Far Eastern Adventures

 

It was back to a bit of globe trotting in the middle of October. First to the Maritime Dialogue in Galle,  Sri Lanka. When I was invited to this I knew it would be a bit poignant, as it was here that we first began to suspect that what Cherry had might be a lot more serious than a passing bug. She had no appetite for the special celebratory birthday dinner under the stars by the sea and on the flight back to Singapore she felt faint and was nearly sick, a worrying first for her. Moreover one of my hosts was the SL Naval officer who waded into the river to recover the phone an over-excited Chery had dropped into the water from a bridge when filming the washing of elephants. He even salvaged some of the pictures for her. Now of course he was very sorry to find out what happened to her not that long afterwards.

She would have liked the ‘Jetwing Hotel’ which despite its name was quite a grand affair right by the sea. I had a balcony looking out over it. The only slightly unsettling aspect of this was seeing the armed guard down on the beach.

They were clearly taking no chances as Sri Lanka has had a very serious terrorism problem in the past. Indeed the naval side of this is one of my special interests. My hosts arranged a few of what they call ‘bilats’ with some if the veterans of this which was very valuable for me.

For this and other reasons I was too busy to be too sad for long. If apologetically, they worked me pretty hard. What I thought was the last straw occurred the evening of the big conference dinner of some 350 diners, including the President of Sri Lanka. The guest speaker was Scott Morrison, the last rather controversial  Prime Minister of Australia. I had heard whispers that he was stuck in Singapore after a plane cancellation. The Chief of Navy sidled up to me in the afternoon and asked me whether I might be prepared to stand in for him if he didn’t make it. No pressure,  but I could hardly say no. An hour later when I realised I had my own car to the Conference venue and was given a great garland of flowers on my arrival,  I suspected that Morrison indeed hadn’t made it. The evening went off Ok but it was nearly midnight when I was returned to the hotel and I was chairing a session first thing the following morning. Then they pulled me out of that conference and drove me for 2.5 hours back to Colombo  to attend a small dinner party the President was holding back in the capital. At his express wish apparently. I wondered why, of course.  Halfway there my minder’s phone crackled into life. Would I mind saying a few words after dinner as Morison still hadn’t made it.  I couldn’t do a repeat as the President and about half the gathering had heard the first one so scratched out a few notes in a pocket book I happened to have on me, bouncing around in the car.

Before this, and leaving Galle, which has a very fine old town inside the castle walls, my minder asked whether I would like a quick tour and obliged when of course I said yes. Here I am in typical tourist garb outside the maritime museum.

Although this was fun, the delay meant we only arrived at the dinner venue a few minutes before the President and I was whisked straight to the top table, and had no chance to write up my very few notes. Of course when the time came, I couldn’t read what I had scrawled in my very small notebook so it certainly wasn’t an ace performance. But there you go. One does what one must, being in such illustrious company. On my table of eight people there were three Presidents – of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and a very impressive old lady who was the Director ( I felt sure she warranted a capital D) of one of the country’s biggest companies employing 25,000 people and the owner of the sumptuous conference venue. Two others were the Presidential wives, one of whom was an alumni of King’s College London like me and a Professor of English.  Again frighteningly on the ball.  I couldn’t place the two other big wheels. Another big, late dinner followed.

And 0400 the following morning off we went after bumping our way through the Colombo docks on my way to the airport and Singapore. Hardly restful !  The flight was fine, but I needed a good night by the time I arrived.  The morning after off to Jakarta, which was significantly less stressful since just giving lectures is more my comfort zone, and I had a bit of time for a swim in the pool. I was one of a small party from my other academic institution, the RSIS in Singapore.  The last Chief of the Indonesia Navy was one of my students and is a big fan. Two private dinners for me followed – one unfortunately Japanese which isn’t my favourite, but all very grand again. I was introduced to someone apparently slated to be his successor. Lots of bonhomie and fish-heads. Like the Sri Lankans, Indonesians are great gift givers. I had taken a spare soft bag, just in case. This turned out to be a good thing. Here’s my collection of goodies laid out on the table at home as I unpacked. Lots of tea and conference presentations, cookies, a brass capstan with a compass on the top, medals, books, the lot. Altogether it weighed more than my suitcase. I was rather touched when my minder – a SLN Commander went off and bought me a picture at the Galle Museum. They really were very generous. Rather humbling.

