Australia has mostly been our home ever since then. However, we moved around within the “Land Down Under” quite a lot, especially in the early days. After Perth, we moved to the Sydney suburb of Mosman, where Martin attended a school run by the Marist brothers. It was here, I think, that my human really became a bibliophile (which means a passionate lover of books — but you already knew that, didn’t you?).
MARTIN: (Groans) A smartarse teddy bear…
FERDINAND: Did I mention that teddy bears often take on the personality traits of their owners?
Anyway… It was at this time Martin discovered his love of science fiction, which has stayed with him ever since. He became friendly with the librarian at the local public library, and on her recommendation, took out books by authors like Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Andre Norton, E. E. “Doc” Smith, and many others.
After Sydney, we had a brief stint in the country town of Lismore, New South Wales, where Martin finally overcame his terror of the water and learned how to swim. This happened in a hotel swimming pool, and I still remember how excited he was. I was very happy for him. However, like all teddy bears, I hate getting my fur wet, so there is no way I was going to join him in the pool!
Then, in 1973, Dad got a call from the United Nations, of all people. They told him there was a dire shortage of chartered surveyors on the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, and they asked him if he wanted to go there. He agreed and off we went.
Martin loved it there, and I really think it was one of the happiest times of his life.
MARTIN: Absolutely. I look back on it as a sort of “golden age” in my childhood, to be honest.
FERDINAND: We lived in the capital, Port-Of-Spain. Martin’s diary for 1974 still exists, with pages of his rather large handwriting and really terrible illustrations (he has never been able to draw for anything…).
MARTIN: Come on! My stick figures are brilliant!
FERDINAND: By the way, Trinidad is officially part of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago; these islands used to belong to Spain, and then to Britain. They gained independence from Britain in 1962 and became a republic in 1976, not long after we left.
In Port-Of-Spain, Martin attended Fatima College, another Catholic school. He flourished and became one of the outstanding students in his class. Mathematics was still his weak point but as always, English was his strength.
My human particularly loved the English teacher, Fr Brett, an older priest who became quite a father figure to him. To this day Martin treasures the paperweight that Fr Brett gave him as a farewell present when he left the school.
Martin made friends at school, though he was never one of the most popular guys. He became particularly friendly with Philip, a boy in his class who came from a Chinese background, and visited Philip’s house a couple of times.
Philip had two sisters who were in their late teens or early twenties. One day, one of these older sisters stood up and stretched, revealing her bare tummy and navel. This gave Martin a funny feeling that he now thinks was one of his first stirrings of sexual desire … (Sighs) … I mean, really! These humans and their obsession with sex!
MARTIN: Teddy bears aren’t interested in sex?
FERDINAND: Look at me! I don’t have a —
MARTIN: Yes, yes, all right!
FERDINAND: Anyway, Fatima was an all boys’ school, and Martin has always been (I think the term is) “hetero”. So, apart from that brief glimpse of female flesh, sex wasn’t really a big issue for him at that time. In fact, my human was very innocent and didn’t “get” a lot of the sexual jokes his friends would make, although he laughed politely.
MARTIN: (Shifts uncomfortably).
FERDINAND: It’s okay; we’re almost finished with the embarrassing stuff.
MARTIN: You’ve said that before!
FERDINAND: Fatima College also provided a bonus for the students and their parents: films were regularly shown in the school hall (on a big screen) on Friday nights. In this way, Martin and his Dad saw The Sound of Music, the Charlton Heston version of Planet of the Apes, the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup, the World War Two classic The Guns of Navarone, and many others.
One film that Martin did NOT enjoy was a horror movie: Hammer Films’ The Lost Continent. This was a low-budget effort about a ship stuck in the Sargasso Sea being menaced by giant crabs, man-eating seaweed and other things. As Martin was only eleven or twelve, he found this a bit scary!
MARTIN: Yes. I saw it again many years later and thought it was just laughable – very bad special effects. But at the time, it was terrifying!
FERDINAND: This was before you really developed your interest in scary movies, stories, and so on — am I right?
MARTIN: Oh, yes. Later on I came to love scary movies such as Alien and its sequels, and authors like Stephen King. But at that time when I was only about eleven or twelve years old … no, sir!
FERDINAND: It seems to me that you (and other horror movie fans) enjoy a bit of a scare. There is a level at which you find it pleasurable, and you’re able to remind yourself that the danger isn’t real. But when it gets too much…
MARTIN: It stops being fun! Correct.
FERDINAND: (sighs) Funny creatures, humans. Anyway…
It was also in Trinidad that Martin’s interest in religion started to develop. He became an altar server at the local parish church, St Patrick’s, run by Fr Keating, a Dominican priest from Ireland. The Archbishop of Port of Spain, the Most Rev. Anthony Pantin (whose brother was the headmaster at Fatima), sometimes used to say Mass there. After his initial nerves, Martin soon became an old hand at serving and helped to train the newer altar boys. And it was probably here that Martin first began to have the idea of becoming a priest.
MARTIN: I can’t remember very clearly, but I think it was around this time. We visited an abbey in Trinidad – Mount St. Benedict Abbey – that impressed me greatly; I remember an atmosphere of calm and peacefulness. And I remember asking the monks questions about what God is made of! Certainly at this time my interest in God and religion was increasing.
