Chapter 3
Flights and Flight
During one of my holiday jobs, I am driving a newspaper truck at three o’clock in the morning. I pick up the papers from the Paddington train at Port Talbot railway station and deliver them around Ammanford, Pontardulais and Clydach, finishing back at the depot at High Street by noon. ‘Do you want some extra money for another delivery run, George?’ asks the foreman. ‘OK’. Off I go towards Port Talbot again.
In another moment of tiredness and exhaustion, I decide to take a short cut down the Hafod and along the Tawe River into the bottom of Wind Street. This takes us along the Strand, one of the oldest riverside port locations in Britain. You turn left to the North Dock. This dark and weaving road is somehow under the town, below High Street, and travels right along the bank of the River Tawe, where ships have plied their trade in metals such as copper and zinc for centuries. It is where provincial Swansea meets the burgeoning sea world leading out to Australia, Canada, South Africa and the South seas. Along the Strand were warehouses, factories, engineering workshops and slum dwellings. It was the scene of a number of petty crimes, thefts, drunkenness and assaults, some of which resulted in cases before the magistrates Court. But I digress. Forgetting that there is a railway tunnel with a curved arch to pass under en route. I look forward. There is the top of the arch. It seems high enough. ‘I’ll try and pass under with the truck’ I divine. What I don’t appreciate is that the curve of the arch has a narrow angle that is much lower than at the top. I strike the corner of the bridge with some force. The impact throws me forward onto the windscreen. No seatbelts in those days.
I stagger in to the local warehouse of Superdrug to get help. Not forgetting to try and sell them some insurance at another time. ‘Why, son. Are you alright’, asks a nearby warehouseman. ‘Yes. I’ll be OK.’ My shoulder is bruised and battered. But I survive to drive another day. My first entry in the local ‘Evening Post’ causes some amusement for my friends. And consternation for my family. I should have kept the resulting press photo of the smashed truck for posterity.
Another adventure. I am on a flight back from Jeddah. Suddenly the Tannoy system announces. ‘We are diverting to Stansted.’ Our arrival airport is slated for Heathrow. ‘What’s going on?’ we ask. There’s a suspect package on the flight and a drunk has announced he’s going to blow us up and kill himself in the process. There’s some panic and distress on board. I’m not wearing shoes. Never keep your shoes on during a long-haul flight. Hold your nose with your fingers and breathe out with your mouth firmly closed.
This helps to prevent decompression. And clear your sinuses... Anyway, I digress. George and a couple of guys jump on him, and pin him down until the male steward and a couple of flight attendants can keep him in his seat. In the fracas, George is pushed backward and stumbles. George hits the back of his head on the opposing chair’s armrest. At that altitude, I pass out. We are met at Stanstead by the police for him and the paramedics for me. They board the plane in a remote corner of the airfield. We disembark and make our way to the terminal where, now recovered, we are met by buses for Heathrow.
On the return flight, we land in Jeddah in the middle of the night. I ask the captain after leaving the plane
‘Why do we always arrive by night?’
He explains that in the desert the air, or rather thelack of it, during the heat of the day is so thin that the plane would drop like a stone. So they prefer toland at night. Anyway it’s much cooler, then, for the passengers.
Talking about decompression, when I’m in Jeddah I take the PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) course. We train in a local swimming pool and learn how to put on the equipment. In those days the air bottle was a separate unit and was strapped on your back. Not in an integrated jacket-like apparatus. I have a goggles and tube for snorkelling when on the surface. We are trained to turn the air bottle on by turning the handle of the tap anti–clockwise and then to give it one half-turn in a clockwise direction. Not for it to stick in the fully open position. We learn buddy breathing, which is offering the tube that you keep in your mouth to your diving partner to breathe in an emergency. All goes well with our practice dives.
We enjoy the multi-coloured coral reefs. There is aquamarine, purple, red, yellow, green, blue, mauve and beige in thousands of hues and tones. All the colours of the rainbow.We see the beauty of the coral formations in their myriads of forms, the fifteen hundred or more varieties of tropical fish –angel fish, butterfly fish, cardinal, down, damsel, gobies, groupers, parrot, you name it. Then of course there are the sharks. What you have to do is ‘cut your buddy with a knife, draw blood for the monster and run….’ No, I jest, but it may be safer to take off your bottle and defend yourself with it as a weapon, using your knife as well. Fortunately, I never encountered one. I did see two remarkably large giant squid. They were lying there in a crevice under the reef as quiet as mice. If I say they were three metres long, I would not be exaggerating.
