Nonagenarians Reunited!
I am, I think, becoming accustomed to being very old and feeble. I am reminded of it every time I try to do anything in the least strenuous, walk even a short distance without my stick, or try to remember the name of someone to whom I had been introduced half an hour earlier. What still comes as a shock though is meeting others that I used to know well seventy years ago, and finding that they too have become ancient and feeble strangers whom I completely fail to recognise, and who fail to recognise or remember me!
It happened at a reunion last week of the surviving members of the 67th Medium Regt. RA, a Territorial Army Regiment formed in Ipswich in the spring of 1939 and consisting of volunteers from Ipswich, Felixstowe, Woodbridge and the East Suffolk villages in those areas. We were in (largely successful) action in the Egyptian/Libyan border region from November 1941 till June 1942 when we were over-run in Tobruk by Rommel’s Deutsch Afrikakorps. Most of us spent the remainder of the war in Italian and German prisoner of war camps.
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| At the reunion. With me is a son of one of the veterans |
Old soldiers never die, never die, never die.
Old soldiers never die – they simply fade away!
We were all, it must be said, a bit faded!
Jane Bradburn of Ipswich had arranged the meeting. She and her friend Diana Watts, who sadly died last year, had been researching the lives of their fathers, both of whom had been members of the Regiment. I had been able to help a little with my own memories and, more importantly, by introducing them to my German friend Ingrid Zeibig. Ingrid had traced the Austrian family who had helped and sheltered Diana’s father at the end of World War II. As a result Diana had been able to visit them two or three times in Austria, and they had become firm friends, as had Ingrid.
At Felixstowe most of us had someone younger and sprightlier, supporting us. One or two younger (though not all that much younger!) guests represented a dad who had been in the Regiment but whose life had ended.
. I was unique in having an attractive German lady as my chauffeur and supporter!
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| Ingrid and I in the Restaurant of the Kingscliff Hotel Holland-on-Sea |
I had no need to feel the least anxiety. Ingrid had been born many years after the end of the War and few, if any, of us retained any animosity toward the Germans. Anyway it was all a long time ago. Ingrid mixed happily with us old soldiers and quickly became ‘one of us’!
I was glad that I went. We nonagenarians did have shared memories that were worth reviving. I think that we had all just about worked out who was who, before it was time to go home. I felt too that the mutual understanding and friendship that flowered that afternoon between Ingrid and we British war veterans was a tiny step on the path of Anglo-German friendship, a cause which I wholeheartedly support, particularly since I have always had such a warm and friendly welcome on my post-war visits to Germany.
A Hospital Outpatient – A not-so-minor Miracle!
A few weeks ago I wrote in this blog about my less-than-happy experiences in the Outpatients’ Department of the Essex County Hospital in Colchester. I have had to go there every three months for two years for a check-up on my ears from which cancerous skin and cartilage has been excised in three operations, two in 2008 and one last year.
I had always had to wait at least one hour, and on one occasion two hours, after the time of my appointment, to see the Plastic Surgery Registrar. When I did get to see him, he would look at my ears, feel my neck for signs of swollen glands (which could mean that the cancer had spread) and, so far, had been always been able to tell me that I was OK.
I had no complaint about the examination. I felt though that it could have been carried out equally efficiently by my own doctor in Clacton who would, of course, have contacted the Consultant had she found anything amiss. Surely my time and that of the Plastic Surgery Registrar, the clinic nurse and the outpatients’ clerical staff was being unnecessarily and expensively wasted. I was also finding the long wait very exhausting. Members of the Plastic Surgery staff are surely well aware that I am, to say the least, long past my ‘best by’ date. Once or twice while waiting I had felt that if I didn’t soon receive attention I might first be making an urgent and involuntary trip to ‘Accidents and Emergencies’!
Another check-up was due last Friday (19th August). I wasn’t worried about the outcome. My ears were fine and my neck unswollen. Had things been otherwise I would have contacted my own doctor promptly. I was a little worried about that long wait for attention though.
I need not have been. My appointment was at 2.15 pm. I was, as always, fifteen minutes or so early and settled down for a long wait. There wasn’t one. Promptly at 2.15 pm I was summoned by a friendly and helpful nurse. In the past this has just meant being parked on a chair in a corridor outside the door of the consulting room for a further half-hour wait.
This time it didn’t. I was shown directly into the consulting room where a friendly young woman Registrar (who clearly regarded me as a fellow human being and not just as ‘that old man with ear trouble’) gave me a very thorough examination and told me that she wouldn’t need to see me again for six months but that if I thought there might be anything wrong I should see my doctor; how eminently sensible!
Nor was that the end. Hitherto I would then have had to join another queue at the reception desk to get the time and date of my ‘in six months time’ appointment. This time though, that friendly and helpful nurse asked me if I would like her to make an appointment for me, of which I would be notified by post. By 2.45 I was getting myself a cup of tea and phoning for my taxi! Yesterday, 24th August, the appointment arrived – for 2.20 pm on 17th February 2012. God willing, I’ll be there!
It was really quite miraculous. Has there been a change of policy or some kind of brilliantly conceived and executed reorganisation of the Outpatients’ Department – or could someone at the hospital have read my blog, looked up my records, and decided to give me a nice surprise? Whichever it was – and indeed, if there is some other explanation of the transformation – I am very grateful, and only hope that they can keep it up!
‘Carry on Camping!’
So says the headline in the current issue of the Clacton Gazette and nearly everyone else will agree.
It isn’t surprising that local residents were dismayed when a succession of trailer caravans turned up on the playing field of the branch of the Coastal Academy (formerly Bishops Gate College) in Jaywick Lane. Could they be ‘travellers’ evicted from some other site in Essex and making their home indefinitely in our midst?
Dismay turned to relief when it became known that they were all members of the East Essex Branch of the Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain, a long established and highly reputable institution whose purpose is explained in its title. My wife and I were members for some thirty years when every year we spent at least one holiday either under canvas or, later, in our motor caravan.
The Club has a network of well-appointed and well-managed camping sites all over Britain. From time to time it also hires land for short periods for rallies of its members. They have on several occasions used the playing field of the Southend High School for Girls for this purpose and this was the first time that they had chosen Clacton-on-Sea. They were staying for a fortnight only.
The Camping Club’s local spokesman Colin Roper is reported as saying that members were enjoying their stay; ‘It has been excellent here in Clacton. The weather has been good (that was a week ago!) and the ice cream van has been here every day. The fish and chip shop up the road and the pubs in town have also had lots of visits from us all’. The campers have, no doubt, also visited shops, cafes and restaurants in the town and, I hope, will be passing on their experiences of Clacton to their friends and neighbours when they return to their homes. My own experience of the Club tells me that when they leave the playing fields at the end of their fortnight’s stay they will leave them exactly as they found them.
Clacton’s attractions have caught the attention of a prestigious national holiday organisation, local businesses have benefited and the Academy has had a welcome addition to its funds.
Every one is happy; well, almost every one. The exception, it appears, is Councillor Stephen Mayzes, described in the Clacton Gazette as ‘Tendring’s tourism boss’ who, one might have thought, would have been particularly pleased. Not a bit of it - the Gazette reported that he was unimpressed by the makeshift camp site.
‘I think it is awful that they are doing this’, he is reported as saying, ‘There must be other ways of making money. Putting caravans on the playgound – where will it end, what next? I shall be writing to them about this and asking them to stop, and I have asked officers to assess if planning permission is required’.
What next indeed? A suggestion that comes to me is that Tendring District Council should find itself a new ‘Tourism Boss’ without delay!
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