Books I Have Read in 2020

 

This has been a very strange year. We have spent many months in lockdown, unable to travel, sometimes unable to leave our homes, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. One thing it has done is allow me more time to read. I have read more books this past year than I have in the previous decade!

This is what I have been reading.

Un Hombre Fascinante – Juan Fernandez

Here’s one from my Spanish classes with Peterborough U3A. We did this one with the intermediate class.

Juan Fernandez is a Spanish teacher in London and his books are pretty good. Quite repetitive, which is helpful for students, but there’s always a decent narrative and he does cover some adult themes – they’re not for kids.

Hola Lola – Juan Fernandez

Another Spanish language book by Juan Fernandez. We did this with the U3A Basic Spanish class and it’s a good starter book with simple language, very repetitive but with some characterisation and a sensible narrative.

The Big Show – Pierre Clostermann

I have read quite a few books on the Second World War this year. I discovered a podcast by Al Murray and James Holland called We Have Ways of Making You Talk. It’s all about WW2 and it’s very interesting, entertaining and easy listening – ideal for lockdown.

This is one book which was referred to in the podcast. Pierre Clostermann was a French pilot who volunteered to fight in the RAF and this is his story of the war.

It’s grim reading at times (he lost lots of good friends and his nerves were shot by the late stages of the war) but his experiences are gripping. I particularly liked it because he seems to have a very good mechanical understanding of aircraft and aero engines, which comes through in his writing.

He starts out flying Spitfires, then moves onto the Typhoon in a ground-attack role and, finally, the Hawker Tempest (a beast of an aircraft which sounded terrifying to fly).

The Places In Between – Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart may have been the last decent Tory politician. He was against Brexit, but pragmatic enough to agree that the Leave campaign had won the referendum and that we should leave the EU.

He stood for the leadership of the party after the resignation of Theresa May and we’d surely be in a much better place now had he won.

His career has included the military, diplomatic roles, working with NGOs and charity organisations. He probably also had some kind of role in intelligence. He was a Tory MP (briefly) and was planning to run for London mayor as an independent, but Covid caused the election to be postponed and he has dropped out.

The Places In Between is an account of a journey across Afghanistan in 2002 just as the US were getting involved. Stewart had already trekked across Turkey and Iran and wanted to walk across northern Afghanistan following a mountain route taken by the Mogul emperor Babur The Great.

Travel books and modern history are my two books of choice and Stewart is a great travel writer. The journey, however, is unremittingly grim. The weather is cold, the people are poor, distrustful and sometimes unwelcoming and the country has been absolutely wrecked by warlords, religious fanatics and interfering outside powers – from Tamburlain and Babur, through to the British, Russians, Taliban and Americans – have basically wrecked the country. No-one properly understands Afghanistan, but everyone seems to think they can sort it out. Read Rory’s book and leave the place well alone.

Big Week – James Holland

I read three books by James Holland and this was my first. Big Week refers to one week in 1944 when the USAF and the RAF undertook a massive bombing campaign against Germany in the Second World War. The aim was to destroy the Luftwaffe by targeting aircraft factories, ball-bearing factories, oil plants and (by the employment of long-range fighters such as the Mustang and Thunderbolt) shooting them out of the sky.

Both American and British bomber forces suffered massive losses, unsustainable losses at various points, but the Germans were suffering equally. Big Week didn’t destroy German resistance, but it was a step towards gaining air supremacy and paving the way for the invasion and liberation of France.

Big Week follows (I now realise) the James Holland formula of choosing a battle or campaign, looking for some established opinions he can knock down and also using lots of eyewitness accounts to add colour and drama. It does make for easy-to-consume history, very readable and a serious study in spite of its popularist target.

The Fens - Francis Prior

Francis Prior is the only author that I’ve met among the collection of books read this year. I met him a couple of times when I was working on newspapers in Peterborough and he was excavating the Flag Fen prehistoric site.

This book covers his life’s work as an archaeologist in the Cambridgeshire Fens and it is amazing what a rich history this part of the world has had. You’d think the Fens were waterlogged bog until the drainage campaigns from the 17^th Century onwards, but not so. Neolithic farmers would have enjoyed firm ground under their feet across much of the land even as sea levels started to rise and, as the land began to suffer flooding, amazing structures like the log causeway across the fen from Peterborough to Whittlesey were built.

It’s staggering what lies under our feet.

And No Birds Sang – Farley Mowat

Farley Mowat was a Canadian who volunteered to fight in the Second World War. This is his account of his wartime experiences.

He signed up for his father’s old outfit, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (known as the Hasty Ps) and found himself entering the war at the invasion of Sicily. The book covers his experiences during the conquest of Sicily and, later, in Italy.

Two things make this personal account of the Second World War stand out. There are many such books, and all offer a personal insight, but few are written as well as this and few have such astonishing feats in battle.

One section includes an assault on a German strongpoint in Sicily which is sited in an old Norman castle which has never been captured in all its history. The Hasty Ps climb a cliff in darkness carrying all their kit and take the garrison by surprise. They manage to capture the place and hold it until advancing, supporting troops arrive.

During the battle, Mowat witnesses a German sniper shooting a donkey. Sadistically shooting the animal in each leg for no good reason, the animal is then left to die a slow death until one of the Canadians puts it out of its misery. The incident clearly horrified Mowat and, in Normandy, my dad seemed more horrified (or more able to talk about his horror) when seeing hundreds of dead horses and cattle. He never talked about dead bodies.

