It would have been the year 1959, as I recall, that commercial television came to Tyneside. Before that we only had one television channel, the BBC, and that broadcasting in black and white only from 1700 to 2300. The hours for Independent Television (ITV) were the same as those for the BBC, but the channel, by definition, included commercial breaks – adverts. I skim or mute the adverts on the television today, but in the late 1950s, for us, they opened up a whole new world south of the River Tees and we learned and experienced all sorts of things that we never knew or had never tried before. We wondered where the yellow went when we brushed our teeth with Pepsodent, and we discovered that there was a margarine that was so good, people couldn’t distinguish it from butter. Apparently, men would even come round and offer to do a housewife’s washing for three weeks. It was against this background of outrageous claims and naive viewers that the Shacklepin family encountered an incident that I now refer to as the Great Alka-Seltzer Experiment. Up to that time the family had not used much in the way of modern medicines; indeed, by today’s standards, not a lot was available. Vicks Vapo-Rub was smeared on your chest if you had a cough; headaches were eased by aspirin; indigestion was dealt with using Milk of Magnesia; and colds or flu were treated with Fennings Fever Cure – a foul-tasting acrid liquid that I discovered, years later while studying GCE ‘O’ level chemistry, contained dilute nitric acid (it worked well, in that you never again admitted to having a cold after experiencing one dose). But one day in 1959 we saw an advertisement for Alka-Seltzer, the fizzing cure for hangover and other ailments. My elder brother was suffering from such a malady (he usually was) and my mother took the bold step of buying a tube of the effervescent remedy for the first time. The incredible thing is (and this is a true story) the family was so excited to see the Alka-Seltzer work that we all stood around the kitchen sink to watch the preparation: Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear, Big Brother Bear and little Baby Bear (ie me). Authoritatively, my father filled a tumbler with water and unscrewed the cap of the Alka-Seltzer tube. He took out a tablet and dropped it into the glass. We all watched, in great anticipation, for the tablet to burst into life – plop, plop, fizz, fizz and all that. Nothing happened. No fizz, nothing; it didn’t even sink. Father took a teaspoon and poked it; still nothing. He stirred it around and pushed it under, but still nothing. ‘What a swizz’, we all thought. Clearly, we had been conned or had received a duff batch. There was much disgruntlement and a sense of betrayal. Mother stated the intention of returning the medicine to the chemist’s and demanding her money back. Then we cottoned on to what we had done wrong. The tablet in the glass of water was not Alka-Seltzer; it was the round polystyrene packing piece included in the top of the tube to stop the tablets rattling around. You couldn’t make it up. Aye, we made our own entertainment when I was a lad – children today don’t know they’re born.
A few years ago we enjoyed a visit from one of Jane’s distant relatives, another ex-pat from the Caribbean, but one who had relocated to Canada instead of the UK shortly after her island became independent from Britain in 1963. She now lived in Alberta – or was it Manitoba? – somewhere in the middle, anyway, and she was over in the Old Country for a few months. As we were chatting away, the subject inevitably came around to the British weather. What she said was interesting: she could not understand, or bear, the near-constant low cloud in the Winter in Britain – it was so depressing. In Alberta (or wherever) they encountered either blue sky (when it might be cold or warm) – or grey sky (when it might be snowing or raining). They rarely, however, had just overcast for week after week without any precipitation or sun. Well, that’s what she said – I am not in a position to confirm or deny the climate of the Canadian provinces, but I did understand her sentiment, for Jane has been moaning about the British weather ever since she and her parents moved to England in 1964. To Jane, suffering the cold in Britain after living in the tropics is bad enough, but what she really cannot stand is the clag, a delightfully descriptive word, which – I was once told – is an aviation acronym for Cloud Low Aircraft Grounded. I have never found an aviator who can confirm that story, so it may be apocryphal; but clag does fit the description perfectly and, indeed, living under it can be very depressing if it goes on for long periods. I have often wondered if our weather is one of the primary reasons why the British went out and founded an Empire, but that is by the way. Given this situation, I am intrigued to know why on earth the UK government has just allocated the sum of £50M for scientists to develop ways of shutting out the sun. Yes, it is true. Not content with dissuading us from driving fossil-fuelled cars, or stopping us from travelling faster than 10 mph, or discouraging us from flying abroad to enjoy ourselves, our lords and masters now want us to sit at home – presumably wrapped in blankets for warmth – looking out of the window at lowering grey skies. An unspoken bonus may be that some elderly people will be so depressed that they will take The Blue Pill as authorised by the forthcoming Assisted Dying Bill, thus saving the NHS the expense of end-of-life care for the aged – every cloud has a silver lining. Apparently, the aim is to modify the clouds so that they reflect the sunlight and, thus, inhibit global warming. There are also plans to develop ways of drawing in large quantities of carbon dioxide: one of these is to gather the entire British Army in Aldershot and order every squaddie to breathe in, all at once, then hold their breath. I made that last bit up, of course; we do not have enough soldiers in the British Army to do any such thing.
