Continuing on the theme of things anachronistic, at the time I last mentioned dad was commanding a garrison where two cleaning ladies "came with" the house. It sounds odd to say it now, because most people just don't live like that, but some houses have staff and so it was with this one.
It was a beautiful, rambling farmhouse with roses around the walls. It had a pond, a lawns for which mum, in aspirational fashion, bought a croquet set, a lavender path, a south facing sunny terrace, an orchard, a hedged vegetable garden, an empty paddock and a field.
Just two or three years before we'd been living in a small, ugly grey brick house with a garden the size of a handkerchief on an army patch in Middle Wallop, which was an army air base in Hampshire. There was no shop but the NAAFI half a mile or so away and we were regularly chucked out the house to walk the dog around the windy sports field. At that time on Sundays, shops weren't open. Sunday was what it still was for probably millions of families: church, roast lunch, a family walk and a period drama on the telly at night.
We did go for fairly uninteresting walks on the lanes around the base. I decided cycling them was better and cycled the pretty Hampshire villages for miles around with their thatched roofs, admiring cottages now worth millions. The base had some World War 2 bunkers and really that was it. I was thirteen and read a lot at that time. I tore through Judy Blume, the morose, horrifying Flowers in the Attic series, the terrifying Amityville Horror, god knows where I found this rubbish. I moved on to my dad's James Herriots. I read all the Gerald Durrel next, the Roald Dahl short stories, Jeffery Archer, anything that was around really. There was no logic to it. There was no local library. I just read what I found. Mum threw a fit when she discovered 'Fear of Flying'. I felt wronged because someone at school must have given it to me and I'd never got around to reading it.
After that, we had our own house for the first time for a year or two, a modest Georgian affair with a pretty cherry tree, opposite a garage on London Road in Andover. I was regularly sent over the road for chocolate in the evening.
It was after that that we moved to the farmhouse in Berkshire. It also had several barns and an old stables where we kept tools and a table tennis table. At that time I use to cycle about twelve miles to Farnborough Sixth Form college or get the train from Crowthorne. Mum used to drive me and we were always but always late. We would end up in a long queue of cars on what is still called Wellingtonia Avenue after the eponymous trees that grew there. The road led up to a roundabout which caused the tailback. This avenue contained houses so large, prestigious and set back they could barely be seen and they were all gated anyway. It was a stones throw from Wellington College, the prestigious private school. I would tumble, inelegantly out of the ancient Peugeot 504 estate, in which I later learned to drive barefoot until an off duty policeman crashed into me on the A30 dual carriageway outside Stockbridge. I was attempting, a week after my test, to negotiate a U-turn in order to chase after mum who I had been trying to follow but had just seen going up the opposite carriageway in my 6'4 father's mini Mayfair. It was scrapped soon after.
Anyway, before all that, I routinely fell out of that car onto Wellingtonia Avenue and harum-scarum, scattered down the road puffing and panting the half mile to the station, bag banging and bumping, to catch my train while all the drivers stuck in traffic enjoyed this frequent, chaotic early morning spectacle from the tranquility of their very smart cars.
The land around the farmhouse has been sold off. Some of the land nearby has also been used to build very smart modern houses. This house had I think two double guest rooms facing that sunny, terrace with the roses rambling up the red brick walls. My room on the same side. The master bedroom was across the corridor. One summer night when my parents were away, mystifyingly, a colony bats flew in from an open window in my room and swarmed, around the upstairs corridors. Alone, I barricaded myself in my parents bedroom to find the house tranquil and empty of the creatures the following morning. It felt like a nightmare I had imagined.
It was after that that we moved to the farmhouse in Berkshire. It also had several barns and an old stables where we kept tools and a table tennis table. At that time I use to cycle about twelve miles to Farnborough Sixth Form college or get the train from Crowthorne. Mum used to drive me and we were always but always late. We would end up in a long queue of cars on what is still called Wellingtonia Avenue after the eponymous trees that grew there. The road led up to a roundabout which caused the tailback. This avenue contained houses so large, prestigious and set back they could barely be seen and they were all gated anyway. It was a stones throw from Wellington College, the prestigious private school. I would tumble, inelegantly out of the ancient Peugeot 504 estate, in which I later learned to drive barefoot until an off duty policeman crashed into me on the A30 dual carriageway outside Stockbridge. I was attempting, a week after my test, to negotiate a U-turn in order to chase after mum who I had been trying to follow but had just seen going up the opposite carriageway in my 6'4 father's mini Mayfair. It was scrapped soon after.
Anyway, before all that, I routinely fell out of that car onto Wellingtonia Avenue and harum-scarum, scattered down the road puffing and panting the half mile to the station, bag banging and bumping, to catch my train while all the drivers stuck in traffic enjoyed this frequent, chaotic early morning spectacle from the tranquility of their very smart cars.
The land around the farmhouse has been sold off. Some of the land nearby has also been used to build very smart modern houses. This house had I think two double guest rooms facing that sunny, terrace with the roses rambling up the red brick walls. My room on the same side. The master bedroom was across the corridor. One summer night when my parents were away, mystifyingly, a colony bats flew in from an open window in my room and swarmed, around the upstairs corridors. Alone, I barricaded myself in my parents bedroom to find the house tranquil and empty of the creatures the following morning. It felt like a nightmare I had imagined.
There was a little servants room at the far end of the hosue which my brother used as a bedroom. It was above the kitchen and had its own loo nearby. There was even a separate poky staircase down to the kitchen. There was only one bathroom for all of us. One day I walked in on an ancient naked general in the bath while he was staying with us. The ground floor comprised a large drawing room facing the terrace, a dining room next door, the kichen with flagstones and at the other end of the house, near the entrance with its solid old wooden door, my father's open plan study and a sort of family room or snug with a fireplace.
