Vol. 21 No. 19 · 30 September 1999
pages 11-16 | 9948 words

Untold Stories
Alan Bennett
There is a wood, the canal, the river and above the river the railway and the road. It’s the first proper country that you get to as you come north out of Leeds and going home on the train I pass the place quite often. Only these days I look. I’ve been passing the place for years without looking because I didn’t know it was a place; that anything had happened there to make it a place, let alone a place that had something to do with me. Below the wood the water is deep and dark and sometimes there’s a boy fishing or a couple walking a dog. I suppose it’s a beauty spot now. It probably was then.
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Letters
Vol. 21 No. 21 · 28 October 1999
From Geoffrey Elliott
Alan Bennett refers to a defining moment in his life when, in the closing days of his National Service, he was ordered to clean a urinal with his bare hands at the Intelligence Corps Depot at Maresfield (LRB, 30 September). I trudged the same route as Bennett a few years later on the way back to normal life from the Army Russian Course, and found myself having to perform the same ritual cleansing, with the minor saving grace that I was given a razor-blade with which to work and the major inconvenience that my work was disturbed halfway through by the Commanding Officer insouciantly using the next stall.
It would be interesting to know if this was some special rite of passage reserved by the Corps's drill sergeants for 'those poncy linguists' who tended to look down on the common soldiery, or a more widely practised military chore. I am preparing a history of the National Service Russian Course and any light your readers can shed on this ordeal by water or any other arcane experiences of the Corps or the Course they can share with me would be appreciated.
Geoffrey Elliott
Villa Cliff<br />32 Knapton Estates Road<br />Smiths FLO8 Bermuda