Ops-Normal.org

My brother just sent this to me; St Peter's Church Hale Cheshire circa 1966. First marriage there, both my parents' ashes are there. Of the front row line of choir boys, my brother is the first. I am the third. The big lad at the end in front of the altar is actually younger than me and now The Dean of Guernsey. I am still in contact with many of the choir boys pictured. They never left the area, including my brother. When I go back (rare) we all go down to the pub together. My late father is in the corner next but one to the last lady. The boy in front of him (front row) is one of my oldest friends. He was in The Cheshire Regiment as a bandsman for 22 years. Now a local bus driver. He used to divert his bus to take my parents right to their door. He played The Last Post at my father's funeral.

Priceless photo Ex A. We often have our photos taken without a second thought, but half a century later the family have something to treasure.

My first school photograph with "interesting" haircut. Evidently the pudding basin was not available

SO sweet!
I had tiny braided pigtails at about that age.

Clearly my mother never had any training as a hairdresser. My sister and me show our lack of appreciation at her hairdressing efforts in Johannesburg circa 1966...



Caco

Update:

Lincoln Castle with the galactic ruleress


Dressed up for a local festival in Toodyay, Western Australia

Doesn't all the blood rush to your heads Dunnunda?

It sometimes rushes to places best not aired in public although not so much nowadays

Waddabout the hats?, Velcro or alien technology?

Cacophonix wrote:Clearly my mother never had any training as a hairdresser. My sister and me show our lack of appreciation at her hairdressing efforts in Johannesburg circa 1966...

Scaredo.JPG

Caco

Mate you look like a Draper bro!

Slasher wrote:

Cacophonix wrote:Clearly my mother never had any training as a hairdresser. My sister and me show our lack of appreciation at her hairdressing efforts in Johannesburg circa 1966...

Scaredo.JPG

Caco

Mate you look like a Draper bro!

Not Scott Draper mate ! I am too old but still have more than enough hair for a good cut.

I am just a simple old man...

Nor is my name Tony! (How is the old bugger these days anyway?)

Caco

Cacophonix wrote:.............................
Not Scott Draper mate ! ..............
....Nor is my name Tony! (How is the old bugger these days anyway?)

Caco

He's been getting legless in hospital and is now terrorising the Mk IV Doris's of Gateshead with his mobility scooter.

4mastacker wrote:

Cacophonix wrote:.............................
Not Scott Draper mate ! ..............
....Nor is my name Tony! (How is the old bugger these days anyway?)

Caco

He's been getting legless in hospital and is now terrorising the Mk IV Doris's of Gateshead with his mobility scooter.

Good to hear the old curmudgeon is still in fine form.

Caco

On the beach in Simonstown about 1949 - with my older brother and mother - love that fag! We went to South Africa in 1947 when the old man was serving in HMS Nigeria, based in Simonstown, and I'm told we all had a great time - if only I could remember any of it. It was great for my mother after wartime England and for my father after spending most of the war at sea. We went back to England in 1949 and shortly after I had double pneumonia - back in the cold and damp.



It was not that long after a famous able seaman had died in 1944 and been buried with honours at HMS Afrikander in Simonstown. He had spent time at a naval air station and latterly at Simonstown and used to take himself into Cape Town on the train and spend time with his naval chums in the pubs there - often drinking beer - and then go back to Simonstown with them afterwards. Here are a couple of photos of Able Seaman Just Nuisance:

A smooth hound caught on a local Wirral beach.

FD2 wrote:On the beach in Simonstown about 1949 - with my older brother and mother - love that fag! We went to South Africa in 1947 when the old man was serving in HMS Nigeria, based in Simonstown, and I'm told we all had a great time - if only I could remember any of it. It was great for my mother after wartime England and for my father after spending most of the war at sea. We went back to England in 1949 and shortly after I had double pneumonia - back in the cold and damp.

It was not that long after a famous able seaman had died in 1944 and been buried with honours at HMS Afrikander in Simonstown. He had spent time at a naval air station and latterly at Simonstown and used to take himself into Cape Town on the train and spend time with his naval chums in the pubs there - often drinking beer - and then go back to Simonstown with them afterwards. Here are a couple of photos of Able Seaman Just Nuisance.

Just Nuisance RN r.jpg

I went to visit Nuisance's grave up on Redhill earlier this year. They have a fine statue of him in the square in the middle of Simonstown. He even had a his own cartoon strip in the Sunday Times (ZA) when I was a kid!

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWrIvdmJHQI[/bbvideo]

I received a very drunken telephone call from an old mate who was ensconced with the old Navy diving mafia on board SAS Makhanda in Simonstown enjoying a whisky tasting last month. He sounded wasted and I suggested he invoke the spirit of Nuisance to get him home!

That photo of your mom and her boys, right down to the cigarette, while it comes from the late 40's could have been me and my brother with my mom in the 60's, not a lot had changed by then in Simonstown, and, in fact, the place is still very much the same. This year I also visited the Royal Navy graveyard up on the mountain behind the Simonstown Hotel on the main road. It is redolent with memories of the might of the Royal Navy when its power was writ large over the globe. Quite poignant actually with memorials to young guys no older than 14 lost off the Cape in the 1700's.