One night dad was sitting at this desk which looked onto the circular drive between the house and the barns. It was nearing midnight. The phone rang and a voice told my father to leave the house within I think, a minute. Threats from the IRA were in full swing at this time. Military in uniform were being killed all the time by bombs under their cars or on trains or they were shot. We had to check our car every time we got in. Dad used to wear a civilian sweater over his uniform if he left the base in a car. We never had the curtains open at night in case we were shot. The Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party Conference had killed five people only a few years before.
The first I knew of it I was woken up and was made to hide under a table. The military police were called. Everything swung into action and it all felt far too grown up and serious. They swept the grounds. It seemed to take forever. I asked dad why we hadn't left the house when told to. It's a measure of how I had been brought up with unthinking obedience. Because they could have been waiting outside to gun us down, he said. I was suddenly glad he was my dad, that he thought things through. I spent a good part of the rest of the night being taught to play pool by dashing young officers when we were temporarily moved to their accommodation while, I suppose the house was checked. I was sixteen and once we were safe it all became rather exciting and delightful.
Somehow I knew who had done it. Some detectives visited us. We had all been badly shaken. I saw it as no joke at all and had no hesitation in naming the boy I suspected with whom I had been having a bit of a thing. Although I think he got a criminal record for the attention seeking, he claimed the detectives had sided with him and spoken badly of me, presumably for giving him up. I didn't know whether to believe him or not, but I spotted the attempt to rattle me and didn't care. Had he been "one of us" he would have "done the right thing" and apologised. I may misremember when I think he said he wanted to but perhaps hadn't been allowed.
That's how I thought in those days. I didn't realise until later the effort that went into my parents', and mostly my father's, iron fast rules that children, dogs, and wives too, for that matter, obeyed. He trained us very much the way he ensured our dog didn't beg - rules with no exceptions. We were not to have a say, and most of all never to answer back. We didn't have our own ideas, because we had his. We were brainwashed into believing dad was right, always right. He was confident, intelligent, powerful, respected, charming and often fun. He was a 6'4 adult with decades of life experience. Why on earth would we do other than what he said or believed? That training was immensely powerful and that early indoctrination continued for decades.
That's how I thought in those days. I didn't realise until later the effort that went into my parents', and mostly my father's, iron fast rules that children, dogs, and wives too, for that matter, obeyed. He trained us very much the way he ensured our dog didn't beg - rules with no exceptions. We were not to have a say, and most of all never to answer back. We didn't have our own ideas, because we had his. We were brainwashed into believing dad was right, always right. He was confident, intelligent, powerful, respected, charming and often fun. He was a 6'4 adult with decades of life experience. Why on earth would we do other than what he said or believed? That training was immensely powerful and that early indoctrination continued for decades.
Still, our house was a stormy one. There were a lot of arguments around that time between me and my parents. I had a friend nearby who I saw nearly every day. I ate regularly with her family. The dad watched nature documents and was gently ribbed by his wife and daughters. The mum went off to bed routinely at 9.30. It was an oasis of calm, stability and routine in comparison to our tempestuous, highly social home. In contrast, she always came to our house with a demeanour of slightly nervous yet relaxed good humour: a sort of what drama was going to happen next?
Nevertheless, it was an idyllic place to live. There was a heron that used to flap onto the little island on the pond that is still there and steal all the fish. The farmhouse itself, per June 2025 photos on Google maps, sadly seems abandoned or perhaps under renovation, the entrances to the garden boarded up with plywood. I hope the heron stayed.
The cleaning ladies who lived locally would also help with the regular dinner parties in the evening. There was the more senior lady with a gentle, refined way and the junior, who was probably older, smaller, stocky, and straw haired, who assisted. I don't know if dad paid them or the army paid them, but they were part of the fixtures. They were there when we arrived and they stayed for dad's successor when we left.
The cleaning ladies who lived locally would also help with the regular dinner parties in the evening. There was the more senior lady with a gentle, refined way and the junior, who was probably older, smaller, stocky, and straw haired, who assisted. I don't know if dad paid them or the army paid them, but they were part of the fixtures. They were there when we arrived and they stayed for dad's successor when we left.
There often seemed to be cleaners. In Germany around 1980 we had had a batwoman, Frau somebody or other, a quiet, efficient, slightly intimidating woman who came to help with cleaning, but I didn’t have much to do with her as she only spoke German. They managed because Dad spoke fluent German and mum could get by. I think we had one later to, in another house on the Rheindahlen base around 1990. This was a huge NATO base with a pool, pub, bars, shops, a travel agent, churches, a cinema and hundreds of homes. It is now completely abandoned and can be seen as a ghost town, on Youtube.
Dad also had a batman, in at least one of his postings. These were effectively a sort of part time personal servant. I can’t really say I’m sure what he did. Polished shoes perhaps? But I remember dad doing that himself and teaching us. Dad’s driver at the farmhouse became a sort of driver come batman, largely on his own initiative. He was a likeable, easygoing corporal of limited ambition who probably found jobs around the rambling old place for himself. He and dad got on extremely well. Certainly he preferred hanging round the house doing odd jobs, working in the vegetable garden with dad or having tea with mum and the cleaning ladies than doing whatever they made him do back at the barracks where he lived as a single man. Occasionally dad and Cpl T (would pick me up from sixth form but the corporal rarely or never came alone because that would not have been an appropriate use of resources. Dad was careful about that, though how it was OK for Corporal T to work in the garden I don't know. Maybe it was only once or maybe I misremember. Officer behaviour was extremely strict when it came to integrity.
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