We carried on with buddy dives for four or five trips, until it was time to take our first solo dive.I prepare my bottle as instructed, giving it the regulation half-turn back. I descend from the edge of the reef, after wading out in the lagoon. I go down to fifteen metres enjoying the dive. Suddenly I’m out of air. ‘What do you do now, George?’ I ask myself. My training kicks in. ‘Don’t panic.’ I approach a nearby diver making the slashing hand and arm across throat movement that indicates you are out of air. I’m hoping he will do ‘buddy breathing’. No response. He looked pretty panicked behind his goggles. ‘Ok.So I’ll go back to the surface and climb right up that mountain of water to get air.’
I ascend to ten metres. Training tells me that I have to pause here for a moment. The reason is the condition known as ‘the bends’ can occur if the diver rushes up to the surface of the water. The bends is caused when air bubbles are contained in the blood, which when reaching the heart can cause the heart to malfunction, where if the bubbles reach it, the right pulmonary ventricle… But I digress; I’m desperate for oxygen, gasping, and still have ten metres to go with another pause at five. I manage another halt at five and swim up with my last final drop of breath.
The reason for the problem is that, on inspection, the valve had been turned completely back clockwise, so that little or no air could get through. Careless me! Anyway, I immediately go back down to avoid the failure complex that happens when you don’t succeed at something.
When Perry was swimming in the freezing cold water reservoirs ( that he pronounced reservoys ) in Tonypandy, Wales, he successfully saves a number of swimmers from drowning. Armed with the Royal Life Saving Society’s Bronze medallion, he jumps in to rescue men in trouble in the water. Once reaching them and they put up any sort of struggle, he knocks them out with a short, sharp, boxer’s punch to the point of the chin. Thus relaxed, he puts his arm across their chest from behind. His head above water, and employing a circular counter movement of his legs like a scissors, underneath them and on his back, he brings them in to the bank. He performs artificial resuscitation, which in those days involved pressing down firmly on the chest and raising back the arms. But the method of artificial respiration has since been modified by applying direct air from mouth to mouth.
On another flight, to Egypt, I arrive with days to spare to visit Cairo. I visit the tombs of the ancient Egyptians. I marvel at the sarcophaguses on display and the artefacts to be viewed in the Boulak Museum. I see the chambers in the burial tombs of the ancient kings and queens of Egypt and inspect the mummies of the Pharaohs. These dead people are found in the pyramids by Caernarvon. They are taken to the Museum at Cairo where the naked skeletons are mummified. One of the most amazing chambers is inside one of the pyramids. You have to climb up a very narrow sloping inclined passage. I manage to get myself stuck. ‘What to do?’ I’m trapped in the dark inside a burial chamber. ‘Perhaps that’s me doomed to expire without air in perpetuity, my body turning to dust over the centuries’ I muse. But no. A guide quickly frees me and I’m off again on my travels.
The belly dancers at the Imperial Hotel are most entertaining. They gyrate, whirl and dance with an abandon rarely seen in Europe. Their muscular contortions are like elastic. I listen to Umm Kulthum, the ‘Star of the East’. She is in many films up to ‘76. She is still thought of as the best singer of Arabic music. With a fine, classical voice. They play on the oud, tambour drum and an oriental violin. Some of her vocal items last up to half an hour. I still occasionally listen to the music of Umm Kulthum as a reminder of those halcyon days.
My next port of call is Jeddah. After a pleasant furlough in the Egyptian capital, George turns up at the Cairene airport. ‘A flight to Jeddah, please?’
‘Sorry, Sir. All the flights are fully booked due to the pilgrimage.’
I wave a packet of two hundred cigarettes (I was a smoker then) in front of the booking clerk.
‘Oh yes, Sir. That’s right’, he says, examining the computer terminal.
‘I do have a seat after all. It’s next to the window.’ The fags duly handed over; I leave Egypt admiring the bustling city, the crazy traffic jams, the pyramids and the Nile below.
