Bonfires
Bonfires have always held a fascination for me. The lighting, the re-lighting, the coaxing and stoking, the sheer excitement of being in complete control. Lovely.
We had one a couple of years ago. I was in my armchair at the time and control was not quite complete.
I was watching the one-o’clock News and eating cheese and dry biscuits. The news was tedious. Real life is so much more exciting.
Like the thin coil of black smoke rising from the top of the set. Now, that was news and reasonably exciting.
I was alone in the house. My wife was on the bus to the city to do shopping. I wrenched the mains plug from its socket and spent perhaps one minute in trying the instinctive ways of putting fires out but to little effect, abandoned them and concentrated on the now obvious solution: getting the set outside.
Smoke does so get in your eyes. Black carbon-rich smoke from fired-up plastic is a great tear-generator. But worse was the weight of this set. It was an old cathode ray tube type and, having got hold of the thing and started lifting, I knew within seconds that gravity was winning fast. I dropped it on the stone hearth, grabbed the phone and called the Fire chaps.
The smoke was now accompanied by small drips of flaming plastic; our pale beige carpet welcomed them and joined the party. As I ran outside I noticed that the bottom of one long curtain was well alight. Once outside and across the road I could see the thick column of black smoke rising vertically from the house and words like ‘demolition’ and ‘reconstruction’ floated across my vision.
The Fire Service arrived unbelievably quickly and its crew found me sitting on a neighbour’s low front-garden wall and being served sweet tea by the owner.
There was a charming interlude as the fire was being dealt with. Two ambulances drew up. The driver of the first one checked that I was unharmed, and left. But the other said, almost apologetically, that he had been on his way back to base after attending a little plane crash over the hill. He had heard the alarm and had just popped round to see if he could help.
They’re like that round here.
It was six months before we could return to the house. Rebuilding work had been done, with complete redecoration and refurnishing. With our daughter helping enormously and the whole family rallying round, the entire operation was handled brilliantly by my wife. Me, I tried to look helpful.
In the evening of the day it happened Barbara said, ‘You know what today is, don't you.'
I shook my head. Barbara usually knows these things.
'It was ten years ago today that we moved in.'
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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010
Simple pleasures
Unless you happen to know about the Film Studios there, you’ve probably never heard of the place called Elstree.
It’s a village 15 miles or so north-west of central London. When I knew it in the 1930s it was a truly rural, countryside area, chiefly a place of narrow, twisty lanes edged by tall hedgerows. Today its lanes are still edged with high hedges and you can imagine yourself in deepest rural England. But much building of housing estates has gone on and the hedges today can hide a multitude of bricks and mortar.
Only five miles from our house in Bushey its airfield was the ideal Saturday afternoon bike-ride for a schoolfriend and me. And by ‘airfield’ I mean an actual field with one short landing strip, a well-rolled and hardened strip of level soil. Dotted about were a few sheds acting as hangars.
Within shouting distance there was another attraction, Elstree Reservoir, a wide stretch of water edged by trees and grassland. Small sailing craft and rowing dinghies were always there, in fine weather and foul, with men calling themselves ‘skippers’ and frequently proving themselves to be quite otherwise.
But the reservoir was not for us, in spite of its many attractions for small boys like the deliciously muddy banks and shallow water that made it ideal for sailing one’s model yacht. Compared with dangerous, noisy, daredevil aeroplanes that might crash at any moment, sailing dinghies were dreary and predictable. They moved slowly and went nowhere. (Twenty years later I was to discover otherwise; every year had a fortnight reserved for sailing 30ft sloops on the Norfolk Broads and teaching others to sail.)
Our viewpoint for watching the airfield activity could not have been better. Just off one of the lanes, through trees and on to a grassy space, was the wooden perimeter fence; as I remember it, low and widely-spaced posts with a single rail. We could see the entire field, sheds and all.
With a couple of slices of fruit cake and a bottle of lemonade between us we would flop down onto the grass close by the railings, and just watch. Planes many years old would be active, biplanes that had served in the years of the 1914-18 war. But newer types like the Gipsy Moth were there, too. The racing types, the trainers, all were there. Not many were actually based there; they would arrive and depart mounted on long trailers, their wings folded or removed, and towed by powerful cars.
The take-offs were not exciting. It was the landings that had the attraction and, on our arrival, the wind-sock was the first thing we looked at. There was only one runway, running roughly east-west; when the wind veered it made all the difference to the difficulty of the job. A sudden sideways gust would send these lightweight and mostly canvas-and wood aircraft staggering. We watched the pilots, mostly very efficient, coax their machines with stick and rudder until they were correctly lined-up, then gently sink them onto the strip. We hoped for the less-experienced; they achieved the most wonderfully dangerous landings, bouncing high as they hit ground and continuing to bounce as they raced nearer and nearer to the perimeter trees.