One Man’s Window – Denis Barnham

This book was also published under the title Malta Spitfire Pilot. The author, Denis Barnham was an artist pre-war, who found himself in the RAF flying Spitfires. This book is an account of the time he spent in Malta as a part of one of the first Spitfire squadrons to be sent to the besieged island. Malta, which had great strategic importance to both Axis and Allied powers, was being attacked by Italian and German aircraft and was the most bombed piece of land anywhere during the Second World War.

It was defended by outclassed Hurricanes, which couldn’t climb quickly enough to be above bombers and fighters and so were ineffective in defence and suffering undue losses. Finally, Spitfires were sent – taken to the Mediterranean by aircraft carrier and then flown hundreds of miles across the sea to reach Malta.

Barnham is a sensitive man (he really only wants to be back with his new, and very pretty, wife and to paint and draw), he’s a self-confessed lousy shot, but a brave and tenacious pilot. Apart from bombs, bullets and no letters from his wife, the worse thing about his experience is the “Malta dog” … dysentery – which everyone suffers from.

This isn’t a glorious tale of tough battle and eventual triumph; it’s a carefully observed window in amazing detail of a horrific battle that went on and on. Barnham is eventually invalided out, which probably saves his life. He’s wracked by dysentery and his nerve has gone. If you think flying Spitfires would have been a glamorous thing, this book will set the record straight. Barnham doesn’t complain about his lot, he gets on with it and he tells it like it was.

The Good Shepherd – C S Forester

This is fiction, not fact, but Forester’s book might be better classed as a docu-drama in today’s media-speak. It has also recently been made into a film, starring Tom Hanks (who else?) as the captain of a US destroyer escorting an Atlantic convoy.

I read the book before I watched the film and the book, in my opinion, is much better. It captures the massive tension of being on a ship hunted by an invisible enemy and suffering from intense fatigue. And the book is set at a time of the war when the Allies had the benefit of improved radar and sonar to help alert them of the presence of submarines and to become the hunters.

It must have been absolute hell in the early days of the war, when escort ships were held back to guard against a possible invasion and when technology hadn’t swung against the submarines.

Quartered Safe out Here – George MacDonald Fraser

George MacDonald Fraser is a well-known author, famous for writing the Flashman books (Flashman being the bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays, re-imagined in adult life as a cad and cowardly army officer). He also wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film Octopussy.

Quartered Safe Out Here is a different kettle of fish, it’s MacDonald Fraser’s account of his time in Burma fighting with the Border Regiment, a group of Cumbrians from the Carlisle area.

They are an experienced group of men and George is the new man. He joins the war when the tide has turned against the Japanese in Burma and, perhaps, his war experience is not as terrible as those of his comrades.

There is a battle narrative to the book, but the most interesting aspect is the relationships between the different soldiers (an odd mix) and how they get along. Sometimes they don’t and this leads to some extremely sad and angry recollections, even tragedy. MacDonald Fraser is different from the others, he’s middle class, and is promoted to corporal (a job he does well) and eventually lifted out of the war for officer training.

Burma and the Far East campaign was essentially a colonial battle. Britain had colonised India, Burma and Malaya and the Japanese wanted to run them instead. The people of those countries being fought over were perhaps the real victims of this conflict (and they are mentioned with sympathy). Having fought to keep our colonies and won, the UK had to grant them all independence within a few years.

In Burma’s case it was 1948. Various elements of the population, divided by ethnicity and religion, fought for the British and Japanese, so it was no surprise that, after the war, factional fighting and assassination preceded independence. This year (2021) there has been yet another military coup and that after a decade of “ethnic cleansing” carried out against Muslim Rohingya people. It’s yet another post-colonial mess we’ve left behind.

By Tank D to VE Day – Ken Tout

Once lockdown is over and if we ever get on top of Covid-19, I want to properly research the wartime experiences of my mother and father, also Margaret’s dad. Both fathers were involved in the Battle for Normandy and fought in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. I can’t undertake any research right now, so I’ve been reading quite a lot of history around the latter phases of the Second World War in order to gain a better understanding of what it was like and also to put other people’s experiences against place names and battles.

Ken Tout, as the name of his wartime memoir suggests, fought in a tank regiment – the Northamptonshire Yeomanry as a gunner. His job was to aim, fire and maintain the main gun. The Northamptonshire Yeomanry, as the name suggests, were a territorial group and called into the army as soon as war was declared. Like several other similar regiments (notably the Sherwood Rangers) they were converted to tanks and Tout fought (mainly in Shermans) from D-Day to October 1944 when he was invalided home due to bursitis in his left knee, possibly caused by repetitive-strain injury from stamping on the gun’s firing mechanism.

Tout was unlucky, but also lucky, as his injury took him out from the war and back to the UK. His book continues in his absence, chronicling the Yeomanry’s war until VE Day. It has a detailed account of the Rhine crossing using Buffalo amphibious tank and infantry carriers. My dad’s Rhine crossing was in a Buffalo. He told me about it when I was making an Airfix model of one. Like many other war memories from dad – bren carriers, 25lb field guns, Churchill and Sherman tanks - they were prompted by Airfix modelling. When (and if) I ever get around to writing an account of Eric Rayner’s war, I’ll certainly draw on the account of the Rhine crossing by Ken Tout’s former comrades.

Burma ’44 – James Holland

After reading Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser, I was tempted to read a little more about the war in the Arakan and James Holland wrote this book about the Japanese offensive of 1944 and the Allied response. It takes a broad view of the Burma campaign to date and enters the battle at a time when the Allies were planning to go on the offensive. The Japanese have the same idea and launch their attack just before ours. It prompts a number of strategically important desperate stands by Allied army units, but also marks the turning point of the war in Burma and India.

