Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 11
I’m not normally a person who is obsessed with ‘what ifs?’ In hunting around for a theme for this week’s blog, I decided to trace my life back and speculate on what may have occurred if what actually happened hadn’t happened!
Let’s go right back. If my mother had not met my father and had gone back from the UK to South Africa where she was already engaged to a member of the Bowes-Lyon family, a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth, how would that have turned out? Would she have married him? If so, she would have married a con man who ended up in jail for fraud. Whoops!
My mother was heavily pregnant but fell over a croquet hoop whilst returning home with me from Weybridge House Hotel. She lost the child and was never able to have children again. How would my life have turned out if I had had a brother or sister?
Coming back with my parents from being evacuated to Scotland during World War II, we were travelling on the famed Flying Scotsman Express. My dad decided to give me a fright. He picked me up and pretended to throw me out of the compartment. Incredibly, as he did so the outside door of the compartment flew open and for a split second I was nearly thrown out of the train for real. Fortunately, my dad had quick reflexes and managed to fall down on top of me on the long seat with the wind whistling through the compartment as the Express travelled at high speed towards London. He then managed to close the door but my mum, dad and I were shattered. Did some “evil spirit” decide to end my life there and then, who knows?
After WWII my parents and I boarded a decrepit Greek passenger liner at Marseilles bound for Alexandria in Egypt as part of our year-long journey to South Africa. Off the coast of Italy, the skipper of the ship ordered all the passengers to move on deck to the stern of the ship while we sailed through a minefield that had not been cleared after the war. I saw some of the mines floating on the surface with metal spikes protruding from the steel ball containing the explosives. The ship crept through successfully but again, what if we had struck a mine?
At St. George’s Grammar School in Cape Town, my parents made me a weekly boarder. In many ways it was a fine school but sadly the boarding house was briefly run by a couple of pedophiles. They would visit the dormitories of the junior boys (11 to 13) and attempt to molest us. Fortunately, my dad had spoken to me earlier about this kind of thing and I managed to escape their attentions until one day they were abruptly removed from the school and, hopefully, jailed. I never found out what had happened to them, but I sometimes wonder how it would have affected me had they been successful with me, as they had with some of the other boys.
My parents later sent me to Michaelhouse, arguably the top private school in South Africa, where my uncle Dennis had been at school, with my mother attending St. Anne’s, its sister school a few miles down the road. My years there were a mixture of good and bad, but I have to emphasize that it was in most ways a fine establishment. I remain a proud member of the old boys club to this day. There are about 800 Old Boys (OMs we call them) in the UK and about 2,500 living OMs around the world including South Africa.
However, what happened to me definitely affected my life. In many ways, I now think that despite the trauma it did point me in the right direction. I’ve written about this before in detail but briefly I had just been awarded my Rugby Honors as well as being nominated for the next year’s Head of House.
I was then involved in an incident where I broke a school rule, having been assured by the school’s Matron that it was all right as she had OK’ed it. The Rector (the term for headmaster at Michaelhouse) went truly psychotic over what was at worst a minor infringement. He yelled at me, called me all kinds of names and said that there was no way I would be Head of House the following year. In fact, he added that he was going to write to my parents and ask them to remove me from the school. I’m not disputing the fact that I was technically in the wrong, but the wild over-reaction infuriated me.
From then on, I was literally persecuted by the Rector. My Housemaster did an extraordinary thing. He offered his resignation should I be prevented from being appointed Head of House. The Rector climbed down and allowed me to be appointed. He wasn’t done with me, however, and did not make me a school prefect despite being Head of House until well into the first term. It made my life extremely difficult apart from demeaning me with my fellow students. Other incidents occurred the following year. He made sure I was not elected School Captain of Rugby though the most senior rugby player left over from the previous year,. He also tried to have me expelled twice for alleged incidents but to his fury I proved that I could not have done them, getting the actual miscreants to go and own up to him. Wonderful honorable fellows!
Lastly with this saga, I was a lousy student and did not get the necessary marks to qualify me for university. However, Uncle Dennis who had attended Cambridge had gotten his rugby Blue (meaning he played for the University), and had an illustrious career in the Colonial Service, etc., etc., had prevailed upon Cambridge to give me a chance to prove myself. The fact that I was a very good rugby player didn’t hurt either. The University told my uncle that they would accept me on probation provided the headmaster of my school wrote a strong recommendation for me. Guess what? I never got that letter! So I never went to university. If I had, goodness knows what I would have ended up doing – probably something dreary.
