Bad flights: Boston, Seattle, San Antonio, Kansas
There was a period when I was travelling for work when there were a lot
of airline strikes, especially BA as I recall. One time I had to fly to Boston
there were flights being cancelled daily, and I checked before leaving that my
flight was OK. Just as I walked into departures, someone was adding my flight
to a list of cancelled flights on a whiteboard (no digital displays in those
days). So I had to wait a few hours then take a flight to New York, then catch
the shuttle to Boston. In those simple times there was a shuttle from New York
to Boston, and another to Washington, that ran once per hour. You didn't have
to book, just turn up and they guaranteed a seat, if needed they laid on
another plane. Even so, I had to wait a while before flying to Boston, then
picked up a hire car. For some reason Racal had booked me into the Boxboro
Sheraton. This was a very nice hotel with a huge reception area, ceiling about
50 feet high supported on massive tree like pillars, with coffee shop,
restaurant and heated swimming pool all inside the area. But it was about a
40-50 mile drive from Logan airport out on the Mass Pike, then around the 495
outer ring road. By the time I checked in, it was around 9 PM, so 2 AM UK time.
I had a light snack, then headed for bed. At some ungodly hour in the night (or
so it seemed to me) the phone rang. It was security telling me they had seen
someone trying to break into my car - did I want to check it, they might have
broken the lock. They seemed slightly surprised when I muttered 'It's a hire
car, no I don't want to check it', and sank groggily back to sleep.
Another time I was flying with Dave Ellis back from Seattle, having
been at Boeing for a while. Instead of a direct flight, we had a connection at
Chicago (not a good idea). O'Hare is always busy, and we had to stack for ages;
as we circled for the nth time, I saw a BOAC 747 taking off below us. 'That's
our plane' I said to Dave, and sure enough we had missed our connection. So we
had to take a later flight to New York, where we had a hotel room for a few
hours before getting a flight to London. By this time, we didn't really know
what the local time was, so when they gave us a voucher for breakfast we
decided to eat it before going to bed. We had to get up at 5 AM local time, so
only a few hours sleep. Then they detected a warning light on one of the
engines, so we had to sit on the runway at New York for a few hours before
finally taking off for Heathrow. The whole journey took about 24 hours, and
when we got there we couldn't pick up our luggage as it had travelled without
us. I was somewhat cross. It had to be delivered to us a few days later.
Another interesting flight, though not that bad, was when I visited a
company in San Antonio, Texas (South West Technical Products as it happens). I
had been in Boston, and had also visited HP in Cupertino in Silicon Valley. I
remember watching humming birds outside the window when I had lunch in HP’s
very smart staff restaurant. There was no direct flight to San Antone (as named
by Johnny Cash), so I had to change at New Orleans. As we descended into the
airport there was a huge thunderstorm going on; at one point there was a flash
and the planes lights went out, then came back on. The pilot came on the PA and
said we had been hit by ‘an electrical discharge’. Blimey Charlie I said (or
words to that effect), we were hit by lightning. Of course, as any student of
electromagnetism knows, this isn’t actually dangerous because the electricity
stays on the outside skin of the plane. But it was a wee bit scary. I enjoyed
my time in Texas, and sampled some good Tex Mex food, though when I took a
drive outside the city I went for about 50 miles and saw nothing but
tumbleweed.
The last of my gruesome flight tales relates to a journey to Kansas
City in February 1987 (not a good time to chose) when I was at Dellfield, to
visit a company called North Supply. They occupied a huge somewhat green
building, which was known locally as 'The Emerald City', because we were, after
all, in Kansas. There wasn't a direct flight to KC (incidentally, KC is only
half in Kansas, the other half is in Missouri), so I had to connect at Houston.
Having a few hours there, I decided to kill the time by having a decent meal.
The flight to KC was only a few hours, but half way there the pilot announced
that we had an engine warning light, probably nothing, but we had to return to
Houston. The funny thing was the American guy next to me was asleep during the
announcement. Shortly after he woke up and spent some time staring out of the
window at the sun. 'We're flying the
wrong way' he said. I explained about the engine trouble, but he simply refused
to believe me (I've noticed this problem before with Americans), and had to
seek out a flight attendant to confirm my story. Once back at Houston I had to
wait for another flight, and eventually got to KC about midnight local time. It
was dark and snowing heavily. I then found out the hotel I was booked into was
near North Supply, but about 40 miles from the airport. I had intended to get a
hire car at the airport, but did not fancy driving 40 miles at night in thick
snow after such a long journey, so took a taxi, which absorbed almost all the
dollars I had with me. As I arrived at the Holiday Inn at about 1-2 AM, the
receptionist greeted me with a cheery good morning. 'No it isn't' I grumped.
