Darren Moore

It’s dark. There’s a terrible smell.  It’s the most terrible smell I have ever experienced. I try and inhale through my mouth to reduce the intensity but it doesn’t help I gag and gasp and wretch. I’m still breathing? I thought we’d decided that the end was the end?

I try and calm down and breathe shallowly. Where am I? I don’t feel terribly well.

My mouth tastes horrible like I had a really big night the night before. As my eyes become accustomed to the light I start to look around. I’m in a kind of rubbish dump. It looks like the place you see in the documentaries where orphans are trying to eke out a sort of existence by filtering and mining through the discards in the Favelas.

I can hear the sound of water sloshing about and dripping all around me. I feel cold. I realise I am naked. But there is a source of heat coming from the far side of this space.

As I take in my surroundings I can make out that I am in something that looks like a medium size barn with translucent walls. There is also a source of light, an orange and purple glow over in the corner. 

I lift my head a little and feel so terribly weak.

I can see some shells of ruined cars, old cars from the eighties. This is a big space. It even looks like my car, my Rover Metro from the 90’s and look there’s two Alfa Romeo’s too and a Honda! These are my cars. I can see the gleaming red of my old Ducati and the Yamaha I crashed into the back of a taxi. There is a tall looming stack of worn tyres from all my bikes, a mound of black snake like innertubes and 18 bike frames and a whole workshop of cycling spares – including my beloved Rotrax.

I slowly move around so I can see the other side of the space. The floor is covered in paper, magazines, and what looks like toilet paper. There are old-fashioned nappies stacked up, and disgustingly, a pile of about 2,000 condoms.

Beside them are thousands of empty tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes with worn bristles and one lone hairbrush.

I keep turning and can see a stack of wine and beer bottles. 

Is the afterlife a big party I wonder? 

But sadly it looks like I’ve missed it, they’re all empty, rusting and leaking.

My heart leaps a little as I see almost one hundred bottles of Chateau Neuf Du Pape, although sadly they are all empty and corkless. Anyway, I certainly don’t feel like having a glass right now. There are about ten whiskey bottles and what looks like hundreds and hundreds of beer cans and bottles. I think I can make out the distinct red cans of McEwans Export – there are stacks of them. There must be over three thousand Coke cans. Laying beside them are thousands of cigarette butts and a whole heap of dog ends from joints. 

I close my eyes, the smell and the thought of the alcohol and cigarettes make me feel even worse.

I shift around a little, still unable to get to my feet. 

The room appears to go on and on with bundles of waste everywhere. There’s a massive stack of CDs, records and tapes. I can see a Stone Roses cassette with the distinct lemon on the front. I loved that tape! I always wondered what had happened to it. There are three bass guitars, what looks like a ukulele, some amps and a whole heap of old hifi. Oh, my favourite Kef speakers are there! The books are all stacked neatly beside the CDs a whole column of Ian Banks and Sebastian Faulks. 

Behind the CDs, there is a huge mountain of clothes. It looks like thousands of pants and socks, shirts and then t-shirts on the top, 60 or so pairs of black jeans and a myriad of stripey jumpers. I think I can make out my favourite black baggy jumper from Uni. Oh and too many hats!

There’s an entire hill of computers, old Macs, almost fifty mobile phones and some old TVs.

I lay back and contemplate my situation. I close my eyes. Wretching from the smell I now recognise as my own shit and piss and vomit. I wonder? I risk a glance and can see a mountain of my skin and dandruff and beside it, a pile of what looks like dark wool but is obviously facial hair and eyebrows. There is even a yellow-white stack of toe and fingernails that stretches to the ceiling.

The glow in the corner seems to be getting brighter. I can make out ghostly shapes in the flames. The smoke is rising. The flames in the corner catch on what looks like my last sofa. It burns quite slowly until the flames touch my old beds and a pile of about forty duvets with sheets piled up all around them.

