Sharks in the Runway E-Book

Paul W. J. Harding

• Herausgeber: Clink Street Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Captain Paul Harding moved with his family to the Bahamas when he was just twelve. He fell in love with his exotic new home immediately and this epic memoir pays tribute to his passion for island life, his ecclectic friends and family, and the extraordinary career he has forged from the sea and the skies. Paul became a qualified Charter Boat Captain and Open Water Scuba Instructor, founding the award winning day-trip diving company Diving Safaris, Ltd in 1976. In 1989 he followed this success by ordering a seaplane and learning how to fly; Safari Seaplanes has since become the stuff of Bahamian legend, flying people from all walks of life to sundrenched locations, including politicians and even superstars like Johnny Depp, who Paul counts as a close friend.  A diver, pilot, captain, husband, father and friend; Paul Harding is a superb storyteller whose tales of island adventures are sure to capture the imagination.

Leseprobe

Sharks in the Runway

A Seaplane Pilot’s Fifty-Year Journey Through Bahamian Times!

Paul W.J. Harding

Dedicated to my mother, Mary Harding, and all those true friends and loving partners who never wavered in their support and belief in me.

From Wings over the Rockies Doug Holgate, Aerial Director of Photography: Narrated by Harrison Ford.

‘You ever had a flying dream, I have. One of the first dreams as a kid was a flying dream. What is it that stirs our dreams in flight … what is that turns such dreams into reality?’ ~ ‘The air is our home, we were meant to fly. The dream of flight never stops. It burns inside longing to be realized; the dream becomes more than simply real, it becomes a way of life!’

‘You can find a place in aviation if you look, if you want, a place for your dreams. Aviation is 100 years old and it’s brand new. You can help take it into the future. It offers freedom and responsibility, they’re not just words. Join us. Flying is like good music it elevates the senses and the very experience of being alive!’

Contents

Title PageDedicationIntroduction  Chapter 1: ‘Way back then…’ Chapter 2: New Horizons. Chapter 3: The Bahamas Chapter 4: A Monster is Born Chapter 5: A Decade of Change Chapter 6: Pilot House to Powerboats Chapter 7: Good Morning: Underwater! Chapter 8: Death in the Afternoon Chapter 9: Here comes Betsy! Chapter 10: A Nightmare at Sea’ Chapter 11: Africa! Chapter 12: From Boy to Man Chapter 13: A Shift in the Wind Chapter 14: The Aussie Chapter 15: I have an idea …! Chapter 16: Once in a Lifetime! Chapter 17: ‘Hello Natalie!’ Chapter 18: Lights, Camera, Action … Chapter 19: ‘You ordered what …!!?’ Chapter 20: Winter Haven Traffic Chapter 21: Time to Get Wet Chapter 22: Career Change! Chapter 23: Safari Seaplanes Chapter 24: A Demon called Andrew Chapter 25: A Decade of Change Chapter 26: Tragedy and New Beginnings Chapter 27: A New Century! Chapter 28: New Era – New Plane Chapter 29: September Morn Chapter 30: The Crash of ’02 Chapter 31: Time to Get Out of the Water! Chapter 32: End Game  Copyright

Introduction:

Autobiographers leave us a gift, through pen and ink, a typewriter and now soft touch computer keys. We paint pictures with words spanning decades past, recording thin slivers of history depicting stories of a personal passage through time. My storytelling starts on shaky ground with my parents, and their families before them, rarely sharing their past; a generation locked in silence, denying most of us valuable first-hand history lessons, with a dysfunction to communicate our family tree is comparatively bare of branches.

I was completing some daily paperwork at Odyssey Aviation, my fixed base operation in Nassau one evening after a day’s flying, and enquired the date from the lovely young Bahamian lady behind the reception counter.

‘November 22nd, Mr. Harding,’ she politely replied.

‘Now that’s a day we will all remember,’ I expressed sombrely whilst completing an Arrival Report, her slightly quizzed expression showing no clue what I was referring to. I explained briefly the horrific historical moment in 1963 that our generation had witnessed some forty years past. Her expression still did not register anything; it was something she had maybe read about in a history book having not even been born yet.

