A fine day, on this trip a rarity, we decided to take the train to Windsor and see the castle.
This is a real castle, and still in one piece, unlike a lot of castles.
Were we hoping to see the Queen, no, it was highly unlikely.
But there were a lot of planes flying overhead into Heathrow. The wind must have been blowing the wrong day, and I’m sure, with one passing over every few minutes, it must annoy the Queen if she was looking for peace and quiet.
Good thing then, when it was built, it was an ideal spot, and not under the landing path. I guess it was hard to predict what would happen 500 years in the future!
I’m not sure if this was the front gate or back gate, but I was wary of any stray arrows coming out of those slits either side of the entrance.
You just never know!
An excellent lawn for croquet. This, I think, is the doorway, on the left, where dignitaries arrive by car. The private apartments are across the back.
The visitor’s apartments. Not sure who that is on the horse.
St George’s Chapel. It’s a magnificent church for a private castle. It’s been very busy the last few months with Royal weddings.
The Round Tower, or the Keep. It is the castle’s centerpiece. Below it is the gardens.
Those stairs are not for the faint-hearted, nor the Queen I suspect. But I think quite a few royal children and their friends have been up and down them a few times.
It’s still a battle of wits, but our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Nor does it help when his old mentor walks through the door.
I don’t like surprises. This dislike had started with a surprise birthday party about 10 years ago and since then I’ve assiduously tried to avoid them.
Of course, there are also surprises you have no control over, and I liked them even less.
Bluff and bravado would only carry me so far. These people whoever they were would not accept that I knew nothing about what had just happened.
Which I didn’t.
It was not the A interrogation team with a chest full of torture tools and dressed in hazmat suits, but when the harbinger of my fate walked into the room, it was something a lot scarier.
A man I knew well or thought I did until he walked in the door, I had the utmost respected for.
Colonel Bamfield. My first Commanding Officer, the man who cut me some slack, and made me into a soldier.
Now, all I had was questions, but I was on the wrong side of the table.
The first, what the hell was going on here?
My first inclination was to stand and salute a superior officer, but he was not wearing the uniform, not the proper uniform I was used to seeing him in. My second inclination was to ask him what he was doing in that room with me, but I didn’t.
Speak when spoken to, and don’t volunteer information.
He too tried the silent treatment, or maybe it was that he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
Then, still standing behind the table, looking down on me, he said, “That was some jump you made from a moving helicopter.” Was there a touch of admiration in his tone?
“Life or death. Anyone one else is that situation would do the same.”
“Less than you’d think.”
Establishing camaraderie. Or trying to. I waited for the next question.
It wasn’t a question but a statement, “We have a problem Alan, and it’s not just with you.”
As some may be aware, but many not, Chester, my faithful writing assistant, mice catcher, and general pain in the neck, passed away some months ago.
Recently I was running a series based on his adventures, under the title of Past Conversations with my cat.
For those who have not had the chance to read about all of his exploits I will run the series again from Episode 1
These are the memories of our time together…
This is Chester. Now we’ve cleaned up the room there’s nowhere to hide.
That might just become a real problem for our furry friend.
The girls are on a mission, as we’ve set them a series of tasks in order to earn some pocket money during the school holidays. And keep them out of mischief.
But, what does Chester think of all of this?
Not happy at all.
He was apprehensive at their arrival as he always is, and tries to hide away while they are here, but all that rummaging and boxes moving hither and thither, it’s not long before he comes out to see what’s happening.
The office is clean, the hiding spots are gone. I watch him slink from spot to spot, the look of dismay lengthening.
This is wrong, he says, coming up and sitting at my feet. You know I need to get away from time to time, spend some alone time to contemplate new ways to catch mice.
Right.
There were seven different spots where I know Chester hides away, and these are spots in cupboards and under beds, places that need cleaning and we can’t get to.
His ears prick up, hearing a noise from the other end of the house, and he’s off like the flash. A few minutes later he’s back. Another hiding spot is gone.
It seems that we can be completely focussed on a single task to the detriment of all else, and, when that task is complete, suddenly we feel totally drained.
That’s how I feel right now.
The end of one year, and soon the start of another…
All I have to do is get past the publication of my next two books, take a few days off, and then I should be invigorated. Perhaps COVID will have something to do with it because it will be more of the same, rather than a brave new world, we will be counteracting new surges and variations with resultant isolations, so it will be more of a case of head down, tail up, with nowhere to go, no travel to plan, and not able to go anywhere other than the shops, the doctor or the chemist.
For computer programmers who never leave their semi darkened lair, ordering in pizza and Coke, it must have been a Godsend.
Given that I prefer to be at home, working on any number of stories, it usually is for me.
But, have I been working too hard, and it’s finally got to me. I mean, you can only write so much before the brain starts to fry?
But, at the very least. I have been working on two novels that needed to be completed, not that they are exactly there yet, and other that NaNoWriMo kicked along, and I’m still writing a few pages a night, and two others that are now ready for the final edit.