I must be hallucinating. The walls are diaphanous, flickering with ghostly images of people I recognize. It’s like an old film projector, showing moments of my life in stark, haunting detail. I see the ghostly images of people. It doesn’t look like a party or a wake. I can see my old bosses standing around. My grandparents, my parents, my sister and aunts and uncles fade in. My friends from school, my friends from Uni, my friends from Ealing and London are standing looking at me. The images tail back and then shown to me like a dream, with some faint and with just a flicker and some bright and clearly in focus and constant I see all of my ex-partners. The brightest one of all is the last one. She looks calm with a half smile. Our eyes meet. I could stay like this for hours but then suddenly the flames lick upwards, the thin walls start to burn, and the image of her long hair combusts. All the faces fade. 

The walls are in flames. I am surrounded by fire.

Shit, shit. It looks like I’m in trouble now. The room is getting seriously warm and the smoke is billowing out from my old furniture. I try and sit up and feel very dizzy. The smell is getting worse.

I look around frantically as the flames grow higher and higher. There must be a way out.

I can see on one side a heap of potato peelings, and corn cobs, interspersed with chicken carcasses and bones. So many bones. Thousands of wooden chopsticks.A skyscraper of empty plastic sushi boxes. I can feel the heat intensely now, it is searingly hot and I try and move away. I manage to crawl a little bit away from the heat although the fire is roaring now. It’s crackling away and releasing such a pungent eye-watering toxic gas. I can taste it like poison in my mouth. The back of my throat is so dry. I try to swallow.

I can see my old house plants in the corner, like a mini forest, their pots chipped and cracked and try to get closer to them. I make a final last effort to get to them and then lay down amongst the leaves and branches as the flames engulf me.

The heat is intense, the smoke choking and there is nothing I can do but lay back amongst my plants and I surrender to it all.

The fire engulfs the possessions of my life but remarkably leaves me untouched. Like burning alcohol, it doesn’t hurt me. I try and relax and my heart is strangely calm.

Suddenly there is a mini explosion as one of my old cars blows up. The flames burn higher and higher and I black out.

When I come around the oppressive heat and the acrid smell have gone. I’m lying on the moss under a tree on the edge of a forest. It feels like the softest bed in the world. I feel the moss on my back and the grass tickling my feet in the breeze.  I inhale the beautiful clean woody scent of the trees. I am held and I am safe. The contrast of my sensations is immense. I feel a cooling breeze on my face, I’m still naked and it feels so natural. I feel a sudden sense of liberty. As I come to my senses I see that I’m sitting up quite high on the hillside looking across to Malham Cove and I feel a huge swell of euphoria deep inside my chest; warming my arms and body. Above the cliffs, the sky is a rich deep blue with white clouds way up high in a herringbone pattern. I feel such joy from seeing the rolling countryside green and untouched stretching away from me. I hear the sound of bird song and the rustle of the wind in the leaves of the trees above me. I relax with a sigh and close my eyes forever.

My take on Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives

Ordinarily, the man standing beside the entrance to the mud and straw hut would have had skin the colour of deep black as the other Kenyans had. But he was old and his pigmentation was fading. Did he have grey hair? Do Kenyan’s go grey as they age? I don’t remember. Unfortunately although younger than me, I was facing an old man in Africa. His eyes were bleached and wayward and he was muttering incoherently.

Unsure how to communicate with a lost man who only spoke a different language I smiled and nodded and then ducked inside the low dark doorway of the mud hut that we were visiting. It was a simple hut of faded red Kenyan mud, roughly textured, with a low straw roof. A traditional hut of the Maasai, some of the world’s last remaining nomadic pastoralists – just like the ones we heard about in GCSE Geography. It was ramshackle, not even as tall as I was, with tarpaulin poking through the branches and straw on its roof. It was functional rather than beautiful and romantic; however, it had stripped living down back to the raw essentials of life: food, shelter and warmth. Was there love here? It was hard to tell.