This is far from any history book, rather an account of a young boy who landed on Bahamian shores in 1960 and the immense effect a beautiful country and its people had on him, while recalling some extraordinary world events that transpired through this time capsule, such as that awful day in Dallas. Many of the years had noted pages in our history, both tragic and inspirational often flashing past us at lightning speed, sometimes taking the very wind out of us emotionally. I have touched some topics in greater detail, as they were the stories that made a mark on the world and myself. There are important timelines overlooked, too many to record here. Some will remember exactly where you were when events mentioned actually happened, maybe others captivated at some of the additional details I found in researching this project? In fairness, some facts and details are not set in stone for absolute accuracy, although close enough to merit consideration. This writing is for readers who hold an appreciation and love of flying, nature, people, the ocean, and the outrageously adventurous way of life written by a man who ordered a brand-new seaplane having no clue how to even fly.

I describe how things were ‘back then’ compared to where I stand today, how an English boarding school educational system with the behaviours of its occupants in those early times, not comprehended by our parents yet accepted by society as ‘the norm’ back then, would today be labelled ‘abusive’. One sees the proverbial wheel of life constantly revolving within this story, taking a young English schoolboy’s journey of traveling through manhood to the present day, choosing to walk away from the chance of a higher education rather spending seventeen years ‘going down’ every day for a living, and the last twenty-three ‘going up’.

I have asked some of our island friends and legends to sit down and talk with me, feeling a compulsion to record their stories before we lose them. Some mentioned here we have already lost. To those who shared, I express a warm ‘thank you’ along with those who gave me the occasional nudge to press on recording my personal saga; that of ‘starting from scratch’ to making a name to be proud.

The journey has been one wild ride after another, yet I often considered some of it as nothing out of the ordinary. I have been labelled impulsive, whereas those who know me well have recognized calculation came first. I visited places never imagined as a boy sharing experiences for the most part only seen on film or in the pages we read. Living in these wonderful islands it all became just a part of life, another day in paradise. They tell me the journey I have travelled is ‘far from ordinary’ and in fairness, with a few recollections such as jumping out of airplanes, racing ocean powerboats, filming television shows in the Red Sea one week and the mountains of Utah the next, swimming in a three-mile deep ocean with a forty-foot whale and rammed face on by a very large shark to exploring the African bush, makes one reflect, ‘they may just be right’…

P.H. May 2009 Nassau, Bahamas.

Chapter 1

‘Way back then…’

In the blink of an eye something went horribly wrong with the aircraft. I barely had chance to finish a breath. Time froze in an instant. Racing over the choppy water my new seaplane rose effortlessly into the afternoon air. Take-off and landings are always exhilarating. For seaplane pilots, no two are alike: we incorporate that gifted skill learned and polished over countless hours in the cockpit, forever honing the quest for perfection. Without warning the right wing suddenly dropped perilously toward the water as if sucked downward by some mystical force, the plane instantaneously out of control. With over 10,000 hours of flight experience the next milliseconds would mean the difference in staying alive or not. It had taken fifty years to arrive at this moment.

I was convinced at an early age I had been born in the wrong place. Reflecting back to where my roots lay, my place of birth and family origins in England, everything is foreign to me. Nothing fits. Trying to remember places, old acquaintances, friends and events are somewhere in the fog of early childhood; recollection has not been practised. I endeavour to recreate my early beginnings, bringing to light my Bahamian home while sitting here at a desk in the English countryside where the journey started back in 1960, having no clue the wheel of life would travel full circle. I think it worth recollecting our youth, for it is here where foundations are laid influencing the paths we chose and the decisions made in later life. Bahamian readers and those with similar journeys may well share many of the times I speak of. A friend and fellow writer recently gave a fairly forceful tug at my memory over dinner; suggesting I tell stories of my very early youth, before age twelve she insisted, and asking was I ‘a pretty baby?’ I laughed in reply, explaining there is so little remembered about the first years hardly deeming it interesting and of course I was pretty! There are minute flashes from very early days as in a dreadful illness from food poisoning after consuming some war rations, food still available to consumers after World War Two. I was just a little fellow when I awoke my mother violently vomiting in the night.

In 1954, fourteen years of rationing in Britain ended, restrictions imposed on food, petrol, clothing and even soap. I was the ripe old age of six.

