Toys

Here's that tree again, just a few months later in 1967! It's amazing how it grew.

This photo was taken on my 6th birthday and my present is sat beside me. It's a Cragstan tin talking robot. They're worth anything up to £1,000 nowadays but then they cost just a few dollars. There was a shop by the coldstore near to our house that always had toys in the window. There'd be robots, tanks, robotic clowns, battery operated cars - everything a kid could want.

We'd been to friends of my parents and their son had one of these robots and then I got one for my birthday. It could say many things including, 'I am a mighty man with 100 horsepower of energy inside me', 'I am bulletproof too, ha, ha, ha!', I'm leaving now to explore the outer limits, goodbye see you again!' and other things that I've long forgotten. To me it was fascinating. My brother had a walking tin robot that fired guns and we used to have mock battles between them. At the time, there was a Japanese cartoon on the tv called, 'Gigantor', which featured a giant robot. I'd never miss it.

Some inquisitive kids would take their tin toys apart and find that parts had been made from food tins and coke cans. Nothing was wasted over there! The toys there were amazing. I remember having a tin aeroplane, remote control car, trains etc. They all seemed far better than they are nowadays. If I'd kept all of these tin toys, they'd probably be worth a fortune.

I see I've scuffed my knee in the picture and also, I have socks on, we must have been going out somewhere! Incidentally, on the tape we sent to my gran, that I mentioned earlier, I'm saying, 'I am bulletproof too, ha, ha, ha!'

My tree

Here's a photo of me in our back garden at Jalan Wijaya in 1966. I'm sitting in front of my tree which, as I mentioned earlier, had just been a branch I'd found in the road and stuck in the garden. This photo probably wasn't taken too long after I'd planted it. It was to grow a lot bigger though and I'd climb it regularly and I think we even tried to build a tree house in it once.

From this picture, it's hard to imagine how fast it grew. I remember one year, that we had a hornet's nest in it and I can't quite remember how we got rid of it. There seemed to be a lot of biting and stinging insects around. This was by the back door and I'd regularly get bitten by large ants there, that's probably why I'm wearing flip-flops.

I don't look too happy in this photo. Perhaps my brother was off playing Samurai with other kids on the estate. The house behind me belonged to the Websters. It was Gordon Webster who sorted out our snake in the house (it ended up in the bin after being hit by a broom). They had three children - David, Judith and Carol. David was my age and we'd play together though it looks like everyone was out on this day!

Incidentally, when I revisited in 1990, it looked like the tree had been chopped down.

Letters home

I recently came across this small reel to reel tape. When we lived in Jalan Wijaya, we used to record messages on to a tape and send them back home to my gran in Seaham. She would then record a message on it and send it back to us. It's strange how the world has changed since with computers, webcams and emails. Back in the 60s, the only contact was through letters and postcards. Even phones were unheard of in people's houses in those days.

Reel to reel tape recorders were relatively new but with electronic equipment being cheaper in the Far East, many forces families had them. We only had a few tapes - Carousel, The Sound of Music, the Black and White Minstrels and an episode of Steptoe and Son which I remember involved him eating pickled onions in the bath.

Recording our own voices was great fun for me and Alan. We had many of these 'Living Letters' tapes but over the years, they've either been recorded over or disappeared when technology changed. It's amazing that this one has survived. I recently had it transferred to CD so that I could listen to it again. Unfortunately, there's not too much on it but we're telling our gran how we've been to Johore Zoo and I sing songs that I've learnt at the infants. One is 'Little Bird I have heard' which I knew all the words to then but have since forgotten. I'll add it to the blog at a later date if I can. The tape is quite clear and I can even hear a scooter going by outside our house. What amazed me most though, was just how well spoken we were. Maybe the tape has distorted things but Alan, in particular, almost sounds posh. Did we really speak like that? There's also a clip on the tape where I impersonate a talking tin robot that I'd seen at a friend's house.

My gran is now long gone unfortunately but I can imagine her getting the tapes and taking them around a friend's house and the excitement of them listening to our voices, recorded in a place so far away. I remember with the returned tape, our gran used to send us sherbet, something that probably wouldn't make it through customs nowadays!

Orchard Road

Here's a lovely old photo of Orchard Road from the 1960s or perhaps, a little bit later. Some of the cars look like they could be early 1970s models.

When I went back to Singapore in 1990, the skyline of Orchard Road had certainly changed and I'm sure it's changed a great deal since.

In the background are signs for, 'National Optics', 'Sony', 'Teac' and 'Cathay Pacific'. The large building on the right is the Hotel Phoenix near to the Orchard Building. A signpost on the left reads, 'Bideford Road'.

Back in the 1960s, the main shops that I can remember in the area were Tangs and Robinsons. I think that Robinsons was air-conditioned and we used to go in just to cool down! Anything we bought had to be taken across the causeway to get it back home to Johore Bahru and this involved 'duty' being paid on items bought. If you tried to hide the items and they searched your vehicle and found anything, the fine would only be a few dollars anyway. Every time we went across the causeway, they would ask us if we had anything to declare but the question was in Malayan. My parents and most of the forces families knew the reply for, 'I have nothing to declare' but I can't remember what it was.