Shutting out the sun: I have come across some crazy schemes authorised by the government in my time, but this one takes the biscuit.
As it happens, much of England has been basking in unseasonal sunshine this Spring, and we have had almost constant sun since March. It has still been cold at night, of course, with temperatures in Melbury around 5C but, no matter, it has been an absolute delight to open the curtains each day and see a clear blue sky and enjoy the prospect of a fine day. Even the daytime temperatures have been quite tolerable and we have hit 25C on occasion. This has been nicely offset by a cold north easterly wind that makes sitting outside uncomfortable. No, no global warming here, nor has there been in Melbury since the term was invented, but the sunshine has been very welcome. There is, of course, a downside to the sunshine. There always is when things seem to be going well with the British weather. With all this sun, correspondingly, there has hardly been any rain. There is talk of drought and conserving water and hosepipe bans. Poor Jane’s garden is parched and withering, the lawn is cracked and going brown, the earth as solid as a rock. We could do with a bit of rain, preferably overnight, but it’s all right, I have the solution to the drought: I am going to wash the dust off the car tomorrow. That always works.
Speaking of motor cars, we are now owners of a brand new Volkswagen ID3 – a state-of-the-art electric vehicle (EV) with a claimed range of 350 miles between charges which has controls that make the space shuttle cockpit look positively antiquated. Friends who know me might infer that the capital gained from the sale of my motor yacht (Blog 138) was just burning a hole in my pocket but, for once, the inference would be incorrect. True, since 1971 I have owned a total of twenty nine motor cars from which it could be deduced that I can be somewhat fickle when it comes to vehicles (the shortest ownership was six months). However, on this occasion the decision to move on was a rational one, arrived at after lengthy discussion with the memsahib and the submission of several well-argued, costed and logical points. We had owned our last car, an electric Nissan Leaf, for five years and we were very pleased with it. It was possibly the best car I had ever owned, with all the ‘bells and whistles’, economical yet nippy, and a delight to drive. Its Achilles heel, however, was its range between battery charges: an indicated value of 170 miles but, in practice, about 120 miles – and that only in the Summer. Regular readers will recall several of my earlier blogs that set out the trials and tribulations of undertaking long trips in the car, the detailed planning involved, and the stress that ensued. Since I bought the Leaf in 2020, technology has moved on a tad and EVs can now be obtained with much better ranges, the greatest claimed to be 481 miles (the Mercedes Benz EQS Saloon). That car would do me nicely but, not being a millionaire, and having had terrible experience from Mercedes’ Customer Service in the past, I wasn’t going down that road. Instead, I conducted a lengthy feasibility study looking at the ranges of all EVs that were just about within my budget, reading the reviews, and drawing up a short list. The VW ID3, fitted with the larger battery option, came out on top.
