Family History 1.144

Gaze History

NSG Memoir

From NSG's diary of world tour 1956

After Singapore they visited Colombo and Aden:

 Monday 9 April  “The noise and smells were terrific. We walked through narrow streets with native shops on each side.  The street was full of people talking and carrying their burdens and every now and then a car would come honking along or a camel drawing a cart.  All sorts of things were being sold from drinks of water to sticky sweetmeats.  Beggars kept coming up and asking for alms; it was difficult to get rid of them as it was of touts who wanted to guide you somewhere – I was not too sure where – the eating houses were full and the scene was like one from the Arabian Nights.  What a lot of cutthroats they appeared to be.  It was very hot and smelly and we returned to our taxi and drove back to the port…. 

Tuesday 10 April  “Most of passengers sleeping off their strenuous tour of Aden and skiting about their wonderful bargains.” 

Then Egypt: 

Friday 13 April  “There was a real mix-up today about our passports.  The immigration authorities came aboard and we were told to queue up to collect our passports. After waiting about an hour they suddenly decided to call out the names instead of in order of the queue.  There was of course a surge to the bar counter where all the books were carefully laid out in alphabetical order by the purser.  At this stage the promoters of our tour to Cairo, Egyptians, took charge, as they thought they knew better.  They started calling out the number of the tour ticket, sometimes the name of the passport-holder and in the meantime people were grabbing books and looking for them.  The Gyppos got tired when they couldn’t find a number quickly and soon looked for another that was being called out from the crowd.  In about a minute the whole of the passports were in an absolute confusion.  When you are told how careful you must be with your book, etc, etc, and to see the way everybody grabbed everybody else’s book and then threw it back it would have given Her Majesty a heart attack to see how we treated her passports. However finally most riots come to an end and everybody appeared to have his own book….” 

On to the Desert:  “What a dreary wilderness it is.  Nothing but sand on either side except for a derelict house occasionally or a police check centre or an army camp on the site of previous British camps….” 

And Cairo:  “The city amazed us with its size.  It must have taken us over half an hour to traverse it, all the time passing down magnificent avenues, wide streets, tree-lined, some with gardens in the centre, lined with tremendous buildings, high 9 to 13 storeys, wide and modern….”