Scant memories return slowly as I write this English December morning. My partner asking out of the blue today, ‘What Christmas’s do you remember first?’ while we laze in bed sipping the steaming rich morning coffee, watching the bird feeder outside awash in activity. ‘Good question,’ I respond, racking my brain to bring the memory out of the misty ethers. I do recall awakening early one morning aware of an unusual weight on the bed covers above my feet. Secretly cracking one eye slightly open, to discover Santa had not left all the packages under the tree, instead a small heap of Christmas presents sprawled over the base of my bed weighing down the blanket. Lots of lovely red wrapping paper tied with ribbon! What toys I received memory has long faded, save a gift from Dad; a fabulous leather cowboy holster set, nicely studded with two matching silver pistols. Playing outside that holiday morning and leaving them hanging on a branch during a lunch break, returning to find the guns stolen. A mortified little boy left only with empty belt and holster. No self-respecting cowboy would walk the streets without guns.

I recall having two friends, sons of my parent’s acquaintances, the same age as myself, being wheeled around as babies in those ghastly old fashioned black-hooded prams our mothers had owned with the large spoke wheels pushing us shopping down Camberley High Street with those unsightly scarfs over their hair, and later down our road a cute little girl I liked called June.

The year 1954 holds another recollection, being taken by my father to my first air show at Farnborough watching the introduction of the Britain’s first vertical take-off craft, called ‘The Flying Bedstead’. A strange metal-framed creation right out of an HG Wells story, that roared off the ground vertically not requiring any runway, gathering data for the upcoming ‘Harrier Project’. The machine left little margin for error, none if one of its two engines had failed. Both Bedsteads built did however crash, one fatally, influencing the Harrier jets production to adopt a different lift system altogether.

Our family belonged to a generation all too frugal in sharing family history neither parent sitting us down to tell their stories leading the way to where I entered their lives. I feel cheated from their silence. Where did they go to school, what was life like for them, I knew nothing of their childhood, their families and fun stuff such as ‘where they went on holiday?’ So many questions; theirs were times of ‘stiff upper lip’ and ‘children being seen, not heard’. Every now and again a small slice of their lives, a morsel of scandal, would surface in conversation, leaving blank pages, void of ink touching paper. Later in life piecing people and information together, I figured out why certain things happened and the influence they had on my life’s journey.

This upbringing led me share the guilt having not pursued my family tree as a youngster although quite improper at the time to even inquire. I was a shy young boy not versed in outgoing skills, known unsurprisingly to be more an introvert. My grandparents were the real source of information in the early days having lived with them in Sussex during my years at boarding school. I had made up my mind years ago upon having a child of my own, I would tell the whole story, no more silence.

My father was born December 21 in a small village of Upper Poppleton in the north of England near the ancient and beautiful walled city of York in 1925. His father, Harold was known as ‘The Major’ from his rank in the British Army; I learned early he was not a well-liked man by most who knew him; an impersonal, arrogant character imposing strict behaviour on all. I saw him only once as a very elderly gentleman, never learning of his personal history other than he was married to my grandmother Edna. That one visit to Yorkshire where my father never formally introduced his son to him or the elder great grandfather seated next to him; simply instructed to seat myself at the far end of the room and be quiet. I refer to Edna as I did my own mother, affectionately calling her ‘The Last of the British Empire’. Her speech and mannerisms shaped in perfect English diction and the little finger held aloft correctly while sipping from a teacup. Edna eventually left the likes of the Major, separating to elope with an employee of the British Civil Service, by the name of Jorge Dean. I called him Nanpa as a youngster, a grandfather to love and respect. A fairly small framed man with fringes of white hair bordering his tanned baldness. A neatly trimmed thin matching moustache suited his generous smile perfectly. His quiet and polished nature I admired while he adored the very ground my grandmother stood on. Again, with that silent generation, I never knew anything of Jorge’s background or even where in England he was born; nothing of his life and little of his career. I ask how this could possibly have slipped my curiosity as a youngster toward a man that I became close to? A valuable lesson for our children and grandchildren: ask questions to know whence you came?

