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All posts for the month May, 2013

Once Upon A Time in the West Country

Posted by barneyspender on May 20, 2013
Posted in: Sport. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Yeovil_2567071bGreat days for Yeovil Town FC. Gary Johnson’s green and white army walked the Wembley way on Sunday, sent Brentford packing and so booked their place in next season’s Championship – in old money that is the English second division, just one league below the new money of the Premier League.

I don’t know whether to be pleased or not. It is, of course, a great achievement for a club that only joined the Football League in 2002 after 112 years as a non-league club. But success of this nature can bring its problems, most of them financial.

And there is something just not quite right about Yeovil holding hands with the big boys. Back in the day, they were a club of largely local talent, part-timers mostly, who played on a sloping pitch against their big rivals Weymouth or Frome, Bath City or Minehead, occasionally snapping the ankles of the fat cats.

Yeovil v Sunderland

Player-manager Alex Stock scores the late winner as Yeovil beat mighty Sunderland 2-1 on the sloping pitch

That status came about when Alex Stock’s side knocked off high-flying Sunderland in the fourth round of the FA Cup back in 1948-49. They lost in the next round 8-0 to Manchester United but that didn’t halt their status as the great Cup giant-killers.

The first time I went to watch Yeovil was during the 1976-77 season. I saw them a few times that year, usually taken by my mother who was pretty game about going to the footie. Her father, Reginald Cookson, had been a doctor in Bristol through the 1930s and she would often go with him to Ashton Gate or Eastville to watch City or Rovers if he was the medic on call.

He also used to do duty at the County Ground in Bristol when Gloucestershire were playing cricket. I still have some of his old scorecards, featuring his favourite, the great Wally Hammond. My mother told me that she would go with him and take her homework, often being left alone on the bleechers while he went for a pork pie.

She must have been well into 70s when I explained that while pork pies were indeed popular at cricket grounds – often referred to as growlers – the phrase was also a euphemism for going for a pint.

“Ah,” she said. “Yes, come to think of it, he did seem to go for rather a lot of pork pies.”

I would like to say that Yeovil during that 1976-77 season were wonderful but you cannot get away with anything in these Google days. The truth though is that, having missed out by a whisker on election to the Football League at the end of the previous season when they finished second behind Wimbledon, it was midtable mediocrity.

But I don’t really remember the results, just the atmosphere inside the old Huish Park, the ground with the sloping pitch.

There were always two or three thousand there, this in the days when fourth division clubs would be happy to hit four figures.

My mother and I would pay our three quid for a seat in the hard flip-up seats behind the dug-outs. We could have paid a pound to stand behind the goal but that was never quite my mother’s cup of tea. To be in the seats though was hardly to be among the prawn cocktail brigade. Definitely more the pork pie patrol with an army of septuagenarians; presumably they had gravitated from the terraces with the onset of the walking stick, high on cider, adrenalin and a mutual hatred for the man in black.

yeovil_town_fans_150

Back in the day this would have read “Yeovil til the Ref dies”

“They were rather beastly to the referee, weren’t they,” my mother would later explain to bemused friends relatives.

“These funny old men, you wouldn’t think they would say boo to a goose until it started. Then they were hammering their sticks and screaming for them to kill the referee. I really did feel rather sorry for him.”

As she said, their language turned blue and their strategic position at the front of the stand enabled them to batter their walking sticks against the metal safety bars. Every now and then, usually after a mild blasphemy, one or other would turn around, smile at my mother and doff his flat hat in apology. Then turn once more to hurl further abuse at the ref.

Stan Harland was the fans’ favourite at the start of that season. He had come from Swindon as player-manager and almost got them promoted. As a hard-tackling full-back with a worse disciplinary record than Jackie Charlton, Norman Hunter and Chopper Harris combined, he spent more time off the pitch than on it. But the fans were still behind him.

The man with the tan: Stan Harland, once of Swindon, then of Yeovil

The man with the tan: Stan Harland, once of Swindon, then of Yeovil

“Oooooooh, Stan’s got a noice tan,” I remember one woman saying as he led his team out.

“Been out to Spain darlin’, en’t ‘e, for pre-season trainin’,” came her man’s reply.

“Spain? Thassa bit posh ain’t it? Waz wrong wiv a sunbed?”

Stan managed a handy scoop, or so we thought, because he persuaded his old Swindon chum Don Rogers to come to the Town on loan.