FERDINAND: One of the great things about Trinidad, which made a lasting impression on my human, was the way people from many different backgrounds lived together in harmony: people from British and French backgrounds, from African backgrounds, Indians, Chinese…We have found out since then that there were some tensions in the country, including reports of criminal gangs hiding in the hills, but there was never any trouble in the city where we lived, and my human (rightly or wrongly) remembers the place as a paradise on earth!
Also while at Fatima, Martin made his first attempt to learn a musical instrument – the steel drum or “steelpan”. This is an instrument that actually developed in Trinidad, and is basically the end of a 55-gallon oil drum cut off and tuned to make music. It comes in various sizes, from small soprano drums to large (uncut) bass ones.
Unfortunately, Martin, who has always been a bit physically uncoordinated, failed miserably in his attempt to become a steelpan player. As we will see, he had a little bit more success with other instruments later on but somewhat to his own regret, he has never really become a proficient musician.
MARTIN: Sad but true.
FERDINAND: But now we come to something that did have a big effect on his life: it set him on course for a lifetime of geekery, or nerdiness, or whatever…
MARTIN: Never liked those words, but go on.
FERDINAND: One day, Martin’s Mum sent him to buy some stuff at a supermarket some distance away from their home. This supermarket had a small book section, and there Martin saw a copy of The World of Star Trek by David Gerrold, an analysis of the original Star Trek series written by the person who wrote one of its most popular episodes, “The Trouble With Tribbles”.{4} Martin ran back home in excitement, having bought whatever he was supposed to buy (apples or bananas or something) and he asked for extra money to go back to buy the book. He got the money and ran back all the way to the store to get the book. Martin’s Mum would later use this as an example of what Martin could do when he really put his mind to things!
The book had quite a huge impact on Martin. It deepened his interest in science fiction, in writing and the media; he still names David Gerrold as one of his favorite writers and one of the people who inspired his interest in writing. And in fact… he has actually had some contact with him on social media, is that right?
MARTIN: Yep, I now follow him on Facebook. He absolutely loathes the current US President, Donald Trump. On 8th May 2018 – I made a note of the date –he made one of many his derogatory comments about Mr. Trump, and I replied to his comment: “You know, I’m getting this weird feeling you don’t like Mr. Trump, ha-ha.” Soon afterwards, he replied back: “What was your first clue?”
FERDINAND: You were over the moon, weren’t you?
MARTIN: I was ecstatic!!!!!!!!
FERDINAND: (Heavy sigh) Well, as you can tell, Martin’s interest in science fiction was certainly increasing around this time in the 70’s. As well as Star Trek and Doctor Who, he also started watching Lost in Space around this time, and names Angela Cartwright, who played Penny Robinson, as his first crush.
MARTIN: Oh, yes. The beautiful Penny…
FERDINAND: In those days, before DVD’s, Blu-Rays, even before video recorders, it could be difficult, or downright impossible, to see your favorite TV programs when you wanted to. As a result, books became an important way to connect with those shows; later on, Martin would amass a huge collection of Doctor Who novelizations and original novels.
MARTIN: The funny thing is, I went off Star Trek for a long time. But more recently (while we’ve been working on this book, in fact) I’ve got back into it. I think I like the optimism of Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the future.
FERDINAND: Hmm… Despite all these distractions, my human did well at school in Trinidad, to the point where he was near the top of his class in many subjects. As well as the English teacher, my human especially liked his history teacher, Mr. Paddington (who shares his name with a famous bear — actually, the first General Secretary of the Teddy Bears’ Union).
Mr. Paddington was also a keen amateur filmmaker and made a videotaped “movie” starring the members of his class. Martin wrote the script; it was supposedly a Doctor Who story in which the Doctor, as played by a boy named Brett who sat next to Martin in class, went back to the Stone Age. A bicycle stood in for the TARDIS.
Unfortunately, the stint in Trinidad, where Martin (and, indeed, the whole family) was very happy, ended after two years, and in 1974 the family returned to Australia.
When he was taken out of Fatima College, one of Martin’s teachers expressed disappointment, saying that he could have won a scholarship to one of the more advanced schools in Trinidad.
MARTIN: And this raises a question that I’ve wondered about from time to time. If I had stayed in one place and one school for longer, could I have done better academically? Could I have maybe gained entrance to a better university and – well, attained academic glory, which is the only type of glory I’ve ever really desired…?
Sometimes I have dreams that I could have been a Rhodes scholar and got a PhD or something. I guess I’ll never know now. Anyway, I know that letters after your name don’t guarantee wisdom or anything like that so it doesn’t really bother me any more.
FERDINAND: I’m not sure about that! I often see you on the web looking up Oxford University and places like that! Anyway…
We left Port-of-Spain on a cruise ship called the Angelina Lauro. This was a sister ship of the Achille Lauro, which gained notoriety when it was hijacked in 1985.
During the cruise, Martin and I made our first public appearance during a talent contest: Martin did a ventriloquist act with me as his “dummy”! He later admitted his routine was pretty corny, but at least we tried.
The ship dropped us off at Miami, Florida – our first visit “stateside”! Then it was onto a plane to Los Angeles, and from there, another flight across the Pacific, with brief stops at Hawaii and Fiji, until we finally returned to Australia. After many long hours in Martin’s suitcase, I was just as glad to get back to terra firma as my human family!