Familial wafflings. Chapter 1, Paragraph NIL.

 In the summer of 1966, my mum was a newly qualified teacher. She’d studied both Greek and Latin before she went to university and…Anyway, we’ll get that. Specifically we’ll get back to that when I have spoken to my mum. I think I know but might as well ask her and find out eh? Back to it, she and my granny had travelled down to Victoria Coach station. Mum was joining a holiday group going overland to Greece, my granny was continuing on to Lymington to stay with my great aunt. The diver of the minibus mum was travelling to Greece in, one of two, didn’t know this. He saw an attractive young woman, happy days!, accompanied by her mum. Oh. And that’s how my parents met. They got to know each other on the drive to Greece, and dad asked my if she’d like to go for a walk with him. The walked from Kostas Babistas’ restaurant in Kastraki up to the rocks of Meteora. Another one to check but I think it was a gravel track at the time. There would have been no cars, coaches, sunset minibus tours, gaggles of Ewanandcharlie-alikes…except german, drones, wedding parties or othersuch selfish bastards getting in the way of a perfect evening - it would have been very peaceful…romantic. The rocks radiate heat at night, so they would have been perfectly warm until the small hours. They were probably pissed. How could it not turn into a life long love affair?

Kastraki, Meteora and Kalabaka are where I have my roots because of that. And they weren’t even supposed to be there. The itinerary took them down to Delphi, but dad insisted on a small detour. There were grumbles from a few. Mum has a love of the classics and would have been itching to get to the centre of the ancient Greek world. I’m guessing she was a grumbler. Just a bit. All was forgiven when they got to Meteora and the group spent the night there. Now I’m wondering whether he got kick backs from Kostas. They were great friends. When introduced to my mum, he declared that he loved it when my dad was there, because they would go into Kalabaka and chase women. Nice move Kostas. I can just imaging my trying to say “SHUT UP KOSTAS!” without actually being able to just say “SHUT UP KOSTAS!”. Still, no harm was done, although my mum has raised it when she needed to play joker on many an occasion.

Mum was coming back from this trip to leave for New Zealand, dad was using the money he was earning to carry on around the world. He’d ridden his AJS to the middle east the previous year, bound for Karachi. He was stymied when some back pay from the RAF didn’t come in time, and ended up heading back to the UK from Haifa. He did make it all around the area - Syria, Lebanon, Jordan (Petra). It was before the fires of ‘67 took hold, so a perfectly safe place to travel around. That was a digression. You noticed? Arse! Anyhooha, all that was going be a thing and then, within 4 or five years, Basingstoke became their thing. Now there is the acid test of love!

They married in March of the following year. Mum was Brown Owl at the Brownie group so they had an amazing parade of bored brownies. Inconsistently capilalised b/Brownies at that!

The wedding was followed by a honeymoon later that year. Rather oddly it started in Istanbul. My mum flew out, met my dad with another holiday group, and travelled with them back to Salzburg. Mum stayed there “for a few days”, while dad drove the group back to the UK, jumped on his AJS, and rode to Salzburg. They then travelled straight through the Iron Curtain for a tour of communism in the 60s. My dad totally knew how to theme a holiday. Tim started to show his impending arrival so I kind of get the feeling things were rather time constrained. Mum talks particularly about passing through Checkpoint Charley and realising that she wasn’t going to fit on the back of the bike much longer.

Back in the UK, my dad carried on working for the same holiday company. I want to say it was Olympic. Yeah, Olympic. A friend in Greece recently gushed at Olympic in the 60s. “Oh it was beautiful - owned by Onassis and he wanted it to be a real experience!”. Part of that experience then, was my dad. Probably not quite what Onassis had in mind. He must of got on okay because he became their English rep in Athens and we lived there for a year or two. Oh yeah, Tim arrived 22/12/67, and me on 19/03/69. So I think, and can, and will, confirm, but we’ll go with winging it for now. This would have been 1970. I think we stayed there (see above re confirmation) until 72 or 73. One of the ways I can find out is from en EU report into the murder of an English woman in Athens. My dad got posted back to the London office, checked out with them embassy and we move into “Mrs Winters’”. That’s all I got - definitely London though, and near a park. Right, the point was that we left in an entirely normal manner, and left a trail even a dead dog could follow, leading back to London.

“The authorities already knew about Ann's disappearance. At about 11 a.m. on Sunday, the Olympic employee Brian Rawson telephoned the British Embassy in the capital to say that she was missing. This same Rawson Left Athens about a month after the killing, with his wife and two children and none of them have ever been seen again despite (unproven) claims that they went to Australia. “

Yeah, maybe not a reliable source for the date we left Athens. This guy writing by the way - a “rapporteur” for the EU, writing a report into the murder for the EU in 1983. I assume that means inattentive chap on a jolly to Athens.

And I went to all the trouble of finding the report that date's our return from Greece, albeit to maybe Australia, and er...didn't actually get the date. 1970 + n, where is is a number written somewhere on the internet where I can't be arsed to go and get it, although if just did that I would be a lot quicker than writing all this bollock.

Ok I'm going

1971...maybe '72. What a waste of time that was! That said, I did just read that dad was definitely working for Olympic Holidays. So "Yay!"...probably.

Rather buggers the whole point of opening up about my dad being wanted for murder that one. Stupid bastard internet.

When my dad left Olympic he went to the AA, working in a specialist bureau helping members having problems in Europe. My dad loved doing that. Troubleshooting, getting people going again, saving holidays and travellers like a gallant knight, except not on a charger, but on a telephone, nobly dialling into battle with his biro drawn and rolodex ready to spin. Sadly, his final quest was to help a bereaved father recover the body of his 12 year old daughter to the UK. It nearly broke him my mum tells me. 

Well that’s rather broken the mood. He left that job, stayed with the AA and was eventually transferred to the newly built Fanum House in basingstoke. Mum bagged a job at a school named after John Hunt of Llanvair Waterdine. The powers that be at the time, regarded “John Hunt of” as absolutely perfect, but decided the best pronunciation Llanvair Waterdine sounded rather a lot like “Everest”. And then they renamed the school just Everest, No more John Hunt of. So sorry about that Sir John Hunt of, but them’s the breaks. Imagine the sadness of his family, to know their family name was no longer to be associated with a knackered comprehensive on a Basingstoke council estate.

“Didn’t’ you have a school named after you John Hunt of?”

“Not anymore bitches!...of”

I'll maybe tidy this up having actually read it. I was on a roll and, having read back, it just looks lumpy. The reality is I won't change this at all, due to lazy gobshite-ery. Also, I'll tell myself I'll pay more attention to it looking good on the page as I go, but I doubt that as well.