I think that was one of the reasons I wanted to go along, to see the ageing Rogers in action. He was a Somerset boy, born in Paulton, and had earned genuine respect for what he had done on the left wing at Swindon, especially when he scored twice in extra-time of the 1969 League Cup final to give them victory over Arsenal (Harland also played in that final). Rogers later went to Crystal Palace and then QPR who were emerging as the most exciting team in the country.

It didn’t last long, just a couple of months, a hip injury and he was back at Swindon, retiring from the game at the end of the season.

The man with the moustache: Don Rogers in his Crystal Palace days

The man with the moustache: Don Rogers in his Crystal Palace days

But there were other big names to savour as well. Jimmy Greaves was one of my heroes but the only time I saw him in the flesh was when he turned out for Barnet on the sloping pitch in Yeovil. Geoff Hurst was another, player manager at Telford United. Greaves and Hurst both did me the honour of scoring although Yeovil won the two games – at least so my memory insists.

Stan’s management style in the end didn’t win him too many friends in the boardroom or the training ground and he was gone within a couple of years.

“Harland was seen by many as a difficult man to work with and the skills he possesses did not always appear to include tact and diplomacy,” wrote Yeovil’s independent supporters’ club after his untimely death at the age of 61 in 2001.

I went to a couple of FA Cup matches with my brother Henry, first a 3-0 defeat by QPR in the late 1980s then, after the club had sacriligeously flogged the sloping pitch to a supermarket chain, another defeat this time by Arsenal at the new ground.

That must be some 20 years ago now, when the Glovers were still a team of part-timers dreaming of the glory days ahead.

Perhaps it is time to return home and catch a glimpse of this new glory. Maybe I will bring my mother, now in her 90s. She doesn’t use a stick but perhaps she could take one anyway so she can rattle the railings and scream bloody murder at the referee.

And maybe, just maybe, we will have a pork pie.

©Barney Spender 2013

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When we were Kids

Posted by barneyspender on May 19, 2013
Posted in: Books, Culture, Greece, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments

Patti Smith has been rattling around my birdcage for a few years now. Last week I read her book Just Kids, which deals with her long friendship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and was reminded yet again of what an enduring talent she is and what a remarkable person.

As I say, we go back a long way. We first made our acquaintance when I was a blinkered 15-year-old and her hairy armpit leapt out at me from the cover of her 1978 album Easter.

The armpits didn’t work for me but the music did. Much of it was too mature for my pea-brain but I was hooked on Because the Night, the single she borrowed from Bruce Springsteen. It was a bit more poppy than the rest of the album which is probably why it appealed to my sachinerined musical tooth.

Since then I have gone back over the Patti catalogue and added many other favourites but, even now, Because the Night conjures up wet afternoons in the fourth form cabins at Pangbourne, Jonny Hanscombe, Gordon Arthur, James Cookson and myself discussing England’s chances against Pakistan and which out of Debbie Harry and Kate Bush we would rather have as a girlfriend. Wishful and unrequited thinking on all our parts.

Patti didn’t figure largely in these conversations. Posters of her never adorned our walls in the way that Debbie and Kate did. Or that perfect crime-fighting trio of Kelly, Jill and Sabrina. Maybe it was her armpits or maybe it was because she never joined the ‘music as sex trade’ game. Patti was serious. And clever. A bit too much for the boys we were.

Fast forward 27 years – a long time for both of us – and our paths finally met in the concourse of Athens International Radio.

The station was sponsoring a gig that she was playing at Lykabettus, a wonderful open air arena carved into the side of the largest mountain in central Athens. As a part of the deal, she came to the station the night before – on July 12, 2005 to be exact – to do a short unplugged session and sip a few glasses of wine with the great unwashed.

My colleague Theo Ioannou had the best of it that night. His show of music and chat ran from 10pm to midnight and Patti agreed to step into the studio to do an unscheduled live interview. Here was no brash pop star high on her own publicity but a measured, thoughtful human being, aware of the world around her and her own small place within it.

In her own handwriting: "People have the power."

In her own handwriting: “People have the power.”

Her daughter Jesse hovered in the background, a gentle unobtrusive minder. My own kids were just three and two at the time and buzzing around like whirling dervishes. Jesse stopped to chat and then Patti also came across to talk kids and family, intrigued like many others to find someone who had made their home in a foreign clime.

