Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 16
How has the world changed in 87 years? That’s the length of time I’ve driven this body around the planet, I’m going to make some observations and break them up into various periods according to what was happening in my life at the time:
Part 1
1936–1946
I remember being bottle fed in my cot, as well as thinking that a rabbit had run across my chest. Whatever really happened, I definitely had a sense of being a baby and recall it vividly!
Before the war, Dad worked for Gaumont British films as a sound engineer, working on pictures such as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” from the novel by John Buchan, starring Rpbert Donat. The late 1930s were marked by the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party and the subsequent declaration of war between Britain and Germany in 1939. In 1938 we moved from Weybridge in Surrey to St. Brelade’s Bay on the island of Jersey. After war broke out, my mother and I were transported back to England on the second last ship to leave before the Germans occupied the Channel Islands. My dad was on the last ship to leave.
The war years were a focal part of my early childhood. My dad was often off on some clandestine mission for MI 5, my mum worked for the sensor department of MI 5. I got used to the idea of air raid sirens, German bombers, searchlights and the douf douf douf of anti-aircraft fire. Childhood was not entirely curtailed by the war, so much as being part of the backdrop to young life. I climbed trees, went tobogganing in winter, played with friends and hated nursery school. Later at Prep (preparatory school, junior school), the teachers tried to change me from being left-handed to right-handed. They failed, thank goodness! I specifically remember a few dramatic moments of the war: I had climbed a tree in the garden when a Junkers Bomber flew directly overhead. I reached the futile safety of hiding under the kitchen table only a few seconds later. I saw Aunt Joy’s fiancée, a test pilot for Wellington bombers, crash and die on the Weybridge railway line. Later in the war, the infamous “Buzz Bombs” (V1’s) packed with explosives, rained on Britain. When they ran out of fuel they crashed and exploded causing havoc. Forerunners of the drone perhaps, they would either glide until they hit something or would dive straight down after the fuel was exhausted. You never knew which it would be. I had two of them stop flying directly over my head. I guess they glided! I recall being nervous about loud noises, hated air raid sirens and was quite unsure of myself.
1946–1956
Soon after the war my parents and I left for South Africa. Ships were booked months in advance, passenger planes were in their infancy, so my dad decided we would travel any way he could find. This entailed a ferry to France and train to Lausanne in Switzerland, where we met up with my mother’s mother (Granny Atkins) who had brought my very young Aunt Diana to finishing school. My dad managed to book us on a ship from Marseilles – but it would not leave for some months, so we travelled up into the Engadine valley to the village of Bevers close to St. Moritz. We would often walk into St. Moritz and witness the early re-emergence of the international high society. Very few foreigners had reached Switzerland so soon after the war. Apart from us, most of them were wealthy Americans who apparently found me fascinating because of my accent and extensive vocabulary. My dad became friendly with ex-king Peter of Yugoslavia and went trout fishing with him. We saw the fabulously wealthy Aga Khan, leader of a Muslim sect in Kenya (and father of Ali Khan who married the Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth). The Aga Khan frequently visited St. Moritz. Meanwhile, we stayed in the delightful little village of Bevers and having very little money because of travel restrictions with British pounds (£100 per person per year) we lived surprisingly well on trout caught by the old man, an exotic variety of edible fungi picked by three of us, and spaghetti from the local shop. News from the UK was that severe food rationing had been imposed and the country was in a parlous state despite having won the war.
We spent about eight glorious months in this wonderful environment surrounded by snow-capped mountains, a paradise for a small boy who should have been at school but learned from the university of life instead. We finally left Switzerland down the Maloja pass into the Italian lake district (Como, Maggiore, Lugano, etc.) through Genoa, into France along the coast and stopping off at Nice. From there we took a bus to Marseilles and boarded a tatty Greek liner that had just been converted from a troop ship back into a passenger liner.
The ship travelled to Athens, then crossed the Mediterranean to Alexandria in Egypt. We went on to Cairo where we stayed at the world-famous Shepheard Hotel. Apart from the Pyramids, the Egyptian Museum and the mosque of Ibn Tulun, the hotel fascinated me as a child for its sheer opulence and Eastern splendor. Sadly, the hotel was burned down in the riots of 1952, but was rebuilt in 1957. It closed in 2014 but is currently being renovated and will re-open in 2024.
We flew from Cairo to Nairobi in Kenya, with an overnight stop in Khartoum, capital of the Sudan. We were met by my grandfather (one of many eccentric Englishmen in Kenya at the time) and stayed with him at Torr’s Hotel. Instead of being shown the hordes of African wildlife, my grandfather took us into the bush along with his guest, a prince who was a cousin of King Farouk. All the animals were chased away; we were handed butterfly nets and instructed to catch as many as we could. My grandfather and the prince were the top butterfly collectors in Africa!