The Major refused divorce as a totally unacceptable practice in those early English days, Edna eventually changed her name to Jorge’s surname by deed poll in the English press. She and her new love lived some of their early life in Madrid, grasping quickly, as an astute chef in her own right, the art of Spanish cooking. They moved back to England and lived outside Camberley in the county of Surrey. Their modest home called, ‘White Lodge’, lay off the main London Road, a picture-perfect stone cottage backed by open undulating grass land, before reaching a small forest of silver birches and giant oaks where foxes burrowed and our dogs went hunting; Pedro, the grumpy male Alsatian with our soft natured Golden Labrador called Penny; the constant explorer and bad influence to often go astray, sometimes days at a time. When Jorge retired from the Civil Service they moved to the neighbouring county of Sussex, purchasing a lovely old thatched cottage, once the saddle room to a group of farmhouses built over 400 years ago. Here they opened a boarding kennel for dogs as their retirement project, calling it ‘Deanwood Kennels’. During half term breaks I stayed with them, some mornings making tea and serving them on a small tray. I would tap gently on their black wooden bedroom door before entering, balancing the tray while lifting the old latch to see them cuddled up to each other in that small double bed. I always admired how they loved each other even in age.

After my schooling, and leaving England for the last time, I learned they finally retired from work and moved back to the warmer climate of Malta to aid their health. She and Jorge loved each other until he died suddenly of heart failure in his garden while his wife prepared afternoon tea. I could easily imagine the scene of her returning to the garden; dropping the tray on the grass to cradle the love of her life as his small body grew cold; a very sad scene to imagine. I had lost track of them in the latter years because of my own family’s dysfunction when I was twenty-one. A letter arrived in Nassau one day and I recognised Nana’s writing. Slitting open the envelope, a small black and white passport picture of Jorge fell to the floor. I knew the content before reading. I regret to this day not writing to them having left England, never finding out what happened to my grandmother. Careless behaviour quietly haunting me through all my years; reports trickled in time from overseas that my father had placed his mother in a nursing home, where she later must have died.

My mother was also from Yorkshire and lived in the village of Easingwold, born in the same month as her husband, December 5 1920. Her parents James and Faith Hood owned a small a pig farm. James, a big man, always wore the same tattered brown suede hat, thick plastic framed glasses with faded Levi overalls, suspenders, with baggy beige corduroy trousers tucked in the classic dirty green Wellington boots. This family’s history has some shady parts, with suggestion of James leaving his wife and marrying his cousin? ‘Shame and scandal in the family’ became a fun title to a familiar island calypso tune heard later in life after leaving England. James used to take me out back to see the pigs. I loved all animals right from the very first visit and there was nothing wrong in my mind with the way pigs smelled. As we approached the pens, wet concrete floors covered in fresh well-trodden pig poop, I would reach through the cold metal railings and pet the inquisitive pink runny noses that jostled through the openings to see if there was anything to eat. They pushed and shoved each other with their huge pink steaming bodies, the familiar grunting noise growing to a frenzied squealing at feed time climaxed with a deafening crescendo. James’s wife, Faith Hood, was the demure, almost speechless lady who drifted quietly around the house like a small silent phantom in her faded pinafore completing her wifely duties. She made the most amazing gravy for the Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, a recipe that she would never part with. I may have laid eyes on each of my Yorkshire families less than a hand full of times in my life barely understanding the thick north-country accent sounding a different language altogether.

The Hood’s daughter Mary grew up to become runner-up in the Miss York Beauty Pageant in her early twenties. She had a brother Cuthbert and another called Peter; a stepbrother, whose freckles and mop of red hair betrayed no resemblance to the rest of the family, a mystery that was taboo to mention. I met Peter maybe a couple of times and remember only a ride on his big motorcycle one night to pick up fresh fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, giving a mouth-watering aroma of salt and vinegar seeping an oily wetness through the print. Mary was considered a really beautiful lady with a wonderful wit. She married John Charles Harding, September 14 1946 when he was just twenty years old, keeping the secret of being the ‘older woman’ by five years, until the day she died. Mary Hood, much to the disapproval of her father, shared a flat in the cathedral city with her best friend Hilda. The two girls lived quite the life as vivacious singles within the ancient walled city and cobbled streets. I remember faded black and white pictures of my young parents driving a classic old black Daimler car. Father in double breasted pin-striped suit and felt hat with a straight pipe held firmly between his teeth; one foot proudly posing on the running board of the classic car. They never gave me any of the old photos. Their years and experiences together were not ever disclosed to me. I was born on March 5 1948 in the small village of Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire, just north of London. I can only put this location being where my father was working at the time training as a flight engineer based at Radlett with Handley Page.

