Chapter 45: Assorted items 1975

Short and shortish true stories, some serious and many of them you might find amusing. A feature is my interview with the actor Derek Nimmo...

From a letter dated March 22 1975:

WEATHER

Our peculiar weather continues. We switched to summer time last Sunday and it snowed for the first three days — the first snow since last winter. Harley thought it was marvellous. Since then the mild weather has returned. It’s nice to be back in summer time. We’ll soon return to the long summer days with darkness not coming until 10.30pm. Lovely.

CHATTING

Niall is coming along very quickly with his speech. He’s light years ahead of what Harley was at this stage. It makes life so much easier to be able to communicate with a child, even if his speech is confined to key words and phrases. Mind you, his favourite word is “no”.

THEATRE

The Australian play “Don’s Party” is now running in London and Rosemary and I were given press tickets. It was very crude but very funny. The press reviews were mixed. The critics either liked it or hated it. There seemed no half measure.

CHEAP CLOTHING

Rosemary and her parents have been to a few jumble sales recently. Her father scored an almost-new tweed sports jacket for 10 pence. Rosemary bought eight lovely shirts for the boys for five pence each. They were just about giving things away.

From a letter dated April 29 1975:

AN EASTER SURPRISE

Our present marvellous weather is in sharp contrast to what we had over Easter. We had a heavy snowfall on Good Friday. It was very cold but a beautiful scene. For some time Harley had been hearing about Easter eggs and Easter bunnies, so it was an exciting time for him. On Good Friday morning he came rushing into our bedroom and insisted that I took him outside to “catch the Easter bunny”. I was less than enthusiastic but Rosemary eventually decided to humour him. After a while I went to a window overlooking the back garden and nearly fell over when I looked out and saw an Easter bunny. Well, not quite. It was a neighbour’s black and white pet rabbit hopping about in the snow. In future, I will have to take a little more notice of Harley’s stories. Perhaps there is a monster hiding in the garden shed and perhaps he really does have a “Skyhouse” being looked after by his imaginary friend “Peter Scamps”.

EDUCATION

Harley enjoys his schooling. It has given him a magnificent start to his education. He constantly amazes us with the things he can do. I’d be surprised if I had been able at Harley’s age to spell certain words and do simple multiplication.

NO MORE BABIES

I had a vasectomy about four weeks ago. Rosemary and I had decided that two children were sufficient. I was back home two hours after the operation. I returned to work the next day, but that was too soon. My face turned grey and I felt terrible, so I was sent home. I had a painful time for about a fortnight because there was some internal bleeding, but I have no regrets. I was surprised to learn how many other men in the newsroom have had a vasectomy and their discomfort had disappeared in a week.

VIETNAM ALARM

Every so often the worldwide power of the BBC is brought home to us in the Bush House newsroom. In Vietnam, for instance, we have the largest audience of any foreign broadcasters and everything we report is gospel. About a month ago we caused the evacuation of a South Vietnamese province because of a report broadcast by our Vietnamese-language service. Our correspondent there reported, very much in passing, a rumour that the government was going to abandon the province without a fight to the Communists. Most people in the province had heard the rumours, but once the BBC reported them, it was assumed they were true. Hence the population did the bunk into a neighbouring province. The responsibility in these circumstances is quite frightening.

AUSSIE BREAKAWAY PROVINCE

I recently did an interview for Radio 3DB Melbourne and Radio New Zealand with a man who claimed to be the Vice-Agent General of the Hutt River Province in Western Australia. In truth he was a publican in London. [The Hutt River Province was proclaimed in April 1970 when farmer Leonard Casley declared his farm to be a sovereign state. He claimed to have seceded from Australia during a dispute with the authorities about wheat quotas. Casley styled himself "Prince Leonard" and granting family members royal titles. The claim was dropped in 2020.]

I thought the Hutt River thing was just a joke, but the publican/Vice-Agent General appeared to treat it seriously. I decided to play the interview straight, the result being one of the funniest interviews I’ve ever done.

From a letter dated May 17 1975:

FRIENDLY HARLEY

Harley continues to enjoy his schooling and is making lots of friends. He’s a great one for inviting any old kid off the street to come inside to play. One day Rosemary shooed away a gang of little tearaways who had been brazenly ripping to pieces a shrub in a neighbour’s garden. Next thing she knew, the whole mob of them were in our back garden — invited in through a hole in the fence by the ever-friendly Harley.

From a letter dated June 17 1975:

CAR CRASH LIES

You may recall that I had a crash in my car in January. Well, the affair still drags on. A few weeks back I got a note from my broker saying that my insurance company wouldn't refund my no-claim bonus nor my excess because the other insurance company was claiming that I had accelerated through a red light. I was so furious about this lie, I decided to telephone the other driver in the faint hope that I would get some justice.

I rigged up a recorder to the phone and got Rosemary’s father to listen on the extension. I planned to appeal to the driver to do the right thing and admit that the lights were green in my favour. Failing that, I was going to abuse him in the hope that he would be trapped into saying something, giving himself away.

Well, as it turned out, he cheerfully admitted that the lights were green and claimed that that was what he told his insurance broker. So, if he is telling the truth, someone has been playing "funny buggers". The insurance companies have now been presented with transcripts of the phone conversation, and their comments are eagerly awaited.

From a letter dated August 3 1975:

CHEERY CHILDREN

Niall and Harley are both going through quite delightful stages. Harley is now fully potty-trained and his speech is very advanced. He is good company in that he is able to carry out intelligent and interesting conversations. He has completed his first year at school and got a very good report.

