This will be my penultimate article for readers of the Redmarley version of this publication unless another editor is found, and it is this possibility that got me thinking of the role the magazine plays in the community. There are the usual words of encouragement from the vicar, times of church services and local events. And there is also parish news and the concerns of parish councillors.
But what about the people whose livelihoods depend on advertising. Without the magazine, local tradesmen might have to rely on nationally organised networks of tradesmen run by a big corporation which takes a % of the tradesman’s wages.
This magazine is a cohesive factor in the local community, and it is a spirit of social cooperation that motivates the team of volunteers who distribute it. What will happen to them? Experience tells us that it is easier to lose a team of volunteers than it is to put one together.
Frankly, if I were younger I would do the half day per month job, but I am now beginning to think that I have ‘peaked’ in the things I am still able to do, and so my days of ‘adding‘ more jobs have gone. However, will a budding writer or editor see it as a chance to get on the ladder to Fleet Street?
This situation recalls my first attempt as magazine proprietor/editor. It was whilst stationed at Steamer Point in the port of Aden in South Yemen. For some reason bureaucrats at the MOD decided that all RAF servicemen should hand in the cutlery issued when we took the Queen’s shilling. ‘In future’ they said, “cutlery would be available at the mess table”. But because most of us conscripts sensed something amiss with this edict, we kept our original (irons) knife, fork and spoon.
Like most British bases, Aden was a pretty open kind of society in that we had some thousands of locals doing all kinds of jobs and, apart from the odd occasion when someone took a shot at you, everyone went about their lives quite openly.
All the cooks were RAF, however just about every other job seemed to involve hundreds of locals. On the day the edict commenced we dutifully used the cutlery placed in tubs on the tables, and for about a week all went well although some items became scarce. We soon learned that we could eat a hot dinner with only a fork and spoon although consuming soup with a knife and fork was difficult. Very soon we were down to single spoon or a fork and so another notice appeared informing us that forty one thousand sets of cutlery had disappeared. The notice did not disclose what by then we all knew, that the cutlery had been shipped by camel-train to markets across the southern Arabian Peninsular.
My RAF job involved work in the communication centre where, on the night watch, I anonymously created a magazine along the lines of the ‘Teach Yourself’ series popular in the nineteen fifties. I entitled the publication ‘Aden for Beginners,’ and discussed issues of service life including mention of the missing cutlery. I mused on how my fellow service men might have used the missing cutlery. Tunnelling was out of the question as the local terrain was desert and because some of us were billeted on an extinct volcano, digging holes deep below its surface did not seem a good idea.
So it was that in that first edition of Aden for Beginners, I dismissed the notion of tunnelling but did speculate that the cutlery might be used to extract POM. For younger readers this was a kind of horrible tasting dry reconstituted potato which was still in use by RAF cooks during my two years of national service. I suggested in my pamphlet that the entire stock of POM had been shovelled into a hole in 1942, because it was believed the Germans were keen to examine this product for its use as an explosive or even rocket fuel.
It must have been this latter point that brought ‘Aden for Beginners’ to the notice of the Authorities and which prompted them to search for its editor. Within days I was standing in front of Group Captain Mcfie, DFC & Bar. His opening gambit was, “Is this your work Wells”? To which I replied “Yes Sir”. “Well done Wells, well done indeed. I enjoyed reading your work. However, you will cease this publication immediately and you will write for the magazine ComCen published monthly and distributed throughout the whole of the RAF. Is that understood Wells”? “Yes Sir”. He concluded with .., “I expect your first article on my desk Friday week. Dismiss”. “Very good Sir”.
He was a wise man that Group Captain, but he ended my editorial career.
View from the Pew 