My only contact with this past is my cousin Veronica, who I discovered and stay in touch with thanks to the creation of social media on our computers. Faded black and white photos found in my mother’s belongings show we held each other close as small children, only to meet some forty years later on their holiday to Nassau. All I can remember of those early years was living in the south of England, first in Surrey and then Sussex: once a year taken on ‘the family visit’ by car to the north-country about 200 miles away. Without today’s highways it was a dreadful journey through winding country roads, taking hours making me deathly carsick. ‘Corner House’ in the village of Upper Poppleton was the destination, being my father’s family home. It was something out of a Stephen King novel; heavy dark wood furnishings with musty antique Asian carpets and insufficient lighting, rooms with low black-beamed ceilings enough to scare the living daylights out of me. Narrow shafts of sunlight beamed through the small lead framed windows showing a powdered mist of dust in their whiteness. The house was built of flint cobblestones and oak beams as far as I can remember with a beautiful garden of lawns and flowerbeds bearing lupines and roses around the perimeter; the old hand-pushed lawn mower leaving perfectly straight stripes on the manicured grass. Inside I was instructed to be seated in the far rear corner and not make a sound; outside was my escape. The slow and steady dominating tick-tock of the antique grandfather clock standing in one corner breaking the silence of that drab stale room, the chimes suddenly so loud one would nearly jump out of your skin. A polar bear rug centred the room, thick cream-coloured fur and dark lifeless black glass eyes in the massive stuffed head watching every move you dare make. Great-Grandfather Wilson’s chair to the right of the fireplace and ‘Uncle’ Harold seated stiffly to the left sucking deeply on his curved pipe; their crumpled slouching old bodies consumed by the ageing Victorian chairs they sat in. Auntie Phil, a withered frail lady with bent posture topped with swept back wizened grey hair, tied in a knot behind her head looking like the old lady in Hitchcock’s Psycho, always appearing from nowhere tea tray in hand, the ever-present cigarette hanging from one corner of her mouth. The rising drift of blue smoke giving her wheezing cough that seemed to go on forever as she talked with phlegm filled husky voice. The two old gentlemen sat as if museum pieces, motionless in the blue haze at the end of the room appearing frozen in time. I knew absolutely nothing of who they were or about their life; they barely spoke and never directly looked at me or acknowledged my presence. The scene is imprinted on my mind as an antique faded sepia photograph. Rumour had it that my Great-Grandfather was one of the first paddle wheel Captains to cross the Atlantic; accounting maybe for the ocean in my genes that would come calling to me a few years from now. The news of each of the elderly men’s’ death would never be announced, they simply slid quietly out of my life as the phantoms they were.

As I write these lines I watch recollections on the CBS Evening News about the ‘Lion of the US Senate’, the late Edward Kennedy, who died yesterday at the age of seventy-seven of brain cancer. A huge slice of recent history now past with the last of the three brothers leaving us. This American dynasty would weave their way through this story as they did with all of us in my generation. America’s equivalent to our ‘Royal Family’. Edward Kennedy had a wonderful quote about the sea saying: ‘It was truly life’s metaphor of which we could always learn its lessons; the sudden storms that arise, the unforeseen disasters, and then the beautiful calm waters that we all enjoy’.