She signed a book for me, not one of hers but a 1937 publication History Through ‘The Times’ – a collection of leader articles from the Thunderer since 1800. It sounds odd, I know, but it is a habit I have picked up over the years of asking people to sign whatever book I happen to be reading when we meet.She admired the mottled, dog-eared book.

“It is so important to understand history and learn from it,” she said before producing her fountain pen and inscribing the book. I discovered from Just Kids that she had taught herself calligraphy during those early years she shared knocking around New York with Mapplethorpe and it shows in her hand.

We only chatted a few minutes. She certainly wouldn’t remember it. And even I cannot recall the exact words apart from that one phrase about history. But I caught the impression of this mother figure a quietly spoken little lady with long greying hair. She is 59, I was thinking; fragile. I wondered at the back of my mind whether she was up to performing the following night.

Oh foolishness.

Twenty-four hours on, Patti was up on stage. Or was she? The gentle old lady was gone. In her place was a snarling, barefoot rock chick, chewing her guitar and spitting it out across the groundlings. The atmosphere was electric. Athens is always on the brink of one revolution or another; Patti was like the great preacher as the mountainside roared along to People Have the Power.

And when she sang Because the Night I thought back to those fourth form days with Debbie, Kate and all of Charlie’s Angels with a tear of nostalgia in my eye.

It was a memorable night; I felt as audiences in another century must have felt when they watched Mozart or Beethoven in the flesh. Tingling excitement. Breathless stimulation. Aware they had witnessed and experienced something way beyond the ordinary.

©Barney Spender 2013

Raising a glass of birthday brandy

Posted by barneyspender on May 8, 2013
Posted in: History. Tagged: , , , , , . 6 Comments

spender_2038844fAs I write this, I raise a small glass of brandy and ginger and pronounce a toast to my father, Tony Spender.  He died almost two years ago, in October 2011 but today, May 8, would have been his 93rd birthday, an occasion to be marked by the far-flung clan with several glasses of the hard stuff.

Over the years, his birthday, which he always pointed out was also VE Day, would usually involve one or two of my siblings, and the occasional nephew or niece, taking both of our parents down the short walk to the Kingsdon Inn, a thatched Somerset pub lying next to a village green unchanged over the centuries except for the small children’s playground by the entrance.

And there they would enjoy a birthday meal and a decent bottle of wine, accompanied perhaps by some virulent talk on the fools in Westminster or Brussels. My father would invariably fiddle with his ear trumpet and miss the punchline which would annoy him intensely. But there would be laughter and perhaps a few anecdotes.

Many of my father’s own anecdotes sprung from his adventures as a submarine captain during the Second World War. Those six years, which took him from the age of 19 to 25, were his growing up time, they were scored across his being as if with a branding iron. Even in his later years, when events of yesterday became a touch vague, he could remember events of 70 years earlier with clarity and precision.

One of the best known-stories which I always enjoyed hearing him tell – especially after I had seen the film Morning Departure – was about the time in 1943 when his new submarine HMS Sirdar plummeted to the bottom of the ocean during sea trials and got stuck in the mud.  He wrote about it in his memoirs and it led his obituary in the Daily Telegraph.

The way he told it was always modest, as if events that day had been decreed by the Almighty and that he just got on with his job. And he was lucky that he got it right.

It was only as I grew older that I began to recognise how good he must have been as a leader of men. A submarine full of sailors stuck at the bottom of the ocean staring death in the face. The tension, the atmosphere, it only needed one to crack and surely the rest would follow. And yet he held it together.

“I think there was one fellow who got the wobbles,” he told me. “But we just locked him in my cabin and got on with it.”

Of course, tales of this sort when told among the family can take on a life of their own so it is always interesting to discover an alternate view of the same event. Hence, I was fascinated after his death to find a slim book in his study called More Submarine Memories (published by the Gatwick Submarine Archive, 1997) in which one of the crew of HMS Sirdar, Ben Stokes, gives his view of what happened that day. It isn’t exactly the same as my dad’s view of things but then they had different roles. What is slightly awesome for a son is to read about how his father is viewed by the men he commanded.

Here is an edited version of Ben Stokes’ account, for which I thank him heartily.

 “For those of you who are not Christians, thank God!”

What better end to an ordeal than those words spoken by our CO on the evening of 25th September 1943.

