-Lad, I stepped back from the lime-light, allowed others to entertain. I was never as care-free again.

It had positive effects too. In an attempt to prove to myself (and to Judy) that I really was a man, I started cross-country running. It takes a man to run in ankle-deep mud up a ploughed hill in February. Before that year was out, I was representing Bomber Command.

Did I seek vengeance? Yes, and it was sweet.

It’s a couple of weeks later, just before I go on my fitters course. A pal and I are on a cross-country training run along the banks of the River Nar and a couple of miles out we come across Tommy fishing. Away where all anglers go while watching their little red floats, he doesn’t see us. Upstream, finding a stack of grubbed-up blackthorn awaiting collection by the farmer, we tip it into the fast-flowing current then watch as Tommy tries, unsuccessfully, to save his rods and keep-nets from being dragged downstream. Still elated, we find his bike in the lane. We hurl it high and deep into the biggest briar and bramble patch you’ve ever seen.

Tommy had been right: I did have a lot of growing up to do.

Tommy

Tweet

‘Terremoto!’

But this is England. After years of repressed tectonic distortion, it’s Mother England who’s abandoning her maidenly restraint to bellow and buck in a quaking orgasm of relief. Why should the Spanish word for earthquake spring into my mind? I’m transported back thirty-eight years.

It’s 1970 and I’m a sergeant avionics technician serving on 543 Squadron, Royal Air Force, operating Victor SR2s out of Jorge Chavez International Airport, Lima, Peru. We’re spying on – sorry, monitoring – the French atmospheric nuclear weapons tests on Mururoa Atoll way out in the Pacific and sending the fusion debris collected back to AWRE Aldermaston for analysis. The operation is deemed ‘Secret’ (though how operating two camouflaged, one hundred and ten foot wingspan aircraft out of an international airport – aircraft which stream sixty-foot braking parachutes each time they land – can be kept secret is beyond any of us). If questioned, we are told to say we are working for the World Health Organisation. Nobody believes us, least of all the French whose ambassador greeted us on arrival with a bottle of champagne.

It’s the squadron’s second detachment to Peru, the first, two years earlier, memorable if only for the international incident caused when after ten long hours airborne, one of our Victors, short on fuel and highly radioactive, was forced to land in Chile after chasing a cloud of debris too far south. ‘BRITISH SPY-PLANE FORCED DOWN BY OUR FIGHTERS’ screamed the Santiago press. After two face-saving days it was allowed to return to Lima.

But it’s a quiet Sunday afternoon and we non-comms are spending a few relaxed hours in the foyer-cum-lounge of the ‘Hotel Riviera’ enjoying a cervesa or two and what few English language newspapers we can find. The officers are at the ‘Crillon’ half a mile distant. The date is May the thirty-first and, although Lima is but twelve degrees below the Equator, it is blanketed by cloud throughout its winter months. I suddenly feel cold; I need a jacket.

‘Ocho, pour favor’. Although the two young lift attendants exchange grins as its doors slide shut, I’m proud of my Spanish pronunciation and, eight floors up, with the key to my room in hand, I give them some more. ‘Una momente, OK?’ then dash along the corridor to return seconds later pulling on a jacket. The doors again slide shut.

The ‘Hotel Riviera’, or most of it, has thirteen storeys, its zenith five floors higher than the one at which the lift, like a giant pendulum, now hangs suspended. Suddenly, everything goes berserk. Yo-yo like, we’re bounced, battered and ground against the shaft walls, the din reverberating throughout the whole of its thirteen storeys. Debris cascades on to the fragile roof just feet above my head and as the word ‘earthquake’ has not yet entered my mind, when a much heavier object slams down on top of us, I imagine it’s the cable and that we’re plummeting earthwards. Seeing the lift boys down on their knees, their right hands a blur as they make the sign of the Cross, convinces me my time is up! But is it? Though I’m no Catholic, my knees are bending too – but for a different reason. Hope really does spring eternal! Do I honestly believe bent knees can cushion an eighty foot drop on to concrete? Then I look at the control panel; the floor numbers are counting down at their usual slow pace; we’re not plunging earthwards after all. My finger hits button number five as it lights up and moments later, we’re out of our animated steel box. But suspended on cables now extending eight storeys, its vigorous bouncing persists. Only now do I realise what’s happening.

The young lift-boys do too. ‘Terremoto!’ Wide-eyed, they mouth the word in unison. Silently. Just the one word.

In an earthquake zone all edifices more than six storeys high have to be built on concrete rafts. The thirteen-storey part of the Hotel Riviera complies with this regulation. Its six-storey extension, however, does not. Two buildings with a shared wall; one of them rocking to the rhythm of the earthquake, the other rigid and unyielding. And here, on the fifth floor, with daylight winking at me through a crack in the wall opposite, their junction is only too obvious. To my lay-man’s eye it would seem the bigger one is about to knock the smaller one down! Shouting to be heard, I tender yet more of my dreadful Spanish and, pointing to where we’re standing, yell ‘Peligro’ then, ‘Esquina’ before ushering them into what I think will be the safest corner. I detect no exchange of grins this time.

Records will state that the Great Peruvian Earthquake of 1970 lasts forty-five seconds. I do not believe that. It lasts an hour, at least. Or that’s how long it seems as I stand squeezed into a corner with two teenage lift attendants.