Early life in England was a very lonely childhood with few friends; a childhood without family holidays to leave an imprint of something fun to remember. It is a time that does not leave welcome flavour in my soul. On reflection, I wonder what actual part I played in the lives of my parents? The first grammar school was a nightmare, the beginning of an awful education experience. I hated school from the very first day. Edwardian design red brick buildings with small windows and a bare concrete courtyard fenced all around with black wrought iron gates. Teachers who forced little kids to drink the small bottles of milk during ‘break-time’; delivered first thing in the morning nicely chilled, now well warmed in the mid-morning sunshine to sour quickly. I discovered quickly ‘herding’ did not sit with my psyche well. I rebelled on the spot when someone said I ‘had to do something’. An introverted loner felt a comfortable title to wear. This characteristic plagued me all through my education from the very first school days all through college. In retrospect, I considered it a reward having aided in my self-protection, but the lessons did not come easily. School in those early years was a very cruel world to live in. It was dog eat dog all the time. The aggressive and arrogant came to the forefront of everything. Children for the most part were very mean to each other, especially boys. Small in frame and quiet in nature I did not fare well with those who needed to mark their territory by fist or foul word. Later, way too late, in the last schools I attended, I finally found out how to draw that ‘line in the sand’. Those who crossed it from then on would have done well to retreat, for I held nothing back in retaliation. All those years of pent up frustration being the ‘lesser being’ came bellowing outward. They had come at me incessantly, often beating me to submission, but eventually I learned how to out manoeuvre my foe. Schoolboys I discovered were downright cruel and often belonged in an institution. If only my father had taught me the art of self-defence or explained simply that one strong act of aggression usually stops them in their tracks to rethink what this puny little bastard might do next; bullies are cowards at heart. Father went through this trial as a small boy being sent away at early age to Rugby boarding school: why the hell do parents pass this insane ritual on to their children?

All those years of frustration finally taught me how to stand up to absolutely anything thrown my way. Maybe those early days did bring some value after all? If I did not win the battle, knowing that I was right in principle, I would eventually win the war. This proof came repeatedly in later life dealing first hand with the local justice system. In today’s time the headlines in both American and English press show concern about the dramatic effects of bullying; kids these days are dying as a result, either by their tormentors or worse at their own hand, not able to cope with the disastrous pressures placed upon them, not just in England or America, a worldwide dilemma. Bullying can race across the internet instantly; children these days have no escape. Puny kids, considered the geeks and the weaklings, arm themselves with their parents’ firearms taking revenge with unimaginable horror. Children and teachers have been slaughtered in the hallways and classrooms of their schools bearing names such as ‘Columbine’. While editing this writing in 2014, a fifteen-year old just stabbed his sixty-five-year-old teacher to death in an English classroom. The epidemic is everywhere raising heated debate about America’s Second Amendment. After massacres in Australia guns were banned slowing the killings to a trickle. In contrast, it possible to walk into an American gun store on passing background checks to purchase an assault rifle firing 13.3 rounds a second or 800 rounds a minute! I think the Founding Fathers, writing their Constitution during the 1700s, in the days of musket ball weapons, would turn in their graves knowing how modern technology can kill so efficiently; it was after all named an Amendment so those of us on the outside often wonder why it could not be ‘amended’ into the twenty-first century?

My father, like most of his era, prophesied that boarding school would ‘make me a man’ as it had been done to him at an even earlier age than he imposed on me. He was right in some sense but at what expense? Before passing this crappy experience to his son in July of 1960, my father worked for Handley Page Aircraft Corporation flying the very secretive high altitude Victor Bomber. I saw a very handsome portrait photo of him in a space suit holding his helmet in his lap, struck immediately with the desire of aviation as a second career choice following veterinarian medicine. The latter proving above my educational ability with high level passes in mathematics required for entry to University; math and my brain did not fare well together. Father was a very meticulous man seeming to have little interest in children. I outgrew him in height eventually but he of better build, gifted technically artistic, enabling the supervision of aircraft hangars at the airport to designing and building his own motorboat in our garden on William Street.

‘Love’ was not a word ever mentioned between us. During eight years of boarding school he wrote three letters to me, only one ever signed ‘Love Dad’ the other two signed ‘John’, a twelve-year-old boy had a difficult time understanding that one. Only my mother religiously wrote weekly, the fold up, light blue paper, pre-stamped air letters on hearing my name ‘Harding!’ shouted in ‘mail call’. Recollections of my father before being sent away to school are scant. I saw him one week each month in between flights to Singapore that consumed the other three. Taking me to see the air shows at Farnborough always were a highlight. Memory retains the tragic crashes of new production fighter jets screaming in front of the crowd; one ploughing with black smoke and flames in to the stands of spectators. The de Havilland 110 losing a section of its tail assembly sending it careening to one side spreading death into a crowd. Air Show regulations changed drastically after this with no major incidents until just last week, August 2015, where a classic Hawker Hunter failed to pull out of a loop, tragically crashing on to the A27 road alongside the Shoreham Air show killing eleven people. The pilot had just flown past me as I walked the South Downs that beautiful afternoon.