This has all happened to the detriment of my episodic stories, which have lain idle since October, and then I picked up one, and wrote two or three more episodes, just to keep it ticking over. The other two still have five spare to publish soon.
And I know it might show signs of panic but April is coming rapidly into focus, and there will be the A to Z Challenge, 26 more stories in 30 days. I’d like to get a head start on this, but time….
Something else that pleases me, and is entirely unexpected, is that I have sold a number of copies of my books in the last month or so. I know I’m not about to be vying for the top of the bestseller list, but it’s satisfying.
I guess I have seen too many westerns, film fodder my parents liked to watch on TV, and especially with John Wayne, and later on Clint Eastwood.
In this day and age there are only scant reminders of a time that may have bristled with excitement, or so dangerous you would be lucky to survive if you got on the wrong side of a gunslinger.
But, for argument’s sake, what if there was a way to actually step back in time?
So, here’s the start of a story…
…
There are hundreds of places in the midwest, where you could see miles of plains, hills, winding rivers, and sleepy towns. Places with old-fashioned motels and hotels, general stores, farmers’ supplies, and everything else in between.
These are the towns where the young, fresh out of school and full of ideas and enthusiasm get on the bus to go to the big cities, promising to return.
Some do, some don’t.
For others who live in the cities, driving through the midwest would be a welcome change from the clogged highways, freeways, turnpikes, and the 14 hour days. Where a person could wind back the hectic to the sedate, and perhaps for a while, to the mundane. It was a dream to cling to, something that just barely kept a man sane in an insane world. And a dream that was about to become a reality.
Jack was on the verge of burnout, having spent the last year doing 80 hour weeks, gunning for the manager’s role that he had been promised, if he put in the time. That he had, and then some.
But the man who made the promise died suddenly, and it all came to naught, passed over by the replacement boss who had his own selection for the role, younger, better educated, but utterly no experience.
It was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
The next day he resigned, spoke not one word to anyone after handing in his keycard and resignation letter, and left. Perhaps the only consolation, no one else knew the complex plant operation systems, and when it broke down, as it always did, there was no one who could fix it.
There was one more ceremonial job he had to do before getting in his car, and that was to toss his cell phone in the bin. That done, the drive home took 20 minutes instead of the usual two hours, he threw what he needed into an overnight bag, and after taking a 30-second look back in the place he had called home for 25 years, shrugged, and closed the door.
There would be no coming back.
…
Of course, there were moments where the resolve was tested, those tendrils of loyalty to a company he had worked at for a long time, and who had treated him reasonably well.
The first night, in a quaint motel, was the hardest. Alone with his thoughts, without anyone to talk to, not that there were many back home, the idea of striking out on his own seemed drastic, even silly.
The second night, spent at a surprisingly rural town, he had supper in a diner that had few customers and a waitress his own age who was a talker. She recommended a guest house, one she stayed at herself, a runaway like he was, but for more desperate reasons, and liking the company stayed for a week.
It was difficult to move on, but he did.
Which was why, five days later, in another small town by a river, he had reached the bridge.
The road went in two directions. West or north. North crossed the river, and the minor roads wound their way through hills and dales to Canada. West headed towards San Francisco, and he had no desire to visit another large city. Not for a while.
Over the bridge it was.
After a night in another interesting motel that had a small room that passed as a museum, and related the history of the area, a story in itself.
There’s more than one way … er, perhaps it’s better to say, there are many ways to use the word bar, which is not bad for a three letter word.
Bar, the one you associate with drinks, in hotels, restaurants and we’ll, just bars.
Probably the best type of bar you might find me in is a Sports Bar, where you can snack on buffalo wings a tall glass of beer and watch with ice hockey in winter or baseball in summer.
It’s one I use from time to time when asked, what will we do, and the reply is often let’s go to a bar. The best bars are underground, dark and dingy, full of eclectic people, with a band playing almost passable music or better still jazz
Bar, as in the legal variety
There are so many legal references to using bar, that the one that I am most familiar with is being admitted to the bar which means that you can now practice law.
Raising the bar, if that’s possible, where the bar is that imaginary level which offers sinks very low. When someone says they’re going to try and raise the bar, you may be assured there will be a long battle ahead, simply because people generally find it hard to change.
Bar, as in we are not going to let you in here. Yes, this is the irksome one where you find yourself, often for reasons unknown, barred from somewhere or something. This may also be referred to by saying everyone may enter bar you.
Bar, as in an iron bar, the sort that is sometimes used as a blunt force object by villains to remind the victim they owe any one of a loan shark, bookie or the mafia. God help you if it is all three.
There are also iron bars of a different sort, those that are set in concrete outside a window most likely in a prison where the objective is to prevent escape.
It gives rise to an old expression, that person should be behind bars.
Then there is just a bar, such as a bar of gold, which I’m sure we’d all like to have stashed away, but not necessarily in the mattress, or the more common variety, a chocolate bar, which I have one now. What’s your favorite?
And just to add to the list of meanings you can always refer to sashes or stripes as bars.
Confused? Well, there’s still music, and the bane of yachtsmen, sand bars but I think we’ll leave it there.