Elstree Airport, as it is now named, is today a busy recreation and training centre. There is still only the single landing strip but now it’s hard and white-lined. Look at the Google map and imagine it as it was, with us revelling in the sunshine, an excellent front-row view, a chunk of Mum’s rich currant cake and a bottle of pop.
Ah, nostalgia. What would I do without you?
(By the way, if you’re interested in the history and development of airfields round Britain have a look at Airport Information Exchange. Very helpful, they are. As their Dave Robinson told me, ‘. . . there's no greater knowledge base on UK Airfields than AiX’.)
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Text and illustration ©Paul Wigmore 2010
Night Train
You board a main line train, you sit back comfortably, it starts to move and you listen to the delightful sound that comes from somewhere under your bottom.
It’s the sound of smooth metal rolling over smooth metal, with the regular clunk as the wheels pass over each joint.
You know that within a minute or so the sound will have developed into a soft, brisk clickety-click, clickety-click, accelerating until it dissolves into a delightful and sleep-inducing lullaby.
Yes, I do know that welded rails produce neither clickety nor clunk. The story I am about to tell happened shortly after Noah did his stuff with the Flood, and they didn’t do welding then.
A colleague and I were on our way East, quite a long way East, for a fourteen-day photographic job. We had endured all the usual travelling irritations from London onwards and were at last, with a considerable amount of personal and professional baggage, boarding the night train that would carry us some 500 miles to our destination.
We had expected to get rid of the baggage in the Guard’s van but were very politely turned away. So in our small compartment we stacked it on the narrow racks above our heads and on the floor. By the time we had finished there was barely room to plant a foot.
We sank back into our seats and mopped brows.
The train began to move.
There came that lovely sound. Clunk, followed shortly afterwards by er, ty, and clunk. Slowly, the sounds came slightly more quickly. Then more quickly. We were now travelling at fully twenty miles per hour.
Five minutes later we were still doing twenty. We consulted each other on the likelihood of going a little faster at some point. But it seemed this was to be our speed for the next 499 miles. Still sweating gently from our exertions we grinned at each other and agreed that this was fate. Jack reached into a bag and produced two cans of warm beer.
It was not a good idea. It happened to be Jack’s birthday and we had already rendered ourselves fragile by unwise drinking on the air journey and at the station bar.
With the combination of our weariness and the beer starting to get familiar with the gin, etc, we found ourselves tending to giggle at the least trigger.
Then I had a brainwave. I got my small tape recorder out and found a space on the overhead rack. I pressed the button, wished Jack a happy birthday and the engaging, rhythmic Jacques Loussier Trio began their version of a Bach concerto. Jack was a great admirer of Loussier and he grinned his appreciation. We drank more beer.
As we did so the cassette battery started running out. Loussier on an inexorably dying glissando was so depressing that, with the alcoholic disturbances beginning to take over, the whole thing became funny and we started giggling. It turned into plain hysterics. We rolled, we doubled up, tears flowed copiously.
In the middle of this the compartment door slid open and we controlled ourselves as a friendly and earnest railway gentleman served us fried rice with pieces of meat on plates. These bore clear evidence of earlier repasts. The food was tepid. With this came tepid tea made with condensed milk. The man left.
Then, for no sensible reason, I told Jack that my music teacher had known Elgar.
He exploded, wiped a tear and said, ‘Oh, really? I myself knew Bach quite well.’
‘They used to go for bike rides together.’
He spilt his beer laughing. Almost but not quite yet in control he said, ‘Now let me tell you something. Stockhausen once wrote something for four groups, you see, and each group had to stand in a different corner of the room and each group played a -’
He was unable to continue. I couldn’t see him for tears.
‘Trombone?’ I suggested.
Bright pink and speechless he wagged his head. ‘- a different piece of music,’ he said, and at this point the waiter opened the door and spoke.
‘I am hoping you like your meal?’
Our mental state rendered this the funniest line ever. We howled with laughter. The poor man gaped at us, half smiling and a little frightened. The sound and sight of two middle-aged men doubled up and collapsing in spilt beer obviously left him in no doubt as to the normal behaviour of the Englishman abroad. He left.
Our speed did eventually improve and, many hours later, we arrived at our destination.
We had seriously bad headaches.