Driving close to the Farnborough hangars one day staring out of my car window I asked my father, ‘Dad what’s that jet was doing?’ as it climbed vertically right alongside us.

The canopy suddenly exploded away and the pilot ejected in front of my eyes.

‘Holy shit!’ Dad exclaimed swerving off the road as the jet fighter reached the end of its thrust to pivot over and fall vertically downward. The pilot had marked his emergency climb perfectly with the airplane exploding in to a fireball impressively between two large occupied hangars as his parachute drifted effortlessly to Earth in a field some hundred yards away. Aviation was making a strong impression on a father’s young son.

My grandparents moved to live in the next county south of us. Sussex was a beautiful county with lush green pastures, rolling curves of the South Downs and small country lanes that weaved their way through thick woods and open fields to find the small thatched English village of North Bersted. The Royal Oak Pub, just outside Bognor Regis, lay in the middle of the road intersection. Westward by a few miles, the equally beautiful cathedral city of Chichester, and to the east a small country lane led into the old village itself. Dating back over 400 years, the quaint cluster of thatched-roofed cottages used to make up a complete farm estate. My grandparents purchased ‘Grey Thatch’ which used to be the saddle room for all the horse tack. The front door caught me about shoulder high having to stoop extremely low to enter, populations four centuries ago were a lot shorter. Constructed from flint, one could not drive a nail into the wall; the black gnarled oak beams acted as main structural supports with each tiny room holding its own special memories.

The only downside I recollect being the nasty smell of boiling tripe that Edna cooked faithfully for all the boarding dogs every morning in a large cast-iron pot on top of the very small gas stove. I became very attached to this property; warm memories of England as the old estate became my escape from the curses of school. I would learn almost every breed of dog during my visits there developing an uncanny bond. Since I can remember I possessed a special communication with all animals from dogs to horses. I relished holding the muzzle of a huge horse to feel their silky muzzle against my face, inhaling their very breath and smiling into those fabulous large eyes. The only animal that curled his lip at me in annoyance was my grandparents Alsatian, Pedro, not warming to little people as did a nasty old potcake, native term for a well-mixed breed, that removed a piece of my earlobe on my offering close affection during early years in Nassau.

In Camberley, Surrey, an epitome of ugly English suburbia, my earliest recollection of a very large block of flats, called ‘Dullater’ I believe. The complex occupied a sprawling acreage with sweeping lawns that led down to a cluster of silver birch trees in the rear of the property. I recall wonderful moments alone with our Golden Labrador, Penny, lying with me on the smooth lawns under the silver birches watching the wind blow through the branches above us. The main London Road passed to the north, not far away the Army Training College Sandhurst, where one could walk through the grounds and around the lake. Sandhurst offered scenic relief to the rows of red brick semi-detached housing I detested living in. Immaculate black cannons mounted on wheel gun carriages stood elegantly on the manicured lawns guarding the main army buildings. Platoons of brown-clad uniforms and gleaming black boots, the cadets marched in unison on their parade ground to the yelling of a sergeant major, changing direction perfectly like a flock of birds. Our flat was small and memory will not be able to describe accurately. I do remember my father bringing home this tiny box that slowly came alive with a black and white picture he called a ‘television’. In 1953 we watched a fuzzy picture, the young Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation on a screen about twelve inches in diameter. I am editing today watching the celebrations of Her Majesty’s ninetieth birthday! Father designed a modern new home for us to live in, a vast improvement to our small flat, calling it ‘Oakwood Rigg’, a name my mother and I could not figure out, was short lived in. No sooner becoming acclimated it was moving day again. Father was one of those who did not believe in debt or mortgage; everything was ‘bought and paid for’. I imagine he must have been presented an offer unable to be refused, for shortly our new home was gone. He was in a flying career as a Flight Engineer aboard Hermes passenger planes on the routes to East Asia taking over three weeks at a time to complete the long journey round trip. My mother and I were alone for many months a year, with him returning intermittently with small collections from all over the world to be displayed in the ugly semi-detached terraced house on Gordon Avenue being our last home in the UK. The back garden long and skinny quite characterless, neither parent displaying any interest in gardening skills. The railway track adorned the end of the property; British suburbia at its finest instilled a strong distaste to this day. The small villages of Sussex however, another story; their small winding lanes and gorgeous character cottages boasting vast arrays of flowers and trees always enchanted me as a place to comfortably live, little did I know the cost of such real estate! I attended day school while father was away and life clicked by providing little recollection of any noted experiences; days dragged into weeks and months; time was sluggish back then. Up to the age of twelve our family did not take a single holiday together, missing chances that could have exposed me to the stunning vistas of South West England and beautiful beaches of Cornwall. One day while home my father announced surprisingly a recent family decision that would drastically change our lives forever.

