I forgot to mention in PostScript last week that Sunday, April 27, was Morse Code Day which marks the birth of Samuel Morse, inventor of the famous communications code. The reason for my interest is that it brings fond memories of the late 1960s when I worked at Cable and Wireless (C&W) communications company in Holborn, central London.
There were about a dozen of us in our section and whenever our boss, who had his own office, wanted to summon any of us he did so, not with a phone call, but by buzzing our initials in Morse Code. It was a busy office and every day we worked to the sound of dots and dashes whizzing through the air. It was certainly more entertaining than any previous office I had worked in.
I answered to "dot dash dot" (R) "dash dot dash dot" (C) or something like that. Sometimes there was total confusion when the buzzer jammed and nobody had a clue who the boss wanted to see.
At C&W I was lucky to be working with two terrific London lads, Nick and Mick, about the same age as me. We shared a love of soul music, particularly Otis Redding who sadly died in an air crash in December 1967.
We often had lunch together, usually in the cheapest places we could find. Once a week we would treat ourselves to a large plate of spaghetti bolognaise at an Italian restaurant in Soho, a 10-minute walk from the office. It was definitely the highlight of the week.
As British actor Robert Morley once observed: "No man is lonely eating spaghetti. It requires so much attention."
Next stop Delhi
Working at C&W certainly whet my appetite for seeing more of the world. My job included correspondence with places in the Caribbean like St Nevis and Kitts, Turks and Caicos, Antigua and the Cayman islands. Then there was the "Far East" with Singapore, the Philippines, Phnom Penh and Bangkok. The seeds for travel had been sewn.
Little wonder that when I spotted an advertisement in the Evening Standard for "overland trips to India or Africa" I nipped down to the South London pub where the organisers met. I was quickly hooked by their tales about the joys of travelling across deserts and mountains in battered old coaches. I chose the New Delhi option hoping to travel on to Australia.
What they didn't tell us is that the coaches often broke down. Ours expired for good in the middle of the Afghan desert which was not particularly helpful. After that we made our own way on local buses with goats and chickens among the fellow passengers.
NKP City
Last Wednesday witnessed celebrations in Ho Chi Minh City marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam war.
It is hard to believe that it was five decades ago when those North Vietnamese tanks rumbled into what was then called Saigon. How time flies.
When I first arrived in Thailand the Vietnam War was still raging and was regular front page news in the Bangkok Post.
There were several US bases in Thailand and the place I enjoyed most was Nakhon Phanom or "NKP City" as the Americans liked to call it.
I first visited NKP in 1972 and returned many times. It may have been the relaxing influence of the mighty Mekong River that attracted me with the spectacular backdrop across the river of the limestone mountains in Laos.
However I admit my attachment to NKP was also influenced by a great restaurant/bar on the banks of the Mekong where a tremendous Thai band called VIP played, led by ace Thai guitarist Lam Morrison. They performed hits by all the rock stars including Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Doors and so on. The Americans loved it.
You could walk out of that bar onto the banks of the Mekong and look across the river to the stillness of Laos but with rock music blasting away.
It was a surreal experience and made it hard to imagine there was a war going on.
End of an era
In 1976 I attended the official closing ceremony of the Americans leaving the base in Nakhon Phanom.
Owing to its strategic location in close proximity to Vietnam, during the war NKP was often involved in rescue missions of US pilots who had been shot down.
But the main function of the base was as a monitoring station of what was going on in Vietnam, using all the latest sophisticated computer technology.
This was reflected in the most popular t-shirt amongst the American personnel which bore the message "In God We Trust, Everyone Else We Monitor" which became the unofficial motto of the base.
My favourite t-shirt purchased in NKP which I wore until it fell to pieces was "Fly The Friendly Skies of Thailand 1975-76" with a Jolly Green Giant helicopter emblazoned on it.
Merry May
We are now in May which in the literary world is regarded as the "merriest month of the year". However the news has been so depressing lately we could all do with some merriment. So to cheer everyone up here's a really old Tommy Cooper joke:
"Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love and get married. The ceremony was rubbish, but the reception was brilliant".
Contact PostScript via email at oldcrutch@hotmail.com