Salut!

Mark my words: ifs and butts

colin randall — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:18:43 +0100

Regulars at Salut! may wonder why this week's My Word column from The National, Abu Dhabi appears relatively late. I may wonder what, despite a very healthy level of daily "hits", has become of most of those regulars, who now represent a very low proportion of the hits. In other words, does it matter* when - or even if - it appears? You tell me ...

Some lessons on the use and abuse of English are taught to us when we are young. Others follow as we proceed through education, careers and life in general; no one should feel ashamed if they never stop learning.

But ideas about correct usage do change. Older readers will remember learning the “I before E except after C” rule, about where to place “only” in a sentence and when to use apostrophes. The younger generation is told these rules no longer matter. “I before E” is dismissed by certain education advisers as outdated, English councils remove possessive apostrophes from street names and even some well-educated people are careless about the positioning of “only”.

If this were not already a recipe for confusion, young people have new sets of rules to learn when they start work. The purpose is usually to encourage staff to conform to in-house style or to improve communication with outsiders, including customers. But such rules may be dictated as much by someone’s personal preferences as by grammatical rigour.

Deskbound newspapermen and women have traditionally been among the most pernickety enforcers of rules. With the decline of the press, sub-editors have been among the casualties of economic measures. Publications rely on smaller workforces, leaving employees with insufficient time, and perhaps little inclination, to be vigilant.

The result is that newspaper executives are no more likely than modern teachers to insist on old values being observed. Young journalists are not the only culprits. I learnt early in my career that it is a geometrical impossibility for one thing to “centre around” another. But the phrase crops up with annoying frequency; I came across it again the other day in The French News, a newspaper for speakers of English living in France. I recognised the writer’s name; it belonged to a highly experienced journalist who ought to have known better.

Some workplace rules on language are concerned mainly with tone. When I worked for The Daily Telegraph in London, the features editor augmented the official style guide with some stern requirements of her own. Writers were told: “Avoid ‘and the rest is history’ or you will be.” “Feisty” was banned when it became clear that journalists would apply it lazily to any remotely spirited interviewee. Perfume had to be scent. “At the end of the day” and “wake-up call” were forbidden.

While I have no strong views on perfume and scent, my style guide for The National did adopt some of the other examples. My mandate was to seek a British broadsheet style of expression with the natural consequence that colleagues were asked to favour British rather than American usage whenever the two clashed. We would refer to a pay rise or increase, not a raise. The salary review that produced the rise would last from Monday to, or until, Friday and not “Monday through Friday”.

Feisty appeared with iconic, crackdown, disaster and unique in a list of words given the sub-heading “think before using”. My list was inevitably influenced by personal taste. We can probably all agree that unique is an adjective that cannot be qualified and that disaster should describe only the gravest of occurrences. My objection to crackdown was more subjective. Journalists reach for it all too readily, sometimes when writing about what is little more than a conscientious application of existing laws or regulations.

What was I saying about the learning process continuing into later life? In my attempt to discourage Americanisms, I asked staff of The National to use withdraw, depart or leave alone in place of “butt out”, a phrase I had not encountered before working with Americans in Abu Dhabi. Only later did I discover its origins, and they had nothing to do with the Americanisation of English. From answers.com comes the following summary: “Middle English butten, from Old French bouter, to strike, of Germanic origin.”

* One obvious explanation is that people come once, find it a heap of nonsense and vow never to return. Thank goodness for Minnie, who wrote: "Hello Colin & greetings from Nice. I visit your site occasionally and always enjoy it, but have never commented. Not a fan of 'lurkers', I just wanted to let you know who, what, when, where, how - and, lucky old me given all this excellent reading matter - why! Proper, grown-up material. Thank you.

Expat life: Britain down the tubes, France à la ruine?

colin randall — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:38:12 +0100

Coming back home can be an eye-opening experience. Pictures in the papers and on TV of a student caught urinating on a war memorial in Sheffield, a young Geordie lass made to clean up the street she'd fouled after a spot of binge drinking, rip-off prices everywhere and evidence daily of a society that has adopted a snarl as its default expression. Thank goodness I have also managed to see glorious Durham Cathedral (and a Sunderland victory aided ever so slightly by a beach ball). But perhaps you'll think my rant in today's edition of The National, Abu Dhabi is unfair ...

