So, Off We Go To Singapore

Russ landed a job as a lecturer in Dentistry at a University in Singapore rather than joining us in England, so we all bundled off into yet another liner, and headed off to Singapore to join him there.

The trip was only memorable for two things, as we were passing through the Bay of Biscay we encountered the worst storm for years.... I can remember standing at the window of the kid's play room which was at the front of the superstructure of this large vessel (about 30 000 tons) and seeing the bows disappearing into the huge waves, and the crash as the sea hit the window I was standing at about half way along the vessel. And feeling the entire ship juddering as its propellers came out of the water as we passed through the huge waves... Very impressive storm which actually I enjoyed, as I am lucky enough not to suffer from sea sickness I am happy to report.

The other thing that I remember was going to sleep in our cabin, having locked the door from the inside, so my mother couldn’t get in when she tried to.. they had to dismount the door as all their banging on it and shouting didn't wake me up.. Told you earlier that I was a sound sleeper didn't I?

Anyhow, in due time we got to Singapore and settled into life there.

Russ happily working at the university, and my mother got a job as an anchor person for the local relay station of what is now the BBC World Service. As there was sort of slow motion war going on in Malaya in those days, and because the studio she worked in was well outside Singapore City in the forest, she was guarded there by a contingent of huge (to me at least) Sikh Soldiers.

In general my life there was pleasant enough, even though I found the very visible signs of the war that was going on up country between the Brits and the Chinese guerillas very disturbing. One would see Rubber planters turning up in the city in their huge heavily armoured American cars and carrying machine guns over their shoulders and soldiers with guns all over the place.... It was a sad and dangerous time.

The realities of this were brought home to me at one point as I was stuck in hospital for a while, and found myself with a very sick Chinese guy in the bed next to mine, with an armed guard at the foot of his bed constantly. Turned out he was a Guerrilla and had been captured and condemned to death, but as he was in such lousy health from his years in the jungle fighting the Brits, it was decided that before they could hang him they had to get him into better health. So he was there being pumped full of medicine and good food, so that when they took him out and hanged him he would be in the best of health... I know this sounds unbelievable, but it is true.. And in due time he was better, and thus disappeared from my view, poor man.

As the normal practice of the English in Singapore was to send their kids off to school in England (which curiously they referred to as “home”) when they reached 8 years of age, my parents had a problem with me. Neither of them wanted to send me off to a boarding school in England, but there were no English schools there for kids over 8 years of age. So I was sent to a large Chinese school, which I actually rather enjoyed. I leaned what I think must have been Cantonese, but I am not sure, and we (my Chinese friends and I) used to play hookie as often as we could manage it, and used to go off to a huge fair ground that used to be in Singapore in those days, and watched Peking Opera, which I grew to love and understand. Very noisy and extremely long and of course, totally melodramatic as well. With the curious convention that whenever a chair or table was needed in the action, a stage hand wandered in with it, and as soon as it had been used, he wandered back on stage and removed it again.

Curiously enough, many years later I found myself performing in a Peking Opera, in Beijing of course. I played the gardener in the sacred Peach Orchard in the Monkey King – a much loved folk tale in China.

My memories of my time at that Chinese school are pleasant ones, which was rare, as generally I loathed all of the roughly 14 schools I went to as a kid in various places and countries.

For a while we lived in a rented house, which we shared with the owner and his family. The main and rather strange things about this house was that a full grown male Orang Utang lived there too, as a full member of the family. He had had polio as a baby, so couldn’t walk very well. But whilst he was totally harmless and friendly, he scared me to death, as he would hug me, and he was much bigger than I was. He was free to wander around the house like we were, so I came across him everywhere. And to finish that one off, the damn thing came to my 9^th birthday party which was held in that house... So there he was, sitting at the table with the rest of the children, eating and enjoying himself to my fury...

About the only other thing of note I can recall from our time in Singapore was the dislike I acquired for the white colonists there, a bunch of supercilious, stupid and racist people who considered themselves to be extremely important and high born... neither of which was true by the way.

In any event, after about 18 months there, my parents decided to head off to England again.. I have no idea why this was decided, but decided it was, so off we all went on yet another ship. This one being a cargo ship with only about 12 passengers, which I loved as it was so informal and simple after the rather complicated life on “real” ocean liners.

She was due to drop us off in Tilbury, but as is often the way with cargo ships, her cargo was sold to a different customer while we were on our way to Europe, so we ended up in Hamburg instead. This was in about 1952 I think.

Hamburg harbour made an indelible impression on me... The damage caused by the carpet bombing of the American and British bombers during the last phase of the war was still there, the masts of sunken ships poking up at all angles all over the place, burnt out and collapsed buildings, destruction all round.

When we got off the ship to drive to the airport to catch a plane to London, we had to drive through the utterly destroyed working class sections of Hamburg... mile upon mile of destroyed houses, shops and streets... piles of bricks and lonely chimneys where once houses had stood.... Dreadful to see. And then we went down into a tunnel that took us under the Elbe and popped us up in the Middle Class residential area on the other side... no destruction or damage here, simply rows and rows of comfortable detached houses.... Obviously the bombing had been aimed not only at the harbour, but also quite intentionally at the working class areas of Hamburg....

As a kid who had already read books by such writers as Koestler, Orwell and similar I was acutely aware of social issues and problems, and had a good grounding in the political and social history of my world, so this experience made an enormous impression on me..... As I saw it, the Americans and British had waged a war against the German working classes, rather than against the Nazis. And whilst I hated everything the Nazis stood for, I also knew that not all Germans had been Nazis, and particularly the working class in Hamburg had always been a bed of resistance to Hitler and his boys... So I found this destruction of perhaps the only people in Germany who shared the same ideals as we were supposed to have and were attacked in this manner totally unacceptable.