Chapter 2

New Horizons.

My father laid a world map on the dining table. His finger travelled away from the United Kingdom across the Atlantic to the east coast of America, downward to the State of Florida and south-eastward to a small group of islands named the Bahamas. My mother’s expressions were not of joy. Quietly in anticipation we listened to the story of how my father had been offered a three-year contract as a flight engineer with a small subsidiary of BOAC called Bahamas Airways. Our lives were to take an immense change if he were to accept. In an unusual move, he involved us all in the decision making although in hindsight I knew his decision already made. There was talk of selling or renting the house, giving our dog to my grandparents and the big cruncher of me having to enter an English boarding school. My mother was not a happy lady, her secure little world of home, child, dog and friends all to be traded for life on some foreign island twenty-one miles long and seven wide, a long way from her homeland. The decision was offered to us but stark reality being our duty to follow my father’s wishes being breadwinner of the family. He was to leave for Nassau, the capital city, in the spring and find a new home for us to live while launching his new career. My mother was to send me off to boarding school and then pack all of our worldly possessions and join him in the islands.

My grandparents thought the idea was a wonderful opportunity having been world travellers themselves also working abroad, swaying my mother into believing that her son would be well cared for in Sussex during the holidays too short for me to travel to the Bahamas for visits. The dog was more than welcome to live with them at ‘Deanwood Kennels’ where a Labrador could run through acres of grounds freely at will. Jorge had retired from the Civil Service, his days of commuting up to London every day on the train now over; the umbrella, black bowler hat and pinstriped three-piece suit stored in a closet. The question lay in where was their grandson going to be sent to school? My parents showed me pictures of this towering house on a hill overlooking a body of water in the south of England called the Solent. The house was King James the First School on the Isle of Wight. To get to this place meant a train journey from London to Portsmouth and then a ferry ride across to the Isle. Irony had this island just off the south coast home to the most secure penitentiary in the United Kingdom called Parkhurst Prison, an appropriate analogy that played through my school career.

It must have been after the Easter Term of 1960 my mother escorted me to London’s Victoria Railway Station. The huge iron domed ceilings, wide notice boards with revolving letters that changed every few seconds indicating train departures and arrivals. Rows of steam locomotives with carriages as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of people milled around the huge train station, outside red London buses mixed with the black city taxis streaming in and out of the entrance-ways. It was very noisy. Whistles blowing, doors slamming and belches of steam from the locomotives echoed through the massive structure. People milled in different directions like ants, no one made eye contact. Suitcases and clothing trunks having no wheels in those days were dragged across the concrete leaving scratch mark trails. I had never seen a major train station before in my life. Many of the children were boys all dressed in the similar suit that I was now wearing, the uniform of King James the First. This is where the school had told us to meet and congregate. I felt as if being herded as cattle, eyes wide and sense of foreboding. I said nothing while shoved in one direction then another. Feeling utterly bewildered, with my head darting in all directions trying to comprehend the chaos, my mother’s hand firmly guiding in the small of my back. The enormous locomotive located at the front of my train, this mass of steel and wheel coated with armour, bellowing white steam from its undersides, as if an impatient steed wanting to bolt from its paddock. Doors were opening and closing as fast as I could comprehend, the latches making a loud bang on closing. A whistle blew very close by with a conductor dressed in black uniform holding his arm upward.