Of course the beach where your happy family snap was taken is now a bloody braying penguin sanctuary and you actually have to pay to go and sun yourself. Still Simonstown has kept a sense of place and history and I also have many happy memories of living (and for a short time) working there.

Caco

I received a very drunken telephone call from an old mate who was ensconced with the old Navy diving mafia on board SAS Makhanda in Simonstown enjoying a whisky tasting last month. He sounded wasted and I suggested he invoke the spirit of Nuisance to get him home!

Stand on the devil's tail, I had not just written the line above when the bugger rang me here in the UK today. He was just off for a swim off Boulders Beach... coincidence or what

Caco

Caco

Many thanks for finding the Youtube clip about Nuisance! My parents had a great time there and we lived at a guest house called the Bon Esperance, run by the Bateman family. It was great for my brother, being three years older he went on expeditions with his chums up the hill and into the bush behind the town. He'd cause more than a little alarm when he got back by telling our mother they'd been hunting black mambas - she'd thought the worst the boys would encounter was Harry Baboon, who'd given up the hardships of troop life for an easier one raiding kitchens through windows that had been left open. My brother was only five then but it was usually like that when we were kids - if the weather wasn't too bad we'd disappear for hours on end around the various towns we lived in in the south of England and only traipse home when hunger struck.

The charming presenter of that clip didn't mention the Royal Navy - do you think that was through being PC or just poor research? I can't be bothered about it these days because almost all the stock footage used on the huge number of military programmes produced for the history channel is partially or even completely wrong, be it anything from the Navy, Army or Air Force, along with the sound track! I'm not sure any more how important it is to get these things as nearly right as possible.

What a coincidence your chum was swimming at Boulders Beach too. Now my tolerance of whisky had diminished along with a few other things so I envy him - but not the hangover! I remember being told we'd either go there or Seaforth Beach in summer. The weather was hot but the water usually a bit cooler!

The other story I remember my father telling me about was the 'Lady in White' - the soprano Perla Siedle Gibson - who'd sing patriotic songs on the quayside when ships were leaving or arriving at Durban. He didn't see 'Ma' himself but would have liked to as she was quite a legend at the time and did a lot to boost morale during the War.

The charming presenter of that clip didn't mention the Royal Navy - do you think that was through being PC or just poor research?

Probably a bit of both FD2, as well as the fact that the current regime in SA are not very well disposed to anything that shows up white culture (of any stripe) in a good light and it is probably easier for young white film makers not to focus on the real history of the place which is the tragedy of the so called new South Africa. The old guard of conservative Afrikaners under the Apartheid regime were also suspicious of the English influenced navy after the hand over to the SADF back in 1957, so we have had two groups with chips on their respective shoulders trying to deny the very real cultural history of the place, but both have failed as almost every tradition and stone in and around the base speaks of the Royal Navy tradition and the town is still very English looking both in appearance and, in fact, through and by sentiment too.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the guest house 'Bon Esperance' still exists in some guise pretty much as it was in the 1940's by the way.

If you ever get a chance to travel back to Simonstown again then drop by the Simonstown yacht club for a drink and I am sure you will find many who will happily sit down and talk ad nauseam about the history of the town and the nautical goings on there back through the years reaching well back to the Second World war and earlier as well. Many of those people will have served in the Royal Navy, quite recently in many cases, as there is an ex-patriate British community living in and around Simonstown as well.

My grandmother lived in Die Burgers Huis in nearby Fishhoek and the semi-detached cottage behind her was sublet (excuse the pun) to a South African Naval lieutenant submariner in the 1970's. He served on the SAS Maria Van Riebeck and arranged for my brother and me to come on board in the early 1970's when she was a working ship. He had spent a long time in France in Toulon while training and had married a French woman who had come out to SA to live with him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Spear

Of course it was the British who unmasked the German born commander at the Simonstown base in the 70's who was later outed as a prolific Soviet spy...

Born November 1, 1935, Gerhardt joined the South African Navy after his father successfully persuaded naval chief Hugo Biermann to take the troubled teenager under his wing to try to instill discipline in him; he graduated from the Naval Academy in Saldanha Bay in 1956, winning the Sword of Honour In 1962 he attended a Royal Navy mine school in Portsmouth and completed the parachute training course at RAF Abingdon. After his training in Britain, he was seconded to the Royal Navy. He started his spying career in his late twenties, while still a junior naval officer, by offering his services to the South African Communist Party. Bram Fischer referred him to the Soviet embassy in London, where the "walk-in" was recruited into the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence branch, and instructed to continue his career in the South African military...

Read the Wiki link for the full tale of his perfidy...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Gerhardt

I ramble on. I could tell you about the Silver Mine NATO funded RADAR station, the officers from the Shah's navy who trained in Simonstown in the late 70's, the amorous whale that tried to make love to the yacht The 'Mighty Lemon Drop' in False Bay, etc. etc. etc. but I am sure I would bore you...

Caco