Now here’s the interesting bit: it was actually cheaper to buy a new car than it was to buy a ‘nearly new’, 6-month-old car (which was our original plan). Few people buy cars for cash any more, the popular method now is Personal Contract Purchase (PCP). For those who are not familiar with the term, you put down a deposit (usually your present car as a trade-in), pay a fixed amount every month for three or four years, after which you can either keep the car after paying a lump sum, return it at no expense, or start the process all over again with another car. The key thing is, you pick the car and arrangement that suits your monthly outgoings so you can get a quite expensive new car for a relatively modest monthly budget. In the past we have taken out a bank loan and bought our car outright; this time we went for a PCP and the monthly payments are almost half the previous bank loan payments. OK, the VW is technically not mine, but so what? I get to use it and it doesn’t cost me much. Lovely car, by the way: it is very cheap to run (on my own electricity), it is rather like an iPad on four wheels, and it goes like a dingbat.
Ah, I forgot to mention another thing as a piece of advice if you are ever thinking of buying a new car: don’t believe that you’ll get the car straight away. We made initial enquiries on 6 January, thinking the deal would be done by the end of the month; in practice, the car had to be earmarked for us in the factory in Germany and, what with IT failures, plague, famine, sea serpents in the North Sea, frogs on the carriageway of the M180 and other delays, we did not take delivery until the evening of 25 April. The VW garage was so embarrassed by the delays and so impressed with our patience, that they gave us £125 as a goodwill gesture to spend on a meal in The Big City, which we thought was jolly decent of them.
It was the conclusion of my final cancer review after two years of successful treatment and, just as I was about to leave, I had casually mentioned a painful swollen lump on my outer ear. The oncologist peered at it.
“Let me get this clear. You’ve been smearing it with after shave balm?”, she said in a voice that rose to a crescendo of disbelief. “What on earth were you thinking of? And why with that?”
I looked suitably abashed.
“Well”, I said, “I’ve tried everything else – cold cream, hand cream, Vaseline, my wife’s anti-ageing cream…I thought I might as well give it a go as I was treating my face with balm after shaving anyway, as part of my punishing cosmetic régime…”
My voice trailed off.
Then Jane chipped in, moving over to stand by the doctor in a united female front.
“He’s had it for six months and I’ve been telling him to get it seen to, but it’s no good talking to him. You tell him, doctor, he wont listen to me”.
The oncologist actually wagged her finger at me.
“You tell me you’ve had this three times before when you were in the Navy, and each time they cut it off, so you should know better. I haven’t saved you from prostate cancer for you to die on me with skin cancer. It looks like a BCC to me. Make an appointment to see your GP, pronto, and get it fixed. And stop putting after-shave balm on it.”
Both women gave me a stern look of admonition. Not for the first time I pondered on the powerful force that is The Sisterhood. I then went home and looked up what a BCC was – I thought it stood for Blind Carbon Copy, but apparently it means Basal Cell Carcinoma, a form of skin cancer.
The next day I was given an immediate appointment with my GP, who confirmed the diagnosis and referred me to a plastic surgeon. I was impressed. When I had had the problem in the Navy, the doctor had more-or-less lopped off the offending growth there and then as I sat in the chair; in civvy street, apparently, I was to be treated by a real plastic surgeon. I wondered, wistfully, if I could get the bags under my eyes fixed, or my nose straightened, at the same time as a discount. Later, I was to learn that, this time, the operation would be more complicated, partly because the growth on my ear was close to my skull and partly because a biggish chunk of outer ear would have to be removed. Within three weeks I was at a private clinic, funded by the NHS. A very nice surgeon performed the deed, stitched it up, and told me to return in two weeks to have the stitches removed. In the meantime I was to keep the wound dry, not wash my hair, and refrain from having a full shower. Blimey.
It was when I returned that the fun started. It turned out out that the surgeon had had to use so much Superglue to seal the wound that he had succeeded in gluing the stitches in place at the same time. Despite her best efforts, the nurse could not get the stitches out. I was sent away with a sore ear, a tub of Vaseline, and instructions to wash and grease the wound twice a day before returning in another two weeks. Surprisingly, that treatment worked and the stitches were removed, complete with sheets of dried Superglue. Mind you, you almost had to scrape me off the ceiling as the stitches came out and I am left with a right ear sticking out of my head like an asymmetrical African elephant. I still say the after-shave balm might have worked. Just call me Dumbo. [Post script: the thing proved to be benign.]