It may just have been that my head was still in the clouds as I gazed in admiration at the French coastline during my plane’s descent into the Mediterranean airport of Toulon. But I could not shake two thoughts: what is wrong with Britain, and how long have you got for the answer?

Any return to France after time away seems to induce a mixture of happiness to be going back, and sorrowful reflections on the negative aspects of what I am leaving behind.

Some of this may be unfair. Even so, I feel entitled to ask why:

• it costs £4.10 (Dh25) to drop a relative off at Heathrow airport (I must have been all of half an hour)?

• so many young women as well as men feel the weekend is not complete unless they get hopelessly drunk and behave in an atrociously antisocial manner?

• the papers are uncommonly full of murder cases involving educated and outwardly successful couples?

• television news bulletins and the contents of supposedly serious newspapers could easily be the work of fugitives from the tabloids? (Did a review in The Observer, noting with disapproval that a new book on economics included five chapters on prostitution, have to be illustrated with – you guessed it – a large photograph of provocatively dressed prostitutes in Budapest?)

I could go on.

There is no complaint from me about Ryanair’s audacious £12.61 for two insipid sandwiches and a shared bottle (small and unchilled) of water, since no one obliged me to buy them. But it has become difficult to find any item or service for sale that does not use either “only” or “just” immediately before some exorbitant asking price.

Ticket machines at railway stations lead you through a lengthy procedure before announcing that they cannot dispense your tickets, even when valid credit cards have been inserted. No company or public service can safely be telephoned unless you have at least 20 minutes to spare while wading through the automated answering system and then waiting for a human voice or summary disconnection. The English seaside, on the strength of two visits to Brighton, has never looked tackier. Everywhere, people are so stressed that repeats of Fawlty Towers make Basil look a model of serenity. Don’t even let me start on reality television and talent shows.

But memo to self: calm down.

Britain may sometimes seem the sick man of Europe, or at least to be confined to a ward of the most acute cases. Yet a lot of what I have described happens elsewhere, too. What was waiting for me on my arrival in France? A staggering checkout bill (£80 or so) for half the supermarket purchases you’d need before paying the same at Lulu or Spinneys, and news of a riot by gormless Paris St Germain football fans after an outbreak of swine flu among their team members forced the late postponement of a match in Marseille. If Britain really is going to the dogs, it is not alone.

Mark my words: manners of speaking

colin randall — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:18:00 +0100

Who are, or who have been, the truly great public speakers? I have seen the best lawyers in action, been present for important political and trade union speeches - and even listened to Cheryl Cole on a Saturday night. And you? From this week's My Word column in The National, Abu Dhabi...

The spoken word, when combining eloquence, passion and perhaps a little wit, is one of the wonders of humanity. But great oratory is not restricted to the highly educated; it comes from many walks of life, in a multitude of accents and on a variety of platforms.

We naturally look to scholarly or influential figures of society to impress us with what they say. Politicians, religious leaders, lawyers, academics, trade unionists and men and women from the stage, screen or printed page frequently earn our respect and admiration for the power or persuasiveness of their pubic speaking.

But there have been noteworthy contributions to spoken English from unconventional or unexpected sources. Arsene Wenger, the French manager of Arsenal football club, is a good example because he not only represents a sport in which articulacy is at a premium but expresses himself daily with clarity and elegance in what is for him a foreign language.

Then there are the political conference upstarts. William Hague was only 17 when he addressed the 1977 conference of Britain's Conservative party, warning delegates of the approaching dangers of socialism with this little dig at complacency: "Half of you won't be here in 30 or 40 years' time."

Mr Hague's words, described by Margaret Thatcher at the time as "thrilling", are still regarded as an exceptional example of speechmaking. The occasion was mentioned again when another bright teenager, Annabel Shaw, excited this year's annual conference of the same party with her denunciation of the present Labour government: "Gordon Brown, I want an apology for the debt burden you are passing on to my generation."

A little while ago, a British daily newspaper, The Guardian, published a series of "great speeches of the 20th century". Among the 14 speakers chosen were Winston Churchill ("We shall fight on the beaches"); John F Kennedy ("Ask not what your country can do for you"): Nelson Mandela ("An ideal for which I am prepared to die"); Franklin D Roosevelt ("The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"); and Martin Luther King ("I have a dream").

The 21st century has already yielded contenders for a follow-up exercise 90 years from now. Think of Barack Obama and his presidential campaign speech on race, and his victory night acceptance, spring to mind. Others would mention the "something happening in America" speech after his defeat by Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary; since appreciation of oratory is subjective, it is natural that opinions should differ.