I stepped inside and compared with London back in time 500 years. As my eyes acclimatised I could see a shaft of light coming in through a tiny open gap to the left. I was hit by the smell of livestock and woodsmoke and I started to make out the embers of a fire in the corner. The hut, although about the same size as a large car, slept up to 8 people from three generations with the men and boys and women and girls segregated on both sides. There was no privacy. Frequently, in the winter the animals joined their shepherds inside too.

Beside the fire I could make out a woman sitting, tending a large metal kettle and poking the fire underneath, she was bald-headed and dressed in the colourful traditional clothing of the Maasai women. She had a beautiful, clear-skinned face and wore an expression of complete calm. She was nursing a baby in a coloured sling around her neck.

We smiled at each other and immediately my heart broke. I’m not really sure why but this was one of my most moving moments of my life. Sharing this space with a fellow human who lived so simply really touched me. She seemed pretty content though, she, almost mysteriously, exuded an inner peace. It surprised me to feel so moved, I had been insulated for so long from my true emotions. Little did I know that this brief moment would be the start of a personal journey that would impact every single aspect of my life for the next two years.

Pretty soon the smoke in the hut and the heat from the fire and sun baking the room became too much for me. The smell was also quite unbearable and I had to leave. I gave a pathetic attempt at a warm gesture and bowed my head and walked out.

It was a real relief to leave the claustrophobic space and breathe the fresh air outside but it didn’t ease the momentous feelings (and sobs) that wracked my body.

Later that day we took to our mountain bikes and started riding out away from the Kenyan village of Olorte along unmade roads and spectacular scenery. We were heading to the Kenyan border with Tanzania. With every pedal, I was feeling that we were moving further and further away from the modern world and I embraced it.

As we neared our destination the road became a river bed and at points, it was little more than a track ascending a dried out waterfall.

We stopped occasionally and were met by the local shepherds – some looked as young as 10 years old. One took great delight in filming us with her last generation camera phone. I wondered what she’d do with those images. Despite spending all hours outside in the countryside the children were like children everywhere else in the world and were laughing and playing. In fact they seemed to take great joy in watching us struggling up the rocky paths.

Further on we came to a great plateau where a series of mud huts gathered, just as we’d seen in history books of ancient Britain. These huts were well maintained and beautifully presented. There was a mobile phone mast on the hilltop. The villagers appeared from all over the hillside and soon gathered around us. They looked on bemused at our bicycles as if they’d never seen one before.

The villagers crowded around our small group and gestured at the bikes. I dismounted and handed my bike to one of the villagers, who looked like he was in his early twenties. He excitedly hopped on my bike and started wheeling it forwards. It soon became clear that he didn’t know what to do, he could remain upright, in fact, he appeared to have incredible balance, but he couldn’t work out how to pedal it properly. He’d just push one pedal down and race forwards and then stop and pull the same pedal to the top of its stroke and push it down again. He gave up quite quickly and handed me back my bike with a bemused smile.

After another 30 minutes of riding, we reached our destination, the rocky cliff that marked the end of the plateau with views across the African savanna stretching out in the haze before us. It was the end of our ride.

The Tanzanian border was just down the hillside and the local guide pointed us in its direction. It was a short walk across the scrubland to the border which consisted of stone cairns about 200 metres apart. That was it, we’d made it to Tanzania.

At the end of our African cycling adventure, sitting on a rocky outcrop, surveying the Kenyan savannah ahead of us, modern life appeared so distant. There were no phone masts, no roads, no planes, no music and as we sat and had a Tanzanian Castle Milk Stout I was struck by how far we’d come and how much this time was making me think. For once I actually enjoyed the destination as much as the journey.

I watched, but chose not to help, as the Maasai warriors cut the throat of the goat we were to feast on, but I must admit there was a strange thrill watching these men hold down our food with their bare hands whilst its blood and life-force pulsed from it. We were all invited to drink the still warm pulsing blood from the goat’s artery as it died.

