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The Ravenhills [Wellington, 1947] What was it about them made my mother their friend, my father suspicious? Family friends, I sensed for the first time, could make for fraught long silences at home. Off you go, visit them, he must have said. This she must fit in between home duties not to be ignored. So the evening meal was on the hob by noon. The quick electric train and tram got us there. What was their home? Did they have one? Not quite - their job was in the Air Force base - high wire gates, a sentry-box, no planes, no air-field even - huts. One was the canteen run by the Ravenhills. Hence his blue serge suit. Their voices! - my first ever from the North of England - sang of cosiness, luv. Why so far from home? The war was over, New Zealand had small need of airmen, aircraft, canteens, portly folk keeping the tea-urn hot. Mrs R and Mum put heads together for long gossips, intertwined fortunes, others’ misfortunes. Mr R minded things. No airmen came in. Childless, he didn’t know how to talk to kids; put on music: Gracie Fields sang about Capri; cheeky George Formby had a ukelele cleaning windows. I saw myself in a cockpit. Rockfist Rogan and I crash-landed our Spitfires nearby. I pretended I could play billiards - against myself, no contest. If Dad had come, he’d have taught me how to wield the heavy cue. He’d have driven us home. Trams nor trains nor Ravenhills, none of them were for him. Mum said: they’re finishing up. Nowhere in the world to go. Vera Lynn sang me home to my own little room again.