Of the earlier series, published as pocket-sized supplements, I seem to have kept only one which, alone among the 14, I heard while I and the speaker were under the same roof. Television has made countless people around the world familiar with the eulogy of Earl Spencer at the funeral of his sister, Diana; his theme ("the most hunted person of the modern age") remains instantly recognisable 12 years on.

On reading the speech again now, I do not consider it one of the finest the world has heard. But the earl's words were emotional and striking, and in lining up his unmistakable targets - the British royal family and, especially, sections of the media - he also captured the public mood. Remember how the applause began with the crowd outside Westminster Abbey, listening to a relay of the service, and spread through the congregation.

There is no science to what constitutes a great speech, though there can be a formula to making an effective one; even Parisian beggars take care with structure with their remarks to passengers on the Metro, often speaking at such length that by the time they have finished, potential donors have reached their destinations and gone. But in mentioning one more important point in favour of Earl Spencer - that unlike many individuals who make what are later hailed as great speeches, he wrote his himself - I would hazard a guess that the same applies to the beggars.

La presse écrite in English: last flickers of a dying flame, or here to stay?

colin randall — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:52:22 +0100

Newspapers nearly everywhere are struggling for survival. Yet for as long as it may last, English-speakers in France, where la presse écrite has been in terminal decline for as long as I can remember, have never been better served.

Good old French News is no longer with us. But in addition to The Riviera Times and The Connexion, both tabloids (in design, though not tone), there is now a multisection broadsheet. On the strength of its early performance, The French Paper is a welcome addition to the range of titles with the bold, authoritative look of a publication that has been around for ever.

French News was a cheerful and friendly paper, run in what sometimes appeared mildly shambolic fashion by an English couple based in south-western France. It had bags of advertising aimed at expats and might, with a little investment and a lot of thought, have been a goldmine.

At Nick Rowswell's blog Berry Deep, Miranda Neame, who edited the paper, wrote: "It has been an exciting adventure on the whole, even if the constant struggle to stay in business has left us both exhausted, older and wiser… and even poorer."

I added these thoughts of mine to the discussion:

As a professional journalist, I am nearly always sad when a newspaper closes. That certainly applies to the demise of French News.
I agree with (the) comment that much of its charm derived from that slightly amateurish, chaotic feel.

It could have done with better writing, more imaginative layout and use of images and all the rest. If I am right, some features - even down to sudoku - appeared one week and the next but not the one after that, and so on.

But it was always a pleasure to receive the paper in the post, and there was never an issue that didn't have something of interest to English speakers living in France or having some affection for the place.

No axe to grind here. I turned to Miranda for quotes often enough when on the staff of The Daily Telegraph, but wrote for the paper only once, for free when still employed. Miranda always claimed she couldn't afford me when I went freelance (euphemism for being fired). But I wish her well, and hope something can rise from the ashes with her at the heart of it.

As it happens, I did once suggest to someone at The Daily Telegraph, whose owners were then in acquisitive mood, that this might be a worthwhile investment. That someone, however, was doing little more than passing through. In a flash, he was gone (as, indeed, was I though I'd taken 29 years over it).

Of the others, The French Paper has a battle to establish itself in a tough market, but deserves to succeed. The Connexion is professional, compact and full of news and The Riviera Times seems to be a fixture of its patch, though I dislike the glossy paper on which it is printed. There is also a range of magazine catering for English-speakers who live in, wish to live in or merely enjoy visiting France, but they are outside the scope of this article.

My guess is that the general malaise of the industry means not all three of the newspapers will be with us two years from now. But I hope I am wrong and will at least do my bit in the meantime to keep them going, by buying them all whever possible.

Expat life: there'd be none (of a certain kind) if Nick Griffin had his way

colin randall — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:51:09 +0100

Last week's Tuesday column appeared on Thursday (pushed back by pressure on space). This week's appears on Monday (to preserve topicality). It is my account for The National, Abu Dhabi of Nick Griffin's debut on a Question Time panel. The cartoon strip is from the sundayfunnies blog.

As Voltaire might have said but didn't, I find the man's views despicable but would vigorously defend his right to express them ...

The big television event in the UK has been the appearance on the BBC programme Question Time of Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party.

