After Malaysia, we went to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for a year. Dad was appointed Head at the British Embassy prep school. I suspect that mum and dad expected to stay longer, but it was a not an easy place for Mum to bring up three children. 

I vividly remember the day we arrive in Jeddah. At the airport, Mum and dad left Jane, Jeff and I on our own; they must have gone to look for our contact or something, and I am certain they did not go far, or for long, but I was scared out of my wits. We seemed to be surrounded by frightening, jeering men with bad teeth.  Mum and Dad must have trusted jane to look after us As always, we would have looked  to Jane for protection and an answer as to what we should do. We got out alive.

On the first morning in Jeddah we awoke to the bizarre but exciting sight of  nomads and camels walking past our house, which was located on the edge of  a scrubby desert, and which  was massive and modern, surrounded by a high wall that was decorated with tiles. We stood with Dad, watching the camels saunter by,

Jane, Jeff and I slept in one large room, always with the light on, because one or us – either me or Jane, I don’t recall – couldn’t stand to be left alone in the dark. The light cast shadows in the room and I would lie in bed and watch shapes passing across the top of the wall opposite me: there were always octopuses among the passing shapes.

 Our house was not near anything. We had an old, massive Mercedes, rented from someone, that was constantly breaking down. Mum had to drive, illegally, to get anywhere.

As a child the desert was a mix of the exciting – the camels, the nomads, the space – and the downright scary: the Arab men with gappy brown teeth crouched around old wooden cartons, selling cans of 7-Up and coca cola, and their even scarier mangy dogs that looked like killers. Scorpions. Stale, foul smelling eggs, tepid water that had to be boiled before any use, not just to drink.

Jane and I would catch a bus from somewhere (how can there have a been a bus stop out in that desert?) to go to the British Embassy school. The craze for most of that year was ‘marbles’, and all the children would have pockets full of them to show. Dad would have left earlier, (how I am not certain) to go and teach. Jeff would go to a nursery close to where Mum had found a job, in a surgery with some Saudi doctors sympathetic to the idea of western women working. Mum would drive across the scrub  in our old Mercedes to get to work.  Mum would say that finding that job helped keep her sane during the time in Jeddah.

I found it hard to make friends, but I enjoyed school. I liked working, writing stuff, maths, reading. I started reading whole books, quite quickly.

 I was embarrassed when each morning we had to give our apple to the teacher for safe keeping until we ate them later. The apples of all the other children were perfectly wrapped in tin foil, whilst mine barely had enough foil to cover half of it. I realised that um was a bit slap dash about details like that a habit that in time I came to cherish in her, but in that Saudi classroom I tried to hand over the apple without being shamed by teacher.

I remember helping Dad brew beer in an upstairs room. It was only years later, when I heard stories about women being punished for driving or wearing western clothes, and westerners being flogged for brewing their own alcohol, that I realised that Mum and Dad were talking some risks, presumably innocent of the possible consequences, or perhaps confident that the chances of being caught were very small.

At weekends and sometimes after school we might go the Red Sea with other British families. Jane went on a sailing trip and caught a fish, which she is proudly holding in one of the photos from that time. I was in awe of Janes ability to do things like this. At the Red Sea we could paddle or swim but had to wear plimsolls as protection against poisonous stone fish.

I heard about Mecca, the holy place for the Arabs, which attracted hundred of thousands of people each year on pilgrimage. There were one or two trips out of Jeddah, in the general direction of Mecca, which I have just discovered via Google maps, is only 100km away from Jeddah.  Of course Mecca was out of bounds for westerners, so we never reached the city itself. I have a vague memory of driving away from  Jeddah on some steep and winding mountainous roads, the type often portrayed on TV adverts for sports cars; we have to stop because we have lost a wheel arch of the Mercedes; this has rolled off the side of the mountain; we look down the mountain and see a truck that has come off the road and fallen down the slope, perhaps for 50 metres or so.

Aside from these occasional trips, there was not alot to do in our spare time. Mum and Dad did not socialise in the way that they had done in Malaya; we didn’t really have any friends.

On Sundays we were driven to Sunday school, Jane led our prayers each evening.