After our feast, we began our re-introduction to the modern world as we headed back to take our flights home. At first, we saw red mud huts and red mud roads, and as the villages grew into shantytowns the scooters and plastic rubbish – plastic rubbish everywhere – started to appear. Wild dogs and western brands started to arrive too; the obligatory Coca Cola and Marlboro billboards beside these towns that resembled the Wild West of 19th Century USA. Tiny two-room hotels that doubled as butchers during the day. Bars, cafes and restaurants with overdeveloped frontages and breeze block backs, just like a film set. The only signs of progress from the Wild West were the worn tyres discarded alongside the road and the car mechanic shacks replacing the blacksmiths.

As the roads improved, the traffic increased and the buildings became more sophisticated. Gated shopping malls started to appear. Fast food names from the UK. Mobile phone coverage and internet returned. I switched my phone on. My phone showed 1250 WhatsApp notifications. My shoulders knotted.

Eventually, we were sitting in cars, in long traffic jams of idling pickup trucks outside Nairobi, the outline of dirty grey high rise buildings on the horizon. I felt sick.

I thought back to my time sitting in the Maasai mud hut by the fire and realised that everything we called progress wasn’t making me any happier: quite the opposite.

I’m not so stupid to see that having clean water, access to medicine, educating women, and not going hungry is immensely desirable, it just struck that me that it didn’t seem possible to have both worlds.

Once we start on this journey of progress it doesn’t seem to ever stop until we’ve gone too far.

When I returned to England I told Ken I was leaving.

I’m reminded of a time, a few years ago, when I decided to take a mountain bike to a waterfall on the Thai Island. The bike was old but had enough working gears and brakes to make the experience bearable and potential successful. I headed off in the humid air. I cycled past red cars and giggling girls on bikes and turned right off the main orbital road into the middle of the Island. I only had a rudimentary map for directions but it felt like the right way and I soon left the urban chaos behind. As I cruised along the road I saw clearings amongst the rainforest with men standing around, collecting coconut husks and lighting small fires, not rushing to complete their farming tasks. The road signs were worn, faded and weathered.

Pretty soon the road became a single grey strip of concrete, there were signs in English and in Thai ordering those on scooters not to tackle the road ahead. My back was soaked with sweat. It was hot and even hotter when the sun came out from the clouds.

I rounded a corner with a derelict house beside it and looked up – the grey concrete road had another scooter sign with a red line through it and it just went straight up. I’d never faced a road like it! Across the world roads never defied the contour lines like this one – it just headed directly up transecting the virtual lines on the map. It was going to hurt. It highlighted the arrogance of man’s machinery over the country’s topography, or did it simply use the least amount of concrete?

I made a valiant effort but my thighs were burning, the heat was intense and I was worried for my heart. For the first time since I started cycling, I got off and pushed. Even pushing was hard work, my heart fluttering as I pushed.

As I reached the top of the road, it headed off to the right, and I finally felt able to remount and try and try and make my legs circulate again. I cycled past a group of bemused looking workers sitting in the shade with nothing in particular to do.

I continued onwards, the road alternating between its dramatic upwards gradients and more gentle curving upward stretches. I got off and pushed again. I had drained my water half an hour ago and it was now drenching through my skin, my t-shirt and shorts were soaked through. I could smell me as much as I could smell the dusty road and countryside.

Eventually, I came to a turning, with an old metal sign directing me to the waterfall, and I headed off the concrete road and pointed the bike downwards onto a little rough dirt track. There were potholes and ruts so it wasn’t much of a respite. I cycled past some more derelict houses and some inhabited ones too. The inhabited ones often had dogs barking, and I realised that the island seemed to have packs of wild dogs.

The dogs were thin but sleek and wild-eyed and barking. They kept barking and chasing me. The last time I’d been chased by wild dogs I’d been on a motorbike in the desert and I had the confidence to outrun them. We’d failed and I remembered the time we crashed off the edge of the piste in the failing light and landing on our sides, looking back to see that fortunately, the pack of dogs had given up their chase. We were only bruised that time and we mounted the bike again and headed out down South.