Outside the studios, there was a noisy demonstration. Inside, from the presenter David Dimbleby and fellow panellists to the audience, there was relentless hostility towards this figurehead of an odious political group based on the hatred of those its adherents consider to be different.

Mr Griffin claims to be a superpatriot, proud of his father’s Second World War service in the Royal Air Force. But he cannot deny that his party is supported by people who have, if not now, then at an earlier stage of their thinking, regretted that the war did not have a different outcome.

His wriggling as the questioning and rhetoric grew more combative reminded me, indirectly, of my afternoon with Daniel Rouxel, who began life as a Franco-German “war baby” and whose story I recounted in The National a couple of Saturdays ago.

Thinking of Mr Rouxel as I watched Question Time, a melange of reflections flooded back into focus about a tragic but fascinating period of modern history.

Our meeting, in the French city of Le Mans, was mentioned, hardly more than in passing, in last week’s East/West musings on home town memories.

But the eloquence with which he defended his late mother, a woman who would have been punished severely as a collaborator had the Resistance got hold of her as war ended, was something I shall probably never forget. “When they met, she hated his uniform,” he said. “But love triumphed over those feelings.”

A couple of readers have written to me since the article appeared to say how moved they were by Rouxel’s account of being tormented and mistreated at his French village school as the “son of a Boche and a whore”.

I have always been reluctant to condemn too harshly those French people who chose, to one extent or another, to get along with the enemy. I like to think I would have been strong and brave enough, in circumstances I have never had to confront, to risk all and resist. But I understand why, with mouths to feed, bodies to clothe, lives to protect, many saw somehow getting through the war as the priority.

And I also believe that had Britain been invaded and overrun, collaboration would have occurred on much the same scale as it did in France, while resistance would have started, as it did there, on the extreme left.

Nick Griffin, when not making repellent statements about Islam and immigrants, can argue until he is blue in the face that he descends, politically, from the sort of far right that would also have done its bit.

He is entitled to his view. Others are equally entitled to feel that, as in France, such elements would have magically rediscovered their patriotism only when it was clear the tide was turning, And then they would have been at the front of the mob baying for vengeance against women like Daniel Rouxel’s mother.

Mark my words: when a sentence hangs on a comma

colin randall — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:23:00 +0200

A dispute on where to place a comma should not be, and generally is not, a life-or-death matter. Readers of Salut! or my words column at The National, Abu Dhabi will know, if they were attentive in history lessons, of the occasion on which sentence influenced sentence ...

Visiting Dublin a few months ago, I missed a golden opportunity to ask a member of one of Ireland's most famous families about the importance of the comma.

Denisa Casement, a charity worker in the city, is the American granddaughter of a second cousin of Sir Roger Casement, the diplomat executed in 1916 for treason.

Historians and grammarians argue that Sir Roger was "hanged by a comma".

There was no doubt that he plotted to land a shipment of German arms destined for Irish rebels, though it is also true that he intended to argue that the Easter rising should not go ahead. The British wanted him sent to the gallows as a traitor, but there was a snag. The Treason Act appeared to cover only activities on British soil while Sir Roger's criminal conduct had occurred in Germany.

To overcome this inconvenience, the court imposed a new meaning on the clause which declared that treason was committed if “... a man do levy war against our Lord the King in his realm, or be adherent to the King's enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere ...”.
Whereas it had previously been assumed that the words "or elsewhere" applied only to the provision of aid and comfort, the court ruled that the comma made them applicable to each of the actions described.

Sir Roger Casement's hanging won him a revered place in Irish history. But by the time I met Denisa, I had forgotten the comma's role in his martyrdom. I am sure she would love the observation of Marc McLoughlin, a historian writing for the online magazine Suite101, that although Sir Roger was, in many eyes, one victim of the perverse application of the law, "English grammar, some would say, was another".

The misuse of commas generally has less calamitous consequences. In my style guide for The National, I recommended sparing use, since I feel good writing can become stodgy if littered with commas. But I also said meaning could be distorted by the omission of a comma that was clearly necessary.

Lynne Truss exploited this rule in calling her book on language Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The title is based on a joke. With the comma, it tells us what one armed panda does on a visit to a cafe; without one, it describes the bear's diet.

Since journalists and lawyers are frequently in conflict with one another, I take mischievous pleasure in recalling the misplaced comma that threatened to cost Canadian company, Rogers Communications, Dh7.5 million.