Our fears that Harley might be ribbed for his unusual name proved groundless. There are some quite exotic names among his 25 classmates. To name a few: Satish, Siebhan, Amira and Shelina. The class is truly cosmopolitan. There are English, Irish, Welsh, French, Polish, West Indian, Indian and Algerian kids in the class. And of course one Anglo-Aussie!

ACTOR INTERVIEW

I did an interview with actor Derek Nimmo a few weeks back for TV Week, 3DB and Radio New Zealand. He is on his way back to Australia to appear in another play in Melbourne. He loves Australia and talks fondly of Bendigo, Ballarat and the Swan Hill Folk Museum. Here’s my article for TV Week using my usual Bruce Conway pen name:

HOLIDAY TIME

We are on a week's holiday just outside Chard in Somerset. We have rented a 17th Century thatched cottage owned by a BBC colleague. It's a pleasant little place and was probably once occupied by farm workers. It is built of stone with the exterior walls about 18 inches thick. The ceilings are only 6'3" high, giving an idea how short people were three centuries ago. The cottage is on a very rough track in the midst of farmland. After London it is extraordinarily quiet. The nearest we get to any excitement is the occasional passing horseman or horsewoman — or a jet fighter from the nearby Fleet Air Arm base making a low sweep overhead. Val and Jim are here with us and enjoying it very much.

It's our second visit to Somerset; our first was soon after we came to England which, by the way, is almost seven years ago. It's frightening how time goes by. Anyway, it's marvellous scenery. Most of the roads are much the same as they've been for hundreds of years, lined by hedgerows up to 15-feet high. And some of the roads are anything up to six feet below the level of the surrounding countryside. If you meet another car, either you or the other driver has to back up to the nearest passing place. Driving along some of these backs roads is, as Rosemary put it, rather like being on a toboggan ride.

We're only about 12 miles from a lovely beach, and as the weather has been magnificent, we've been able to take the kids there for a couple of hours every day so far. It is a sandy beach, unlike so many English beaches, which are pebbles. After a rather hesitant start, the kids have really taken to the sand and the water.

CAREER NEWS

My big news for me is that I've been promoted to Duty Editor in the BBC World Service Newsroom. I was interviewed by the Appointments Board last week and was told the news by the Editor on Friday as we were preparing for our trip to Cornwall. Naturally it was a tremendous thrill. It's a bit difficult to describe what a Duty Editor does, but in effect it means I have immediate control over the output of the section assigned to me. There are four Duty Editors for each shift, which is made up of about thirty journalists and the same number of typists. As far as anyone can tell, I'm the first Australian to be appointed a Duty Editor in the corporation's overseas broadcasting service. I'm also pretty sure that I will be the youngest Duty Editor in our newsroom.

Enough of this self-congratulation, because Rosemary is also on the move on the job front. In another couple of weeks she takes up an appointment with the Honeywell Computer Company. It will be much the same work (operating a composer typewriter which simulates printed copy), but she will be getting a lot more money -- and the most important thing is that she will be within very easy travelling distance from both home and Harley's school.

NIALL CHAT

For all intents and purposes, Niall is now talking. He began stringing short sentences together a week or so ago and now there’s no stopping him. His vocabulary is very wide and there is no word he’s not prepared to have a go at. But his favourite words are “Me too?”

From a letter dated October 24 1975:

HARLEY’S PLANS AND TV VIEWING

Harley and I were talking the other day about what he planned to do when he became a man. “When I grow up,” he replied, “I want to stay at home watching cartoons on television and planting things in your garden”.

Harley’s favourite TV show at the moment is “The Invisible Man”. However, he doesn’t like the sound of the laser that renders the man invisible, so he watches the program with the sound turned off. His fascination with a program in which the star can neither be seen nor heard escapes me.

TED HEATH INTERVIEW

A couple of weeks ago I did a special interview for Radio New Zealand with ex-Prime Minister Ted Heath. We've spoken on the phone before but never actually met. He's a very cold fish, unless you're a classical music or yachting freak, After I'd set up my equipment in the loungeroom, he strode in, asked me what the questions would be, sat down and chatted away on tape for 10 minutes, got up, shook hands and murmured “nice to meet you" and strode out again. I was left to find my own way out. One interesting thing I noticed was that he'd moved his office to the back of the building since the IRA lobbed a bomb against the window of his old office.

I can’t remember why Radio New Zealand wanted me to interview Ted Heath. I think it was something to do with China. I don’t seem to have kept a copy of the recording.

DRIVING LEGALLY

Last week I got myself a British driver’s licence. Ever since I came over here in 1968 I have been driving rather fraudulently on my Australian licence and an International Driver’s Permit. I thought it was time I legalised the situation. The British make everyone do a test no matter how long they’ve held a licence elsewhere. A couple of days before I did the test I took a lesson with one of the local driving schools to familiarise myself with it. I passed the test first time.

The Australian tests are now very much tougher than when I got my licence in my late teens. I was okay as long as I didn’t scare the daylights out of the local copper or run over anyone.

For what it is worth, here’s my current licence with the details obscured:

HAPPY BROTHERS

The kids are both well at the moment. Niall’s teething problems are behind him and he’s great fun. He’s very boisterous and can more than hold his own with Harley. They’re good mates and have a lot of fun together.

There will now be a gap in my memoir timeline — mainly because I was in Australia for a while and have few records of what happened on that trip.

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Other chapters can be found HERE