Serendipity... a Life

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© 2012,2013 Peter Watson-Wood. All Rights Reserved.

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or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/10/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8173-9 (sc)

978-1-4772-1497-8 (e)

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Foreword

IN THE BEGINNING

The Battle of Britain

FOR KING & COUNTRY

LONDON BELONGS TO ME!

Soho Soho

MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC

CORNWALL

CREATIVE CORNWALL

HEROIN ON THE N.H.S.

THE WILD WEST

BACK IN THE

WILD WEST COUNTRY

NEW GUINEA

LIFE ON THE OCEAN … LINER

THE KEYSTONE FILM COMPANY

BACK TO LONDON

FILMSCREEN

Thrust 2

LEAVING LONDON

THE NIGHT

THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

MOVIESCREEN

ALIBI & MATADOR

AND FINALLY

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Ivan Levene for his editorial help with this book.

Thank you to my son Christopher Watson-Wood for the Cover and Interior design of the book.

Photograph of Peter Watson-Wood on the back cover by Peter Aspden.

The author is grateful for permission from Diana Calvert

to publish ‘The Cuckoo Song’ by Arthur Caddick.

Denis Mitchel taped interview with David Lewis & Sarah Fox-Pitt, 13 April 1981, Tate Gallery Archive, and featured in the book ‘St Ives 1939-64’ published by Tate Gallery Publishing. Revised Edition 1996.

All the characters in this book are real, and I trust I have remembered the events in which they feature, and my conversations with them, accurately. To all of them, my sincere thanks for their contribution. Without them, there would be no book, no story to tell.

Author’s Foreword

Many years ago I was attending the wedding reception in Wales of my granddaughter Rowan to Richie Trezize. Following the formal speeches and toasts, I was enjoying a quiet pint with grandson Ben. I must have regaled him with some story from my past, because he turned to me and said, GPP [Grand Pa Peter] every time we meet, you fascinate me with yet another interesting moment in your life - you seem to have a story to suit every occasion. You should put your stories on paper, then we can all enjoy your adventures. At the time, I thought it was charming of Ben, but for years I did nothing about it.

It wasn’t until 2008, when I became aware of my senior status, that I remembered Ben’s request all those years ago. Perhaps I should put pen to paper after all, so that my family could know what the old feller had been up to during his long life! So to all the family, and friends, I dedicate this slender memoir. I trust you will enjoy the read, as much as I have enjoyed living the life.

Gary’s children from left, Marina, Harriet, Ben, who asked me to put pen to paper, & Rowan.

Chapter 1

IN THE BEGINNING

The year, 2008. ‘pen to paper’ now means text appearing like magic on a word document. My computer is a time machine; a frightening rewind across a lifetime of experience, arriving with a shock on the 24th of September, 1928. The shock? Almost certainly a slap from the midwife, provoking the first cry. We shall fast forward thru’ the baby years, arriving seven years later as the stubborn child is sent to his second school as a weekly border. It is an unusual school, specialising in drama and dance. Each day we would have a ballet class, practise our barre work and classic movement. I love the dance in all its forms, and still like to dance whenever there is an excuse. It’s about the only thing I learnt at that school.

My father, Dougie, was a journalist. Larger than life, he had a great personality and an amazing mix of friends - theatre impresarios, beautiful actresses, the aristocracy, bookies… although William Hill was hardly an ordinary bookmaker. But father enjoyed his best fun down the local pub in what used to be called the public bar, where all the working chaps used to hang out.

My mother Molly was the epitome of 1930’s glamour. Her venues were fashionable restaurants and glamorous night clubs which she attended with stylish and sometimes risqué companions like Tallulah Bankhead, a famous actress and lesbian, who amused Molly with her acerbic wit and outrageous behaviour. Many years later I was delighted when my friend Diana Dors, recalling the Bankhead legend, began to recite a ‘perversion’ of the well known Masefield poem. Down to the she in sips, she began, and went on with many other verses. I seem to remember she claimed that Noel Coward had adapted this Sapphic version of the literary classic.

Before my eighth birthday I was struck down by a life-changing, life-threatening event. I had been playing with my toy sailing boat on the lake in Kensington Gardens, looking forward to tea with Mummy on the roof garden at Derry and Toms, when the sky went black, and the worst headache - ever, ever - hit me. A nightmare of half remembered events and concerned, echoing voices. Finally my horizon narrowed to a bright light burning above my hospital bed.

Cerebral spinal meningitis changed my life and my mother’s life in the most comprehensive way. Unfortunately this was some years before that miracle medication known as antibiotics. Bugger! Did this mean the end? I hadn’t even perfected my entrechat yet! The clinical investigation began - the spinal tap and so on. What complex treatment will be suggested to deal with this ghastly illness? The consultant leaves my bedside with the matron.

I fear there is no hope for this patient. He will slip into a deep coma soon, from which he will not recover. You should inform me, matron, when the inevitable occurs.

Despite her glamorous trappings Molly was tough, and she demanded to know the verdict. Her response: Not bloody likely. We just have to make sure he doesn’t nod off.

Molly sat by my bed reading stories, day after day, night after night. Toys were brought in by my father, while Molly demanded my attention and involvement 24/7 as I slipped in and out of consciousness. Even now I have no idea how long this twilight world lasted, but there came a day when I opened my eyes and saw beside my bed my mother slumped in a chair, exhausted, a picture book slipping slowly out of her hands. The consultant was called, expecting to sign the death certificate. No need - I was alive! Thank you Molly! I had been spared; maybe to do something interesting with my life. Well yea, maybe!

