Bright sunny beaches,
Cool beer and peaches.
The time when we were
lovers on the sand.
You know that I’d run miles,
to kiss your face of smiles.
You really got to know now,
life is grand.”
Steve Dixie and Ras Yeggman 1976 “Ja Make Her?” album.
© Groaner (Belize) Ltd and the executors of Baron Adelbert Gruner
CHAPTER 21 TO THE CROSSROADS
Colonel James Moriarty wasn't late for the 10 AM meeting. He'd got to Carbonec by 9-30, but even now, even here, despite the huge new car parks, there was no room to park. Why the hell did the bloody fools who designed these places assume everyone who worked here would live locally and walk to work? This was the middle of Salisbury Plain. Where on earth would people live? Villages round here were full of stock brokers and bankers and bloody rock stars. The nearest place a civil servant could afford to rent somewhere was probably Trowbridge or Andover or somewhere. It was lack of planning. Or more likely bigger car parks were planned, except they would be cancelled, moved to the right, as the defence budget was cut.
There was a space.
He was practically back at the main gate. And where was the meeting? Conference Room 17 in building 400. Were there really four hundred buildings on this site? Or did they include places like the dumpster shelter behind the NAAFI as a separate building? And was the concrete bomb proof litter bin by the path through the trees also a building? Where was…? A sign pointed down another path to “Building 400.”
John Gilchrist ran down the list of attendees, he’d done Toblerones for everyone. The computer was plugged in, and on, the projector was up and running, the electronic white board was working, with white board markers, note pads and pens. There were plugs at each place in case someone's laptop needed power. The big tea urn was on a table by the wall, small packets of biscuits were piled up by the cups. The bowl was full of sugar sachets. The little milk cartons were still cold, the tea bags and coffee packets looked sufficient. There were even real tea spoons instead of the plastic stick things. He pocketed an individual pack of jammy dodgers from the biscuits. A perk of the job.
Colonel Moriarty bounded through the automatic doors. The guard at the foyer desk had been downsized, but there was a familiar face “John?”
“Ah yes. Major Mor….” He was slipping into an easy alliteration. “I mean Colonel Moriarty. Welcome back to Carbonec.”
“Pleased to see you. Are you organising this meeting?”
“I’m just organising the tea and biscuits. The chair is James Wilder.”
“He must be new.”
“He is, yes. It’s in the conference room at the top of the second stairs through there.” John waved down the foyer into the central atrium.
“Fine. Tell me John. How far do you have to commute to get here?”
“Ah,” He was never sure how to answer this one “Not far. I actually live in the valley through that way, so it’s just about five or ten miles.”
“The next valley? What? In a council house or something?”
“No actually I have my own house. I had some money, so I moved out of London and settled here.”
“I see. Right, um see you later.” Damn civilians. The bloody clerk seemed to be rolling in it and a colonel still had to commute miles from rented accommodation. Once the Army had provided housing for officers, then sold it all off to rent back under some mad scheme, and now it was in short supply. None anywhere near Abbey Wood at all. He ran up the stairs and smiled a familiar face. “Ah Colonel James.”
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