Back now in this Thai Island, I was unsure of my horsepower on this shabby mountain bike and my dead limbs and gasping lungs. I carried on, through the packs of barking dogs as is my way. The dogs seemed to lack the courage of their barks to actually make contact but it was unnerving and certainly motivating. I was already dreading facing the dogs again on my return journey back home.

Eventually, the track swung upwards and I could see a straw-covered hut in front of me.

I’d reached the waterfall which was a low key tourist site. I was very pleased to see a little hut selling cold drinks to tourists which was manned by two Thai people. I smiled and said hello to them as I dismounted and tried to casually park my bike up against a large concrete slab beside the road. Pleased with my standless bike parking I started to walk towards the stall.

The two stall owners who had previously been staring at me blankly started to say something to me and pointed at my bike. I thought they were admiring my bike skills but actually, they were pointing out that I had parked my bike right beside a bright green snaked that was now poised and ready to strike me. My heart felt like it couldn’t take much more stress and I very slowly inched away from the bike towards the stall. When I felt that I was at a safe distance I risked a glance back towards the snake, which fortunately appeared to have lost its stimulus and was now slowly sinking back towards the concrete slab.

I bought some water from the stall owners, and then shaken by my close encounter with the green snake cautiously set about following the narrow foot track down to the waterfall.

After about 10 minutes walking I finally reached the waterfall, although sadly all I could see were the smooth slabs of rock as there hadn’t been any significant rainfall on the island for months.

You’ve probably seen your council declare a climate emergency, or heard one of the many companies recently state their Net-Zero intentions. But what does Net-Zero mean, and how does being Net-Zero apply to a human?

The UK Government, and all those who have signed up for the Paris Accord have the legally binding objective to reach Net-Zero by 2050.

This means the amount of CO² their activities emit is balanced by an equivalent volume of CO² being removed from the atmosphere.

Making a country or a multi-national Net-Zero is complex but we could speed this up significantly by asking all our citizens to become Net-Zero.

So here’s how to make yourself Net-Zero voluntarily.

1. Find out how much you emit and for what activities. There are a number of tools for this but by far the simplest is the WWF’s carbon footprint calculator. Simply answer about 20 questions about your lifestyle and the website calculates your footprint based on averages. It also gives you a nice breakdown of the areas of your life that create the greatest emissions.

In my example this shows my lifestyle emitting 7 tonnes per year.

2. At this point we could simply pay an offsetting company to offset our 7 tonnes every year and announce that we are Net-Zero, but the scientists don’t agree. To avoid claims of green-washing you must also make a commitment to reduce your emissions going forwards and present any offsets and any renewable energy sources in a table.

For example.
In 2021 I pledge not to take any flights and to reduce the emissions from the stuff I buy by not buying anything new. I buy our renewable energy from Bulb Energy which is 100% renewably sourced.

Along with my emissions, these green tariffs, and my offsets, I am a Net-Zero human.

	CO2e (tonnes)
Gross emissions CO2e	7.0
Green tariff	-2.5
Offsets	-4.5
Net emissions	0

3. Offset the remaining emissions. Although the UN Carbon Credit scheme can be economically attractive I would rather support a scheme that is closer to home. It is also proven that rewilding the countryside has a huge benefit to the environment from both an emissions and bio-diversity point of view so I plant trees with Trees For Life who are re-wilding Glen Affic in Scotland.

It costs £6 per tree with Trees For Life and it is calculated that 5 trees will sequester 1 tonne of CO² per year, so to offset our 4.5 tonnes we require:

CO2e Tonnes	4.5
Trees (Tonnes x 5)	22.5
Cost (£6 per tree)	£135

So, in line with scientific concensus, I can claim that I am a Net-Zero human by making a public commitment to reduce my future emissions, buying 100% renewable energy, and offsetting the remaining emissions with a rewilding project in Scotland.

Of course, it’s a great start to be a Net-Zero human but to make sure our planet is inhabitable for future generations we really need political change locally and nationally which is why I support the Green Party.

Darren Moore runs One Point Five Comms which helps businesses and organisations become Net-Zero.