In the evenings we read books;  we would all sit round as Mum read a book to Jeff, the title of which i do not remember, which always made him cry.

In our home, we were trapped inside the walled compound and there was not an awful lot to do. Apparently we were saved by having bikes that we would spend hours riding round the ‘garden’. Jane remembers small bare patches, used for plants , criss-crossed across the yard. Apparently raw goat manure was dumped regularly on some of the beds.

We had very few toys. For our one Christmas there, Dad had been back to England and bought a few presents over: I got a toy Trebuchet which I thought was the most marvellous thing, and we were given  a ‘Mr Men’ book each; I liked that the author was ‘Roger’ Hargreaves and wondered whether this was significant.  My book was ‘Mr Tickle’, always my favourite and the first I bought for Joe when he was old enough to be read too. When I was still reading to Joe and Ned , I was gripped by the memory of Mr Tickle and decided  to try to collect all the Mr Men books again.

That Christmas in Jeddah, Dad had also bought back some jars of marmite. Jane, Jeff and I had all been fed marmite since the day we were born, and I loved the stuff (and always have, eating some every day, on toast). Mum would pester the local supermarket owner in Jeddah to start stocking marmite. In the week we left Saudi for England the supermarket finally started stocking it. Trips to the supermarket in Jeddah were a regular outing for us, one of the few things to do.  We children would come away with some ‘Pez’ sweets in a dispenser that you pushed to pop a sweet out. These have come on sale again in the UK in recent years, presumably to cash in on the taste for nostalgia amongst middle aged parents.

Mum struggled to buy enough food that we would happily eat. Drinking water had to be boiled. Eggs were not to be trusted.  In photos from the period, we are close to skeletal. Jane caught amoebic dysentry, and Jane and I both had cases of worms. I had a reasonably bad case and after some treatment I excreted a long one, like something from Alien.

Back in England, we had to carry on taking our ‘worm medicine’ for what seemed liked years but was more likely for a year or so.  This became a torturous monthly ritual. All the family would gather in the kitchen . Mum would make up the doses of medicine, which came in the form of a liquid that was designed to be disguised as strawberry milkshake. I couldn’t stomach the stuff and remember vomiting it back up more than once. There would be tears and trauma before I managed to down mine. Dad would have to be called up to take a dose, which he would quickly down before stating how nice it was. I appreciated that he was making this effort on my behalf. I knew that he was playing a game, but felt shamed enough to finally endure my medicine, for fear of failing him.

 (My father always had this power over me, and to a lesser extent, Jane and Jeff; Mum, who performed 95% of domestic duties, could be constantly  [challenged – find better word] whilst my father would only need to raise his head masterly voice and he would get immediate attention. There were times when Mum, who never stopped working,  found this aggravating. There have been many more times when I have wished that I had inherited my fathers ability to rend according to his will).

For years after we stopped taking the medicine, I could not stomach even the idea of strawberry or raspberry ‘drinks’. Once, when I was about 14, I was staying at my cousins Russ and Nicks house in Eastwood. My Auntie Christine offered us all a drink of strawberry milkshake one afternoon. I was too polite and shy to say that I’d rather not. I had to drink the stuff, and then spend an hour or so fighting back the urge to vomit. I was overcome by nausea for the remainder of the day. The fear of strawberry flavoured drinks has not lasted forever; by about the age of 30 I was able to sample strawberry ice cream and I believe I could now handle a milkshake should my life depend on it.

Except for strawberry flavoured drinks I have always had a voracious appetite.  From a fairly young age I have found that I can keep eating without ever feeling full. I like to put this down to the dose of tape worm I experienced as a four year old boy.   (As a short, middle aged man I have to control this urge to keep eating)

The life in Saudi was not easy for a western woman with young children, so I suspect my Mum was keen for dad to get a job elsewhere.  I remember some talk of carrying on the globe trotting, and that there was a potential job for Dad in the Seychelles, which sounded quite exciting. But we ended up at Wells for the start of the school year in September 1972.

I think Dad went on his own, followed later by Mum, Jane., Jeff and myself. Mum says she had a £1000 of cash in the luggage, alot of money at that time. Saudi Arabia was becoming a lucrative place to work.