One of the adventures that occur when I’m in Jeddah is like this. I’m driving along at sunset in my Chevrolet Caprice with all electric windows, fully air conditioned and cruise control. It is a left hand drive car and I’m driving on the right side of the road. A large car of similar type pulls up alongside me on my left hand side. A man reaches across from his driver’s seat on his left hand side. Through our respective open windows he berates me with a large club – like stick. Fortunately, it does not quite reach me. He is screaming ‘Go to Prayers! Go to Prayers!’ (Salat! Salat!). He is a mutaween, a member of the religious police who enforce the Shahria law in some Muslim majority countries. I’m also wearing a short sleeved shirt which doesn’t help, apparently.
Another time, returning from running with the Brit Hash House Harriers running club,I attempt to get into a lift to go up to our thirteenth floor apartment. I’m standing in my sportswear on the ground floor. Again I’m dressed in shorts and a tee shirt. The lift arrives from the basement car park. Some Bedouin ladies give me an appalled look. And quickly push the door buttons, closing them in my face. They were not willing to let me in to travel in the same elevator. Making eye contact with women in Saudi is not traditional, respectable or advisable.
The Hash House Harriers employ the hares and hounds model for the runs. We drive out to the outskirts of the city into the desert. It’s all rocky and creviced. The heat is intense. But diminishing a bit at sunset when we run. Sand dunes stretch away. There, the night before, the hares have marked out a one and a half kilometre track with white flour for the hounds to follow around. There are strict rules for security and personal safety. Moray Souter (Motor Scooter) and lan Miskelly( Miss Kelly) are the two main runners with over 200 runs achieved. Where are they now? My tally reaches two hundred after my decade in the desert. I have the pewter tankard still on my window ledge as I write.
The run is undertaken largely as a group. There are valleys and cliff faces that rival and surpass Colorado. The hounds set off chasing the hares. But stragglers face the danger of getting lost and dying under the desert sun from dehydration, attacks by wolves, hyenas or worse. On one run I sign out, and chase off into the desert with the hounds. I’m busy chatting up a nurse from the Riyadh hospital in sexy shorts and brief top - her, of course. ‘What gorgeous breasts she has’, thinks George. ‘Where are you from, gorgeous?’ ‘Lancs, babe’, she murmurs. And we lose all track of time.
Suddenly, we’re kissing. I get her shorts off. After a quickie, she says
‘Give me more of that, George’.
With sweat pouring from us in the heat, I try to emulate Boris Becker’s famous under the stairs cupboard bonk in record time.
‘Yes, Yes, Yes, Yessss…’
I’ve heard that before somewhere. It’s like an echo from my childhood. She’s panting hard. We’re up against a rock face, not in a cupboard. She wants more. I’m like a ram. I’m really pounding her.
It’s now getting late…‘Which way is it back?’ we wonder. Following some flour traces in the sand, and keeping to the contours of the valley, we stagger in to be met by the marshals who demand that I be ‘gunged’ for a late arrival. The gunge is a concoction made up from two lbs. of flour, a dash of coloured food dyes and a litre of water. They didn’t use a ball and chain then. They apply a liberal dose of the gooey mixture over my head and ‘force’ me to drink a ‘yard of ale’ that is actually a coloured fruit drink. (please see illustration) That night, after some makeshift ablutions, we both sleep under the stars on the sand, near the cars, in a sleeping bag. Making love Ina sleeping blanket is quite an art when you consider the constricted space. Ask Roger, my mentor! The things I do for love!
Eventually, I’m deported from Saudi as a spy. My Ministry decides that my daily walk along the first floor balcony to get some well-deserved fresh air is illegal. It is misinterpreted as spying on a sensitive Ministry. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh is under the impression that the Brits are spying on them to get information about sensitive oil contracts and military hardware. As if the British Foreign Office would employ a Yawoo Welshman as an English spy! I’m put under house arrest and remain at home for seven weeks before receiving my deportation papers. The reality was that they were discombobulated with my part time job as a television presenter and cultural programmes director for Channel II Saudi TV. I’d spent nine years in the role, and they were calculating that the ten year bonus upcoming would be too much for them. Money talks!