Holland’s book centres on the Battle of the Admin Box in February 1944, just before the desperate battles of Imphal and Kohima when the Japanese were turned back just within India. It was significant as the first time the Japanese army had been defeated and also helped develop and test new tactics involving supply by air and holding ground rather than retreating to avoid being cut off.

The defence of the Admin Box, admin centre of the Indian Army’s 7^th Division, was desperate and close-run. The Japanese successfully infiltrated the area on a number of occasions, including one where the hospital was captured and doctors and patients murdered. This war crime stiffened the resolve of the defenders, and the Japanese, who had gambled on a quick victory, began to run out of food and ammunition.

Critical to the successful defence of the position were a number of Lee tanks and the use of Spitfires, which were able to gain air superiority over the area and allow the defenders to be resupplied by air-drops. I’ve enjoyed a number of James Holland books this year. This was a hard read due to my lack of background knowledge, also a string of hard-to-pronounce names such as the Ngakyedauk Pass. The temptation is to “bleep over” them all, but then you soon lose track of what’s what.

Serenade to the Big Bird – Bert Stiles

Bert Stiles flew Flying Fortress bombers from English air-bases during the great bombing offensive on Germany during 1943 and 1944.

They suffered horrendous losses in the early stages before long-ranger fighter escorts could be provided. The book gives an insight into the physical difficulties of flying one of these large bombers in close formation (something Stiles found very taxing), but also the massive psychological strain of mission after mission when the losses were so high. Perhaps some people could adopt an if-it-happens-it-happens attitude, but most would have taken off in the knowledge that, statistically, there was a chance that they would not be returning.

Stiles completed his tour but chose to convert to fighters and was killed later in the war.

Stalin’s Nose – Rory MacLean

I do like a good travel book. This one was a little left field in its construct. The author has a great aunt of semi-aristocratic Austrian descent, who lived with her husband (a Soviet espionage officer) in East Berlin. The Berlin Wall former part of the boundary to their garden and when it was pulled down, all their livestock escaped.

The aunt is widowed and persuades her nephew to take her with him on a journey into eastern Europe (only recently freed from Soviet control). Travelling in a two-stroke Trabant and taking his aunt’s pet pig with them, they journey across Austria, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Poland and Russia. They meet people scarred by the Second World War and by Soviet rule.

One wouldn’t have wanted to be caught between Stalin and Hitler but, of course, millions were. MacLean finds small cameos of lives destroyed, people surviving, scars still healing … It would be a very hard read, except for the comedy elements of the pig and his aunt, but it’s clear that, in eastern Europe, there are a lot of historical issues to resolve.

The Ship – C S Forester

After reading the Good Shepherd, about a destroyer escorting an Atlantic convoy, I decided to read The Ship, which is about a cruiser escorting a Malta convoy.

The Good Shepherd’s charges are threatened by U-boats, but in the Mediterranean, the threat comes from Italian aircraft and surface vessels.

The Royal Navy was an exceptionally well-trained and professional outfit during the Second World War. Sure, they had their setbacks and cock-ups, but compared to the Army, they were streets ahead. There might still have been an old-boys network thwarting promotion purely on merit, but at least the navy’s “old boys” had been trained and blooded.

Forester paints a propaganda-like image of the skill and daring, but it’s entirely believable and quite gripping.

The escort cruisers and destroyers have just beaten off an Italian air-raid, but now face the threat of attack by more powerful Italian battleships planning to intercept the convoy. Their defensive strategy and battle tactics are fascinating. It’s a great read and, in spite of its glowing admiration for the Royal Navy, it’s certainly highly accurate.

Normandy 44 - James Holland

This was the modern history book I most wanted to read in the context of understanding my father’s war.

Like other books by James Holland, it is a mixture of historical facts, a re-examination of events and commonly held views, with a large number of personal stories (from both sides).

It has added massively to my knowledge of the Battle of Normandy and has increased my desire to properly research the wartime experiences of my father and father-in-law. I just need life to return to some normality.

Crimen en Barcleona – Paco Ardit

I’m some way short of being able to call myself a polyglot, but I have read a number of Spanish-language books.

This is the latest – a B1-level novel about murder, investigation and family intrigue, set within an airline business in Barcelona.

The language is fairly simple (being lower intermediate level), but the story and plot twists are quite complex and adult.

A Tier 4 Coronavirus Regulation Christmas

 

Saoirse in her Christmas jumper

Christmas in lockdown, or Tier 4 as it’s called, wasn’t too bad.

We should have been in Soham – Sam and Lucy’s first Christmas in their new house – and we were a little disappointed to miss out. My sister was expecting to have Alex up for five days or so, but he was also caught up in the late lockdown, so we said she would be our bubble and she could come round for Christmas dinner.

Plenty of people are breaking or seriously bending the Tier 4 rules and you can hardly blame them. There’s no proper strategy from the Government, they just react late to every new development and the rules have changed so much, it’s hard to know what you can and can’t do. Some people don’t even know which area they’re in!

In the morning, we set up a Zoom online meeting for Sam and also for Max and Inna to join us [you can see it here: https://youtu.be/Occ97KGJHBA]. It actually worked pretty well and it was good for Sam to be able to have a chat with Max and to see baby Alice, who had slept through most of the night. Arthur was keen to show off some of his presents. He’d got some toy soldiers and had set them up in a defensive line across the kitchen door. Lucy and Sam could step over them, but they took a few casualties when Saoirse needed to get by.

I think Christmas was a little overwhelming for her. She hid her face and burst into tears when we started the video link, but soon settled down. She had a pair of swimming goggles on her head (and over her eyes) for much of the time.

Max and Inna seem to be managing well. Alice had been sleeping very little during the night and has been either feeding or crying. She was awake and happy enough to be jigged in Max’s arms while we were all talking. It’s a shame that we’re not able to see and hold her.

