I went to London on
business and to attend a Management Course at Ashridge College
near Birkhamstead. My journal for that part of the
journey is business related, so this starts series starts at the end of that
course ahead of meeting Matt and Rab in Germany.
We were still living in South
Africa, waiting for the formalities to be completed
before we moved to Zimbabwe.
Exchange control regulations were such that we could not use credit cards
outside South Afric and we were limited to a foreign exchange allowance of
R10,000 each per annum. Most South Africans who travelled took their full
allowance and deposited any unspent balance in
hard currency account, although this was illegal.
The
South African Rand and the Zimbabwe
dollar were on a par. The rates against
US dollar and sterling were about R1.00:US$1.25 and about R1.00:£0.60p.
Saturday 28
March 1981 - London/Bad Godesburg
Time rushed by at Ashridge and we
had a lot of fun. I had to give the speech at the final dinner and everyone
congratulated me afterwards, so I suppose it cannot have been too bad - at
least it was short! Another course was finishing on the same day as we were, so we had a
combined dinner. I was glad I spoke first, because their speaker, who followed
me, was very good indeed. We had a splendid PU after dinner, which finally
broke up at about 03.30, with me and a chap called Bob Hancock assisting
Malcolm Davies to the door of his room. After breakfast the next day -
yesterday actually - I set off with John McNamara who had offered to take me to
Heathrow since he didn't live far away at Gerrard's Cross.
It was a beautiful day and quite
warm, so we drove with the sun roof open. It was the first really warm weather
I had in England.
Most of the time we were at Ashridge it was drizzling or over cast and it even
snowed for two days - not heavily, but just enough to put down a thin layer,
which melted quite quickly. There were a couple of days when it stopped raining
when a bunch of us walked down to the local pub at Little Neasden and had lunch
there which was a nice break. We also went for a walk of about 7 1/2 miles on
the Sunday afternoon when we were confined to College for a working weekend.
The weather didn't bother me, but I would have liked to see a bit more of the
countryside, which was lovely and very English.
John took me back to his house to
meet his wife, Marion. Their house was only built last year and was, I gather,
rather expensive. The ceiling was so low that I could put my hand flat on it
and the lights hit me about mid-forehead. Anyway, it was kind of him to give me
a lift. After a cup of coffee, we went on to Heathrow and I got there about 12.00
- very early for my flight which only left at 14.05, but as there was a threat
of union action, I didn't want to take any chances.
We got off almost on time - there
was a bit of delay because only one runway was being used and we had to queue
for about ten minutes. As we were right next to the runway, we had a very good
view of the aircraft as they came in. I was on a British Airways Tri-Star,
which was really scruffy on the outside and as tatty on the inside - makes you
realise how clean SAA aircraft are. The departure lounge was a bit decrepit and
I couldn't get a Coke or a fruit drink because they had run out! (I realise now, on reading this old entry
that my poor view of British Airways has been there a long time.)
The flight was good and I had a nice
view of the British and French coastlines as we crossed the Channel. It was
lovely seeing Rab and Matt again. We took a taxi from the airport to Jan's
house at Bad Godesburg. It is a lovely old place and has a marvellous view of
the Rhine Valley. We had dinner at the local pub,
just around the corner - typical German fare and delicious it was too. It was a
lovely day yesterday and when we woke up this morning, it still looked
promising, so after a nice Continental breakfast, we set off for Bonn.
 |
| Matt meets the barrel organ |
We started off by bus to Reinallee
station on the tram line. We didn't have to wait long for the tram to start
and, after cashing a travellers cheque
we set out for Rosenthals shop via all sorts of little shops on the way and an
encounter with a barrel organ - a sure sign that Spring had arrived according
to a passerby. We saw the organ grinder later in the morning, gazing with
apparent admiration at a one-legged accordion player.
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| Matt with a propriety hand on the toy shop van |
The weather remained mild all day
and, apart from some minor disagreements as to purchases, we had a good time.
We went to the toy shop, which Matt had already discovered - Poppet Koenigen - and
I must say it was marvellous - better than Hamleys in London, but on a smaller scale. I tried out
an Abby Dog from a sidewalk vendor and we also had some doughnuts (probably
berliners as in "Ich bin ein Berliner" as JFK said to the amusement
of the crowd) which were very nice.
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| The family at Beethoven's House |
We had lunch in an old pub near
Beethoven's house and the meal was lovely - Matt and I shared a dish of
marinated beef with potato dumplings (Reinische sauerbrauten mit kartoffelklosser) and Rab and
Jan had a dish of beans and gammon with boiled potatoes. After lunch we
wandered down to the river near Kennedy
Bridge and caught a ferry
across to the other bank, where we had an ice cream and a stroll and then just
sat and watched the traffic on the river.
At the moment the river is flowing
very strongly and is very high indeed - I reckon 10/15 feet above
"normal", so the barges heading upstream were making rather heavy
weather, whilst those going down were moving pretty rapidly. We were all a bit
tired so we didn't go out for a meal - just had cold meat, cheese etc with some
Pils. After supper, we sampled some liqueurs which I bought during the morning
and decided that one - Cuja-Cuja, made from granadillas (passion fruit) - was
well worth having.
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| Matt, Terry and Jan down by the river |
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