My Life by Lionel Graves. (Page 38)
Addenda.
Just a few memories that arrived a little too late to be included.
- Whilst in Nairobi I can remember a giant swarms of locusts, so large that they blacked the sky. The natives beat them with branches and set fires, eating some of the by now well-cooked creatures. The entire garden was eventually cleared leaf by leaf.
- Films. Durham. ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, German 1919 B/W Silent – very art deco, very dated, can’t remember the plot.
D. W. Griffiths. ‘The Birth of a Nation’, American 1915 B/W silent.
- Being taken by Dad, after travelling on the Flying Scotsman, up to the engine to thank the driver for the journey. Don’t remember where from or where to just that the engine was huge.
- I remember when I was about four years old and on leave with Mum and Dad in Glasgow. We had just been to the playground and on the way home had passed a Greengrocers displaying piles of fresh fruit from which I helped myself to an apple. After we had walked for some distance I showed the apple to my parents, Dad was very cross and marched me all the way back to the stall to apologise. The Grocer didn’t seem to have any strong feelings about my crime and said that I could keep the apple but my father refused on my behalf. Suffice to say that this was my first and last major, fruit related, crime.
- A recent visit to Priors Marston reminded me of the times when our football team played a Catholic school and the referee nun would go galloping down the field, habit billowing and rosary swinging wildly, and often urging on her own team at the same time. An awesome sight. Her decisions and rulings, obviously aided from above, were never queried or questioned.
- Jean and Mike reminded us that once, when they visited us at Priors Marston we all went to a dance at the village hall and left Jane and Richard in the care of Sandra Gardiner, our neighbour’s daughter. Halfway through the evening she had to come and get us because Richard was throwing a tantrum and she couldn’t control him. History repeating itself because Jean and I had done the same thing in Mombasa. It helps to explain Sophie though.
- Another connection with HMS Hood, Richard tells me it was sent to the River Clyde and Glasgow on the 4th May 1926, in case the striking, revolting Glaswegians got out of hand and marched on England (I was born in Glasgow on the 4th May 1926).
- One night in the mess at the education corps college on Mt. Carmel, Haifa, a sergeant ordered a single tot from every bottle of spirits or liqueurs on the top shelf, there must have been thirty or forty bottles. The barman poured them all into a cocktail shaker and shook them up, the sergeant, an older man, took out his khaki handkerchief and made a bag of it in his fist, then poured the mixture in until it was the size of a small orange, then he closed the aperture. The liquid did not seep through the hanky, he poked it with his finger and I swear it chinked, then he poured it into a glass and just like a brownish raw egg, a disgusting looking thing, it plopped into the glass, then he drank it.
- Another case at the 19th General Hospital was a sergeant cook trying to drink himself into getting a ticket home. I was called into his room one afternoon to see him lying on his bed dead to the world, like a great beached whale, and also spouting. Not a pretty sight, but it must have worked because a few months later he was posted home.
- When on the diversional therapy course on Mt Carmel we were lying on beds in barrack rooms one afternoon when someone noticed I had C15 in little brass nails on the insteps on the bottom of my shoes. These were there because they were my old school house shoes and everything had to be numbered for identification, shoes as well as clothing and my house number was C15, C for Castle House.
Someone asked me what that meant and I told them that it was my approved school or Borstal number, there was a deathly hush for a moment, then everyone carried on as if nothing had happened. A little later a tough old Scottish Sergeant came over and treated me with the greatest respect as if I was a celebrity, I’d never been so respected before in my life.
Still a few days later on Duke Winfield and a few others asked if it was true and I owned up to lying and told them the truth, they seemed more relieved to hear that, but give them credit, they hadn’t acted differently.
Lionel Mathieson Graves.
Father: Lionel Edward Graves.
Son: Lionel Richard Graves.
Self just before retirement (1986).
Jane and Richard (1973).
Jane and Richard (1978)
Self and Diana 18/10/1999
From left to right, Back Row: Lionel Graves, Sara Lawrence, Jane Lawrence (Daughter), Diana Graves, Jonathan Lawrence, Beth Lawrence, Richard Graves (Son), and Jane Graves (Daughter-in-law).
Front row Sophie Graves and Emily Graves.
Email: Lionel Graves (lionel@graf-tek.com).
Copyright ©2000-2008 L. Graves. All Rights Reserved.