HMS_Sirdar

HMS Sirdar

That morning at 0800, we slipped our wires and set our course to carry out the necessary trials and working up practices to enable us to become operational. Our destination was Loch Ranza off the Isle of Arran to rendezvous with our sparring partner (a motor yacht) to carry out all the necessary evasion and attack programmes laid out to examine the competence of the CO and the crew.

This was the usual procedure with new boats and new crews; for 80 percent of the crew this was going to be their first operational boat, our ages varied, all from different walks of life.

We were in Loch Ranza. Diving stations. I was in the W/T office, my diving station was at the Navigator’s table on the attack log and responsible for Q tank. As I stepped out of the W/T office and into the Control Room, the klaxon sounded. Then it happened. An uncontrolled and unbelievable dive.

With our foreplanes not operating due to some malfunction, we plunged down at an angle, completely out of control, eventually hitting the seabed with some speed at approximately 460ft for’d and 440ft aft. On the way down, due to the angle, all of us in the Control Room were hurled forward to land on a deck that was covered with a few inches of bilge water.

The ERA (Engine Room Artificer) had opened  the main ballast tanks to dive had been unable to shut them. He was thrown towards the Wardroom.

The severity of the plunge caused all the bulk head doors to come off their clips.

It was while I was gripping the aft periscope standard that I had the amazing experience to witness true grit and endeavor at its best. Our Captain had obviously shut the upper hatch and he literally fell from the top of the coning tower to the bottom, arriving in the Control Room with one arm attached to the bottom rung of the Control Room ladder – keeping his balance he stretched over to shut the main vents.

With the two depth gauges in the Control Room flickering the gravity of the situation, we all wondered what we were going to do next.

And that came down to one man.  Our CO. The man in charge.

With the severity of the plunge we had one casualty. Our cook had a nasty leg wound, caused by the bulkhead door coming off its clip. His blood flowed freely as the bilge water but the west country Coxswain eased his pain.

The rest of us assumed our various stations albeit with difficulty. Because of the angle you could not stand upright. You had to hold on to something. Anything.

LITTLE HOPE OF ESCAPE

At this depth we knew there was little hope of escaping with the aid of our trusted DSEA escape apparatus. We awaited to the Captain’s orders. With deliberate intention he called for reports, fore and aft, of any damage. We were relieved to hear that all was in order. He then made clear our position; we were nose first in a sandy bottom, at an angle and at great depth. Our aim now was to loosen ourselves free.

Sirdar 1 001

Members of the crew of HMS Sirdar in the Pacific

“Full astern, both motors,” came the order. But all we heard was a continuous grinding noise. No movement, no relief. The next plan was fire our underwater gun, which was aft. This would at least give those up top an indication of our position, not that they could do anything about it.

More attempts at full astern were all unsuccessful and with time progressing towards midday our Captain issued orders that we should try to relieve some of the weight up for’d by shifting it to the after end. It was here that the crew came into its own. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, we now all had a job to do and that broke the tension. Jokes began to fly, most of them unprintable, about life in the navy. Anything of weight was dragged from the fore ends to aft. Because of the angle, though, most had to be hauled along the deck.

Time passed unnoticed. A few orders were given; full astern but again no movement. Getting on now towards 1700; it seemed a lifetime. But food or drink never entered our heads at any stage. My only thought in moments of silence was the sadness that my wife would experience on the notification of my demise by telegram the following day, September 26th, our first wedding anniversary.

Our Captain now made it plain that he would keep on trying our motors and pumping everything out; that would be our best chance of extricating ourselves. Exhaustion was evident, concern was apparent but faith was in the man in charge. The blowing of the tanks and the grinding of the motors made the atmosphere in the Control Room one of unbelievable hope and expectation.

With the pumping out and the shifting of the weight all went well. Within minutes all eyes were on depth gauges rising rapidly. Relief turned to euphoria. Our ordeal was over; we were on the surface. What a feeling. Words were lost; instead a series of determined handshakes, broad grins and I am sure a few muffled prayers.

Our natural jubilation was halted by the order from Spender.

“Up periscope.”

HMS Sirdar came through its brush with the mud and went to have a distinguished war in the Pacific

HMS Sirdar came through its brush with the mud and went on to have a distinguished war in the Pacific

A swift look around, down periscope. Then without any emotion although visibly relieved, he reminded us all we had to thank Him up top. The Captain then told us that we had mud clinging to our forecasing as aft as our gun platform – it was later found out after our dry dock inspection we had two large rocks embedded in our torpedo apertures.

