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 4: Joining Dad.

Some time later it was our turn to go, and unlike my father we would be flying! Before all that, well, when you went to a foreign country everything is not quite as it is at home. You must have an injection for this, and an injection for that, then there’s something else that needs, you guessed, another injection, until you think you’re a pin cushion for doctors and nurses. I was so glad when it was all over.

For some time home for us had been R.A.F. service married quarters, 25 Mottershead Drive, Innsworth, Gloucestershire. Leaving there is a bit of a blur. I know my mother had to do ‘the inventory’. It was something that always happened when I wasn’t around. I had always heard about ‘the inventory’, the counting of the spoons and that sort of thing. My mother was always tense as it got closer.

I imagine it went reasonably well, since we left Innsworth on the start of the long voyage to join my father. I know we took the train to London and got a taxi from Paddington but the driver took us to the wrong building. It should have been Victoria but he took us to Regent Street or maybe it was the other way round, I think. The taxi was one of those really old fashioned ones where there was a kind of cubby hole next to the driver where you would put your luggage. Despite going to the wrong London building, somehow or other we managed to get to the airport, Stansted. My mother told me the terminal was just tents, something that has been borne out in my researches. The plane however was was big and had jet engines, and we would be flying non-stop, so I knew it was modern. Flying direct over long distances was a novel experience. On the way to and from the Far East we apparently stopped off in many places such as Basra, Colombo, Calcutta, Rome. In the 1950s it took us a long weekend to get to Singapore.

Do I remember much about the flight? Only a bit. Mum pointed out the Swiss Alps, and told me when she was young, she and her sister Edna went on holiday down there before I was born. I have since retraced some of that holiday, and it is surprising how little some of the places have changed. I hope to post something about that in the future as well. Oh, and we had pea soup.

Kids being kids, the ‘are we nearly there yet?’ routine must have driven my mother to the edge of hysteria. I must have said it on more than one occasion. I also had new clothes to change into. They weren’t as heavy as those I was wearing when we left Innsworth. I had to change out of pullovers and long trousers into cotton summer shirts and shorts. Eventually we got there. I have seen a photograph of me running to my father after we had landed. In those days it seems the formalities of customs weren’t too rigid. Unless if you are a V.I.P. or a celebrity, I don’t suppose anybody gets welcomed on the tarmac as they get off a plane anywhere anymore. I don’t remember the heat, which must have been intense as Aden was generally 100˚F in the shade between sunrise and sunset. Seeing my father again at last after a very long separation was more important anything. 

Dad took us to our new home, 6 Cherry Buildings, Ma'alla (I have got this right in essence if not in detail). We were very close to the Stim factory (the local producer of carbonated drinks). A sight and sound that sticks in my memory is of crates full of bottles trundling along the rollers.

In the other direction on the same side of the street was a bank (I have stumbled across a photo of Maalla on the internet and discovered it was a Grindlays Bank, but I was convinced it was a Lloyds bank).

Across the road was the NAAFI and an Avon shop where my mother bought so many perfumes. I have a roll of film, in rather poor condition. One of the negatives is of my parent’s bedroom. On the dressing table (it sounds rather grand for something so plain, functional and unimpressive) stand various containers, a jar of vaseline, my father’s Old Spice after shave, Johnson’s baby talcum powder. I recognise the Avon bottles, I am sure my mother liked Topaz a lot. The shape of one of the bottles and of the top is unforgettable. The image is the fourth photo in this blog entry.

My own bedroom in the apartment was enormous in comparison to the tiny room I had had at Innsworth. Also there was a novelty waiting for me, an air conditioning unit. I don’t recall us having air conditioning in Hong Kong or Singapore, we just had ceiling fans. This particular unit was green and noisy. It also had a peculiar odour.

On the window ledge (it was much bigger than a sill!) were some brand new books waiting for my arrival. There was a Billy Bunter, which I didn’t really care for (sorry Dad) and Beatrix Potter’s The Fairy Caravan, which I did like. One of the characters was a guinea pig, and we had had guinea pigs back in Innsworth. I am sure there were other books. I can’t recall if The Wind in the Willows was one of them or if I got that later while we were in Aden, not that it matters much now, some 50 years later. It is peculiar to think that for me The Wind in the Willows and Aden are inextricably twinned, whereas that book conjures up a very English world.

Here I was, in my new home. Thoughts of family and England were set aside as quickly as night follows day in the tropics. Service children always seemed to adapt. We didn’t get homesick, and if we did, it didn’t last long. Aden was going to be home. Not forever, but then, forever is a long time, and two years is forever to a seven year old child.

© 2012 Gwailo54

Aden Old Photos 6: Me

There comes a point where one's past cannot be denied. Yes, I was a sweet fresh-faced kid. Yes, I was in the Cubs. Yes, we went to church. I imagine the Cub uniform was worn for a special reason. Anyhow, I think these photos of me in Cub uniform were taken outside the Church of the Rock which I think was Methodist and the priest was Padre Hurl (not sure of the spelling).

My parents tended to pick-and-mix when it came to religion, not that I am sure either of them were deeply religious.

These remaining photos are probably Christmas photos. On the first one (taken in our living/dining room), where I am wearing a strange straw hat, heaven knows why. Above my head I can see our old Christmas lights trailing down. We didn't have Christmas trees as far as I can remember. They weren't exactly growing in abundance in the area. I do remember the pyjamas I was wearing (isn't it amazing the rubbish information we retain?). They were blue or green or turquoise - somewhere in that colour range - and nothing like the heavy things I wore back in Britain. I am also wearing the Aden regulation flip flops all kids wore! The thong part between the toes and the lower part of the sole was only either red or blue. I don't remember any other colours. In the second photo my parents' bedroom is in an unusual state of upheaval. The largest box I am pretty sure was for my mother's Braun food user she got in Aden. It lasted her a very long time.

Stim

Is there anybody out there who remembers Stim?

When we lived in Aden, our flat was no distance from the Stim factory, but I don't think that got us any extra supplies! We lived on the same side of Ma'alla Strait as the factory. I think it was Cherry Buildings, I know it was number 6.

The Nomad

If there is one part of British society that seems not to have been made part of a so-called "reality" TV show, or mini-season tucked away on BBC4 it is the families that lived overseas as the Empire shrivelled and Britons were not so welcome in parts of the world.

One such place was Aden. BP families were in Little Aden, and the service families in Crater, Khormaksar, Ma'alla and Steamer Point (as we called in those days). In Ma'alla we lived almost cheek by jowl with the locals. We had the posh flats on Ma'alla Strait, they lived in the back streets.

Since the British were unceremoniously expelled from Aden, it seems little has happened to improve the lot of the native population. Of course they have enjoyed advances in modern society. So has everybody else to a greater or lesser extent. Since the British left Aden, it has been in the headlines for the wrong reasons. Like many other Britons, I am proud to say it once was home to me for a short time.