Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 241
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 241]
120
more often to ramble curiously through its old narrow crooked streets, packed with old-fashioned, two-storey, half-timbered buildings, leaning at all angles and in every direction, and interspersed with cramped little shops with quaint bow-windows, cosy low-ceilinged inns, and here and there, the crumbling stone edifices of public institutions. Goods of the very highest quality were sold in the smallest shops: the label "Made in England" really was a guarantee of the best possible quality, in those days. Few of us from the New World, I think, failed to be reverentially impressed by the famous cathedral with its towering spire, grassy close and lovely cloisters; and by the historic tombs, effigies, monuments and wall tablets within its walls, all so very redolent of the past. Some nights we patronised the local playhouse, where the vaudeville turns were first class entertainment that we enjoyed very much.
I bought a new bicycle in Salisbury for five pounds, and on Sundays after morning Church Parade, I rode it for many miles exploring the beautiful countryside and surrounding villages. When I felt a bit thirsty or hungry I would have a mug of beer and a snack at some convenient, cross-roads, attractive pub. Owing to the long twilight of the English Summer, it was not dark until well after 9 p.m. Later, to get farther afield I would put the bicycle in the brake-van of a local train for a journey into a neighbouring County, usually Hampshire, then ride it around in new country. In this way I saw much of the lovliest scenery and charming old villages in the South of England, which was just like a big garden in those days, unspoilt by dense motor traffic, arterial roads, ribbon development, ugly Council houses and flats and red-brick brewery pubs.
In late November I was ordered to proceed to Le Havre, the big Channel port in France, for three weeks entraining duty as Railway Transport Officer (R.T.O.). I was accommodated at the Hotel Moderne in the main street, where my immediate superior, a gentlemanly "dug-out" formerly a Major in the Scots Guards, and two other English R.T.Os. were already living in luxury at Army expense. Our duty, each morning and night, was to go down to the extensive railway yards, report to the senior French