If this has inspired you to become Net-Zero too then please let me know below in the comments.

My Grandad didn’t like to talk about his experiences during the war but he did write them down. I thought I’d share his personal account of an unforgettable episode in the conflict with Japan during the Second World War.

We think this occurred in October 1944 in the Gulf of Martaban, Burma (Myanmar).

I reported to 354 Squadron and was crewed -up as a replacement gunner in a crew who were all Canadians. The rest of the crew had already completed about 100 hours of operations so I was always ready to fly as a spare-bod in order to finish my tour at the same time as the rest of the crew.

The squadron carried out two main types of operation. A-Flight conducted low-level bombing and machine-gunning attacks against coastal shipping. B-Flight were mainly engaged upon convoy escort and anti-submarine duties. My crew was in A-Flight but I flew as a spare on several operations with B-Flight crews. Our operations were usually of 10 to 16 hours duration, the longest I did was 22 hours to Singapore where our bomb-load was a single 2501b. bomb. This trip involved five aircraft whereas the usual number was one or two, four of the five were lost on the run-in. During an operation we gunners would change positions every two hours, rotating between rear turret, beam position, nose turret and mid-upper turret.

On operations, we wore a light jungle suit, battle dress top, head set and throat mike, Maewest, parachute harness and a baseball-cap. I don’t know why we wore baseball caps but everybody wore them, it must have been the Canadian influence, the jungle suit was a very light sidcot with a lot of pockets which contained our “survival” kit in case we were shot down.

We had:

• water purifying tablets
• a magnifying glass to use to make a fire
• fishing line( no rod )
• shark repellant dye
• a commando knife
• a machete
• a compass
• and we carried a .38 revolver.

Towards the end of our tour we were briefed to attack a target off Cox’s Bazaar on the Arekan Coast the japs were shipping petrol in lighters towed by small paddle steamers. We arrived at first light and shot them up from an altitude of about 50 ft. and they blew up. The steamer had a light machine-gun similar to a Lewis gun for defence but as we approached everyone dived overboard, I don’t blame them either.

The next day another crew was short of a gunner and asked me to stand- in, I was about 30 hours behind my crew so agreed to go with them. We went to the same place at the same time with the same result.

The following day my crew was detailed for operations and at briefing, sure enough, it was the same time same place. It was our 2nd Pilot’s wedding anniversary and he was apprehensive so asked if there was any chance of fighter cover. He was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no request for fighter cover for a single Liberator.

As we were approaching the target at about 50ft. we were attacked by three Zekes (Zeros), they came in line ahead and as we were so low they had to break away upwards which made them a relatively easy target. We shot down the first two then our skipper said “we are going-in” no formal Dinghy Dinghy business. I was in the mid-upper turret and was halfway down from it when we hit the water and I was pitched forward. Seven of us were in the water with the dinghy deployed when the last of the Zekes gunned us in the water killing the pilot and the 2nd. pilot, after three passes it flew off. The rest of us got into the dinghy and started paddling towards the shore which was about a mile away. Progress was very slow so I got into the water and started swimming pushing the dinghy, it wasn’t until I got back to camp that I was told that there were sharks in those waters.

We reached the shore, as we were pulling the dinghy up the beach we heard shouts in the bush (it was bush, not jungle) and ten men in Japanese garb carrying rifles with bayonets appeared. I think that they must have been Koreans as they were very big, over 6ft. tall we couldn’t understand them but they got their message across with their rifles and bayonets. They took us into the bush to a track where they had a lorry parked. We were put into the lorry with the help of rifle butts and they drove off.

We were driven for one and a half or two days non-stop except for when the guards needed a comfort stop, then we were allowed out for the same purpose. Finally, we arrived at a prison camp at Tavoy in South Burma.

The commander was a Major Ipsui and the second in command was Captain Shintu, after the war, I read in the paper that they had both been tried for war crimes, including shooting eight Australians in front of their own graves, and executed by hanging.