An interesting aside to the above experience was that, when I mentioned to one of the theatre nurses that I had served in the Royal Navy (“The Falklands? Aw shucks, it was nothing really…”) she offered to provide me with a form for claiming compensation for injury caused in service. She presumably thought that I had spent my time at sea on the open bridge of a destroyer, gazing at far-off horizons under a blazing sun, my cap at a rakish angle. I did not disabuse her of the image, which did fit the bill of my year as a Midshipman in 1970-71, but I had to admit to myself that the rest of my time at sea was actually spent looking at a far-off superheated steam gauge in a very noisy steam turbine room, my cap at a rakish angle after bumping my head on a hot steam pipe. I declined the offer with a modest smile.
Whatever happened to the Continental Quilt? Does anyone remember that term? They are called duvets now, of course, but when they first appeared around the late 1970s they were initially given the rather odd double name, tacitly implying that this was an eccentric European fad, not to be taken seriously when compared to good British (or, rather, Egyptian) sheets, woollen blankets, counterpanes and eiderdowns. The duvet had the last laugh. When I joined the Royal Navy in 1969, they issued me with two sets of sheets, two pillow cases and two hand towels as part of my initial uniform allowance. You carried this bedding around with you to every ship or establishment and handed it over to your steward on arrival to make up your bunk. Your cabin was not like a hotel room with all this basic stuff provided: you had to supply your own. As the duvet came along, some officers and men used those instead and there was considerable flair for artistic individualism as an alternative to the standard naval counterpane with its logo of a fouled anchor set precisely centrally on the bunk. This all went well until the Falklands Conflict, when the Royal Navy re-learned the lessons of World War 2 and discovered that fires or the flash from an explosion melted man-made fibres that were next to the skin, causing horrible burns. After that bedding moved on to compulsory naval-issue sleeping bags with removable liners made from natural fibre such as cotton, all provided by the establishment or ship. Sensibly, personnel moved back to cotton or woollen socks and underwear at the same time. I think we all heaved a sigh of relief at no longer having to carry our own sheets and pillow cases with our dunnage. I still have some of my sheets – we use them to cover the floor when we are decorating. Not a bad record for a piece of cotton issued fifty six years ago.
So, anyway, five hundred or so years ago the Portuguese, those great explorers, discovered a group of islands in the Indian Ocean roughly somewhere between India and Madagascar. The islands were totally unoccupied and one might reasonably think that Portugal would claim sovereignty but, for one reason or another, France eventually took occupation in the 18th century and started copra plantations using slaves from Africa. They administered the islands from their other possession in the Indian Ocean, Îsle de France. When Britain beat Napoleon in 1814, she took possession of the islands from the French, along with Îsle de France – the spoils of war. The islands, in case you haven’t already gathered, are the Chagos Islands, and Îsle de France is now called Mauritius. The British freed the slaves on the islands, and they remained as contracted workers on the plantations. The workforce was enhanced by people from Mauritius and the Seychelles and eventually became the de facto inhabitants known now as Chagossians. For convenience, the British continued to administer the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, 1,300 miles away to the south west.