First taste of Christmas pudding. It
seem to be going down well.

They are getting some support from Marina, Inna’s mum, who has formed a child support bubble with them and had been bringing food, shopping and helping with the dog. Ollie stayed with her while Inna was in hospital and now considers Wigston his second home. Max says he gets so excited when he sees Marina that he does backward somersaults.

Later in the day, we linked up with Tom on Zoom [link: https://youtu.be/pFfCGraF3w8]. He was in Ambato and we were able to see Julia and Aureliano open presents we’d got for them. Quacker had a book and Julia a loom, which seemed to offer no instant pleasure, just frustration, as it needed to be assembled and would require some supervision.

She cheered herself up by scooting very fast around the deserted hospital corridors. Lucy and Florencia were in the house, so we didn’t see them. I did get a look at Pink and Hatchi, however.

There was no white Christmas, but it did freeze overnight and there was a bitter north wind when I took Holly for her walk. I bumped into Thornton Holmes in the park, who was walking his two spaniels. They were very pleased to see us (well pleased to see Holly, and then me when they realised I had a biscuit in my pocket). He’d been told off by a couple with two pugs because his dogs were “not under control” and he was a bit grumpy about it. “They’re just being friendly,” he insisted. I didn’t need to be convinced; I have considerable experience of owning “friendly” dogs!

There were other dogs in the park, and I was mobbed by a terrier and a small lurcher. Margaret has been walking Holly most days and is ingratiating herself with the local dogs by feeding them biscuits. They saw Holly and thought “treats!” but hadn’t accounted for mean Eric being in charge today.

We also bumped into Pauline and Chris at the traffic lights. They had probably walked Jasper around Toneham. He was very excited to see Holly and she to see him. Like us, they’d been talking to children and grandchildren via video links and were set to have a WhatsApp meeting with Rebecca in California that evening.

It has been a strange day, not like any previous Christmas, but then 2020 has been a year like no other.

Christmas is cancelled!

What a shower we have running this country. I can forgive stupid statements such as “it will all be over by Christmas” as they were made back in spring and there was little information to go on.

However, this past week, the government has threatened to take legal action against councils for closing schools early and, at Prime Minster’s Questions on Wednesday, Bojo the Clown lambasted the opposition for “wanting to cancel Christmas”.

Guess what? Everyone else could see what was coming, except those in charge.

Now, Kent, London, big chunks of the home counties (and Peterborough) have been placed into a new, stricter Tier 4, while the rest of the country have had new restrictions applied over Christmas. Instead of a five-day holiday from lock-downs, we have one day to see family (Christmas Day).

For us, in Tier 4, Christmas is cancelled. We are not allowed to travel into a lower tier area, which means we can’t go to Sam’s for Christmas Day (Soham is in Tier 2) and we can’t go to Max’s to see baby Alice – not even through the window (Syston is in Tier 3).

It’s quite depressing. I’m sure the measures are required, but the government is always behind the game. They are a complete shower!

Margaret said last night (the restrictions were announced just after 4pm yesterday) that this would be the first Christmas in over 40 years that we have spent on our own. I’m not even sure that’s true. I can’t remember a Christmas all alone – it always seemed that before we had children of our own, we spent the holiday at my dad’s and visited Margaret’s parents and my aunts.

Anyway, there is nothing we can do. We should be grateful, at least, that we’re healthy, warm and safe and have no money worries. Peterborough does have a high rate of Covid-19 infection, although Thorney has very little. We can’t go to Whittlesey (four miles south), Crowland (five miles north) or Thorney Toll (five miles east).

These certainly are strange times. The one bit of good news is that vaccinations are being rolled out slowly. The over-80s are the first group to get them and several people we know have been vaccinated – Bert and Irene (both in their 90s – went to Peterborough City Hospital to have theirs. They need a second jab in the new year to be fully covered. We hope new vaccines will get approval soon and we will all be offered one in the coming year.

Welcome grandchild No 6

I was woken up in the early hours by Margaret, who has been monitoring her WhatsApp messages all night waiting for news …

Max and Inna’s baby was born at 3.50am. We don’t know any more than that at this stage. No weight and I’m not absolutely sure of the name, although I’m running with Anya.

She has been keeping everyone waiting for just over a week and Inna had to go into hospital to try to kick-start labour on Monday (it’s Wednesday today). It’s been quite a marathon!

So, Anya becomes my sixth grandchild and Max and Inna’s first child. I’ve had one grandchild every year since 2015. Funnily enough, I’ve become more and more anxious about each one. Julia, Arthur and Aureliano presented no particular worries to me (although plenty for their parents, I'm sure).

With Saoirse there was a concern that there was some kind of foetal abnormality on a scan and they wanted to do some more tests. Sam and Lucy said no and, of course, Saoirse is absolutely fine. Florencia caused some concern with early contractions after a bumpy trip to Santo Domingo and with later scans, too. Lucy had to get a second opinion and (of course) we had the added problem of a flight from Quito to Mexico City and then a long plane journey to London. We upgraded Lucy to first class so she had a bed and, again, Florencia was fine. I was so worried that she'd arrive at 35,000ft over the north Atlantic.

Max and Inna were worried that Anya, who had been a real wriggler, had stopped moving. I think this caused also some concern for us with one or more of ours and might be that the baby is just settling down for the “big push” as it were. Anya seemed very happy where she was and in no hurry to make her entrance; the hospital was able to monitor her heartbeat but said they’d induce contractions if there was nothing by Monday, so that’s what happened.