Next day however dawned bright and sunny, and the snow was quite pretty, for
Kansas. I was amused to notice that the hotel had a heated outdoor swimming
pool that was gently steaming surrounded by deep snow.
Munich
A long time ago, around the mid 70s, Racal Redac opened an office in
Munich. We were doing a lot of business with Siemens, BBC (Brown Boveri) and
others. I was involved in setting up the computers, so went there quite a lot,
including six times in one summer. I enjoyed Munich, especially the food and
drink. Quite fortuitously I went once during Octoberfest (not actually in
October, just like May week in Cambridge is actually in June). Other times we
spent happy hours drinking in the famous
Hofbrauhaus, where you sit at long tables and benches drinking Lowenbrau or
Paulaner from litre sized handled glasses - a Mass. Waitresses built like Panzer tanks march round at speed with four
of these hefty measures in each hand, if you get in their way you are likely to
be flattened.
One time I flew to Munich to set
up a new DEC computer, only to discover that it had not actually arrived. I was
told to catch the next flight back to the UK, so I returned by the evening in
time, as I recall, to go to a party in Cheltenham. I flew out again a couple of
days later when the machine had been delivered and stayed a night. So that made
twice in one week.
White water rafting
During one trip to DEC I met up with Dave Ellis, who was living there
full time, for a Sunday trip white water rafting. We started early, and stopped
for the obligatory breakfast, then drove for miles through western
Massachusetts to the Green river. I had never done this kind of canoeing
before, so Dave took the stern paddle for steering, while I sat in the front and
tried to avoid the rocks. It was good fun, and the river was so warm I swam in
it when we stopped for beer and sandwiches.
Japan
In November 1974 we were installing a complex system for Sony at
Atsugi, a suburb of Tokyo. Dave Ellis had been there a while when I was sent
out to help him. I knew about this some time in advance, so I planned to use my
full price ticket to do some travelling on the way back. I spent three weeks
there, which was an interesting experience. I found it to be the most alien country
I had ever visited, with a completely different culture. One thing was the
food, with ‘Ramen’ shops selling a variety of noodle soups often containing
lumps of fishy tasting rubbery stuff. Then there were the sea urchin eggs, lots
of raw fish, and fish skeletons. Some of it was nice, the Sony canteen did a
nice Miso soup, and I liked Teppanyaki, Shabu Shabu and Tempura. The Yakitori
we had in a local bar were OK, and the grilled Sakana (fish) was, except they
never gutted it. Opposite our hotel was an open space between shops with a pile
of large smooth boulders. We never found out what this was, because when we
asked our agent if it was a boulder shop, he simply smiled and said ‘aha, yes,
boulder shop, aha’. You could never tell what they really meant, and of course
they cannot say ‘no’.
I had shown an interest in a national park, so on the first weekend
they drove us out of Tokyo to their traditional Japanese house out in the
sticks. It was only about 100 miles away, but it took us 4 hours, 2 just to get
out of Tokyo. Then they drove us further into the mountains to the national
park, with lovely scenery. Up high it started snowing and they had to put
chains on the tyres.
After we had been there a while, and travelled around on the
underground, we got more adventurous and decided we wanted to hire a car for
the weekend. Our agents were very reluctant; I think they felt they had to look
after us. Anyway we persuaded them, and drove to Mount Fuji, where you can get
near the top.
Before we left, we stayed in the hotel Okura in Tokyo, very posh. Dave
wanted to come with me on the trip I had planned on the way back, so we spent
about 2 hours in the JAL office in the hotel. The young woman there had to leaf
through several huge timetable books – no computerised systems - and write out tickets by hand which
overflowed onto another ticket book. We flew via Bangkok, Colombo (Ceylon as it
was then), Bombay, Tehran, and Beirut. We had to spend a day in Bombay, where
Air France put us up in the famous Taj Mahal hotel (don’t think you would get
that these days). We also had to connect via Rome. Seven flights in all, and I
was glad to get back at the end, but it was quite an adventure.