Without having lived through the experience, the power of an earthquake is truly beyond man’s imagination. I watch piles of plaster dust grow on the carpet as the crack in the wall lengthens vertically, I hear glass breaking and women screaming. And I wait for the inevitable collapse. Surely this building will fall! This was not meant to happen! This was not how my life was supposed to end! Surprisingly, I accept it. Although convinced I am about to die, the emotion I feel is disappointment more than fear. I think of my children nine thousand miles away; they’ll never see me again.

Forty-five seconds? No, I don’t believe it.

But as suddenly as it started it’s over. Instantly. No fade-out. It’s as though a switch has been thrown. All that mighty power turned off at the mains. The floor under my feet stops shaking and it’s so quiet I feel I’ve gone deaf. The relief is instant too. How long have I been holding my breath?

We’ve survived and, seeing the smiles on the faces of my two companions, I need to demonstrate my feelings. I sense they do too. We’ve shared a very special moment in our lives, one we will remember always. So what to do? They are very young, very junior members of staff; I am a patron of the hotel they serve. It’s up to me. But a mere handshake won’t do. In a very un-British display of emotion I extend my arms for a hug. Laughing, they respond enthusiastically.

The bar is five floors down and I need a drink. Do we use the lift? Is it still serviceable? We take a chance and, although our ride is attended by a discomforting clatter from mechanisms overhead, we make it to the ground floor safely.

With the hotel staff having deserted en masse, there’s no one at the reception desk and the lift-boys, no doubt following Standing Orders, join them outside. But there’s a party underway in the bar! With no barman on duty, my RAF comrades are helping themselves. I’m greeted by a huge cheer. But in discussing our respective experiences our voices are just that little bit too loud, our laughter more prolonged than it should be. There’s a hint of hysteria in the air.

And it’s not yet over. At a sudden after-shock, the standard lamps distributed around the lounge rock in unison, the one close to where I’m sitting almost toppling. Instant silence. Only one man moves: a young corporal rigger leaps to his feet and is half way to the door before the jeers of the rest of us stop him in his tracks. Sheepishly he returns to his seat.

Will it make the papers back home? What none of us realise yet is that our exciting, eight-point-one on the Richter scale earthquake experience has killed or will kill more than seventy-five thousand people, that three million others will be rendered homeless. We do not yet know that a natural dam high in the Cordilleras to the north of Lima has burst its banks after half a mountain slid into it, that the result is a drowned town, its adobe houses reverting back to mud. Twenty thousand of its inhabitants drowned in what were their own homes. Or do you suffocate in mud? The Peruvian government will allow no excavation at the site and the dead of the town of Yungay lie undisturbed still, a memorial to that tragic day.

So of course it makes the news back home, and in a few hours time, once every squadron member has been accounted for, police Landrovers will be broadcasting our survival throughout RAF Station Wyton’s married-quarters.

Over the next few days and despite television assurances to the contrary, Peruvians agitating against nuclear weapons-testing convince themselves that we are responsible for the earthquake – they think we’re French because of the ‘tricolor’ painted on our Victor tail fins (all RAF aircraft have them in 1970) and a protest march to the airport is planned. Only after Union Jacks are procured from the Embassy and prominently displayed can they be persuaded otherwise.

Despite world-wide protest, the French would continue testing their nuclear weapons on Muroroa so we were back in Lima the following year and again in 1974. With earth tremors common along the whole length of that western seaboard, I was to experience many more of them. On every occasion, just as in England on February 27^th 2008, it was the word ‘terremoto’ rather than ‘earthquake’ that sprang to mind.

Terremoto!

Tweet

A design fault falling short on technical support,
they’re repulsive little afterthoughts brought out late.
We’re supposed to have been wrought
in God’s image, so I thought,
I’d like to bet that He ain’t got none, mate!

‘Cos God’s a super-hero with special magic powers,
He never really needed ears Himself.
He’d created whisky-sours
on the day He gave us ours
and must have picked the wrong bits off the shelf.

Just imagine you had never even heard of ears before
and you saw some for the very first time;
you’d feel sorry for the bloke,
or think it was a joke,
or that it was a nightmare and high time that you awoke.

Once over your astonishment, you’d wish that you were dead
as you contemplate a lifetime of embarrassment ahead
when told those flaps of gristle
were real, not artificial
and you’d grown a pair yourself, one on each side of your head.

It’s a pity they’re so ugly (they’re even worse if you’ve played rugby)
and hurt like hell when caught by winter’s chill,
but to keep your glasses on
they’re quite simply sine qua non
and they’re somewhere to hang jewellery as well.

Tweet

         “our duty’s to expose them, their frailties and flaws.

         We cannot sanction heroes, there’s no such thing as heroes,

          we don’t have national heroes any more.

          Okay, we may destroy him, his marriage, his career

          with half-truths, innuendo, with fabricated smears,

          but we don’t yield to sentiment, to candour or finesse,

          Press Freedom can’t be fettered by fairness or largesse.

          The dignity of just one man concerns us even less.

          Reproach and accusations must fall on deafened ears

          when we weigh emancipation against a family’s tears.

         We’ll ferret out some secret, some old associates,

         there’s always plenty willing, they come to us, they just can’t wait.

         To get their noses in the trough even so-called friends will cough

         if we’re prepared to pay enough.”

         He’ll wake to banner headlines: -    ‘HOW HE BROKE MY HEART!’

         from some vicious, avaricious, little kiss-and-telling tart.

         They’re all well-versed in calumny but tabloids are the worst,

         they may not always tell the truth but they will print it first.

         They say, “You can’t have heroes, there’s no such thing as heroes,

         there’s no demand for heroes, it’s not nineteen forty-four,”

         then wonder why there’s no respect from youngsters any more.

Tweet