Page 20 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

Father being a fireman and Mother an ambulance-driver. Twice they had been
bombed out of their homes, firstly by a simple bomb (which they heard coming)
and secondly by a V1 (which could be heard flying in. When the engine was
heard to stop, one took cover; at that time, Londoners spent a great deal of time
in air-raid shelters and the underground!). All this mayhem produced a vision of
hell in eastern London, whole rows of houses being demolished; public services
were out of commission for weeks, and strict food rationing was enforced. We,
living in the 1950’s in a confectionary/tobacconist shop, could still witness the
poverty and the shortage of means; eggs and milk were still largely powdered, and
rabbit was more often the meat of choice than were chicken and lamb.

However, not only was the city covered in grime, but it remained unrepaired.
It was still replete with bomb-sites, derelict houses and the detritus of a war that
had left the country, and particularly the industrial areas, ragged and disconsolate.
The mood, certainly of East London, was a definition of pyrrhic; victory over the
Axis seemed tantamount to defeat.

While I was at school, I had enjoyed geography in particular (enjoyment not
enhanced by the buffoon of the geography/careers teacher, Mr M, who taught the
subject, I believe, because during the war he had joined the Royal Navy and had
even been on an MTB as far as the coast of France), and I had determined that
a seagoing life looked a lot more interesting than working in, say, a bank, which
Father thought the epitome of a secure and worthy lifestyle. At that time, the U.K.
offered very little chance of attending university to middle-class families such as
ours (although a few years later there began a period of growth in the number
of colleges and polytechnics being upgraded to regional universities). As careers
master, however, Mr M had no idea of how to join the Merchant Navy (he gave
me a few ragged brochures) so I wrote to many of the better-known companies
and was gratified to receive a number of encouraging replies. All that I had to do
was either attend a residential nautical training school and then be indentured for
three years or otherwise complete a four-year apprenticeship ‘before the mast’. I was
quite happy, as were my parents, for me to apply to Warsash to begin the first route.
At that time, it was not difficult to see how Britain was changing; during the early
1960s, the government eliminated the whole concept of Resale Price Maintenance,
a step that represented the death-knell for small businesses such as was my parents’.
Needless to say, however, taking over their business was the last thing that they
would have wished for their sons; they were happy to send me to Warsash.

It was from that setting that I had embarked upon the life of travel, reasonable
pay, and what I expected to be a bit more comfort than Khyber obviously offered.

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