Circuits and Bumps
by
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RAF Skellingthorpe, 1944
“DAH DI-DI DAH, DI-DAH DI-DAH.” Boots hammering the floor, Jock was at full bore, bending the poker with his bare hands and bawling snatches of song in a hoarse voice deliberately made uglier. He seemed pleased with himself. The reason was soon evident. Suddenly stopping his caterwauling, he exclaimed, “Eh, I had a guid time last night. After a few wee nips, I like nothing better than to bash a Yank.” He huckled, looking around for approval.
“Why a Yank?” someone asked.
“Look how they treat their Blacks. Who the fuck do they think they are?”
Jock, the noble defender of the downtrodden! Where did he find Americans? Lincoln, probably, certainly not at our local. Although I had noticed his absence from the potato fields by day and from the hut most evenings, I had never wondered where he got to. In any case, I wasn’t impressed by his explanation. I knew he liked to pick a fight when he’d been drinking. His preferred victim was usually the last one who had annoyed him. Failing that, the nearest fellow Scot would do – or anyone.
As fate would have it, there was another Scot in our hut. For reasons that will become apparent, I shall call him Riever. Muscular, yet softly spoken, he usually had little to say; but when Jock was absent he tended to rabbit away.
“I’m getting fed-up with Riever,” remarked Dennis to me one day. Like Jock, Dennis had also been a member of my flight at Scarborough.
“Why?”
“Oh, he’s always going on about what a great athlete he is. Claims he’s a champion wrestler. I wish he’d shut up.”
As if bragging were not enough, Riever tempted fate further by demonstrating his athletic prowess in a basketball game. Bounding all over the court like a manic Springheel Jack, shouldering lighter players out of his way, he soon had some of us muttering. “Leave him to me,” Dennis reassured us. “I’ll fix him.” A few minutes later, Riever retired from the game, clutching his groin and looking unhappy.
Perhaps he was a slow learner, or just stupid, but one quiet evening Riever decided to push an argument with Mike into a fight. The rest of us, three bods sprawled on their pits in a state of stupefied boredom, immediately perked up, curious, yet ready to intervene, for Riever outweighed Mike by at least three stone. We needn’t have worried. Mike, the quietest and shortest of us, had no intention of fighting on Riever’s terms. Instead, clasping his hands behind his head, he lay calmly on the floor and kicked out with his boots whenever his burly opponent came near, a novel defensive tactic that at first didn’t seem promising. However, when the champion wrestler showed no sign of hurling himself from a great height to tie a flattened Mike into knots, we leant against our bedding and prepared ourselves to be entertained.
What followed was a fight reminiscent of the boxing bout in City Lights, only in this case there was no physical contact whatever! Mesmerized by the lashing boots, Riever circled the imperturbable Mike, looking for an opening. Round and round he went, making tentative little rushes and then leaping back with exaggerated caution as if he were a large but timid mongoose facing its first deadly cobra. After a few minutes of this unprofitable tactic, he began to wave his arms in exasperation and make little whimpering noises. Then, casting his eyes around wildly for inspiration, he rushed across to his bed and began to pelt Mike with biscuit mattresses. “Thanks,” said Mike, seizing the first as a pad for his back and booting the other two out of the way. It was now that Riever made another mistake. Maddened by frustration and by our laughter, which was now bordering on hysteria, he seized the broom and made to hit Mike with it.
“Hey!”
“No you don’t!”
As one man we had sprung to our feet. We weren’t laughing now. His eyes brimming with tears of rage and humiliation, the inept champion obediently threw the broom down. The great fight was over.
Someone must have told Jock. The following evening, as I lay...
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About the Book
This is essentially a memoir of childhood and youth. The author's childhood is an unsettled one, including family bankruptcy, a period in an orphanage for the children, and then only three years as part of a "normal" family before the war breaks it up again. Yet, thanks largely to the mother, it is not an unhappy childhood; and the memoir gives an affectionate look back at life in pre-War London.
After a year as an evacuee, the author rejoins his mother and sister in Wales and enjoys a period of great growth and happiness, fostered by his love of family and by his passions for reading, music, climbing, and flying. As a result, although poorly educated, he confidently makes the transition from office boy to aircrew training.
Following his demobilization, the author emigrates to Canada and spends four seasons in the Klondike goldfields. Then, having completed school by correspondence, he enters university and in his third year becomes married. This period, which he terms "Phoenix Rising", ends with two shattering blows within the space of less than three months. He subsequently has a successful teaching career - but at the cost of later breakdowns and a life of solitude.
This memoir is no mere narrative. With echoes of Dickens' Pip, Wordsworth, Bunyan's pilgrim and Mr. Chips, among other things it takes a glance at climbing, flying, gold-mining, teaching, recurrent dreams and dissociation. This is a tale of perseverance in spite of repeated disappointment - and it is a testament of love.
For those interested in pre-War London, this book is a gem, but the author writes just as enthusiastically about teaching as he does about war, heartbreak, and disillusionment. The true strength of this book is the author’s experiences, from his time as a pilot to the four seasons he spent in Klondike goldfields. ...It is clear that Condon has led a full life, and he has risen after every bump and dive. Thus, the phoenix is an appropriate section title and an apt symbol for the writer himself.
A deft, compelling autobiography of an Everyman.
Thorough, organized and well-researched, Circuits & Bumps qualifies more as autobiography than memoir, heavily weighted though it is toward Condon’s early years. Though his childhood was at times Dickensian - spent in part in an orphanage when his father was incarcerated and his mother hospitalized - the author, an admitted romantic, remembers himself more as Huck Finn than Pip. Blessed with an encyclopedic memory, Condon displays a keen eye for those seminal moments that most require years of expensive therapy to pinpoint. His are receiving his library card, seeing his first mountain and suffering a terrifying run-in with a threatening stranger - all have effects that took decades to reveal themselves fully. Though the author entered training for the Royal Air Force during World War II, fighting ended before he got airborne. Failing to earn his wings, Condon found himself adrift in the gloom of postwar London. Lured by the contrast of Canada’s unfettered and pristine expanses, Condon emigrated. There he transforms into a virtual Sal Paradise and his narrative into a somewhat less manic, but no less idealistic, Anglo-Canadian On the Road. A stint at a mining camp in the Yukon led the young man to turn his attention to education, a decision that led to his matriculating at the age of 27 at the University of British Columbia. By his early 30’s, Condon married his one true love, lost her to breast cancer, became a teacher and began suffering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The author wields some advantage over a contemporary audience due to the sheer exoticism of growing up in 1930’s London. However, his magnetic tale is powered as much by the storytelling and language as by the subject matter. There’s comfort in the grace with which he writes about his struggles. A writer with an enviable talent for consistently skilled word choice, Condon crafts a remarkable story....
Wise and entertaining, this book is hard to put down.
WRITER’S DIGEST contest for self-published books :
Judge's comments: The title and cover gave me absolutely no idea of how good this book was, so I don’t think I would have picked it up at a bookstore, which would be too bad. Your story is worth reading. This was a beautifully written book.
About the Author
A self-confessed loner and romantic introvert, the author is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and has spent half his working life as a teacher of senior English in a comprehensive school. Respected by both students and colleagues, he is now retired and lives in a rented house on a friend's hobby farm. His main interests have been climbing, flying, music, history, poetry and metaphysics.