My dog George romped
through the bracken sniffing out rabbits without a concern about his future. I
sat on the hillside wondering if I had one.
It was October 1962. George
and I were in a park in West Kirby just outside Liverpool.
The Russian ships with missiles aboard were approaching the line President
Kennedy had drawn in the sand. The world was on the brink of a nuclear war and Liverpool was bound to be a target. Would my life just be
the twenty years I had lived until now, gone literally in a flash?
Until then I had not spend
much time contemplating my future except in the broadest terms. I had finished
with school when I was fifteen, starting work in the Department of (In)Justice
in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe)
because I thought I’d like to do law like my grandfather and uncles. That
potential career path was interrupted by my being called up for compulsory
military training.
Although I had hoped to avoid this experience, I found that it was
not as bad as I had thought it would be
– and even quite enjoyable. The camaraderie was something I had not experienced
previously. Attending six schools in different parts of Southern
Africa was not conducive to the formation of friendships. I liked
the physicality of the training as well as the skills we learned. A year or so
after the completion of the nine months basic training, when I was eighteen, I
was offered a commission in the Rhodesian Army. It was tempting. Two years at
Sandhurst Military College in England; a year serving in a British regiment in
one of the outposts of the Empire; free board and lodging and job related
clothing for at least five years when I got back to Rhodesia. Not quite the
career in law – but what an opportunity to get out of the confines of Rhodesia and see
the world.
Fortunately, another
pathway to the outside world opened up with my father’s transfer to England. If I
went with the family, I assumed I would have the chance gain the legal
qualifications I was aiming for in Rhodesia. Not so, as I found after
we arrived in England.
There were no jobs for trainee lawyers – you had to pay to serve a form of
apprenticeship. Taking the easiest route to paying work, I joined the insurance
industry, often regarded as the last refuge of the incompetents who couldn’t
get into banking. But at least it was a job – and there was the contemplation
of the ladder of promotion if you served your time and didn’t blot your
copybook.
Now this cosy, but somewhat
dull future was threatened by the potential rain of Intercontinental Ballistic
Missiles. Would Khrushchev back off? Would Kennedy hit the launch button if he
did not? Was annihilation really likely? Could anyone contemplate that
possibility – or probability? Which was it? Complex thoughts for a young man –
or at least for me. My only conclusion at the end of my rumination was simply
that I should be less concerned about the future, since the future might be so
doubtful, and concentrate more on today, tomorrow and, maybe, next week.
The lesson was driven home
the following week. George never knew that biting a postman was a capital
offence in Britain. He never
ran on the hill again.