There is always something to be found that can be very interesting, and sometimes, when following more obscure links in web pages, you can either finish up having your computer trashed, or you find a gem.
As you can imagine, when I saw the CIA, I thought, OK, this fits my penchant for conspiracies and subterfuge, and when I stumbled across this thing called the Phoenix Program. Whether it existed or not, one can never sure when reading about CIA activities, its premise gives me an avenue to attach a few shady characters and let them run with it.
Then, of course, there was a film which I noticed was on cable TV, so I watched it. Air America, and whether that was true or not, it gave me another idea, and so the characterization of Colonel Davenport will fit into both these scenarios.
I suspect there may have been one or two more enterprising officers who saw an opportunity to not only appear to fulfill the parameters of their mission, but also make a little money on the side, setting up an operation within an operation, whether it’s to move into a black market arms supply, or moving and selling drugs from what was called the golden triangle that may or may not have included Cambodia.
That also lends itself to Davenport, when Bill finally catches on to what he is up to, arranging for his capture and removal to a prisoner of war campo over the border in Cambodia. It could also probably have been in Laos, at the CIA may or may not have been running an operation there as well.
There is so much now to consider.
I now have to find out about airbases and personnel, come up with a suitable band of misfits, find out what sort of aircraft and land transport could be involved in moving the contraband, and a little more about Saigon back in the mid-sixties.
A fine day, on this trip a rarity, we decided to take the train to Windsor and see the castle.
This is a real castle, and still in one piece, unlike a lot of castles.
Were we hoping to see the Queen, no, it was highly unlikely.
But there were a lot of planes flying overhead into Heathrow. The wind must have been blowing the wrong day, and I’m sure, with one passing over every few minutes, it must annoy the Queen if she was looking for peace and quiet.
Good thing then, when it was built, it was an ideal spot, and not under the landing path. I guess it was hard to predict what would happen 500 years in the future!
I’m not sure if this was the front gate or back gate, but I was wary of any stray arrows coming out of those slits either side of the entrance.
You just never know!
An excellent lawn for croquet. This, I think, is the doorway, on the left, where dignitaries arrive by car. The private apartments are across the back.
The visitor’s apartments. Not sure who that is on the horse.
St George’s Chapel. It’s a magnificent church for a private castle. It’s been very busy the last few months with Royal weddings.
The Round Tower, or the Keep. It is the castle’s centerpiece. Below it is the gardens.
Those stairs are not for the faint-hearted, nor the Queen I suspect. But I think quite a few royal children and their friends have been up and down them a few times.
I think I won the battle of wits, or whatever it was.
A few moments later he sat on the other side, pushing the chair back from the table, and me, as a deliberate act.
Distancing.
Besides adopting the speak when spoken to route, I was also adopting that age old modus operandi of not volunteering anything. If they knew anything they would have to tell me what they knew.
So, to begin with, another round of silence.
Then, after a few more minutes, s thin knowing smile, as if he knew everything I’d do before I did. Perhaps he was a psychology professor.
“What we you doing in a no fly zone?”
Well that answered at least two questions right there. We were where we were not supposed to be, and, as a stab in the dark, knowing how good the pilot was, we had deliberately strayed there.
On orders, or curiosity. No, orders.
Reason, suspected enemy or other activity in a designated area being used as cover. Had the Commander known about this and ordered a discreet incursion.
It felt more like a routine operation.
“I was not the pilot. You’d have to ask him, although that might be difficult now he’s dead.”
“The nature of you pre op briefing, then?”
“There wasn’t one, or if there was, I wasn’t included.”
“That would be a violation of regulations would it not?”
“You’d have to ask the military lawyers. I just make up the numbers, and do as I’m told.” I could add more but don’t volunteer information. Let them dig for it.
“Then why were you on board?”
He asked that question as if it was a surprise to him or someone else.
I think at that moment I realised there might be bigger fish that might get fried from this interview. There was an arrangement in place that if the pilot wanted to go up for extra hours, he had to take someone like me along, for situations like that which had happened.
This had been sanctioned by the Commander, but I don’t think it included heading out to hot spots. If this man was from our side, he might be on a witch hunt.
Today, I’ve decided on doing a little research, and this means giving the internet and Google a good workout.
I need some information about the Vietnam War.
So, as a start, I type in the words ‘Vietnam War’ into Google.
This returns: About 699,000,000 results (0.83 seconds)
Wikipedia says “The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975”
OK, so this gives me the broadest outline. What I need is details, so it’s a matter of where to start. This means to start with, when did troops get sent from both Australia and the United States for service. It seems the US sent troops from 1964 to 1969, and Australia between August 1965 and March 1966. This gives me a starting point, because our main character is Australian, and somehow gets seconded to the Americans.
January 1972, the war ends.
Now we need to know
where the bases were
where the battle zones were
methods of transportation
what happened to prisoners of war
rest and recreation points
CIA involvement (which will no doubt be impossible to find evidence)
what happened to soldiers injured in battle
It’s a list that will get longer and may require a reading list, and first-hand accounts.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 