After leaving school and spending a year in Namibia with my parents, I returned to the UK where I took odd jobs like working as a laborer for a pile-driving company, a night watchman, a farm laborer, a waiter in a restaurant, a car washer and then unexpectedly a bouncer in a nightclub in London’s Soho district. Had my judo instructor not recommended me for the bouncing activity, I would probably never eventually have looked for a better-paying job and never applied to BBC Television for a post as scene shifter. Had I not over-sold myself and ended up on the bottom rung of the production ladder, I would never have entered a profession that excited me almost as much as playing rugby!
After three amazing years in TV, I decided to return to South Africa where I wanted to make documentary films and break free from the confines of studio-based productions. I even had an offer from a London company to finance any documentaries that they felt would appeal to their market. What if I had remained in Britain where ATV had promised me the next vacancy for the post of TV Director? This would have made me the youngest director in the country, beating even the later famous Richard Lester who went on to make some very big movies, such as “Hard Day’s Night” featuring the Beatles, “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Three Musketeers.”
Meanwhile I needed a job. Television had not yet started in South Africa, so I did the rounds of the major film companies but there were no vacancies. Getting desperate, I applied to the mining giant Anglo American looking for men willing to go prospecting in remote areas of Uganda, living alone in a tent, with food and a rifle supplied. My application was successful, and I was booked on a flight to Uganda the following week. The next day I was offered a job with Alpha films in Johannesburg, as someone had walked out. Anglo American was very understanding but I wonder where the prospecting job would have taken me had I not had the intervention from Alpha.
On April 22nd, 1960, the horrific Sharpeville massacre took place. Over sixty African protesters in the township of Sharpeville a few miles outside Johannesburg were shot and killed by a handful of terrified young policemen facing over 5,000 protesters. Nothing can excuse the killings, but I do understand how newly recruited cops mostly aged about 18 lost their nerve and started shooting. A week after the event I received a telegram from the London film company saying that they no longer wanted anything to do with films from South Africa. If Sharpeville hadn’t happened, where would my career have taken me?
There are too many more what ifs to detail here, so I’ll close with just a couple of them. I was working for Lintas advertising (originally the ad agency exclusively for Lever Brothers products but later opened to other products) when they employed an assistant for me handling the producing of commercials and short films screened to remote African communities to show them how to use certain products. Ronnie Kasrils, my new assistant and I became friendly but disagreed strongly on the South African political scene. We did agree that Apartheid was a terrible thing, but I soon discovered that Ronnie was a dedicated communist and advocated a violent overthrow of the white government – whereas I was part of the more centrist Liberal party that tried to bring about change through peaceful means. Despite our differences I agreed to share an apartment with him. One day he disappeared and a short time later I heard he was on the run for blowing up electricity pylons. He went on to become a senior member of the African National Congress in exile and much later a cabinet minister in Nelson Mandela’s government. Anyway, the boss of Lintas called me in and fired me on the spot, presuming I was in cahoots with Ronnie’s political activism – which was far from the truth. Had I not shared the apartment with Ronnie, this would never have happened.
Lastly, while living in East Grinstead in Sussex after leaving South Africa, I became friendly with Alan Douglas, a fellow poet. One day he introduced me to ExoBrain and Peter Warren, who needed a writer. Had Alan not been inspired to put me forward despite having only read my poetry and none of my other writings, I would never have become totally absorbed in the concept of ExoTech and its incredible technology. Alan tragically died a few years later. Had I not met him when I did, who knows?
To sum up then, I’m sure I’m not alone in having numerous incidents and adventures both good and bad that have steered me in a certain direction. Any regrets? Not really. I’m pretty sure I would never have discovered that I have a certain skill with writing plus a vast imagination. So here and now I’ll formally bury my what ifs and thank my lucky stars that I’ve done what I’ve done and achieved what I’ve achieved. Best of all I acquired a wonderful wife in 1965 and she’s been mad enough to stick with me through thick and thin!
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.