By contrast being back in Singapore for the last two days of the trip  was much more restful. I had a couple of meetings and met up with some friends, and managed a couple of hours in the National Archives, reading copies of the Straits Times just before the war which I find fascinating. The last day I decided to be a total tourist. By this time all this rich eating had had dire effects on my diet so I decided to be energetic. I went for a walk around some old bits of the real Singapore, Kallang and Geylang where I know there is a really splendid little tea emporium which sells tea direct from China. We tracked it down years ago; it’s hidden away in a small industrial estate, but contact failed, because the little lady in charge was clearly alarmed at my possible appearance and didn’t speak English. My Hokkien is likewise non-existent. So I put that off and resolved to go with a photo of the tins I want, on the next trip. Otherwise I just wandered around poking my nose into a temple to light some candles, having a Tiger beer in a local café, spotting unusual things to eat, exchanging compliments with the parrot outside the ‘Jesus Mission’ and so on.

As a historian, I always find it interesting to see reminders of the old British presence all over the place. Unlike other countries such as Mr Modi’s India,, the Singaporeans take care of these. Some are not so obvious as this lorry,

such as the 5 foot shaded walkways which Raffles (the founder of modern Singapore) insisted on being built for the comfort of shoppers and shop-keepers in the early 19^th Century. The resultant Chinese shop-houses can be very elegant. Some tempting local delicacies were on offer too. 

Some tempting local delicacies were on offer too.

The only problem with all this were temperatures in the mid 30s and very high humidity. By the time I staggered back to the hotel to pack for my departure I had done 17,000 steps and really, really needed a shower.

And so back to the UK to a few weeks of necessary recovery 

Topping Out

 

It’s not just nasty things that come, as Shakespeare more or less said, not as single spies but in whole battalions. Nice things do too. I had a recent example of that. First of all I was invited to join in a topping out ceremony in Salisbury Cathedral. This was in recognition of my having funded a stone in the refurbishment of the roof of the North Transept to mark the 5^th anniversary of Cherry’s passing. Her initials and dates are up there somewhere. Obviously, I wasn’t going to miss that. Then soon after came another invitation to give an after-dinner speech down at the Britannia Royal Naval College the same day, only later of course. I started my career there decades ago and have hardly been back since so I didn’t want to miss that either. As our American cousins say I ‘did the math,’ consulted Googlemaps and decided that it was just about feasible, given a following wind. Needless to say the day turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year, when if anything, one would want to slow down a bit.

The Guardian gave the Cathedral event quite a splash, nearly a whole page, in recognition of the fact that the project had finally ended after 37 years, just one short of the 38 the medieval masons had

needed to build the whole place back in the 13^th century. After the ceremony the scaffolding would be removed and for the first time in 40 years there wouldn’t be any on the cathedral anywhere, until, that is the next project began. There were about 40 of us, nearly all white-haired, nervously gathering outside at the foot of the transept crossing. We’d been warned that there would be stairs and ladders to climb and that a head for hights would be good (which I don’t have these days). As it turned out it was all very easy, and there were stalwart masons between us and any point of danger. Tremendous views of course, the Dean blessed the newly repaired stone cross and I got a mason to explain how they joined the old and new bits together. So it was fine. I scuttled off early, thereby having to miss the afternoon tea in one of the Close gardens unfortunately.

