Before being posted to Christmas Island, in 1958, I spent about a week receiving an assortment of injections and being kitted out with tropical gear and equipment at the RASC Depot Camp in Hampshire.
On the weekend before the flight to The Pacific, Barrie Hands (right), Geordie Dixon (centre) and myself (left) set out towards Aldershot for a final Saturday afternoon and evening in the UK.
On the way, from the top of a double-decker bus, I caught sight of a small garage which had a Ford Popular for hire. Fortunately, Barrie had a savings account; so, we jumped off the bus, found a Post Office, and persuaded him to withdraw sufficient funds to cover the cost of the hire - which (so far as I can recall) was about a fiver for the weekend.
Heading north, we realised it was too far to contemplate going as far as Geordie's home in the north-east; so I invited him to my home in the north-west. Barrie lived near Birmingham and we dropped him off on the way. We returned to Depot Camp very late on Sunday night before heading to Heathrow airport on the following morning.
This afternoon, for the first time since 1959, I drove past the aforementioned garage - very much modernised now, as you might imagine. By a quite intriguing coincidence, the reason I was in the area was that I had taken my Christmas Island collection of colour slides to be renovated before being put onto a DVD. An interesting example of old meeting new in more than one sense of the word.
Heading north, we realised it was too far to contemplate going as far as Geordie's home in the north-east; so I invited him to my home in the north-west. Barrie lived near Birmingham and we dropped him off on the way. We returned to Depot Camp very late on Sunday night before heading to Heathrow airport on the following morning.
This afternoon, for the first time since 1959, I drove past the aforementioned garage - very much modernised now, as you might imagine. By a quite intriguing coincidence, the reason I was in the area was that I had taken my Christmas Island collection of colour slides to be renovated before being put onto a DVD. An interesting example of old meeting new in more than one sense of the word.
