I feel totally gutted -please read :( A very brave soldier

Henry John Waylen was my grandmother's brother in law.  He was a gardener.  In 1914 at the outbreak of the first world war, he was sent to the Western Front. with his local Regiment, the Glosters . After a year or so, he was transferred to the Greek front line at Salonika fighting the Ottomans.  In 1916 he was sent home with TB and he died in his early thirties in 1917 in the same week as his father.  His mother died in the same year as well. 

He was honoured to be given a military headstone,(it only took a hundred and one years to do it!)  and one of my friends agreed to be present at the installation.  I couldn't go for two reasons.  I live in Australia, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission didn't tell me - they just sent me an email.

It's no big deal, but I would love a decent picture of his headstone, and as he was a gardener, I am sure he would have appreciated it if you could leave a flower on his grave to show he is not forgotten,

Like millions of other soldiers, he would have gone through unimaginable experiences and been scared witless,day after day.

So if you happen to be near Tewkesbury Cemetery, please, if you can, put a flower from your garden on his grave on my behalf.

He deserves so much more than a bare tombstone and an email.

Thanks.

John

If you are not Australian, but want to visit us “down under”, here are a few pieces of information that may stand you in good stead.

First of all, don’t call Oz and NZ “down under”.  You wouldn’t like to be called “up over”.

Because we live on the opposite side of our planet, the Earth appears to spin in the opposite direction to the northern hemisphere.  This has the effect of apparently making the stars and the moon appear to be upside down.   The sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, but it travels via the north, not the south.  This makes our sun travel anticlockwise.  This may disorient you to start with.  We have our galaxy on our side of the planet so that on a clear night you will see far more stars than in the northern hemisphere.  There is a constellation called Crux Australis.  This is not Latin for “Australian Crooks”, but rather “Southern Cross”.  And yes, the water does go down the plughole in the opposite direction, but please don’t try it during a drought.

In a Linnean species name, it is unfortunate that “australis” is the word for “Southern”.  If you want to name something specifically “Australian” we use “novaehollandiae” which translates as “New Holland-ish”, (New Holland being one of the old names that the Dutch used when they discovered Australia almost a hundred years before Captain Cook).  Or else we just say it’s Aussie!

Australian life is seldom like that of “Home and Away” or “Neighbours”.  Edna Everage is a man.

Sydney has a gay Mardi-Gras.  Many of the participants are not gay, they just like the freedom once a year to dress outrageously – and good on’em, which is Australian for “well done”.  Also, the Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) procession is always held on a Saturday.

Nobody that I know of in a posh restaurant will give you a menu, and then ask whether you have chosen your meal.  Instead, except in all but the most exclusive restaurants a young man or woman will come up to you, give you the menu, and say, “I am Wladislav, I am your waiter for today” - “Dya know what you want?”  When you choose, it will be written down and the waiter will say “No worries” This is Australian for thank you; I understand; of course; we, of course, can accommodate you, as for instance, “May we have whole roast crocodile roasted in its skin” will elicit “I’ll just check with the Chef – Yes, no worries!”  In the trendier parts of our cities, “no worries” may be replaced by “good choice!”.  It may be of help to find out where the waiter/waitress originally comes from, but only if you speak their language.  And as you leave the establishment at 3.30 am, after the meal of the Century, Wladislaw will probably farewell you with "Have a good night!")

Most Aussie taxi drivers are honest god-fearing people.  They do not cheat on you like European taxi drivers do.  It’s just, as Chinese migrants, they do not know where they are going in the large foreign city, which they are just beginning to call “home”.  On two separate occasions I have had taxi drivers who have not known the way from the Airport to the main railway station.  They asked me for directions!  (Since GPS, this is less of a problem).  ALWAYS sit in the front passenger seat of a taxi if it’s vacant –  it's good Aussie etiquette, and it might help with the navigation.

Barbeque is nearly always spelled BBQ.  Do not try and pronounce that with your mouth full.

Australian lamb is the best in the world, no joke.

Please do not call the indigenous people “blackfellas” or “abbos”.  It is disrespectful. 