The firm's lawyers thought they had a deal on utility poles with a pricing structure maintained for at least the first five-year period, after which one year's notice would be required to terminate any subsequent five-year-term. However, the relevant clause said the agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party".

Applying the letter of grammatical law, regulators held that the second comma meant the second firm had acted within its rights in giving notice of a large increase without waiting for the first five-year term to end.

Rogers was saved by Canadian bilingualism. The French version of the contract supported its interpretation.

Another example of the care needed with Canadian English deserves mention. Two Canadian readers have highlighted an error in last week's column: in Canada, a car lot is where vehicles are sold, not - as suggested - where they are parked (a car park in London being a parking lot in Ontario).

Both readers should note that I have made a resolution to be much more conscientious about foreign languages.

Expat life: home town tales

colin randall — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:01:00 +0200

Salut! has been quiet this week. This, my East/West column from The National, Abu Dhabi (hence the UAE references), would have appeared sooner but pressure on space delayed its publication by the newspaper. Read on for an explanation of the photographs ...

For the overwhelming majority of people in the UAE, home is - or was - somewhere else.

That is an inevitable consequence of the expatriate nature of the population. But the notion of a fondly remembered home town is commonplace in our highly mobile society, attached as we may become to wherever we end up living.

I spent 23 of my first 23-and-a-quarter years in north-eastern England. The relentless passage of time leaves me only eight years short of having spent twice as long in exile. Yet Shildon, County Durham remains the town I call home, since I disregard as meaningless my three months of infancy on the south coast.

My career has taken me to dozens of countries. That makes me feel very fortunate, but not as fortunate as when work takes me home.

As well as numerous visits to the region in general, there have been three professional trips to Shildon, a town of barely 10,000 souls and known only for things it no longer has: a railway industry and coalmines. I reported from there on the closure of the rail engineering plant where I had my first job, and again when a former safecracker won a prestigious award honouring his thriving kitchen surfaces business (the rehabilitation was incomplete; he later went back to jail for tax evasion). More recently, in the service of The National, I picked the brains of friends there while researching the decline of the Labour party, the north being its traditional heartland.

This month, I paid my second journalistic visit to another home town, my wife's. Le Mans, in western France, is one of those place names that inspire instant recognition. Mention it and people think immediately of the 24 Hours car race. My first assignment in the city followed a decision by its communist-led municipality to name a street after Bobby Sands, an Irish Republican Army bomber who died on hunger strike in 1981. This had caused a stir back in the English town of Bolton with which Le Mans is twinned.

The purpose of my visit two weeks ago was to meet a man, seen below, who had become France's first product of a Franco-German wartime love affair to gain German citizenship, fulfilling his desire for acknowledgement of that part of his identity. This second mission was rather more successful than the first in that everything went smoothly. Not so my search long ago for rue Bobby Sands. Despite having a lifelong inhabitant as my guide, I couldn't locate the street perhaps because it was too new to have a nameplate. No one we asked could help, or even knew who Bobby Sands was. One person did offer directions, but these led to rue Georges Sand.

My misfortune was a blessing for the headline writer, who cleverly came up with "French shrug shoulders over 'rue Bobby who?' ".

But that reminds me. There may have been no time this month to resume the search. But when I am next in Le Mans, the second of my home towns, I really must try, 28 years on, to find it.

* To see the story of Daniel Rouxel, the son of a French waitress and German soldier, see http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091017/FOREIGN/710169817

Mark my words: we're all nerds now

colin randall — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:52:00 +0200

Those words we loathe, part two. The feedback to my thoughts of a couple of weeks ago - thanks - caused me to revisit the subject in today's My Word column in The National, Abu Dhabi...

Newspaper columns on the use of language thrive on communication with readers. The lively response to My Word arrives by at least four methods: directly to The National, e-mails to me, comments at my website, where the column is reproduced each week, and replies to messages left at Facebook. No one, of course, writes letters these days so there has so far been no trace of old-fashioned mail.

Sometimes, a reader will cause me to think again about a point I have made, add thoughts of his or her own or suggest a new topic for discussion. We may just have an exchanges of views, as happened when a teacher of English in Abu Dhabi, whom I remember meeting at The National's offices, sent an e-mail recently. I wrote back, complimenting him on his choice of the striking "plastic utterances" to describe such phrases as "have a nice day" when spoken with little or no sincerity. He quickly corrected me. He had, in fact, used the more elegant and equally striking "phatic utterances".