I then drove to Dartmouth. Unfortunately all my sat nav systems went down, and my phones too so I couldn’t warn Dartmouth I would probably be late. I just plugged on in the old-fashioned way relying on glances at a map and memory. For a straight no-stopping three and a half hours. I made it but in that heat arrived in something of a lather ! My room turned out to be on the top floor of the Captain’s house, as well !  Anyhow everything went well and I enjoyed myself in the evening and the following morning, pottering about in the College reminding myself of all the memories, seeing what had changed and what hadn’t. It’s a magnificent building, beautifully situated looking down on the river and Dartmouth and the warm misty morning weather was glorious. I looked up at the building from the parade ground and remembered that every Saturday morning, and some Sundays too I used to stand up there in my regalia with all my academic and naval colleagues  for ‘Divisions’ when all the cadets and sub-lieutenants are marshalled together. I wonder if they still do that ? Probably not. Once, at a leaving dinner, one of my retiring colleagues in his speech quoted St Paul. ‘Let there be no Divisions !’ It almost brought the house down. And that was 50 years ago.

On the way home, I stopped in at Cullompton services, and mysteriously all my systems kicked into life again and I could reconnect with the 21^st Century. I indulged myself by dropping in at the National Trust’s Lytes Cary Manor. Quite small but utterly delightful. Sir Walter Jenner bought the place in a pretty devastated state before the war and filled it with antiques of the period. He did a pretty good job. Inspiring.

And so back to the house, my own little world for a hectic weekend preparing it and the garden for the arrival of some American friends from Newport, first thing Monday. Two fun-packed days followed, as I took them round Old Sarum, the Cathedral, the close and Salisbury generally. We ended up in the Haunch of Venison, one of the oldest pub-restaurants in Salisbury. I couldn’t compete with the really posh places, food-wise, that they had taken me to in Newport, but I think they were duly impressed by the ‘severed hand and cards’ still on display in one little room !  The following day it was Avebury, complete with any number of stone-huggers, the circles, the amazing barn now used to display Stukely’s extraordinary prints of the place, the museum and of course the House (owned once by a cousin of Sir Walter Jenner I noticed) and garden. And so to Devizes for lunch and a quick tour of the town, ending at the famous ladder of locks. They loved it all. Took huge numbers of photos, before returning to London.

Then I got down to some academic commitments not exactly overdue, but certainly some that were getting pretty close, and back to something a bit closer to the normal routine - and of course preparing for two foreign trips. There were two delightful breaks in this pattern, the first being a weekend visit by Son No 1 and  his ladies ! This was delightful and packed with activity. Highlight has to be a return to the ‘starwell’ that we visited back in 2018.

This is an unobtrusive little spring in the middle of an anonymous field near Chippenham in the clear waters of which little star-shaped fossils can be found. Even though we had been there before it took some finding and plunging around across rutted fields and through the undergrowth. With the help of some locals who knew all about it to my surprise success was achieved and we managed to assempnle quite a collection in a remarkably short time. They’re not tiny starfish in fact but from the stem of a plaant aons ago. Quite remarkable. On top of that, Violet found a four leave clover ! We celebrated our success in a nearby hostelry in the charming very Cotswoldsy little village of Biddeston. A great success: the following day before departure we lunched in the mist and drizzle in the lee of Adam’s grave. Who could want for a nicer weekend ?

The next one was a bit special too. I’m in the ‘Friends of Friendless Churches’ and they were to hold  a service and an AGM in a quite charming little rescued Church in the middle of nowhere but near Cardigan/Aberteifi in Pembrokeshire. I thought I would attend and stay overnight in the country hotel where the mini-busses were to collect us all. It was a 3.5 hour trip again and I thought 7 hours driving in one day excessive. The whole thing was really interesting and I enjoyed every minute of it, though It won’t have done my diet any good. I was seriously impressed with the professionalism and expertise of the dedicated volunteers who actually run the organization which only has two staff as such. They made what I knew about historic churches look amateurish and shallow indeed. Very salutary. The little church was idyllic. The coracle in the porch wasn’t just for show. Four or five years ago, the church although on a hill, had a flood that reached high up enough to obliterate the bottom half of the words on the mural memorial in the picture.

It was also interesting to be in Wales and to try out these new 20 mph speed limits. They certainly give you more time to examine the villages you go through.  No doubt we shall have  get used to them since they seem likely to be coming England’s way even more before too long.  Having also done an anti- speeding course, I am very aware of these things these days !