Sunny and warm days were forecast
for the whole week following a fortnight of miserable, cold and wet weather snap.
We felt that we must take advantage of this dry break and take a holiday. The menacing
pandemic is still simmering, the possibility of another lockdown, though small
is always there. This threat of impending prohibition made the desire to enjoy
this opportune freedom rather compulsive.
The complexities of choosing
a safe holiday destination did not dampen the desire. Going abroad even to a
nearby European destination needs a lot of organising and is riddled with
uncertainties so we decided to stay in the country.
After considering a few
places we finally chose the historic naval city of Portsmouth. It evoked a
nostalgic feeling. I did my first job* there in in 1977 when I came to UK and
have not been there since.
It is a relatively quieter
city and the incidence of covid 19 in this part of the country is relatively low.
It is only about two to three hours journey by car so we would avoid travelling
by public transport.
To keep the risks down we
chose to stay in a small countryside bed and breakfast which catered for only a
few guests at a time.
I was excited and enthusiastic as we reached the city, kept on reminiscing to Bibha about my stay there. In the city I went near the area where I had stayed. I did not recognise anything around St Mary’s Hospital where I worked all that time ago. It has changed so much. The hospital is now a community hospital instead of a busy district hospital of my memory’s past. It is irrational but I felt let down.
To be honest I was there only for two and a
half weeks and my whole attention was to overcome the anxiety of being in an alien
place and at the same time trying to impress my colleagues with my work, and bed-manners at the hospital. I don’t think I paid much attention to the surroundings and forty years have passed since. My memories were probably more a product of my brain’s imagination and editing
over time as it always happens with long term memories.
When we went to the waterfront at the harbour it was the same story, everything was different. There were now many multi-storey buildings with gleaming glass fronts. It looked highly commercialised. One can not even enter the historic harbour area without buying a ticket let alone see the famous ships. I had bought the tickets online to avoid queuing. Strolling in the harbour we came to the most elegant ship there, HMS Victory made famous by its participation as the flag ship of Lord Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar more than 200 years ago. My only sightseeing in Portsmouth in 1977 was a visit to HMS Victory! I and Bibha went abode the ship.
Once inside the ship I suddenly felt a strange sense of being there, seeing and touching various artefacts and hearing the description. I did not remember or recognise these things in the usual sense. I had only seen them for a few minutes 44 years ago! But I felt an odd familiarity, not nostalgic but a kind of Déjà vu-ish. In one of the lower decks, in spite of all the warning notices I hit my head on a beam on the low ceiling. I remembered that I did this in 1977 too!
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| Ship surgeon's table and tools |
For next two days we visited many famous sites in the town and strolled on a few beaches, did a bit of shopping in the large new mall (Gunwharf Quays) and went up the 170m tall Spinnaker Tower for a spectacular view of the bay from 150 meters up.
We drove back home, luckily
traffic was not bad. We both were tired but strangely felt happier and fresh.
That’s what a holiday is for. Isn’t it?
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| Where else can one sit on a torpedo but at a naval base. |
*Actually, it was my “attachment”. It was a mandatory paid assessment period where an overseas doctor was attached to a hospital unit for up to four weeks. Only on its successful completion one could get a training doctor job in the National Health Service.
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| View of the harbour from the top of Spinnaker Tower |
