A SPOOKY COINCIDENCE..

A  couple of posts ago, I celebrated the fact that 50 years ago on 4th February my National Service came to an end.   Something happened that reminded me of an episode during my ten weeks `basic training` in Catterick Camp.  (Why does the term `basic training` immediately conjur up visions of dogs being put through their paces?)

Anyway, the episode in question was the fact that, after about four weeks of training, we were given a 48 hour leave.   Now, 48 hours wasn`t long enough in those days for me and some others to even attempt to get home and back in time to avoid the dire consequences of arriving late back in Catterick.   So, I along with a fellow `trainee` - one Graham Pollard who hailed from Preston - decided to hitch hike our way across the north Yorkshire moors and see if we could get to the Lake District.   Togged up in our army gear, we didn`t have too much trouble thumbing lifts and we made it as far as Ambleside, where we found Mrs. Miggins Comfy Guest House for the night.

It seemed to Graham and me that the only thing to do in Ambleside on a Saturday evening was to go to the one and only cinema.   The film was `Carry on Sergeant,` the first in the long line of Carry On films.   It wasn`t great and for us trying to escape our National Service for a few hours it wasn`t in the least bit funny. The Guardian`s London film critic, writing on its release in 1959, called it "one of those insular, quite unpretentious skylarks which not infrequently turn out to be goldmines."   He was more easily pleased than we were, especially as our National Service up to that point was anything but an unpretentious skylark.

Next morning we said goodbye to Mrs. Miggins and, fortified by her full English, we began to thumb our way back to Catterick.   Only this time, lifts were few and far between, so Graham rang his Dad in Preston who came and picked us up, treated us to a sumptuous meal in Sedburgh and got us back to camp in time.

And the spooky coincidence?   Well, just a couple of days ago Channel 4 showed....`Carry On Sergeant.`   In the 50 years since I last saw it, it was even less funny than when I saw it in Ambleside, but maybe it was just the memories it brought back that dulled my sense of humour.