He also drew my attention to a cartoon from the New Yorker which illustrated the subject to perfection. Investigating the discovery of a skeleton in an apartment, police found a telephone, still off the hook and still connected to an automated switchboard with the corporate mantra: "Your call is important to us."

In an age when so much conversation has been reduced to spoken monosyllables or the electronic argot of text messages, these readers' messages are important. It is not hard to predict which subjects will catch the eye, so I was not surprised to receive a large number of comments about the strong dislike expressed by the late Eric Partridge, a renowned authority on the use and abuse of English, for the word "bid" to mean, in its verb form, to attempt to do or obtain virtually anything. I guaranteed additional response by mentioning my own aversion to "gig", for musical concert.

At my website and also at Facebook, I asked which three-letter words others found objectionable. Most, but not all, of those who rose to the bait were colleagues or former colleagues.

One sub-editor sprang readily to Mr Partridge's support on "bid:", which he said had been banned, "unless you were in an auction house", on the British national newspaper sports desk where he had previously worked. But his real pet hates were "get" and "got". He is not alone, but I have occasionally wondered whether these words cause offence chiefly because they sound unattractive, perhaps even slightly vulgar, when spoken.

A younger sub-editor thought too much fuss was being made about bid, asking: "Isn't a player transfer sometimes an auction? Lots of bidders making bids. There's always ways to write around it of course, but it's a fairly needless effort."

My readers felt no need to restrict themselves to three-letter words. Keith, in southern England, bristles when people use "probe" except in cases of medical equipment or space travel; hike unless in reference to a countryside ramble, icon save when describing an image of a sacred personage, rubbish as a verb and tabloid substitutes for criticised such as slammed or blasted.

Mr Partridge included his views on bid in a section of one of his books devoted to what he called "vogue" words, terms that had acquired new or refined meanings. Louise, also at my site, offered the smart retort: "Probably 'vogue word' is pretty annoying."

A young Canadian of my acquaintance teased me by complaining about what she calls Britishisms. She objects to car park, pavement and ice hockey when the speaker, in her variation of the language, means car lot, sidewalk and plain hockey. But it took another female Canadian to close the debate. "You guys are nerds," she said, and I believe she was proposing neither guys nor nerds as candidates.

War: falling into enemy hands (2)

colin randall — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:55:00 +0200

Jeremy Robson concludes his story of his dad's time as a prisoner of war during the final part of the Second World War, and reflects on his debt of life to an honourable enemy ...

During his convalescence in Scarborough, my father received a letter from the Air Ministry.

This informed him of an approach by Herr Heinrich Gottman, who was claiming that he and his family had helped an injured British airman in the closing stages of the war.

Herr Gottman had also told the ministry that a relative, Fritz Nolte, was a prisoner of war at a camp in Scotland. Naturally they were looking forward to his return to Germany, and hopingthe help they had offered to my father might be taken into consideration in securing Fritz with an earlier than scheduled release.

My father replied, pointing out that the Gottman family and other villagers had been very kind to him, especially given the circumstances.

They had done their very best to help treat his wounds and make him comfortable. They had very little to treat him with but had done the best they could. As the war was now over, he said that if anything could be done to reunite Fritz Nolte with his family, then it would be very much with his blessing. Over the following decades he never heard any more about this, and wondered if his reply to the Air Ministry had produced the desired effect.

As a small child I was constantly amazed that my dear old Dad had experienced such a tumultuous time in his youth. I would endlessly demand that he told me more “war stories” and my favourite time for this was on a Friday night after my Dad had been to the pub for a couple of pints.

I suppose there were a lot of things that he wouldn’t talk about, He’d seen things that nobody should see and experienced a lot of bad things that he didn’t want his family to know about. Like other men who had undergone similar experiences, there were some things he would never discuss. Some secrets died with him.

What I’ve recalled is the most complete account of what I was told as a small child.

There may be some things missing but nothing that changes the starkness of those events of so long ago. I used to wonder if this peculiar meeting of “enemies” had made the same profound impact on the Gottman family, and their neighbours.

Very few civilians came into direct contact with the enemy during those years, and to some extent very few of the participants in battle in the air, on land or at sea would look directly into the eyes of “the enemy” as my Dad did with Heinrich Gottmann and his family, and as they did with him.