Of course, there was a game to see what could be taken across the causeway without paying duty. This included buying bikes and cycling them across, sitting on new cushions so they looked like they belonged to the car and wearing bought clothes and other items. I can't really remember anyone paying duty on anything.

I loved our trips over to Singapore in the 1960s. It seemed that there was so much going on there. Of course, it was the place where my dad worked and we regularly went to the Naval Base for cinema shows, firework displays, Christmas parties and other events. There always seemed to be something going on when you were part of a Naval family.

Grass Cutters

Every so often, Alan would take the family's bakelite Kodak 127 camera and wander around the estate taking pictures. They were all quite interesting because they would be pictures of things that were happening at the time rather than just family photos, I remember he took the photo of the Satay man which I featured on a previous post and also some newly hatched ducklings. There were quite a few chickens and ducks about and we used to watch for their eggs to hatch. I think that some of the photos that Alan took might have been lost over the years but here's an interesting one of a grass cutter near our home. I don't remember anyone having a lawn mower at the time and if they did, they certainly weren't electric. For $2, the grass cutters would cut your grass. They had huge scythes which they used to swing over their heads. It all looked pretty dangerous. The area of land shown in the picture was between us and the row of shops, including the cold store, where we got our shopping. I remember one day, when we were returning from the shops and I found a branch which I took home and stuck in the back garden. Amazingly, it grew and continued to grow over the next three years. I had great fun in that tree, I'll post some photos later!

Samurai

Everyone who lived in Singapore and Malaya in the 1960s seems to remember the tv programme, Samurai. I asked my brother recently if he remembered us making Ninja stars and he remembers that we used to throw them at the old wooden packing crates left by the removal men when we moved into our house in Jalan Wijaya. The stars were quite lethal, though I don't think that any of the local kids every had fights with them.
Here's a clip I've found of the original show. The haunting theme tune should bring back instant memories. It reminds me of being right back at Jalan Wijaya in the garden attacking my brother!

It's funny, there wasn't a kid in Australia, Japan or Singapore who hadn't seen Samurai. Yet, when we got back to England, nobody had heard of it. Samurai starred Koichi Ose, who was a top movie star in Japan at the time. He played the lead character, Shintaro in the programme. His arch enemies were the Koga Ninjas.
Samurai was a huge show and when Koichi Ose visited Australia in the 1960s, he got a bigger welcome than the Beatles. He was greeted by screaming fans in home made kimonos throwing Ninja stars made of cardboard. Apparently, he had no idea just how popular he was outside Japan.
The show ran throughout the 1960s having first been shown in Japan in 1962. It was dubbed into English which could be quite funny some times. For instance, Shintaro would be giving a long speech and his mouth would be moving quite a lot and the dubbed voice would just say something like, 'Yes, I know'.
Incidentally, Koichi Ose is still alive and living in Japan. He retired in 1969 and started up a property company and in 1980, he and his wife opened a chain of noodle restaurants. I hope he has as fond memories as I have of Samurai.

Dogs

Here's a photo of me and my brother at Sandycroft, Penang in about 1966. There was a lovely dog there that used to follow us everywhere and I think he must have belonged to someone who worked in the cafe. If my memory serves me right, his name was Pepper and I think he was a Labrador (or something similar!). Back at home in Jalan Wijaya, there were many wild dogs roaming around. I quite liked seeing them and sometimes we'd play with them, although we were told to keep away from them in case they had rabies. Many servicemen and their children had dogs but when they came to return home, the dog had to either be found a new home or, unfortunately, be put down. I remember a few people who had dogs near to our home and I think someone even had a couple of poodles, which weren't the sort of dog you would expect to find in the Far East. Most of the wild dogs on the estate were just a mixture of everything and most were quite friendly though they'd bark like most dogs! I remember one day when Alan came in and said that he had seen the police driving around and shooting stray dogs. It was very upsetting but they did this often though I never witnessed it. There's one time that I really remember coming into contact with a stray dog and this follows on from my last post. I think I was at Debbie Sharpe's birthday party near to our home. I was about 5 at the time. I was jumping around the garden, pretending to be a kangaroo, when I cracked my head on one of the steel windows that was open. Now, it's funny when you're in pain, you remember anything that happened to you at the time,even years later. I remember that Englebert Humperdinck's 'Please Release Me' was playing on the radio! Anyway, I decided to walk home with my hand on my head and blood pouring down my arm. As I made my way up the street, Bette, Debbie's mother, had seen what had happened and called me back. I was determined to get home and was probably tearful. As I came around the corner into Jalan Wijaya, a huge friendly, wild dog came up to me, wagging its tail, and stood on my shoulders and licked my face. After all the warnings about wild dogs, I think I then ran home as quick as I could. I had a sore head for a while but all was soon back to normal. As I said earlier, I've still got the scar and my hair never did grow there again! Whenever I hear 'Please Release Me', I'm taken back to that day in Johore Bahru, my sore head and that scary dog!