MARTIN DAWES - The Skegness of the South Atlantic
THERE are rumblings in the South Atlantic with the latest bit of Argie-bargy over the Falklands.
Which reminds me of the rumblings in my stomach - gurglings more like - on my first night on the Falklands in 1983.
In 1982 I'd been standing by with my case packed (toothbrush, walking boots and Henderson's Relish) ready to report as the invasion fleet sailed south. But I never got the call.
The Empire struck back without me. The consolation prize was a week on the islands the following year.
In those days before the opening of the international airport there was only one way in by plane. The existing runway was too small for jets but fine for the RAF's Hercules transports, providing the wind was in the right direction.
You flew 12 hours from Ascension Island, packed like sardines on webbed seating with the constant din from the engines.
If Purgatory exists then it is a long flight in a Hercules to the Falklands with just a pork pie and a carton of oranage juice for sustenance.
With the wrong crosswinds the plane could not land so you had to fly all the way back and try again when the weather improved.
They told of a well-known comic booked to entertain the troops who had made two failed flights and flatly refused to get on a third time. I don't blame him.
When I finally made it and was booked into my hotel, the Upland Goose at Port Stanley, the capital, I found myself trembling uncontrollably.
"Herc Lag," nodded the man from the BBC and his mate from ITN who were propping up the bar. "We've all been through it."
For a year after the war both organisations kept a man on the islands in case anything happened, which it didn't, so they got fed up and went home.
There are only so many stories you can do about the most southerly Co-op shop in the world and I did one, too.
"You need a drink," they said, which was how I was introduced to the islands' very own beer, Penguin Ale. It seemed the patriotic thing to drink. Another? If the BBC were paying, I didn't mind if I did.
"You're staying in the room used by the padre of the Argentine Army," said the hotel boss. I noticed it wasn't en-suite.
"Down the corridor," he said and pointed. It was information I would be immensely grateful for later on.
As Herc Lag subsided I took a stroll round town. It didn't take long for Port Stanley was really no more than an overgrown village with a couple of streets and a lot of muddy alleys.
It had a familiar look which took time to place and then it clicked.
You know those shanty towns outside holiday resorts like Skeggy or Ingoldmells, chalets with bits added on? That was Port Stanley then.
Every other gate seemed to have a note for the butcher but, as I soon discovered, you could have any meat you wanted as long as it was lamb.
Or just for a change, mutton.
Back in the Upland Goose that night the Penguin Ale, made at a mini-brewery built by Everards, kept coming.
What I didn't realise then was that the Upland Goose had no cellars because as everywhere on the islands the water table was no more than inches from the surface. So the beer was kept in plastic polypins under the bar and the yeast kept working.
Halfway through the night in the Argie padre's old room the Empire struck back again. The toilet, remember, was down the corridor and I raced down it naked like an Exocet missile.
Reader, I made it.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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