Two years of convalescence, and back to school in the beginners’ class. I have to start all over again. The shame of it. Now ten, I am learning with six and seven-year-olds. You can just imagine the taunts, the indignity, the torture for the over-sensitive schoolboy. By the time I was allowed into prep school I had developed a technique for dealing with the horror of having to attend school. The secret weapon? A sense of humour - identify the influential boys, make ‘em laugh, and get them on your side. Even so I hated it there, but two things saved me from losing my mind: books and the WAR!

Books, because I found that I could lose myself in the magic of another world. There I would find people like me, victims of petty cruelty, and together we would journey through worlds of adventure and enchantment until it was time for me to live my own story once more. War, because it made the adventure real.

War had been threatening for some time, and troops had been mobilised all over the country. We were living in Cheam, Surrey, and like many of our neighbours we had a soldier billeted with us. I enjoyed having a real soldier to talk to and to play toy-soldiers with. This we did after school when he was not on duty, which was often as the troops were really on stand-by for who-knew-what.

September 4, 1939. My model troops are strategically deployed on the living room floor, the opposing army commanded by our military house guest. TIME FOR BATTLE! My mother enters the room and turns on the radio. The Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, has issued an ultimatum to the Germans asking them to agree to withdraw from Poland immediately. The words of that broadcast are now history:

I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and as a consequence, this country is now at war with Germany. Damn, just when we were about to start our game!

To begin with, the conflict was slow-burn. We had rationing, gas masks, air raid rehearsals to deal with; everywhere public air raid shelters were being constructed; the Boy Scout slogan, ‘Be Prepared’, became the universal message. Meanwhile the news from France was not good, and it became clear that we were in retreat. The British land forces headed for Dunkirk where hundreds of boats of all sizes arrived on the beaches to rescue them. The enemy responded with heavy shelling, but despite this our forces escaped over the water to fight another day. In the eyes of a patriotic Britain, Dunkirk was a victory. Either way, it was a miracle.

Me and my Mother on a day out at Chessington Zoo

My father Dougie Watson-Wood in his sailor suit,

with his father Douglas ‘Timber’ Watson-Wood, Rector of Easton, Suffolk.

Chapter 2

The Battle of Britain

It was a lovely summer’s day when the curtain went up on the drama of our war. Suddenly the sky was black with enemy aircraft - wave after wave of German bombers flying in tight formation, the better to beat off our defending fighter aircraft. Day after day, month after month, Hurricanes and Spitfires circled and harassed the threatening raiders, occasionally picking-off a straggler, attempting to break-up phalanx after phalanx of menacing enemy bombers. This was the Battle of Britain, and it made an extraordinary spectacle for us to watch as we made our way reluctantly to school.

Sir Winston Churchill famously referred to the intrepid fighter pilots as ‘The Few’ - Never in the field of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many to so few. We schoolboys were witness to this amazing theatre in the sky, the unfolding drama of The Few beating off the aerial onslaught that was supposed to bring Britain to its knees and clear the way for the land invasion that would complete Hitler’s plan to conquer Europe. At last, the courage of the fighter pilots prevailed, and the daylight raids were suspended. However, the German High Command strategy changed, and for people living in London and the Home Counties, there was much worse to come.

The night raids were quite terrifying. You could no longer see the enemy, and from the nightfall sirens’ wail until the dawn ‘all-clear’, the German bombers unleashed their deadly cargo. The constant throb of the bombers’ engines, the scream of descending high-explosives, the deafening sound of their impacts, some far away, sometimes very near - bombs of all sizes and kinds literally rained down on London and, to a much greater extent than before, on our own district of Sutton and Cheam. Every morning you would see the smouldering rubble of yet another destroyed building. There was a mounting loss of life, sometimes people you knew. Would it be our house, our lives next? It was only natural to wonder.

In our dining room we had what was known as a Morrison shelter. It was literally a steel table with wire mesh sides, the theory being that when the house was destroyed the shelter would support the demolished building and a rescue team would be able to clear the rubble and release the people inside. I don’t think I slept in my own bed for over two years. Still, even as I lay curled-up inside my steel cage, my sleep shattered by the nightmare detonating around me, I was at least happy that I had not been evacuated. Rather live with the danger than be sent away to some strange family, separated from my mother and father.

As it turned out, it was just as well I slept in the Morrison, for one night the bombers dropped incendiary bombs, thousands of them, hoping to destroy the district by fire. Four or five of these small but deadly munitions dropped in our garden, but there was one that penetrated the roof and landed on my empty bed. It happened just as my father, who was an Air Raid Precautions officer (ARP), had dropped by the house to check on us. Hearing the noise he rushed upstairs, gathered up the mattress with the device on it, and heaved it out the window just as it burst into flames and burnt out. Our grass was badly damaged, but the house was saved!

Morning again and back to school, remarking casually on the houses here and there reduced to rubble, the bang in the night made real, rescue teams often still working to free someone from the wreckage or recover a body. The emotional impact on the thirteen-year-old boy was considerable. I’m sure that everything that occurs in childhood seriously influences the rest of your life, and if you are the sum of those experiences then there is a part of me that still carries those scars, however submerged they may be. I guess children shouldn’t have to deal with that kind of thing: death and destruction so shockingly close, the nightly frisson of terror as I lay powerless in my Morrison praying for the dawn. No horror picture can really affect me now. I was a star in my own horror epic - not two hours long, but two years!

My time at the prep school which I attended during The Battle of Britain was marked by the struggle to catch up on my lost school work. Stuck in a class of much younger boys I made easy prey for the ones my own age, who bullied and taunted me with snide remarks. It didn’t help that I was also crap at games.

Posing with my mother Molly. (Circa 1935)

My father Dougie on a sporting day out.

Then there was the headmaster, who used to take us for maths. Often he would summon us to his desk for personal instruction, and once there a predatory hand would slide itself into your shorts and explore your thigh. This made it extremely