Bangkok was, as usual, boiling hot; we took a boat trip to see Wat Arun
and the Golden Buddha amongst other things. We ate in a little local restaurant
and discovered the delights of Thai food, loaded with lethal bird’s eye chillis.
Then we flew another 6 or 7 hours to Colombo where it was also hot, but not
quite so ferocious. We stayed in a colonial B&B in Colombo, with enormous
bedrooms and bathrooms, and a ‘boy’ – about 70 probably, who carried our cases.
Being young, I tried to protest at him carrying them, but the landlady told us
that he would feel aggrieved if we did not let him. We then took a rickety
train up to Kandy where we stayed in a government place with white gloved
waiters and took breakfast on the veranda with boiled eggs and bananas, and an
ancient hand written receipt. Kandy was lovely, and we went twice to the wonderful
botanic gardens there where we saw trees full of fruit bats. We also saw
fireflies on our evening stroll, which I found enchanting. Finally we took a
coastal train down to the south west, running along the beach with fishermen
employing their nets. I believe this was the train which was wrecked later in
the tsunami. We were in the edge of the monsoon season, and every day at around
5PM it rained with tropical heaviness for a short while. We bought local
umbrellas which I kept for many years as a souvenir. We took local buses in
Colombo, and they were so cheap we had difficulty in finding small enough coins
to pay, probably about a farthing.
Onwards then to Tehran, with the day in the Bombay Taj Mahal, where we
ate a splendid Indian buffet for lunch, accompanied by a Palm Court orchestra.
The front of the hotel was magnificent, with marble reception and splendidly
dressed staff. Looking out at the back from our hotel rooms gave a totally
different picture of total squalor. We walked around Bombay a bit, but were too
tired to take up the offer of a taxi driver who promised to show us all that
life had to offer.
Further to Tehran, which was totally different, much colder, with
street sellers displaying braziers of baked beetroot. It was cold enough to
need heating at night, with a very primitive oil heater in our room. I bought
an ‘Afghan’ style wool hat to keep my head warm. We were befriended by a local
Doctor who took us around the city, and showed us where to eat Chelo Kebab –
delicious grilled lamb with raw onion, rice, pickle and yoghourt. We swapped
addresses with him, and he sent me a post card later, but that was all. We went
inside lovely mosques, and saw where the women washed the locally made carpets
and dried them on the river banks. We had to get up at about 4 AM to catch our
next flight, this was getting a bit tiring.
From Tehran we flew to Beirut where we were met by my uncle Mitri. For
the first and only time in my life I was called for to go directly through
customs. Mitri used to work as a customs officer, and so knew the customs
people at the airport. Made me feel like a VIP. I stayed with Dave at aunt
Najla and Mitri’s place in Rue El Hamra, central Beirut. While there we took a
coach trip to the grottos; we were supposed to also go to a costal town, but
the traffic was so bad we had to give up. Aunt Salwa and her doctor husband
invited us to a slap up feast with various other relatives, including Suheil,
who I remembered from my previous stay in Beirut. Before I left another uncle
came to see me; he spoke no English at all, but was very affectionate. He had
seen me as a small child, and wanted to see how I was then; he brought a tin of
very delicious Lebanese cakes that I took back to England.
Raytheon at Wayland
One of my trips to the States was to Raytheon in Wayland, MA. The guy
there in charge of their CAD efforts was Gene Marsh, who later ran Redac’s
office in Massachusetts. We had sold them a complex system with numerous old
and new programs mashed together to form a big system. Several people went out
there to install and debug it. I was due to go out and help, but discovered the
night before the flight that my US visa had expired. The company driver (Don
Reggate) drove me to the US embassy, and I queued up to get it renewed, but it couldn’t
be done that day because I was born in the Lebanon. So Don drove me back and
Dave Ellis went out instead. He was still having problems with several programs,
so a bit later I was sent out as the last resort. Dave was staying on, but I
was there a bit over a week. I worked really hard and got all programs going,
and Dave and I had a good time together, eating Maine lobster and drinking Jack
Daniels. I learned a bit more American speak when Gene called one of the guys
working for him ‘slow as molasses’. He also like to talk about someone ‘getting
tangled up in their underwear’, a US version of ‘getting their knickers in a
twist’.