We had some concern when there was meconium in the “waters” but she’s been checked and there’s no sign of her having ingested any into her lungs, so we can relax a little. Max is heading home for some sleep and Inna and Anya will be transferred to a smaller post-natal centre in Melton Mowbray.

I don’t know when we will be able to see or hold Anya. Leicester is in the strictest Tier 3 Covid-19 restrictions and Peterborough may move from Tier 2 to 3 tomorrow. Apart from all the hazards of birth, there’s still Covid to consider. Infection rates are high (20,000 new cases and 500 deaths per day) so we have to be careful. Oddly, some people still don’t believe Covid exists. They say it’s just a regular cold, but a bit worse, and that the government is in the hands of evil scientists trying to control us. I suppose Brexit should have made it clear that there are a lot of gullible people out there but, honestly, the crass stupidity of some folk doesn’t bear thinking about.

Footnote: So I'd almost written all my Christmas cards telling friends and family about Anya, when we got a WhatsApp message from Max to say they had decided to call the baby Alice Marina (Marina after Inna's mum). Alice is a very nice name and it's good to have Marina continuing into another generation.

Arthur and Saoirse are over for the weekend

Saoirse in the buggy singing
Jingle Bells

This time last year, Margaret’s biggest worry about Christmas was whether to get a turkey or a goose. This year, we weren’t sure there would be a Christmas.

With typical incompetence, this shower of a government had promised Covid-19 would all be over by Christmas. Well they were wrong! Perhaps if they’d had proper tracking measures in place, decent testing and some kind of sensible policy, it could have been under control, but they didn’t and it isn’t.

Science advisors had suggested a two-week lockdown in September as infection rates climbed with schools and universities back, but they said that wasn’t necessary. By the time they realised they were wrong, we needed a four-week lockdown, which comes to an end this week, but it doesn’t seem to have done a lot of good. Peterborough went into lockdown in tier 1 (the least severe) and we’re coming out of lockdown in tier 2 (worse than when we went in!). I have no idea how the hell that is possible.

This morning, the main news is a survey which says rates are dropping fast and the R-rate (re-infection rate) is down to 0.8, so someone has got their figures wrong or the decimal point in the wrong place.

What we do know is that we’re still under strict restrictions about who can come into the house (no-one basically), but schools are open, you can go to the pub as long as you are having a meal and all shops are open. Oh! You can also go to the gym and there can be up to 2,000 people at a football match.

Restrictions are being lifted over Christmas across the UK, so up to three households can meet together for Christmas. We have all been invited to Sam’s and it now seems clear that we’ll be able to go. Max and Inna were invited too, but their baby will be born any day now and they have decided (quite sensibly) that they’ll have a quiet Christmas at home.

I did go for a walk with Max last week, but it was the first time I’d seen him for a while. We had a cold (perhaps Covid) and then he had to self-isolate because he’s had contact with someone who later tested positive. Anyway, we had a nice walk around Watermead, near Syston, and then a picnic in the rain in the car, breaking another lockdown rule.

There are so many rules that I can’t keep up so, like many people, I’m just doing what seems sensible.

This weekend, we had Arthur and Saoirse staying with us. Apparently, we’re allowed to be designated as a carer and as long as we don’t mix with Sam or Lucy, we can look after the kids. It’s another rule that doesn’t make any sense, but hey-ho! It was nice to see them and I’ve enjoyed spending some time together with Arthur doing a few things. There has been a marked change in him since he started school (he’s grown up a lot). I think it’s been very good for him.

He has a reading book and is doing pretty well with learning his letters. He’s also very keen to learn, so that’s really good news. We did some sawing wood and nailing bits together and also watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he really enjoyed. On the way back to Soham last night, we had a very philosophical conversation about numbers.

Arthur is an angel in the school
nativity play. His costume is
one of my old shirts adapted
by Auntie. He also has a halo
but no wings (wings are
too distruptive).

He’d been counting cars (I’d heard random numbers being mouthed in the back) and, at March, he declared he’d reached 100. Were there enough numbers to count all the cars in the country? I said there were. Well, Arthur wasn’t sure about that. He’d had a conversation with his mum about the number of stars and she’d told him there weren’t enough numbers to count all the stars.

I said there were certainly a lot of stars, but we did have a number (or at least an estimate for how many there were). He said: how many? I said I couldn’t recall, but I’m sure there was a number available (I can’t drive and Google at the same time). He wasn’t happy with that answer. I then introduced the concept of infinity (which is when numbers run out) and he was very interested in that especially when we talked about infinity +1, but then it’s not infinity, is it? He fell asleep at Witcham Toll contemplating infinity, which is when Saoirse, who I thought was fast asleep because she was so quiet, chipped in with a number of profound statements, which I couldn't hear very well. She wasn’t too bothered about a proper answer, fortunately, and was happy to make her proclamations without hearing a sensible response.

The funniest thing Arthur does is mix up his personal and possessive pronouns. Instead of saying "she always does that" he says "her always does that". It's very cute. I don't think it's right to correct him, but I will say "she does, doesn't she" to which he answers "her does".

Saoirse is now at nursery three days a week and that’s also, clearly, been good for her. She copies Arthur reading and will sit with a book, pointing at letters and making random sounds. She’s also got a desire to learn.

She has new words and phrases, too. She says “OK” quite often. I was reading them a bedtime story and she got out of bed to stand on the landing. Margaret, who was in her bed waiting to put them down when I’d finished the stories, told her to get back into bed. “OK”, said Saoirse, still standing there. She also says “please” and “thank you” and the other thing she says is “help me, please”. Her great joy remains to jump – she’s more than happy to stand and jump, but if she can find something to jump off, she’s especially happy.