We returned to our depot ship at approximately 1900 having had a period of 11 hours on the bottom. I can never express fully the relief and jubilation that prevailed throughout the boat.

We had a boat which had performed miraculously at a very deep depth, a captain who kept his cool and a crew now closely knitted together through calamity. Our faith and confidence for the future was centred on one man, our CO. And after 53 years I am still at a loss to understand why there was no recognition of Lt Spender’s courage, resourcefulness and bravery on September 25th 1943.

Like my father, Ben Stokes has also passed away now. But I hope the pair of them and their other shipmates are enjoying an extra brandy in whichever celestial bar they happen to find themselves.

Happy birthday – and cheers!

©Barney Spender 2013

Van Gogh and the Iranian freedom fighters

Posted by barneyspender on May 4, 2013
Posted in: Culture, France. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment
Van Gogh's last self-portrait, sent to his mother as a gift

Van Gogh’s last self-portrait, sent to his mother as a gift

It’s a strange day when you head off for a quiet walk in the country to track the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh and come within a whisker of being frog-marched off to a holding cell behind barbed wire, not to mention a good beating.

It all happened last Sunday. A family walk with friends up the river at Auvers-sur-Oise, a few miles to the north of Paris.

A hint of rain, a sliver of sun, a picnic in the backpack, a stately line of cypress trees, the dogs and kids running ahead to check out the swans and the ducks, the paunchy journalist bringing up the rear. A merry band indeed.

The purpose: to find out more about the town and area where Vincent van Gogh spent the last three months of his life. It was in Auvers on July 27, 1890 that he put a revolver to his chest and fired the fatal bullet.

He was a better painter than marksman to be sure. No swift suicide (if it was indeed suicide for in 2011 came a suggestion that Vincent had not in fact shot himself, but that two boys with a misfiring gun had pulled the trigger); instead the bullet ricocheted off a rib and lodged in his spine. It took two days for him to shuffle off his mortal coil.

DSC00248

Vincent and Theo lie side by side in the cemetry in Auvers (Photo: B Spender)

His brother Theo died of illnesses caused by syphilis six months later and is buried alongside Vincent in Auvers.

The cemetery was just one of our stops. Another was the house where Vincent expired and the church that he immortalised in paint. The town of Auvers has traded well on a painter who spent just three months there – a museum of absinthe has also claimed its place among the drifting lanes.

The day, though, belonged to another less than merry band of spycatchers who appeared from nowhere to pounce on me along the riverbank.

One of our fellow walkers, who lives in Auvers, had explained that along our path was the house where the last Shah of Iran lived in exile after his fall from power in 1979. I was under the impression he had spent his time buzzing around the USA getting treatment for his cancer, Morocco, Mexico and Egypt where he is buried.

Be that as it may, I am a sucker for what you might call “living” history. Iran remains very much in the forefront of the world’s news and so I was able to use the Shah as a pretext to explain to the kids what had happened there in the 1970s. And what is happening now. They laugh at the thought of a president called Ahmadinnerjacket but rush back to join the dogs and the ducks.

DSC00246

The church at Auvers with van Gogh’s version alongside (Photo: B Spender)

Until we reach the residence with its long, high walls topped with barbed wire, lights and, unseen by me at the time, security cameras. Just over the wall, we could pick out the sloping roof and top floor of a grand residence.

“It’s like a prison,” they said.

“Well, I suppose it was,” I replied. “A man in exile, fearful for his life, barricades himself into his palace. In spite of all his money, he doesn’t have any freedom. He can’t just walk along the riverbank like us.”

The kids nod, a moment in thought. And then screech and chase each other with the sticks they have picked up along the way. The dogs start barking and games of Tag and Fetch begin simultaneously up ahead.

A house that is interesting for its history, I thought. Maybe I can put in a line about it if/when I blog about this lovely day out following van Gogh (or Gog, as the French prefer to say). And so, as my colleagues walked ahead, I fetched out the camera and lined up a shot of wall, wire and rooftop. Just one. Nothing special. Then returned the camera to its case.

Before I had stepped three paces, a sidedoor had opened and a man slithered out, walkie-talkie in hand and approached me.

“Bonjour,” he greeted me.

“Bonjour.”

“You just took a photograph.”

The Shah and Empress Farah shortly before leaving Iran in 1979 during the height of the Iranian revolution.