The embassies and consulates move from Jeddah to Riyadh in order to centralise the diplomacy of the country. The official opening of the Brit embassy in Riyadh is performed by Prince Charles and Diana.The ceremony over, Charles and Diana work the crowd. Luckily, one of my students dressed in a western suit is policing the spectators. He beckons me to the front. ‘Mr George, stand here’, he kindly allows. Charles is on the other side of the path and Diana on this side. She comes along, and noticing my blue spotted silk tie exclaims
‘Oh. I do like your tie.’
‘Yes, Ma’am. I wore it specially for you’ I smoothly retort.
I had heard that Diana likes spots. She smiles so graciously and warmly with those big blue eyes and perfect English Rose skin. I am smitten for life.
An amusing scene then takes place. Charles gets in to the official embassy Rolls on his side of the car. Diana enters from our side. They do not look at or acknowledge each other. The body language is frozen and disconnected. The tension between them is apparent. The Embassy Rolls refuses to start. The chauffeur gets out and starts to push the vehicle with the help of a few Saudi officials in long thobes and turbans. Befitting the role of a prince, Charles does not get out to push. They eventually manage a kick start and off they go to the great amusement of the assembled crowd.
The day they deport me, the Saudi officials come to the flat. They admire my kitchen china, which I give them as a gift. It wasn’t their fault, after all. We all spend time on the journey out to the airport outside Riyadh buying roadside apricots. Of course, they have to be tasted and enjoyed in the relaxed Saudi way.
Whilst leaving, I sum up my years in the desert. Not all bad. Not all good. There were good Saudis and bad ones. After all, one of my students, Abdullah, loaned me the money to buy my first car there. And did not insist on prompt repayment.A few contretemps with hot- headed Saudi motorists adds to the roll call. Then there was the boss at Saudi TV who made me redo a whole programme I recorded on Bertolt Brecht. Because I had pronounced his name sounding like ‘Brescht’ rather than the Germanic ‘Brecht’. I recorded a hundred radio programmes entitled orally ‘Schoools of Litrechuchure’ in my inimical Welsh way. I used to record the introductory music from vinyl records at home during the vacations. I made cultural, sports and religious shows for the expatriate community in the English language on Saudi TV II. They pay for my programmes and never default.
My highlight was my interview with the very tall Jackie Charlton, whose Geordie accent was a bit difficult for me. Jackie was graceful and accommodating as an interviewee.Saudi football is played very much on the carpet with little heading. And I mean carpet literally because they are synthetic pitches, not grass. Now, I’mcovering the horse racing stadium at the Riyadh races, where Brit horse owners and trainer of King Khaled’s Frankel, the erstwhile Henry Cecil, take part. Anyway, after the show one of the princes’ assistants says ‘Come on everyone. We’re going back to the palace for refreshments’. We all pile into the cars and drive to the palace. Behind a very long louver screen they pull back there’s a bar and it has every drink you can imagine. Whisky. Vodka. Gin. Rum. Campari and Soda.
‘Would you like a drink? the Saudi asks me’. It’s a dry country, right? I wriggle nervously.
‘Sorry I don’t drink. I’ll take afruit juice’.
The Saudis are all getting sloshed and me, the Brit, sipping a soda… Strange World!
Returning to my deportation. We finish up tasting and buying the apricots. Running so late, they end up putting me and Zeena into a car out to the plane with our entire luggage from ten years, my AT / XT IBM computer and monitor, souvenirs, a hand-carved coffee table and a Bedouin incense burner, an onyx ornament, a pair of Wellingtons (purchased tax free) and a prayer mat, not forgetting Zeena’s luggage. We are almost late for the flight. But the captain has not ordered the doors closed. And we scramble aboard the BA flight to Heathrow.
Arriving home, it is sad to hear of Elizabeth’s sudden tragic early death from a brain haemorrhage. May and John are distraught and Moazeem gutted. He loves her so much. Rob in Canada cannot get over for his sister’s funeral. Moazeem subsequently remarries and stays close to May. Even introducing his new wife to her. May is so graciousand kind,she takes to her and they remain friends. Life has to go on, doesn’t it?