Maybe they have been learning Jingle Bells at nursery, because she’s singing extracts from it “jingle, way, bells, jingle” to herself. Margaret took her for a walk in the purple buggy on Saturday (that generally gets her off to sleep) but they walked all around the village for about an hour and a half with Saoirse singing her cover version of “jingle, way, bells”.

My dad would have been 100 today

On this day, one hundred years ago, on November 26^th, 1920, Eric Rayner, my dad, was born. If he were still alive, he would be 100 years old today.

He was the first child of Thomas Leonard Rayner and Ada Mitchell. When he was born, Thomas was 30 and Ada was 24, they had been married for nine months and two weeks. Perhaps my father was a honeymoon baby, although I don’t think they could afford a honeymoon.

Thomas had avoided the First World War by failing a medical when he went to enlist in Kitchener’s army. He was turned down due to hypertension and was pretty dismayed by the diagnosis. I think he expected to drop dead at any time. As it happened, he lived to be 85 and, had he passed the medical, he may well have been killed in the trenches.

He was a boilermaker by trade and during the First World War, he worked at Cammell Laird shipbuilders in Birkenhead. My grandmother lived in Liverpool in Doon Street, Kirkdale. The story is that they met on the Mersey ferry (no tunnel in those days). She was being bothered by a couple of ruffians and Thomas stepped in and shifted them. My grandfather was only a shade above five feet and a very mild-mannered man, but I’ve no idea how big (or how rough) the ruffians were. I’ve no reason to doubt the story because my grandmother told it to me. My grandmother was as hard as nails and I was always surprised she hadn’t been able to sort them out herself.

The completed family in the garden at Robert Street. Pam is
the baby and that will be Vi standing behind Ada.

The First World War would have been a boom time for Cammell Laird, but work soon dried up after the armistice and I believe Thomas came back to Cheshire with his pregnant wife in the hope of finding work and they rented a cottage on School Lane in Hartford, Northwich.

They must have been quite worried about their future, but Thomas managed to get work at Brunner Mond, later ICI. My dad was born at 341 Manchester Road, Lostock, a house built by his grandfather and he was named Eric, possibly after my grandmother’s grandfather who was called Henrick Lemmer, and had come to Liverpool from Germany. Later, the family was able to move into an ICI rented house at 9 Robert Street, Castle on the other side of Northwich to Lostock, but perhaps only two or three miles away.

I reckon they thought they had landed on their feet. They had a nice house and a secure job. ICI offered a pension and the housing would have been subsidised, also very modern for its time.

I remember the house very well. Thomas and Ada still lived there when I was a boy and my mother and I would visit regularly. As you walked through the back door, there was a toilet and a coalhouse, there was a kitchen with storage, a pantry, gas cooker and sink. The bathroom was alongside the kitchen. The living room had an open coal fire and a cast iron range, with an oven alongside the open fire. It always amazed me how grandma could wedge the kettle on top of the coals and iron grate. It always stood by the grate or half on, so the water was almost boiling for a cup of tea. There was a short garden which backed onto the embankment carrying the Chester to Manchester railway across the Weaver valley, first on an embankment and then a series of sandstone arches.

For a child, the surrounding area would have offered a playground and dangers. Just below them were the locks on the river and a wide flood plain. Across the valley was Sir John Dean’s Grammar School (where I went many years later). The west bank of the River Weaver was rolling farmland grazed by cattle and cut by a couple of deep gulleys and a flood plain along the canalised river. There was a small boatyard (Pimlott’s, I think) but it was mainly a rural landscape. My dad’s memories were of playing with a gang of other children, making camps on Twig Island (wherever that was) and, when they had some cash, buying nettle beer from an old lady who lived in one of the houses at the edge of the estate.

He also spent a lot of time in Lostock, where he had a grandmother, great aunt and great uncles, aunts, uncles and cousins in 339 and 341 Manchester Road. Those houses had long gardens (over 150 metres) leading down to Wincham Brook, where there was fishing, also greenhouses and livestock (chickens, geese and a pig). The two gardens were like a little farm. At 339, there was an orchid house and maybe 15 damson trees, plus apples and pears.

Tom and Ada had started a family pretty quickly, but it was another seven years before a second child came along, a girl who was named Joan. When Eric was 12, another sister, Pamela, was born and that completed his family.

Eric went to Castle Boys School. I was told he was smart and had won a place at grammar school, but his parents could not afford to send him. He was musical, playing the violin, also the clarinet and saxophone.

In his teens, he suffered a serious road accident which they feared may have killed him. He was cycling back to Castle after visiting Lostock. It was foggy and when he came to the crossroads at Northwich Station, he was cycling across when a bus went through a red light and hit him. He was carried, unconscious and bleeding, into the Lion and Railway Hotel where an ambulance was called to take him to Northwich infirmary. He recovered, of course, but his jaw had been smashed and he wore false teeth for the rest of his life. My grandma told me the bus company had paid compensation, but it had all gone to replace the carpet in the Lion & Railway, which had been ruined by the blood. I have no idea whether that is true!

Eric (front left) with the Bert Jarvis band

Eric got a job first at the terracotta works off Leicester Street. He said it was hard work and hot. At lunchtimes, the men would sink five pints of beer. My dad said they needed it to replace all the fluids they sweated out during the morning. Oddly, some folk I worked with used to polish off a similar quantity, but they weren’t sweating in a terracotta works. Later, he became an apprentice plumber with Fred Whitehead, a Northwich builder. I think he liked the work and liked his employer. He always spoke fondly of his time there. He talked of having to push a handcart full of tools and materials up Castle Hill, a steep road up from the river. In his leisure time, he played in a dance band – clarinet and violin. It was called the Bert Jarvis dance band.