One device I had trouble with was a Xynetics plotter, state of the art
and costing about $100,000. It was made in Los Angeles, and when I rang the
tech guy there on a Friday afternoon, he asked if I could get a magnetic tape
shipped out to him. I asked Bill Mcmanus, the head of department, if we could
do this. Sure, he said. Someone got a shipping package for the tape, I wrote the
mag tape, someone else got an airway bill number from the shipping department,
and Bill volunteered to drop it into the shipping terminal at Logan on his way
home. The next morning (Saturday), I was phoned by the guy in LA who had driven
to LAX, picked up the parcel, and had a look at the mag tape. Over 2500 miles
from Friday night to Saturday morning; no way could anything like that happen
anywhere else in the world.
The Master's Lodge at Trinity College
When Michael was ‘installed’ as master at Trinity in 1990, we went for
the day with Tom and Dan and stayed the night. Being installed was a long
process, with him knocking at the gate and giving the porter ‘letters from the
Queen’ which had to be inspected before he was allowed in. Then formal process
with speeches, followed by a feast in hall. I sat on the high table, with
Julian Huxley next to me, and Ben Okri opposite. I didn’t know much about
Huxley (except he was Aldous’ brother), so I asked him what he had done, and he
explained about discovering the signalling method along nerve fibres: ‘that is
what we got the Nobel prize for’. I knew Ben Okri had written ‘The Famished
Road’ which won the Booker prize, but I chatted to him about evolution, which I
was very keen on at the time (still am), and I told Huxley to read Lovelock’s
‘Gaia’. The master’s lodge is huge, like a stately home, with three living
rooms, the largest can hold 350 people at sherry parties. There are three
staircases and a lift. We stayed in ‘The west wing’, which had seven bedrooms.
Michael was master for seven years, so I stayed there a few times, on my own
and with Bev. The last time was when Michael was 80, and the college put on a
feast for him. They do this for fellows who reach 80, and then for ‘each ten
years thereafter’. Michael was no longer master; the new one was Martin Rees,
but he was not using the lodge as he had a house in town. We were met by the
new housekeeper, now a butler, resplendent in grey morning suite, who had
previously butlered for the Queen. He told us he would make porridge, just like
he used to for the hunting parties at Sandringham. At dinner I sat next to
(Sir) Alec Broers, who was then master of Churchill, my old college. We stayed
in the Judges servant’s room, pretty grand even for the servant. Trinity had
the privilege of providing lodging for the travelling judge.
Buckingham Palace twice
I have twice been to Buck Palace, the first time was in about 1980.
Racal Redac had won the Queen’s award for industry; actually we won it twice,
once for export, and once for technology. I was invited to go as a company
representative, along with the MD Eric Wolfendale, and one of the ‘hardware’
guys, Bob Rackstraw. We were driven up in Eric’s Jag by the company driver;
there was a complex procedure at the palace. We were dropped off, and then the
Jag was driven off to park in the Mall; it was called back when it was time for
us to leave. We were treated to drinks and nibbles (whiskey and cashews), and
then lined up to shake hands with the Queen and Prince Charles. It was a long
line, we were near the end, so I said to Charles ‘not long to go now’, and he
guffawed as he does. We then mingled and chatted with various bigwigs, the Duke
of Kent, Keith Joseph, and, not least, Margaret Thatcher. She was surrounded by
a wary circle of men, pontificating on the economy and the state of the pound.
I joined in and unwisely said that the Germans didn’t seem to worry about a
strong currency, she stared at me with penetrating black eyes that seemed to go
right though me; ‘Oh, but they do, they do’ she said. I shut up after that.
Scary woman. After we left, Eric took us to a fancy expensive restaurant in a
boat on the Thames. I don’t know how much the wine cost, but it wasn’t cheap.
The second time was when I had been a mentor for the Prince’s Trust; I
entered a draw for a ticket, and to my surprise won. So Bev and I took a train
to London and went to the Palace for tea (along with a few thousand other
people). We were lucky in that it was a lovely summer’s day, so we walked through
the parks from Paddington to the Palace. Numerous big names were there: Martin
Clunes, Susan Hampshire, Brian May, and lots of others. I must say that the
food was good, all from the Royal supplies (Duchy estates etc.), and a
selection of class teas (of course). It was a most enjoyable occasion, and we
went back on the train very content.
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