Steve, here is my Sixty Years story for you, extracted from my written
memories. Be encouraged, youngster:
In 1950, in England, I applied to the British Colonial Office for a
position in the Colonial Survey Service. I was accepted for service in
the Federation of Malaya. Now I had to have a year's training in
Newbury, in Berkshire, and after that I was headed for another and
exciting part of the world. I wasn’t sure how long this would be for. I
would support Malaya’s independence, but had no idea what the
implications were for me. I was to be trained at Hermitage. This was a
pink army camp about twenty five miles south of Oxford. All the
buildings were pinkwashed, a not entirely popular idea of the C.O.
I went up to London once or twice in the first couple of months and saw
Janet, and then I got a letter from her to say that she had taken a job
as welfare officer at the Pressed Steel works in Oxford! I suppose if a
milk jug has any feelings when it's filled with milk, that's the way I
felt. I brimmed over with the fullness of life and love. Life, in fact,
right then could offer no more that this. Twenty five miles away in Oxford!
One day, months later, leaning on the bridge at Abingdon, I looked
sideways at her with a lump in my throat and mentioned marriage. It
wasn't just marriage. In a few months I was off to the other end of the
world, to the land of Conrad and Somerset Maugham, a country in the
midst of a guerrilla war against British imperialism, and I was an
imperialist. I was asking her to do this too. We looked at each other
and she said yes. I don't remember how she said it; the sky and the
clouds and the running river all shouted it over all the world, and
muffled the world's ears so that I was the only one that heard, a cosmic
secret. How could I feel so breathlessly exhilarated and placidly
contented at the same time? We kissed. I should have been used to this
by now but it was always sweet and beautiful.
We married in 1951. It is now 2011, 60 years later. Last week, talking
to a lady, I said, “Watch!” and I leaned over and kissed Janet. “That is
the same kiss we have been sharing for sixty years,” I told the lady.
Ken
memories. Be encouraged, youngster:
In 1950, in England, I applied to the British Colonial Office for a
position in the Colonial Survey Service. I was accepted for service in
the Federation of Malaya. Now I had to have a year's training in
Newbury, in Berkshire, and after that I was headed for another and
exciting part of the world. I wasn’t sure how long this would be for. I
would support Malaya’s independence, but had no idea what the
implications were for me. I was to be trained at Hermitage. This was a
pink army camp about twenty five miles south of Oxford. All the
buildings were pinkwashed, a not entirely popular idea of the C.O.
I went up to London once or twice in the first couple of months and saw
Janet, and then I got a letter from her to say that she had taken a job
as welfare officer at the Pressed Steel works in Oxford! I suppose if a
milk jug has any feelings when it's filled with milk, that's the way I
felt. I brimmed over with the fullness of life and love. Life, in fact,
right then could offer no more that this. Twenty five miles away in Oxford!
One day, months later, leaning on the bridge at Abingdon, I looked
sideways at her with a lump in my throat and mentioned marriage. It
wasn't just marriage. In a few months I was off to the other end of the
world, to the land of Conrad and Somerset Maugham, a country in the
midst of a guerrilla war against British imperialism, and I was an
imperialist. I was asking her to do this too. We looked at each other
and she said yes. I don't remember how she said it; the sky and the
clouds and the running river all shouted it over all the world, and
muffled the world's ears so that I was the only one that heard, a cosmic
secret. How could I feel so breathlessly exhilarated and placidly
contented at the same time? We kissed. I should have been used to this
by now but it was always sweet and beautiful.
We married in 1951. It is now 2011, 60 years later. Last week, talking
to a lady, I said, “Watch!” and I leaned over and kissed Janet. “That is
the same kiss we have been sharing for sixty years,” I told the lady.
Ken
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