Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

from the allotments. I can still taste the dry acrid-metallic-electric-acidic feeling of the
black carbonized skin when we pulled them out from the embers - but they were
delicious.
The Spanish city with its high white rotunda and dome was an exotic place - which
in memory was open year round. Colourful gypsy people provided shooting galleries,
coconut ‘shies’, big dipper, whirling machines, a tunnel with ghosts and skeletons,
fortune tellers, toffee apples, candy-floss, ice-cream, seaside rock and so on. There was a
'Treasure' game in a glass cabinet, with a grip-lever outside that controlled a grab inside
the case. The floor of the case was covered with sand and rocks to simulate the sea floor
and strewn with prizes to be picked up and delivered into a moving tray. One
manipulated the grip to select a prize with the grab. These were trashy and very difficult
for the claws to grip; success was rare. (How very slow and primitive indeed compared
with today's computer games!) Unsophisticated (very unsophisticated by today's
standards) gambling, such as rolling pennies onto squares, was on offer, which attracted
various prizes such as big cuddly toys, a doll or a goldfish in a bowl if one won; or
versions of roulette.
There was no television then of course: on Saturday mornings we used to go along
to one of the three cinemas, the "Empire" to see adventure films, such as Flash Gordon,
or "Bring-em-back-alive" Callaghan (my first - if vicarious - encounter with elephants,
hippos, rhinos, giraffes, gorillas, lions, leopards and crocodiles. There were also the
films of Osa and [Martin] Johnson, which introduced me to more natural wildlife in
Kenya. Little did I know that I was to have much more vivid encounters with these
species than the very contrived ones in the films, or that I would live to see a man on the
moon. We used to pay to get into the cinema on Saturday by collecting jam jars, which
we handed in at the box-office. "God Save the King " was played at the end and we all
stood up to attention: I still remember how proud it felt to be British.
My mother was concerned about more civilized matters and I was forced to take
dancing lessons, which I loathed and was never any good at. I was also taught "good
manners" - to stand when a lady entered a room, to open doors, to be helpful around the
house, or digging the garden and so on. I went shopping with my mother, to carry the
purchases and be shown off. My father was a keen card player and each week had a
card-playing evening with three of his friends; when they met at my home I used to
stand and watch the play and listen to the talk. They used cowrie shells for gambling
chips, playing for small stakes. I learnt to play chess and draughts, and other games.
In the summer the beach was a focus and the family spent quite a bit of time there at
weekends. We had a beach tent and deck chairs, which were stored in a building at the
back of the promenade. Many years later my Father became President of the Panama
Swimming Club and after a successful fund-raising drive they were able to build a
clubhouse. I learnt to swim in the sea - really a matter of sink or swim, but it was a
point of honour to achieve mastery of the medium. It was a great feeling of triumph the
first time I was able to swim unassisted out of contact with the bottom and experience
the thrill of being out of my depth. It was also quite a hardy life. I was expected to have
a ‘dip’ every morning, more or less year round, whatever the weather. It was worse for
my father because, with only one leg, he had to hop down to the sea on his crutches and
then throw them down on the sand and slowly immerse himself in the shallow water; at
least we could run in and get it over quickly!
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