Captain Cook discovered the east coast of Australia in 1770 for the United Kingdom almost exactly a quarter of a millennium ago.  The Normans invaded England about a millennium ago, and the birth of Christ and the Romans were about two millennia ago.  Stonehenge was built five millennia ago, and the rock paintings at Lascaux in France about sixteen millennia ago.  The oldest Australian indigenous rock paintings are over three times their age, over an unimaginable fifty millennia ago.  The oldest civilisation in the world.  That demands awe as well as respect.

And finally,( for this bit of the story only), the “First Fleet” carrying the first colonists including the first Governor of New South Wales, arrived in Botany Bay on 26^th January 1788.  Literally, only two days afterwards a very unexpected ship arrived flying the French flag. 

(To think that if he had been only three DAYS earlier, we would have had the Marseillaise as a National Anthem, and the Sydney Tower would be a different shape)  The ship carried the Comte de la Perouse, who was also on a world circumnavigation.  He and his officers dined with the British officers, and they exchanged mail “for home”.  His officers included botanists zoologists anthropologists and people with other interests, to gain the maximum knowledge from one voyage.  Many of them were successful applicants from the Ecole Militaire in Paris.

Sadly, La Perouse sailed north a few days later, and was never seen again.

Not one of them survived.

Because he failed the interview, a Corsican student  named Napoleon Bonaparte was never picked to go on the Expedition.  He did survive.  He also went to the Southern Hemispere to the island of St Helena.

Tewkesbury Floods

Tewkesbury Floods

In Summer I played in the mowing grass

Among the buttercups, the cornflowers and daisies,

I heard a chaffinch make its call.

In the hedges with briars and elm trees so tall 

They seemed to be crowned with white clouds, every one, 

While I warmly basked in the Gloucestershire sun.

Moving on . . . now the elm trees have gone.

Killed with disease . . . just a few linger on.

A plain, flat and featureless, save one great tower

That’s all there is until you look lower

And see the town, and three rivers that flood.

(The Swilgate once ran ruddy with blood)

For nine centuries now, St Mary’s has stood

Proud on an island just clear of the flood,

For the builders knew precisely just where the land

Was best to let the huge Abbey stand.

Just above levels of flood and of tide

The Abbey stays dry with no water inside.

Five hundred years ago townsfolk designed 

Half-timbered houses and similar kind

In higgledy streets, down piggledy lanes

Dwellings were built just above the floodplains.

The Abbot and townsfolk continued to keep

An eye on the waters so they didn’t run deep.

Our shattered last Century was scattered around

So that cars, trucks and tarmac covered the ground.

More people!  More houses!  Oh! Why don’t we build

The houses in suburbs - where flood land was tilled?

Now, when it rains hard, we sandbag the doors.

“There’s mud in the kitchen and dirt on the stairs.

But last year was worse, you can tell by that stain

On the wall”.  But alas, every year, homes are flooded again.

No cornflowers are left in the mowing grass high,

The Abbey looks down where I played, and men sigh.

For hundreds of years, old Tewkesbury was dry

But now, every winter, the water comes by.

And the blind men, the deaf men continually cry

“The water comes by

But we don’t know why”

Cheltenham Grammar School - an oasis of tranquility and eccentricity. The Teachers

I went to Cheltenham Grammar School from 1959 to 1965.  I had been transferred from Bournemouth School, one of those bland educational establishments built in the fifties, to CGS in the Lower High Street which had originally been founded in 1574.

To start the Alice in Wonderland flavour of this most wonderful of schools, all pupils started in their first year in the Second Form, then the Third and Fourth Form.  In their fourth year everyone went into the Lower Fifth, and by the time you reached 16 you were in the Upper Fifth.  First Year (aged 17) of the Sixth Form was the Lower Sixth or First Year Sixth, and the Second Year plus any repeats went into the Upper Sixth.  This meant that in 1959 I was in 4 alpha but by the time I reached the other end of the School I was in 6S2IVA. 6 (Sixth Form, obviously); S for Science; 2 for second year in the Sixth Form; and IVA, a course designed to study Maths, Physics and Chemistry.  (IVB was Chemistry, Botany and Zoology) . 

Clear so far?

