Nissen Dorma

When my father grew old, his grasp for words became slower and his frustration greater. We sometimes took him for a car ride around his Gloucestershire haunts.

We would end at a pub, often in Frampton Mansell, and he would sit, making a half pint last forever, with a look of complete contentment on his face as he watched his grandchildren.

A serenity not granted often.

A time when the words he struggled to find were replaced by pictures, a slide show of his past.

Perhaps, it would start with an image conjured by his elder sister’s loving poem to him…

When we were young and full of fun

And all our days were carefree

Do you remember that September

We climbed the old pear tree?

Next slide, please.

He saw his mother, a substantial Victorian presence, who, it was rumoured, would play a piano hauled onto the green in Frampton Mansell. Perhaps he saw her at a party in their London flat when he lay on the floorboards and watched bewitched as puffs of dust rose with her every step.

Or maybe the firework night when his father’s rocket careered into the fuel store. ‘Best firework night ever.’

Next slide, please.

Perhaps he saw, 1921, living in a rented Nissen hut, once used by the WW1 Australian Air Force, at the edge of Minchinhampton Common. A hut so large that he learnt to ride a bike in it. A hut so haunting that he never ate chicken after a door swung closed in a dark pantry, with half-dead birds hanging from a hook.

Next slide, please.

He is sitting on a fence at Sapperton tunnels when a Star in the shape of 4056 Princess Margaret thunders out, shrouded in steam. Golden Valley bound. He carefully writes her number into his notebook and pockets the stub of pencil.

Next slide, please.

He’s twelve years old. Still watching the line, but no trains pass. It is 1926, The General Strike. Trains won’t run until a year has passed. No whistles pierce the night in his Nissen hut.