My father was generally a man of few words. But his preoccupation with the war, its political backdrop, origins, and events as well as aftermath, became his key interest for the rest of his life. He was a bookworm, devouring hundreds if not thousands of books devoted to the subject. He had turned away from the Air Force at the end of the war, yet was tied to the battle, insatiable in an appetite for detail that remained undiminished until his death in 1996.

This fascination with the events of decades earlier didn’t seem unusual to me as a child, and it was only as I grew up, that I realised the enormity of the largely unspoken impact that it all had.

The physical damage done to him was lifelong, as so was the psychological aspect. I adopted an almost vicarious fascination not so much with the war itself but the intensely personal situation that resulted from him baling out, and the very brief time in the hands of a German family.

It would have been so easy to run him through with a pitchfork as he lay helpless and bleeding in a foreign field. Nobody would have batted an eyelid. Such action would probably have been regarded as a patriotic heroic act, killing a flyer whose mission was to bomb them.

In the summer of 1985 the time had come to find out more about what had happened all those years ago. I set off in search of whatever it was that I needed to find out. I headed for Germany stopping off for a couple of days with some relations of a student friend of mine in Aachen, Germany, just across the Dutch border.

I set off across Germany for Kulte. I arrived in Arolsen, the town where my father was hospitalised, unable to locate Kulte on any of the maps I had. The name of the village had yet to appear on any signpost I’d encountered so far.

Peculiarly, I happened to come across a German army medic about to get into a jeep, when I was looking for someone to provide directions. He was interested to know why an Englishman was looking for Kulte, so I told him part of the tale. “You’d better follow me” he said. “You’ll never find it otherwise,” he said in very good English.

I followed him for several miles down country lanes until we arrived on the edge of a tiny village which looked like it probably hadn’t changed for centuries.

“Here is Kulte,” he said as he got out of his jeep. “Good luck. I hope you find what you came here for.” He got back into his vehicle and left me standing there, wondering what I should do next.

Kulte was much smaller than I had imagined or could have expected. It was little more than a collection of smallholdings, with a few farms and an assortment of houses.

Freshly washed clothes hanging on lines above the well-tended vegetable gardens, and not a soul was in sight. I wandered around the narrow winding streets in the hope that someone would appear.

Eventually a middle aged woman appeared at her door. I stopped and asked if she knew the Gottman family, not even sure if any of the family remained in Kulte. I explained to her in what could only be described as woeful German why I was there. At this point she became very excited and shouted something I took to mean “Wait there!” in German as she ran back into the house.

I waited patiently and could hear the sound of an animated phone conversation - or, at least, one side of it.

Within a few minutes she emerged from the house, even more excited than when she had gone in. She started trotting down the street, gesticulating to me to follow. “That’s Frtiz Nolte’s brother’s house,” she said, pointing to her left as we made our way down the street.

“Where are we going?” I asked for a second time, my first question passing her by in her haste to reach our as yet to be declared destination. “The Gottmans!” she responded, smiling broadly.

As we reached the end of the street she crossed and pointed to a younger woman in the garden of a house as we neared.

She started talking again, but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. The younger woman appeared to be very enthusiastic about whatever the older woman was telling her. I was quickly bundled into the kitchen of her house where the younger woman told me that she was going to fetch her husband. She explained that Heinrich Gottman was her father-in-law.

At this point I was trying to determine how old Heinrich must have been based on the age of his daughter in law. By now I had been introduced to Frau Gottman, who I assumed must be Heinrich’s widow, as no mention had been made of Heinrich.

A well built, blond German in his thirties then appeared in the kitchen, shaking my hand warmly and offering me a drink.

He said he was going to bring in his Dad! Incredible! Heinrich was still alive and 40 years after the event, I was going to meet the man who had saved my father’s life. After what seemed like an eternity a dark haired man in his sixties wearing heavy framed spectacles appeared. I was amazed to find that Heinrich was exactly the same age as my Dad, even more surprised to find he had been a German soldier home on leave at the time my father arrived so spectacularly in the middle of a winter’s night.

Both my father and Heinrich were only 22 when these events had occurred.

Within a half hour of arriving in the kitchen the farm house was besieged by visitors, who had been in Kulte during the war or who had heard tales about the injured British flyer landing in a field.

I wondered more, after the event, about how easy it would have been for Heinrich to have simply put a bullet through my father’s head. I doubt very much whether his wartime experience had been something that he particularly relished. He was a country boy caught up in it all, just the same as my Dad.

