Aden: Thanks to my unknown readers

At the moment I have no more Aden material, and I would like to thank those of you who have followed me for all or part of the journey. Now I have finished everything and had time to reflect, here a re she musings arising from my Aden blogging.

Blogging on this website provides me as the blogger with statistics. Some are useful. Some are interesting, such as the ability to know where visitors to the blog have come from. This includes some ghastly search engines in Russia which are not really that. I wish I could eradicate these from my figures. 

Nevertheless, on the plus side I am flattered by the large number of visits from the UK, which is really my target audience as I imagine most people interested in my life in Aden would be there.

However, I am very curious about the handful of visits from the Yemen. Here's hoping the interest is from ordinary individuals like myself and not any state or commercial organisation. If it is anther "man in the street", whoever you are (singular or plural) thank you for being intrigued enough to visit my blog. I wish you and your country peace and stability, especially given the recent turmoil. If you are from Aden, then my wishes are more heartfelt still.

My nomadic childhood has left me with more than one place that I think of as "home". In the 50s I grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong, where being surrounded by ethnic Chinese and Malay was a normal everyday experience. On my first return visit to both places after 30 years absence I felt strangely at home. Its not easy to explain to somebody who grew up in the same place how normal it feels to go back somewhere and feel more comfortable as part of a minority of the population. Home is many places to me. Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Gloucester, Cottesmore are all my very early homes in my time of childhood and innocence. I have a bond with them all. 

I fear I have lost my opportunity to visit Aden, given the current political and religious turmoil in the world. I cannot adequately express how much I would love to see Ma'alla, Steamer Point, Elephant Bay, Crater and Khormaksar again and see how much has changed or stayed the same. Youtube has been useful, but not all the videos posted are very good. Too many of modern Aden are more about the persons in the video than the place, but such is the vanity of humans! 

I regret very much not returning to Aden before the recent religious divisions between Islam and the rest of the world surfaced. I feel my presence would not be welcome in certain parts of the world, but I do not mean that all Islamic countries are forbidding to me. For instance, when I was in Penang I felt most welcome by the locals I came in contact with. One abiding memory is of school children saying "Welcome to Malaysia" to us. I understand they would have been encouraged to do this, but a child's generosity of spirit is a precious gift, which more adults could do worse than try to rediscover within themselves. Given a less than happy previous experience in Kuala Lumpur, the people of Penang more than adequately made up for that experience.

However, after that digression I shall return to the topic of religious division. To me it feels as negative and pointless as the Protestant and Catholic divisions in European history, or the Christian behaviour of the Middle Ages which effected a superiority it did not deserve. Then the Arab or Moorish culture was far more advanced than the so-called Western civilisation. One only needs to visit Granada and see the palace of the Alhambra and the gardens of the Generalife to realise how more advanced that society was compared with the regressiveness of the regime of "los reyes catolicos". In my blog about Crater I commented on the Cisterns of Tawila. To this day I still think they are a marvel. I can still remember how awesome (I use that word not in its modern guise) it was as I walked around. You really need to be ignorant or blind to reason not to acknowledge the cleverness of mind and sophistication of a society that brought them into being.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and in my case, my absence from Aden has made me realise how lucky I have been to revisit Hong Kong and Singapore more than once. The memories I have of Aden are mainly positive, but the negative memories were due to the British presence outstaying its welcome. I am sure had I been a native of an occupied country my feelings would not have been too dissimilar. Whether I would express my displeasure I don't know. I thank my lucky stars I can express my opinions, which was not always an option open to the Adeni.

Aden: Random Memories 7: The Cinema

The cinema was still popular at this time. When we lived in Innsworth I went to the Astra to see films. I especially remember ‘The King and I’ and particularly the scene between the King and Anna as they dance. The rest of the film was not so memorable.

Well, we saw films as a family in Aden at both Astra cinemas, Steamer Point and Khormaksar. This was film going with a difference, we were in the open air. Enclosed by the cinema walls and the dark night sky above, the huge images projected onto the screen, this was unique movie going.

For Tom and Jerry cartoons, I was very good and sat up very straight! The night we saw the Hope and Crosby ‘Road to Hong Kong’ had me laughing until my sides ached. We went to see ‘South Pacific’, my mother had seen it on stage in London and loved it very much. I recall being bored rigid by it and not understanding why the colours in the film went all funny whenever people started singing. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful and didn’t say anything negative, but I felt better when my mother said she was very disappointed by the movie and Mitzi Gaynor was not as good as Mary Martin.

There were other movies, but most have made no lasting impression on me, and I am not intending to turn this into a critical review of cinema of that time for an ordinary child living in extraordinary circumstances. Only one other movie deserves mention, Flower Drum Song. We had lived in Singapore and Hong Kong before, and watching a film full of (supposedly) Chinese people came as no surprise to me. Perhaps, for the first time in my life I felt a nostalgic twinge (of course I didn’t realise that’s what it was at the time), and that home was not necessarily where everybody, or the vast majority, was white.

I have many places I think of as home to varying degrees such as Gloucester, Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Cottesmore and Stanmore. My brother, ten years my junior, sadly was never with us on an overseas posting, and although he too led a nomadic life, that was only in Britain. Like me he has an affinity with Gloucester and the rugby and takes great delight when Bath is soundly thrashed!

© 2012 Gwailo54