So I carry on. From one extreme of heat to another. I take a flight to Chicago. I arrive at the Greyhound bus station in the late afternoon. The journey up North in Wisconsin is long yet absorbing. I’m heading for Milwaukie looking for work. It’s now about two in the morning and the bus piles us out at our destination. I take a taxi and say to the driver.
‘Please find me a cheap motel for the night’.
We drive out of the city. It is now snowing hard and freezing. He drops me at the hotel and I wave him a cheery farewell, thinking that I wouldn’t be needing him.
Behind a thick plate glass panel, the motel clerk says very gruffly.
‘I need photo ID’.
I offer him my Brit driving licence, which in those days did not contain a picture of the driver.
‘That’s no good. I can’t give you a room without ID.’
I protest. It’s two in the morning after all. That’s me. Kicked out of the hotel in the middle of night. I’m trudging along the main highway in deep snow up to my knees, with a heavy suitcase and feeling pretty low. Along comes another car. I hail it. The driver is a friendly Muslim guy named Abdul. He takes me out to another motel. They check me in without question. Horses for courses, I suppose.
The next morning, it’s ten below zero. I have no hat. I need to get to town to buy warm protection. I’ve never known such a cold place. Blood must be thin after Saudi, probably. I queue waiting for the Milwaukie bus system. A driver comes along. I board.
‘Where’s your token?’ he asks.
It’s freezing. I want to get in the warm. I only have notes of ten dollars.
‘Get it changed!’ he barks.
And again I’m kicked out in the snow. Getting to think this place is not for me. I eventually sort out some change and ride into town. The wind is blowing in from the lake. Cold? It would freeze the icicles on your nose. In town, I find a military hardware shop – guns, rifles, hunting knives, that sort of thing. I buy a balaclava helmet and stride back on my way.
I decide to fly back to Chicago, Illinois and over the Great Lake. At the airport, the aircraft awaiting us is a propeller job. We board, taking care to avoid the propeller area in case of danger. Inside the fuselage, it’s small and cramped. I wonder if the flight will be safe in such a crate. This is the U S of A after all, so it must be alright. The pilot overhears my negative chatter and tells me to ‘shut the fuck up’. We taxi out to the runway. A massive convoy of trucks surrounds us. The blizzard is blowing snow like mad. We are in white out conditions. The propellers scream in the icy wind. They de-ice the wings of the de Havilland with chemicals and we get out to the runway. It’s all been cleared by snow ploughs and we make our way. We take off somehow and after a twenty – five minute flight over the lake, we arrive at General O’Hara airport, Chicago.
Another time I’m in France. I run a red light on the Cote d’Azur in Monaco in a Simca with gear change in the dash. The traffic lights don’t have the amber warning phase that we have. They change immediately from green to red. The cops chase me and I foolishly make a run for it. I get out of the car and tearing off my clothes, swim out to one of those pontoons where you can sunbathe and dive. I take a quick sunbathe.
I’m ‘’suntanned, wind blown. Honeymooners at last alone.’’
I’m dreaming about the film ‘Pal Joey’ with Grace Kelly, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra.
‘While I give to you and you give to me
True love, true love
So on and on it will always be
True love, true love
For you and I have a guardian angel
On high, with nothing to do
But to give to you and to give to me
Love forever, true’
Poor, beautiful, Grace Kelly, after her marriage to Prince Rainier, is killed on the same cliff road that I’m speeding on. But I digress… I finish my sybaritic spot of sunbathing. I dive back in and strike out for the shore. The gendarmerie is waiting for me on the beach. At the police station, I try out my rudimentary French. ‘Suis Brittanique. Je ne savais pas que les feux de signialisation ont changes. Ils sont differentes que dans l’Anglettere’. (‘I’m Brittanic. I do not know that the lights have signialisation exchange. They are different than in the Anglettere') I spend the night in the cooler and the next morning they let me off.