My dad was a sociable animal. He loved gossip, loved stories and he enjoyed music. I’m guessing as a plumber with workmates, going into different houses and playing in the band at the weekends, his life would have been pretty good.

Then along came the Second World War.

He and a friend from Whitehead’s immediately went to enlist in the RAF. It must have seemed like the glamorous option. Eric’s friend was a painter and they took him, but told my dad there was no call for plumbers … sorry. He joined the Local Defence Volunteers, the Home Guard, and they exercised with broom handles because they had no rifles. By the time we were a year into the war, they had rifles and, after the fall of France, they were on invasion alert. They manned a sandbagged redoubt overnight at the junction of Moss Road and Castle Street. They had a Boys anti-tank rifle which was pointed up Chester Road (because that’s the way they expected the Germans to come) and my dad said they were very confident that they’d stop anything.

The Boys rifle fired a large steel bullet which could pierce 22mm of steel plate. It had a long barrel (36in) and had a magazine with five bullets and a bolt-action firing mechanism. Its kick was fearsome and I guess it was a pretty effective weapon against lightly armoured vehicles.

Eric was called up when he hit 21. It’s one of the things on my list to properly research his wartime experiences. I know that he spent some time in Northern Ireland and that, at some stage, he volunteered to be a glider pilot. “Why the hell did you do that?” I asked him. He said because everyone volunteered. Luckily, he wasn’t selected.

Military service and warfare was the reason most men travelled anywhere. Until then, Eric would have gone as far as his bike or a bus would take him. He had family in Manchester and Liverpool, but foreign travel was unheard of and, anyway, foreigners were not to be trusted. So Northern Ireland must have seemed quite exotic to my dad. To him, the fight for Irish independence would be seen through the imperialist lenses he was offered. Like many of his generation, he considered the Irish to be troublemakers.

He was infantry (not a good place to be) but at 5ft 3in at least he’d find it easier to keep his head down. Normandy was his first taste of action. He was in the Northumberland Fusiliers and I believe he landed on Gold Beach (Arromanches) on D+3 (June 9, 1944). I know that he drove a bren gun carrier and was armed with mortar and Vickers machine gun. At some stage, he was transferred (I may be wrong) to the 2^nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. He fought in the bitter battle for Normandy and then through a freezing winter in Belgium, was pulled in to reinforce during the Ardennes battle and then crossed the Rhine in a Buffalo. He ended the war in Hamburg, a city in ruins. He was shocked by the devastation and staggered to see a Woolworth’s sign still intact on the front of a ruined store. After VE Day, he was sent to Palestine as a peacekeeper and added Jews and Arabs to the list of foreigners not to be trusted. I’d call him a xenophobe these days, but the only foreigners he’d ever met were trying to kill him, so I guess we need to cut him some slack. He did get leave in Cairo and got to see the Pyramids.

After the war and Palestine, he returned to Cheshire and never set foot abroad again. I would have liked to have taken him to France one summer, I should have made the time to do so.

Eric returned to his job with Whitehead’s and to his weekend band. It was on a plumbing job that he met his wife, my mother, Nellie Little. She had been in the WRNS during the war and had managed to get work as a cook at Dutton hospital, an old TB isolation hospital, after being demobbed. My dad was called to do some work and I guess he made straight for the kitchen and a cup of tea. They were married at Adwick le Street, just north of Doncaster (the village where my mother had lived before going to the orphanage) on April 16, 1948 and honeymooned in Scarborough. Eric was 27 years old.

They rented a house on Manchester Road and, on November 7 1949, his daughter and first child Margaret was born. Around this time, Eric decided to go it alone. He left Whitehead’s and started out as a self-employed plumber. It must have been a bit of a gamble, but my dad was a good networker and was able to get enough work. There was something of a building boom going on with council houses being built in Weaverham, Lostock Gralam, Leftwich and Rudheath.

I was born on July 18, 1953, named Eric Thomas after my father and grandfather, and the same year, they had moved from rented housing to 339 Manchester Road, the former home of his great uncle Tom Rayner. I was born in the back bedroom of the house, that was where I took my first breath.

As I grew up, my memories were of breakfast at the kitchen table, making toast through the grille of the Rayburn range, family Sunday lunches and my dad’s overalls hanging behind the door. They always smelled of putty.

I know now that my parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect. My dad had a string of girlfriends and my mother certainly knew of at least one widow that he kept comforted. He played in his band (called the Meltones) on Saturday nights and, on Sundays, had a regular gig at Lostock Club playing with a pianist and drummer for dancing and backing to club singers.

He had a number of cars, which would have been essential for his work. There was a Hillman convertible, which I can remember only for it boiling over between Macclesfield and Buxton when we were going to visit his cousin (my Aunt Eileen). There was also an Austin pick-up, a Morris 1000 van (with the floor falling out), a Ford Anglia van (36 TU) which was bought new, a Ford Anglia Estate, a Minivan and a Morris 1100 estate. They were all, always filled with tools and bits of pipe.

We had a telephone early (a line shared with another house a little way down the road). The number was Northwich 3352 and I often had to answer the phone and take messages. Where was he? He’d promised to come that day but hadn’t turned up – that was a typical inquiry. There were always burst pipes, especially in winter.

In 1963, a particularly hard winter, almost all the pipes in all the houses of the street were frozen. When they thawed, he was rushed off his feet fixing bursts. Another winter, when I was about 14, there was a heavy snowfall and a quick thaw which brought down almost all the cast iron spouts in the road. I was able to help replacing them with grey plastic ones.