The Shah and Empress Farah shortly before leaving Iran in 1979 during the height of the Iranian revolution.

“Yes, fascinating place. I understand the Shah lived here.”

“No, not the Shah. But you are not permitted to take pictures.”

Generally, I am quite amenable to people’s requests but I took umbrage at the man’s aggressive tone.

“Who says?” I asked.

“We don’t allow it.”

“Who is we? Are you with the gendarmes?”

“No, I am not police but you are not allowed to take photos.”

“But who says? Do you have some kind of ID? Are you with French state security? Who are you?”

I thought it best during this exchange and throughout all that followed not to mention that I was a journalist.

He didn’t answer me, just began talking into his walkie-talkie. Not in French but, I guessed, in Persian. Within moments another three men appeared from the magic door and the four of them formed a circle around me.

A different one spoke, slightly younger than the others, a scar just under his left ear.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Where are you from?” I returned.

“Why are you taking photos here?”

“Why don’t you want me to take photos here?”

A pause before the scar tried again.

“You are English aren’t you?” he asked in English, adopting a softer tone.

“As it is yes, I am. And you are Iranian, are you?”

“I know England very well. I was a student in Newcastle. I lived in Bristol and Manchester. I know it very well.”

“Good stuff. Wish I could say the same about Iran but I haven’t ever been. ”

“Please, we don’t like people taking pictures. For security reasons.”

“So who lives here then? The son of the Shah?”

DSC00216

The cypress trees of Auvers along the banks of the Oise, as real for van Gogh as for the Iranian opposition (Photo: B Spender)

“No, not the Shah. No. We are the official opposition, the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran). We are fighting against the government of Iran. They have people who are trying to do us damage and we have to be careful about our security. That is why we cannot allow you to take pictures.”

There are moments when the fight is worth fighting and there are moments when it really doesn’t seem terribly important. I suspect the Iranian secret service know perfectly well where the opposition is so I didn’t believe the security aspect of their argument but even so this one just didn’t seem important. It was a pretty lousy picture anyway. Besides I was reading John Le Carré at the time and had visions of my ending up gagged and blindfolded in a cardboard box while my co-walkers continued along the riverbank blissfully unaware of the drama unfolding behind them.

“I see. Well, I certainly don’t want to put anyone in jeopardy (not least my family, I thought). So I will gladly delete it. The only problem is that this is a new camera and I don’t actually know how it works. I will have to get my daughter to do it.”

Feeble as it sounds, this was absolutely true. As a technophobe, I need a good couple of hours with the instruction manual before I can do anything. My children need five minutes and no manual.

“No, I am sorry. We cannot allow that. We have to delete it now.”

“Well, as I said, I don’t know how to. It is a new camera and I am not going to let you take it away. I give you my word that it will be deleted and that it will not be shared anywhere.”

“No. We have a man who understands these things.”

More talking on the walkie-talkies and a fifth man appears through the magic door, this one twice the size of the others put together. Immense but smiling which is always a touch sinister. I definitely wasn’t going to argue although I did warn him that he had better be careful.

“There are a lot of family pictures on there and some films. You delete those and you will have to answer to my wife. She’s Welsh and a lot scarier and tougher than me.”

The giant didn’t look unduly concerned about the prospect of a Gallic onslaught as he delicately worked the buttons on the camera which was like a toy in his bucket hands.

Not quite van Gogh but roughly what this is how the forbidden photo looked

Not quite van Gogh but roughly what this is how the forbidden photo looked (Image: B Spender)

“This one,” he said.

“That is it. Like I said, just the one picture.”

The giant pressed the Erase button and then Confirmed.

Smiles all around; suddenly their anxiety was lifted and we were all chums, apparently united in the war against the regime in Iran. I kept my mouth shut.

“So,” said the scar as I made to move off. “This is our embassy. You can come in if you like. Would you like a coffee? Good Iranian coffee.”

I will admit to feeling confused by this swift transition from public enemy number one, the master spy angling to bring down the opposition in exile, to brother in arms. Had I been a spy, I imagine I would have seen a lot more from inside the compound. But maybe they still suspected me and were trying to lure me into that cardboard box which could then be dumped from 30,000 feet over the Persian Gulf.

I declined politely, explaining that while an Iranian coffee would be absolutely perfect, I had to catch up with my family and my friends. I wished them good luck in their political endeavours and marched off along the riverbank.

Van Gogh was waiting.

Barney Spender 2013