I realised, though, from talking to Heinrich and spending several days with them as their guest that the killing of a wounded enemy was simply not conceivable for a man like him. His instinct was to help another human being who lay injured, frightened and in pain in an enemy land.

Maybe when Heinrich looked at my father he saw himself in other circumstances. I really don’t know.

The language barrier didn’t help of course, but what was unmistakable was the warmth of their welcome and the generous nature. I realised my Dad had been in safe hands all those years ago. This feeling was so overwhelming, that for many years afterwards I don’t think the very real danger he was in ever sunk in. It made me think that being found by a member of the German army maybe helped him in some way or other.

Heinrich said that over the previous 40 years, that he had often wondered what had happened to the wounded “flieger”, and that he hoped he had recovered well and resumed a normal life after the war.

Once my father had left the farmhouse on the back of a horse drawn cart, they heard no more about him. It had taken 40 years to find out. I also had the pleasure of meeting Fritz Nolte who said that he realised my Dad had done what he could to help him return home after the war. Fritz had been released earlier than expected. He told me he wished he could have expressed his gratitude, but had no way of contacting him of course.

Several months later I took my father to Kulte, and it was a wonderful occasion. That is the three of us in the 1986 photo: me, my father and Heinrich.

Neither he nor Heinrich were men to let emotions run wild, but for them to meet four decades on was something special to both. I’ve come to realise as I’ve grown older that I very much owe my existence to Heinrich.

My father passed away in 1996, and Heinrich just a few years ago. Heinrich’s grandchildren are now adults, and they send a card and letter to my mother, written in impeccable English every Christmas. In them he left behind a great legacy of which he was justifiably proud. I wonder if it ever crossed his mind, that he also left so much more.

It’s amazing what can happen when two young lads meet up in a farmer's field.

Expat life: le retrait de Petite Anglaise

colin randall — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:08:00 +0200

Amid this week's diet of war reminiscences, let there also be levity. The issue has already had an airing here. So beyond wishing Petite Anglaise well with the imminent birth of her second child, I merely reassure the fan who promised to hit the first writer to ask whether Petite's own retreat signals the end of blogging that this week's East/West column in The National, Abu Dhabi is not intended as a deliberate provocation ...

By her own standards, the blogger known as Petite Anglaise had been quiet of late. A month went by without a posting and reader responses to earlier items had dipped as low as the high 30s, pleasing as most people with blogs would find such feedback.

Suddenly, a new post appears and comments double. How does she achieve this? By announcing, in effect, her departure from the blogosphere. “As far as personal blogging is concerned,” she writes. “I’ve turned the page. And it feels good.”

Just one blogger’s choice? Or, since Petite is one of the most famous, a sign that the phenomenon of committing private thoughts to online diaries may be entering terminal decline? We shall see.

I bear some responsibility for what has happened to Petite, real name Catherine Sanderson, in the past three years. We met electronically when we both lived in Paris (she still does). In our different ways, we both blogged.

Then she was fired, because of her blog, from her job as a bilingual secretary at the Paris offices of an English accountancy firm. I broke the story, with her approval, and it swept the world; Catherine already had a largish cult following but the publicity brought in thousands of extra readers, so many that her site crashed on one occasion.

Publishers jostled to sign her up. The resulting deal has led to two books, one the story of her life as a thirtysomething single mum and the other a novel drawing heavily on that life.

Now it is over. Save for any promotional events she may wish to mention, the blog is no more. Sanderson describes a growing disinclination to share her private life with strangers. She cites a British newspaper columnist who has “made a living out of sharing every aspect of her personal life, showing little or no regard for the feelings or right to privacy of the partners/lovers/neighbours that she uses for material” and says it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Among 130-plus readers’ farewell comments, there is much regret, but also understanding. There was a little nonsense chiding the press for taking interest; if it hadn’t in the first place, of course, there would have been no books, and many of those who have enjoyed the blog would never have heard about it.

On whether this has any bearing on blogging’s future, I am unsure. There are developments in instant communication that, some say, will replace blogging. Yet look around. When there is big news, bloggers still seem to be everywhere. Most feed on the mainstream news sources they purport to detest, but also weigh in with their own views, sometimes attracting healthy postbags. Some blogs are witty and even wise; others are vulgar and crass. My instinct is that the best, and probably many of the worst, will survive. It is also my instinct that Petite Anglaise, in the manner of all those rock bands that announce premature retirement, will one day embark on the comeback tour.