chaplain in my time. There was a parents meeting in the main common room for all the new intake. Everyone was smoking so much that it was really hard to see across the room in the heavy haze, and the dense pollution smarted ones eyes, and amid the hum of conversation there was a steady unremitting coughing.. Four years later when I had a repeat performance with Paul’s arrival, the tobacco /cancer link had been established and the air was clear with only the odd person lighting up! Peter had a hard time the first three weeks settling in at public school. The new boys picked on him and bullied him, and I told him to get one and give him a hiding and assert himself. This he did and from then on he settled in smoothly and soon made friends.
In 1970 we acquired another outlet at Cranleigh about 10 miles away, which proved successful and again we had a summer 6 weeks holiday by driving this time the shorter route to Venice . We could now afford a cabin for ourelves whilst the children slept on deck on inflatable lilos, a performance that we repeated this again in 1972. In the spring of 1972 John Oliver my accountant made me a fantastic job offer of in those days of £11,000 a year to become a co-director with him in a public company with a motor franchise business and with also a lot of interests in Kenya. I was anxious about my loss of independence and unsure and so played for time. I was in a dilemma and kept on stalling him and said that I would give him my reply on my return from Turkey. Had I been offered the job whilst I still worked in London I would have been over joyed to accept, but now having been an entrepreneur on my own and enjoyed the life of making and living by ones own decisions and my own wits I became hesitant. . I talked with Father about the offer that John Oliver had made and also my plans for expansion with the backing of a merchant bank into a large development at Cobham.
“What do you think I should do with a huge salaried offer like that? Should I take it and liquidate my self out of my business, or stay on my own.”
“What is you gut feeling Mike, are you confident of yourself or are you the sort that needs the protection of a big organisation. Also do you think that you can do as well on your own?”
“Well I reckon as a person I am happiest on my own, and I am pretty sure that I can do as well as his salary by myself.”
“Well in that case thank him politely for his offer, but in effect tell him to get stuffed, and that you will manage your own affairs, act like a man, and stand on your own two feet!”
And so when eventually we came home I turned down his offer and we launched ourselves into the Cobham development about which I will come to describe later.
We had travelled this last time for six weeks as a total family unit, leaving England on the 20th July 1973 towing three dingies which we drove non- stop down to Venice 750 miles away in under 24 hours. We now had a 16 ft Wayfarer, a 16ft Fireball racing dingy that I had won in a competition at the Earls Court Boat show in January by guessing its weight to within 9 grams, and a small mini sail on the roof of the car. We finally arrived in Izmir after a glorious cruise down the blue Adriatic and through the Greek Islands to meet Father with all our boats and proceed in convoy for the 50 miles to Lidja on the 24th July.He was overjoyed to see us all, full of prosperity and confidence and eager to all enjoy ourselves with our little fleet and he with his lovely motor cruiser as well. He had arranged accommodation for the children in a large airy basement which he shared too, whilst we were next door in a lovely bedroom in a large mansion owned by an Italian called Renee who loved to come fireballing with me, and his pretty young blonde wife called Aude, who unfortunately was from the same unbalanced and over emotional family as Roget’s wife Flavia. They later were to get divorced! We arrived and settled into our rooms in the early afternoon, and then we all wanted to have a turn sailing and get the boats into action.
We rigged them all up, and as there was only a very light breeze decided to just sail over the inner bay to Buyukliman about 2 miles away. Peter who was quite proficient and was now 17 years of age took the stable Wayfarer with Janet as crew, Paul who was 13 years old and was also quite used to sailing would go alone in the little minsail, and Jill and I would shepherd him closely in the fireball. All went well to start with and we sailed nicely for over two thirds of the way when suddenly the wind picked up force and what had begun as a calm easy cruise was now decidedy dangerous, especially for young Paul who was getting frightened all alone on his small craft with the waves breaking over him. I shouted to Peter to quickly beach the Wayfarer in a tiny sandy cove amidst the rock cliffs and then brought the Fireball up to Paul for Jill to jump out and sail his boat for him. The fireball was grossly over rigged for racing but I let out the mainsail to its maximum, freed the jib to flap and hoped to sail limping along to the shore at Buyukliman which was only a short distance away. But as soon as Jill’s counterbalancing weight was off the boat as she dived into the water the fireball capsized. I was now alone on the upturned hull drifting in the strong wind towards the steep rocky cliffs. Jill rescued Paul and safely landed him at the small cove where they met Peter and Janet. Meanwhile I was still drifting out of control and it was only a matter of time before the boat was wrecked on the rocks. Fortunately just at that very moment a Turkish pleasure boat motored around the headland and heard my cries. They came over and I asked them to go to the cove and collect Jill and bring her back, which they kindly did. There were about 25 people on board, all family members of an insurance company who were on a days outing, but to me in my predicament they seemed like angels from heaven! Jill eventually was brought back, and with her help to balance the boat,I stood on the centreplate and got it up again and we clambered in and set course on a fast reach to suck out the water through the self balers. Later we went back to the cove and got Peter to sail the Wayfarer which was large safe and stable back to Lidja with Paul and we went later with Father in Lanka and collected the mini sail from the little cove. So began our last group family holiday, with an excitement that so nearly could have ended tragically.
But the sailing was wonderful otherwise. Peter loved taking the Wayfarer out with Harold Charnaud a cousin from England who was about 25 years old. They would push the boat in the strong winds to its absolute limit capsizing any number of times in a morning. He would go out with the other young fraternity to discos, where one night he had so much wine that he collapsed getting sick into the lavatory pan as he hugged it. Jill was distraught, but I reassured her that all boys have to undergo such an experience to learn the limits of alcohol intake, and that it is not like water! Janet just loved talking with us in the evening under the warm moonlight on the terrace with the fig tree adjoining. She once confessed that two years before we had not allowed her to go to a Led Zepplin concert in Wembley, and she was so cross and in a teenage tantrum that I sent her to cool down in her room upstairs. She had slammed the kitchen door so hard in its fury that I thought the door frame might have been dislodged out of the frame! “Well you were both absolutely right, although I would never admit it at the time, because it was then that one of her friends had started on drugs and the other had gone over all bent and hippy”.That was typical of Janet she was always open, always eager to talk and a keen listener and she also had built up during her formative years a very close relationship with Mother who had taken a lot of trouble with her, to educate her in art galleries and in reading. Both of these attributes of listening and learning were to stand her in very good stead in the development of her career as a writer and turn her into a most excellent and intelligent Mother, always striking just the right balance between the modern and traditional.