That was one occasion where I was quite useful, but other times when I went out on jobs with him, I was less helpful. There was the time I was tasked with sawing through floorboards to lay some pipes and I sawed through the floorboards and the plaster lathes of the ceiling. That was embarrassing! Another time, I was given the job of digging a trench on Bates’ Caravan Park at Goostrey to lay mains sewage to a static caravan. I was digging alongside a hedge and thought I’d come to a thick root. I gave it a couple of good chops, only to create a geyser of water. I’d cut through the mains water pipe to one side of the site. I was like a Texan oil driller (only it was water, not oil). It was a quick job the join the two bits of pipe, but we had to turn off the water for the whole site and everyone was moaning.

Eric’s wife, my mother, died on February 6, 1965 from breast cancer. She’d had a mastectomy a couple of years before and, like the child I was, I’d thought “that’s it, sorted.” I hadn’t known she was going to die until a couple of weeks beforehand. It was so devastating for me that I didn’t really observe my dad and its effect on him.

The usual people were helping out. The great aunts next door, the same aunts that had looked after my dad as a child, were still helping out, sisters, mother, his brother-in-law Dick, many friends … They rallied around at the time and they did so for years afterwards. His sisters Joan and Pam did washing and cleaning, his mother came with Joan while she was still fit enough. My sister and I also had jobs (I was firelighter and keeper).

Our reduced family - me, my dad and
sister at the wedding of dad's
cousin Rae at Lostock Gralam.

Dad carried on with his work, of course, he had to; also continued to play in his band (now called The Chordials). What was a shock to me was the number of women who started showing up. Some of them were around pretty quickly, others nosed in more carefully. There were awkward moments when they encountered another. I remember being told not to say anything about Auntie Rita to Auntie Sybil. I did not consider these women to be my aunts. I was sometimes angry at the time but, later, I was sorry for them. They all wanted to be married, but my dad was not really the marrying kind, even when one of them (Sybil Haskins) had a child, Stephen, my half-brother, in September 1969 when Eric was 48.

Rita Lamb, who came for baths a couple of times a week, was willing to cook as well as bathe and clearly saw me as a door to gain access. She asked what my favourite dinner was. I’d always enjoyed liver when my mum cooked it, but Rita Lamb’s liver was nothing like my mum’s. She shocked me by saying I’d have to move my bedroom when she and my dad were married because they’d have that room. I asked my dad if he was getting married. He said he wasn’t (I don’t think it has crossed his mind) and I didn’t see Rita in the house after that … perhaps she’d been told marriage was out of the question. A few years later, she married Harry Hulse, another widower, who lived next-door-but-one to us and I often stopped for a chat with her.

We saw a lot of Sybil and there were a couple of Margarets and an Audrey as well. These were the ones we knew about and there were others. It came to a head at his funeral when Sybil and the two Margarets were all in the same room. There were no fireworks, just smouldering resentment. Margaret Ditchburn was quite cross with me a few days later. She wanted to know why I hadn’t told her about the others and I said it wasn’t my job to sort out my dad’s complicated love life. For all I knew, they were aware of the others and happy with the shared arrangement. She clearly wasn’t and wasn’t, but I gave her a heavy chest of drawers and some crystal door knobs that were in the wash-house and she went away never to be seen again.

Sybil and Stephen were more trouble. They wanted to be involved in sorting things out, but didn’t want to be cleaning and clearing – that fell largely to Margaret (my wife). Eric’s will, witnessed by Rita Lamb a few days before he died, provided enough cash to pay Sybil’s mortgage so her house was hers and the rest was divided between my sister and I. Sybil and Stephen started a legal challenge to the will, thinking he should have a third share. I could see my dad’s thinking. He thought that Stephen would have to wait until Sybil died when her house would be his. As executor, I said it was my job to carry out the clear instructions in the will and I stood firm. I insisted the legal challenge be heard in Peterborough to make it harder for them to travel from Macclesfield and they didn’t bother to show up. Their case was weak, but it was a nuisance and did allow me to draw a line under Sybil and Stephen. I’ve not seen or heard of them since.

Before my mother died, dad didn’t come on holiday with us. There were a couple of holidays at Middleton Towers, but I was too young to remember much about them. It was mam who took us on holiday (to relatives in Yorkshire, or to Blackpool or to the Isle of Man) and it was her who took us on days out – Manchester, Chester, Liverpool, Sunday School trips to Rhyl, Llandudno or Southport. After she died, I did have holidays in London (with dad, Aunt Joan and Uncle Don) and also Blackpool (with Sybil). We had always been told dad was too busy to come …

Three generations of Rayners - me, my dad and my children
- Sam, Max and Tom - at 339 Manchester Road.

When I started work, when I married and started a business, when we had children, dad was clearly proud and very interested. He was massively supportive in helping with things like some cash for a car, buying me a typewriter. I was pleased that he could come down to Peterborough to spend a couple of holidays with us and I was pleased that he could come to see our offices in London when I was managing director of Central Press Features.

Eric died of a heart attack on April 15, 1992. He was 71. He died in his bed, hopefully without too much pain and discomfort. When my Aunt Joan didn’t see him that day and got no response from the phone, they called the police. They broke in through the back door and found him in bed. I had a call that day in London and my sister and I headed up that evening. I was out on a sales call and got a message to call Margaret urgently. I feared something had happened to one of my children and my first thought upon hearing that dad was dead was one of relief – it’s strange how life can play tricks on you like that.

I still miss my dad and I wish he was around today to wish happy birthday and see how things worked out. People do live to be 100 don’t they?

Eric at around two or three years old

With his first grandchild, Becky

At 339 Manchester Road probably around
1974 - my sister Margaret, wife Margaret
and my dad.