Almost every teacher had their own nickname, and quirk.  Some of them taught me, but some of the nicknames were universal through the School.  (One, Mr Yeats, even became celebrated with a very rude nickname in the last line of the chorus of our School Song)

The Headmaster Dr Bell was inevitably Ding Dong, and his nose wanted to turn left.  If he turned right, he became like a sailing dinghy gybing!  He used his "dabber" (CGS for Mortar Board hat) to carry notices to be read out at Morning Assembly.

Most of the teachers were called by their first names to identify them, and "Sir" to talk to them, thus Fred Jessop, Bill Neve, Joe Curtis, and many more.  But sometimes the names were shrouded in the mists of time.  "Bim" Wright, who taught Chemistry, is a case in point.  His son told me that when Bim first started, he borrowed his brother's leather briefcase with the gold letters CHRW.  This soon became Cherry, and a popular song of the time was "Cherry cherry Bim".  His deputy in Chemistry was a tall soulful man called Claude, because in his younger days he apparently looked like Claude Raines, (the Chief of Police in "Casablanca").  Mr Conway, that renowned Physics teacher was "Coot", and I have absolutely no idea why; Mr Latham (German) was "Burly" - partly because of his body shape and partly because of his use of the word "Burly" to excess.

One of the most loved teachers was "Bill" Neve (Music).  He was a little effete, and HE WORE SUEDE SHOES, which in those days automatically made you a homosexual.  After a summer break, there was a huge whisper around the School: "Bill's got married!" and he had!

Then there was "Ilt".  This actually was his name.  He was Illtyd Pearce.  Hard as nails, he once played for Wales.  What he played for Wales is open to debate, but play he did.  He always ensured that we had our "daps" (plimsolls) and that we finished off with a cold shower.

Mr Pixley (RI) had a rare white area on one side of his dark grey hair, so he was called "Patch".  To quote from the "Patesian", at lunchtimes he "blessed the cabbage". There was also "Monk" Edwards (French) and "Mrs Monk", or "Ma", his wife, who taught Physics.

And then there was Joseph (Joe) Curtis (History), who had been educated at CGS and Oxford.  He then went out to Simla in India, before returning to CGS as a teacher.  On cold days in Winter, he would wear Plus Fours to school.  He also used to use Hindi a lot.  He'd look at your work and say "Ucha Ooloo" (Good, boy) and if he was (usually mock) angry, a stream of invective came out which only people from the Indian Himalayas could understand.

Such were some of the teaching staff at CGS from 1959 to 1965.

The Tewkesbury Floods.  (I haven't got it just right yet, and I think I'm getting stuck).  Any thoughts welcome?  It's a poem about the terrible results caused by the developers of modern housing on the traditional flood plains around Tewkesbury, my native town.

Tewkesbury Floods

In Summer I played in the mowing grass

Among the buttercups, the cornflowers and daisies,

And listened to the chaffinch sing.

I saw fields hedged with tall elm trees and briar

Crowned in white clouds and warm in the Gloucestershire sun.

Moving on . . . The elm trees have gone.

Most are now dead.  Just a few linger on.

A plain, flat and featureless, save one great tower

And that’s all that there is until you look lower

Encircled by hills and three rivers that flood.

(One of them once ran ruddy with blood)

Moving back by nine centuries, St Mary’s has stood

Proud on an island just clear of the flood

For the builders precisely knew just where the land

Was best to let the huge Abbey stand.

Just above levels of flood and of tide

The Abbey stays dry with no water inside.

Moving back by five centuries to half-timbered houses

Crammed along streets and forced down dark alleys

The shopkeepers, butchers, chandlers and bakers.

A market was here which sold cattle and sheep

(and the fruit from the Vale that you hoped you’d buy cheap)

Still the rivers outside the town didn’t run deep.

A century back the world fell in pieces around

And cars, trucks and tarmac covered the ground.

More people!  More houses!  Oh! Why don’t we build

The houses in suburbs where flood land was tilled?

Now, when it rains hard, they sandbag the doors.

There’s mud in the kitchen and dirt on the stairs.

Last year was worse, you can tell by that stain

On the wall.  But alas, every year, homes are flooded again.

No cornflowers are left in the mowing grass high,

The Abbey looks down where I played, and men sigh.

For hundreds of years, old Tewkesbury was dry

But now every winter the water comes by.