That reminds me of an earlier adventure in France, as a youth on a hitch hiking holiday in 1959. General Charles de Gaulle had suddenly reversed his policy on the decolonisation of Algeria and the country was tense. That August, they were looking for any suspicious Algerian travellers. As a swarthy, olive skinned Welshman, I am a good target. I’m in the back of a Citroen 2CV travelling with another Brit and a kind French farmer who had offered us the lift. We are motoring between Lille and Paris. There’s a road block ahead. We are ordered out of the car. A massive burly French cop comes up to us. He takes out his revolver from the leather holster and points it in my chest. It’s a bit disturbing. I had noted in my geography lessons that Lille is a large industrial town near Belgium, with a population of 1.885 million people, mostly engaged in heavy industry with a prominent statue of President Charles de … but I digress. He demands my passport. The other Brit has been sent packing. The gendarme examines my passport for some ten minutes and then with a wave of his gun orders me off. I go my way again striding off as fast as my legs will carry me.
So off I hitch hike to Spain. I’m travelling on twenty pounds – about a week’s salary in those days. Reaching Lille, I head South and get lifts via Paris, ClemontFerrond and Lyon. Lyon is such a big city I have to take a bus to get across it. I found that it’s best to be on the outskirts of cities to pick up a lift. So I get a lift from a commercial traveller travelling South in his Peugeot. It’s a comfortable car. But suddenly he has his hand on my knee and it’s moving up my thigh.It reminds me of the joke Bri’ always used to tell.
‘Take your hand off my knee.’
‘That’s not my hand’, the boy says.
‘That’s not my knee.’ the girl replies’.
But I joke… I grab the ignition keys. I throw them out of the window. The car grinds to a stop. I run off down the road escaping from another tight spot.
The Costa Brava is magnificent. I follow the railway line and jump trains all the way in to Barcelona. The bull fight is a worryingly barbaric form of entertainment. I am able only to afford a ticket for ‘sol’ (sun) and not ‘sombra’ (shade), the more expensive side. It is terrifically hot. Riders on horseback lance the bull. Horses are getting gored. The matadors sway their marvellous red capes and trip in their tasselled, patent leather shoes. Their sleek black hair is tied back in a feminine bow. The bull paws the ground angrily. He dashes at the bullfighter. He makes a passing sweep with the cape and in a balletic movement avoids the rushing bull. The bull attacks again. But the man slips into one of the barriers and hides himself from the furious animal. Standing there.Intimidating the exhausted and terrified bull. He arrogantly paces forward like a toreador. He plunges his sword deep into the bull’s neck. The sword is decorated with coloured ribbons. Blood pours from the wounded animal. He has conquered. The crowd is ecstatic. ‘Ole!. Ole!’ I am violently sick.
Whilst in Barcelona, I am supping at a bar near the statue of Christopher Columbus. He hailed from Barca. I’m enjoying the Spanish el vino. Suddenly, from behind, an ugly, wizened, old prostitute reaches between my trousered legs and grabs my manhood. I rush off. Why am I always escaping from the sexual advances of women? I ask myself.
On the return journey, I decide to return by the scenic route via the Pyrenees mountains. Remember that I am on twenty quid. I survive on freshly baked loaves of Spanish bread and grapes stolen from roadside vineyards. I only sleep one night in a hedge. The nights are warm and balmy.
Staying at a Youth Hostel Association stopover in Paris.It is unaccountably built in the middle of a street with traffic on both sides. Bedding down for the night. I leave my trousers on the bed with my wallet in the pocket. At four in the morning, I hear some sort of commotion at the foot of my paillasse. I’m too tired to awaken. In the morning, I examine my wallet. My last few francs are gone. There’s another Brit staying at the youth hostel. He lends me ten francs new money to get on the ferry home. The French had revalued the currency by crossing off two noughts at the end of the figure. Thus, a thousand francs became ten francs. I give him a cheque in exchange.
I get a lift in a ‘deux chevaux’ (2cv) on my way back home. The driver explains that he only wants me to make a heavy weight in the middle of the back seat to stabilise the air suspension system of the Citroen. He motors at top speed something like a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour. We get on the ferry together. I reach Blighty. Never been so glad to see the white cliffs of Dover. At home, I send a letter of thanks to my British benefactor. And make sure I do work as a labourer on a building site. To cover the cheque I have given him.
Another time in France, I’m asked to train some private chateau school boys in horse riding. I’d learned to ride a bit at Sinead’s family home in Ireland. They had a stable of hunters. One particular nasty character was Harry. Out riding him - he was thirteen hands tall – he tries to u