The days of British colonial rule were numbered as a rebel group known as the Mau Mau were preparing a wave of terror, leading to Independence in 1963. After travelling to the coast to the resort of Shanzu Beach, I became friendly with other children staying at the hotel. Exploring a cave close to the beach, we found numerous written materials and markings on the walls of the cave. Years later I met up with one of the then-children in Johannesburg, who told me that we had stumbled on a major Mau Mau hideout and were lucky not to have been discovered by them. The Mau Mau was a powerful group who eventually killed many Africans loyal to the British as well as some of the white settlers. As more and more African states declared Independence, Kenya, headed by former Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta and encouraged by the writings of so-called Lieutenant General Dr. Russia, gained Independence in 1963.
In early 1947 we landed from a Union Castle liner at Durban, South Africa. My dad bought a 1928 Plymouth coupe. I was loaded into the “dickie seat,” a small seat which replaced the trunk (or boot) at the back of the car. It was open to the elements, and I experienced a number of soaking-wet trips as we drove the 1,200 miles to Cape Town. On the way we arrived at the small town of George shortly after the exclusive “White Train” containing the British Royal family (King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, daughters Elizabeth and Margaret) on their tour of South Africa. I’ve always been amused at the double entendre of a banner across the road from the railway station which simply said “Welcome to George”!
We initially stayed with Ian and Sheila Williams in Cape Town. Sheila and my mother had been at school together at St. Anne’s, an exclusive private school outside of Durban and a sister school to the top boy’s school, Michaelhouse. After a couple of years at St. George’s Grammar School, the oldest English-speaking school in South Africa, I was sent the 1,200 miles by train to Michaelhouse in 1950. My uncle Dennis had attended at about the same time as his sister Patricia (my mother) was at St. Anne’s.
This was an unsettling period for South Africa. The ruling United Party headed by the world-famous prime minister Jan Smuts, a close friend and confidante of Winston Churchill during the Second World War, was unexpectedly defeated by the Nationalist party of D.F. Malan. Unlike most other parts of Africa where Independence was taking place, the all-white parliament of the new Nationalist party introduced the concept of Apartheid. In truth, in South Africa, like most colonial states on the continent, there was a great lack of racial harmony long before the Nationalists formalized their concept of keeping the races apart.
I personally believe that elements of the Nationalist Party honestly felt that keeping the races separate was the best solution for both whites and blacks, despite the minority whites maintaining control over some 90% of the country. The blacks were expected to start returning to their “homelands” in the remaining 10% of the country. The rest of Africa was moving towards Independence, but South Africa turned in the opposite direction, exerting more and more pernicious controls over the African population.
Hendrik Verwoerd, born in Holland in 1901, came to South Africa with his parents as a child. He was an exceptional student and turned down offers of scholarships in Britain in favor of going to Germany in 1926, which at the time was leading the world in the development of psychiatry. This discipline was unfortunately heavily influenced by the concept of Eugenics leading to the “master race” and “racial hygiene” theories of the time. Verwoerd returned to South Africa in 1928 and after some six years in academia, he turned to politics, joining the Nationalist Party. He rose through the ranks and succeeded Prime Minister J.G. Stryjdom after his death in 1958. He was a central figure in breaking away from British domination and South Africa becoming a republic.
Verwoerd’s earlier training in pre-war Nazi Germany resulted in his imposition of more and more repressive social engineering by creating a highly organized structure for Apartheid. This additional pressure resulted in a growing anger from the black communities in particular, but also evoked resentment from a sizable number of white South Africans. In April 1960, David Pratt, a wealthy white farmer, shot Verwoerd twice at the Rand Agricultural Show. I had dated his daughter a couple of times and got some of the unpublished details of the event. The Apartheid leader survived and kept a tight rein on the development of the African “Homelands,” encouraging major industries to move closer to the Homelands from where they could draw their labor forces. But in 1966, Dimitri Tsafendis, a man of mixed race from Mozambique, stabbed Verwoerd to death in the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town.
I was at Michaelhouse from 1950 to 1954. The school was probably the most liberal educational facility in the country with things like the exchange of black students for a month with Michaelhouse boys spending the same time at a black college. This was way ahead of its time, and I’m amazed that the school got away with it. We also had a number of Chinese boys at the school which was again unique at the time. The Chinese were rated along with the Indians as Asians and therefore on the other side of the color line. Crazily, the Japanese were classified as “honorary whites” because of strong economic ties between the two countries. The school had occasional problems such as when Eddie Ho-King was selected to play on the wing for our 1st XV Rugby team. Voortrekker High School, a local Afrikaans-language establishment, refused to play with us unless Ho-King was dropped. We did not comply!
Although up until then Apartheid had not affected me directly, I felt like all liberal South Africans that the system was iniquitous. On looking back, I realize that also like so many liberals we muttered about the system but did little about it. After all South Africa in those days was a paradise for the whites and in many ways hell for the blacks.
At the end of 1954, I left school and took a 2,500-mile train journey to Walvis Bay, South West Africa (now Namibia) to join my parents for a year before leaving on my own back to England – with absolutely no idea of what I wanted to do with my life! Of course, ExoTech was not even a twinkle in Peter Warren’s eye in those years. It remained to become an exciting part of my future just when people my age were being put out to pasture. For much longer than most, I continued to write longhand. Then, having been thoroughly confused by computers for a few years, I was delighted to discover the development of the ExoBrain system which will change the way we think and communicate in future.
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.