1970s PRIVATE LIFE
0238 Hurst Park Social Activities
The nice thing about Hurst Park was that, due to most of its residents starting their family lives there at almost the same time, it was a homogenous community. We operated as a tight knit group and enjoyed ourselves as community.
We had our own small group of friends particularly Ian and Lil Donaldson, Moira and Derek Payne, Tricia and James Malcolm and a few others. We regularly had parties. I remember we used to have, as was very fashionable at the time, fondue parties -- the form of fondue we used revolved around frying bits of fillet steak in boiling oil on the table. We also had regular parties at Christmas and New Year and barbecues in the summer. Indeed, for the only time in my life we regularly got together on a weekly basis. These bonds were cemented by the fact that our children were friends together. I guess that was the reason that it happened, since we've never had the same access to such a community since that time.
We also went out together, and I especially remember a number of visits to Leith Hill -- the Surrey beauty spot -- in which we managed to pile four adults and four children into Ian's Renault. It was a wonderfully friendly atmosphere and I get quite nostalgic when I think of it.
Later on we joined a group called Grapevine. This was supposedly a wine appreciation society. In fact it was a good excuse to get sociably drunk, though there was certainly a wine appreciation aspect. The key factor, though, was that everyone was expected to drink glass of each of the wines on offer -- and there were six wines every evening -- which meant they would drink about a bottle of wine. Those of us on the committee, as I eventually was, were expected to drink about one and a half bottles. Accordingly everyone was very friendly and everyone was very merry. In particular I remember the lady who was at that time chairwoman of our residents association. She was a very proper lady until, each grapevine, her fourth glass of wine; at which point she came alive to become the heart and soul of the party. Her husband was a senior civil servant, who was at that time -- much to his surprise -- put in charge of Britain's defence against the Cod War. He was the only civil servant I know who was given a memorandum budget and told to spend as much as was necessary. He later went on to become a director-general in the European Commission.
Having said all that, there was considerable element of wine appreciation. We, on the committee took it in turn to choose the wines and we worked hard to make it very educational. The idea was to work towards the best wine just after halfway through the evening. By then people's palates had been wakened, but the later ones would have been ruined by the drunken spirits. People, under the influence of rather too much drink, always however thought the last wine was best of all!
I did two evenings. One was Spanish wines. When we went to Spain on holiday, I brought back a vast quantity of local wines and champagne. This was a great success. My later one was a great success during evening, but was not quite so well received the following morning. It covered aperitifs, and I went out on way to get some of the most exotic aperitifs I could find. What I did not allow for was that some were gin based, some whisky based and some wine based. The net result was, without realising it, everyone thoroughly mixed their drinks and the resulting hangovers were terrible. However, it wasn't as bad as an evening at the restaurant of one of the members, with six special courses cooked for us, where the seafood course – although delicious like the other parts of the meal - gave everyone violent food poisoning.
These close friendships lasted for a dozen or so years until we were forced to move down to Basingstoke. We still keep in touch with a handful of those friends. It was diminished somewhat when Ian, who was my best friend, was forced to take a job in Oman as architects jobs were then non-existent in this country. We bade him in a sad farewell, along with his family, when they departed to Oman. Were astounded when, four months later, we found him back again. He had been deported.
The story was that he had been getting on well in Oman, reporting to the chief architect who in turn reported to Sultan Kaboosh; who was the ruler there. Things went wrong when one of their workers, who they recruited from the civil service, had become a persona non grata and Ian's boss was told to get rid of him. When he didn't do this he was arrested and deported. Ian took over and when he didn't do this fast enough either, he too was deported.
The reason for this was fairly straightforward. This worker, a very good go-for, had previously worked for the air force and had discovered that the new anti-aircraft system they were putting in place was the wrong one. BAe, who had a surplus system on the stocks, had persuaded the sultan's charge d'affaire -- who was in charge of negotiations -- to order the wrong one. He ordered the mobile one when they really needed the fixed one. He was in this position because he was also the sultan's boyfriend, despite the very elaborate wedding ceremony the sultan had just gone through. He had been persuaded by BAe adopting the simple expedient of offering him a £1 million bribe. If this news got out then he would have a very nasty end. Not long before, when there had been a threatened palace coup, the participants had been taken down to the rifle range where they were used for target practice; and, as the soldiers were not very good shots, it had taken a long time for them to die. Accordingly everyone associating with the bribery desperately wanted the story buried.
Ian came back without a job, more important with all his savings frozen him Oman. I eventually persuaded him to make an approach to the foreign office. I thought that he should suggest that the only way that he could recoup his money was to go to the national newspapers with the story. Very quickly he was taken to the foreign office and put in front of a room full of people who refused to say who they were, but who were fairly obviously members of the intelligence services. Almost immediately a newspaper article appeared which reported that a member of the military had been arrested for bribery in Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, this story was never followed up by the newspapers over the next years. At the same time Ian got his money out of Oman and was found a job in Saudi Arabia. He was in charge of building the Ministry of Youth.
He had some good stories of his time there. Not all were happy stories. He had been taking the Swedish managing director of the multinational which was the building contractor around the roof of building when this managing director was so deep in conversation that instead of turning left he walked straight on; and fell down 10 stories. It must have a very embarrassing for the local management to have to report this to its Swedish Head Office.
He also told stories about the neighbouring site which was subcontracted to the South Koreans. In particular, the workforce, when they stopped work every night, turned out on the parade ground and proceeded to undertake military drill. It turned out that they were the backup for the King in case the palace guards didn't defend him as well as were supposed to.
He then went on to be the site architect in charge of building of the most expensive building in the world, which was the Saudi Foreign Ministry. As it was also the location for the Saudi intelligence services I came to the conclusion that he, by then at least. was in reality working for the CIA. Surprisingly, I'm not certain that he himself realised this!
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