We were taken from the truck into the compound, it was just a compound with no gates, wire or watch towers just a bamboo screen. In the compound were two wooden stakes with two naked P.O.W’s. tied to them with barbed wire and left in the sun.

They took us into a basha on our own, it had no furniture at all and we were given nothing to eat or drink until the next day. We were then given a small mug of water and some revolting stew of some sort of meat I think. At intervals, a Jap came in and asked us where we came from and what squadron. Although it turned out that they knew we were from 354, where it was stationed and the name of our CO.

On the third day, we were sitting on the floor, our Flight Engineer (a rather large Anglo-Indian ) was sitting under the window which was just a hole in the wall which could be covered by a bamboo flap. The guard put his head in through the window and the F/E reached up and grasped him by the neck and pulled him in through the window! I don’t know if he was dead or merely stunned but he lay there very still. We were surprised that he had done such a foolish thing (in retrospect it was not so silly) but we went out through the window, pushed our way through the bamboo screen of the compound and ran as fast as we could until we reached some vegetation and on and on until we reached the jungle. We kept going until we could go no further then rested overnight before continuing.

We kept going running and walking for six or seven days and were nearing the end of our tether. We had very little to eat or drink and it was difficult to sleep in the jungle with the noise and the biting insects, we decided that we would have to ask the Burmese for help. Back on the squadron, we had been told that if we came to a river and followed it upstream it would lead us to a village. Coming to a river we went upstream until we came to a village, we were approached by an old Burmese man and our Anglo-Indian F/E was able to make him understand that we needed help.

The old man took us to a basha and indicated that we should go inside, he stayed outside. Inside we found a Jap officer (the Japs used to leave an officer in charge of occupied villages to keep order and check on crops etc.) He drew his revolver and started ushering us towards a cell at the rear of the basha. As we were going along the corridor somebody called out “shoot him”, I was at the back of the crew just in front of the Jap, I turned around and kicked him as hard as I could in the groin. The rest of the crew joined in hitting and kicking him beating him until he lay still then we ran out of the basha.

Outside there was no sign of the Burmese man, which was just as well as there is no knowing what we might have done to him, but there was a vehicle similar to a jeep with several cans of petrol in the back. We all piled into it, I got into the passenger seat, then came to the big anti-climax none of us could drive. My father had had a car before the war and I had a vague idea of what he did so I fiddled about for a while and got it moving. We travelled for a long time in bottom gear before I managed to operate the gear lever and changeup. We were able to travel for many miles as the track was not too bad and we had the cans of petrol. Eventually, we ran out of petrol and had to start walking again.

After a day or day and a half, we saw a military camp but we stayed hidden in the bush because we were not certain whether it belonged to friend or enemy. Some Indian soldiers appeared but we stayed hidden as there were more Indians fighting for the Japs than for us. Eventually, we saw an English officer and made our presence known.

We were such a motley looking crew with an unlikely story that we were kept in the cells while Calcutta and our base were contacted to establish our bona fides. This done we were taken by lorry to Calcutta and flown back to Cuttack. Back at base we spent one night in hospital, I had gone from 10 stone down to 7 stone most of which was put down to dehydration.

During debriefing, I made very clear my views about being sent to the same place at the same time three days in succession. An officer took exception to this and I was put on a charge- conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline etc. etc.

The next day I was taken before the CO. who congratulated me on my safe return and told me that I was being recommended for an award. He then tore a strip off the officer who had charged me. I said that I wasn’t concerned about any decoration but was still very upset that five of my friends had been killed because of a lack of forethought and commonsense. The CO. then dismissed the charge.

Nice to get an honourable mention on the London Cycling Campaign website thanks to my active travel campaigning:

CW9 takes another big step forward.Read in full.

And thanks to the local newspapers for publishing my articles:

Warren Farm, a nature reserve under threat. Read in full.

How Ealing Half Marathon inspired me to run. Read in full.

Ealing Cyclists Bring Water to Masai. Read in full.

The Guardian’s take on our Banksy. Read in full.