Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
T
ime marches on and great changes are taking place. The Commonwealth Office is now amalgamated with the Foreign Office. I myself am on the verge of moving once again. Having been accepted into the homebased staff of the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) after ten years with the High Commission in India and Ceylon, I am eligible for posting to pastures anew. The year is 1965. Coral and I have made plans for our move but as we will have to return to the UK on our end of tour leave we will not know of our next posting until we are there. Mervyn has not been accepted in the new scheme of things. He and Mavis will be leaving in due course to settle down in the UK. He has sound hopes of getting a job with a jeweller's firm in Bedford. Victor was still at the Gordon school and would be expecting to come out to us on his mid-summer holidays. As this would coincide with our departure we planned that he would take off for Cyprus and meet us there. Fortunately our son Rowland was posted to Cyprus and we were to spend a short holiday with Rowland and Les, and our first grandson Paul, where we shall all be together after many years apart. The big day arrived and we were given a great send-off by most of the staff of the High Commission. The BOAC flight was to take us on to Damascus where we change planes for onward flight to Cyprus. The Britannia flight to Damascus was ideal but on arrival there we experienced six hours of stupidity by local officials. The country had just been given their independence by France and so all foreigners, especially Europeans, were treated with great suspicion. On arrival we had been told that our connecting flight to 163