Fast forward on to the 1960s, when Britain ‘did a deal’ with the USA to let that country use one of the islands, Diego Garcia, as a military base. The civilian Chagossians (between 1,000 and 2,000 people) were deported to Mauritius (by then independent of Britain) and financial provision was made for their resettlement. As part of the deal with the USA Britain received a discount on the Polaris ballistic missile system, a lot of goodwill, and some excellent port and airfield facilities. Anyway, here we are in 2025 and the British government has made the bizarre decision not only to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius (which never owned them in the first place), but also to pay that island a generous payment of £101M each year for 99 years as rent for the USA to continue to use Diego Garcia as a defensive base. For the exiled Chagossians, wallowing as untermensch in Mauritius, there is no hope of return to their native land – indeed they are threatened with ten years in prison in Mauritius if they even claim the Chagos Islands as theirs. So, in summary, we have the crazy situation whereby Britain owns of a group of islands, it lets another nation use the islands pretty-much free of charge, then it gives those islands away to a third nation, 1,300 miles away, and pays that last nation rent to continue to use the islands while denying the civilian population a return to their homeland. And the amazing thing is, the British Prime Minister thinks his action was a good deal. The presidents of Mauritius and USA must be laughing all their way to the bank, but I don’t think the Chagossians are.
Have you ever played Contract Bridge? We have started to take lessons, following the recommendation of a good friend of ours, and we find it mentally challenging but a goal worth pursuing. It is, after all, a good social skill to have. For those who are not familiar with the game, you work with a partner (who sits opposite) and probably about 50% of the game is spent on bidding on how many tricks you and your chum think you will win, based on clues that pass between you on what each of you has in their hand. By clues, I don’t mean scratching your ear or twitching your nose; I mean by what each of you bids (it’s complicated). Eventually, around the table someone wins the bidding (like in an auction) to make the claimed number of tricks (hence ‘contract’), gets to declare trumps, and you move on to the next stage of actually playing the cards, rather like whist. At the end, you score points (or lose them to the opposition) according to what you won as opposed to what you claimed you would get. As far as I can make out, the game, which has a strict etiquette of its own, is taken extremely seriously by some people, which excludes me from playing in a club straight away. Even my best friend Christian and his wife Victoria, who are expert players, no longer partake of the game because they kept falling out as partners. I think Jane and I are all right because neither of us is competitive and neither of us takes the game seriously. Time will tell if we survive. For the time being, I think I will bid One No Trump.
Speaking of our old friends C & V (above), we spent an excellent few days with them in their holiday apartment on the Costa del Sol last March, a welcome break from the chilly English early Spring. I think they were a bit taken aback when we accepted their invitation with alacrity, but we are in the new ‘no boat’ era now and we have the time (and a bit more cash) to do spontaneous things. Their generous offer cost us nothing other than the airfare and they were free with their hospitality and transport. Mind you, we nearly didn’t make it because another friend, who lives in a nearby town, very kindly offered to transport us to and from Bristol Airport, thus saving the cost of parking. What we hadn’t realised was that she only knew the route to the airport from her own house and town, and that route was a convoluted one. A journey that would have taken us exactly one hour from our house ended up taking an hour and a half, resulting in a mad rush through the airport to catch the flight. And guess who triggered the security alarm and was singled out for a personal search (actually, it was Jane – dodgy looking character). Anyway, Spain and its alfresco style of living and very amiable people proved to be absolutely delightful and a good time was had by all. We even played bridge and are still friends. Christian and Victoria won, well they would wouldn’t they? Incidentally, there is British Bridge, played in Britain – and then there is International Bridge, which is played by the USA and The Rest of the World. Each has its own rules, though the principles are the same and it is possible to play a mixed game. I am not sure why Britain stands alone against the rest of the world, but I rather think it has always been thus. It’s what made Britain great, you know.
I see that a Norwegian gentleman woke up a couple of days ago to find a 135 metre, 11,135 deadweight tonne, container ship in his garden (as you do). Apparently he slept through the whole grounding experience and only discovered it when he went outside to water his prize begonias, or whatever. It reminds me of a submariner’s anecdote about a submarine that dragged her anchor in a storm during the last war and ended up beached across a coast road during the blackout. Her captain was surveying the sorry situation from the conning tower when a cyclist appeared on the road and promptly ran into the submarine in the dark. Swearing profusely, the cyclist shook his fist at the captain, who apparently replied,
“But my dear chap, you should have rung your bell.”
Now, if you will excuse me, I am off to look at the rain, which has arrived at last.
24 May 2025
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 