F e a t u r e s


Diary of a Dependant…


Susie Wakeham - Dawson I


t was my fault; I saw the advert for RAF Chaplains in the Church Times and suggested to my husband that since we were living on a


boat on the Thames with one baby and another en route, this might be worth investigating.


The next thing I knew, it was February, I was living on a boat on the Thames with one toddler and one newborn baby and no heating… Andrew, meanwhile, rang up from Cranwell to tell me what a good time he was having and that he had a cleaner. At this point I was feeding the baby on and off until 3 am and the other was waking at 4 am. I soon threw all my middle-class morals to the wind and taught the toddler how to turn the television on and watch videos until 6 am.


Late February saw me selling, Mary, the boat we were living on, and learning that we were posted to RAF Wittering, (and thankfully quite near – but not too near! – my family).


March 8. To visit Wittering with my Dad. I think that this is where I first wrote the word DEPENDANT on a form at the gate – sorry, guardroom… At the house we were met by a positive posse of padres, all talking in another language about guardrooms, messes, passes (but never messy passes!), indulging (in a large glass of red wine?), marching in (I didn’t think marching was something dependants had to learn), quarters (give me halves any time), warrants, etc – not to mention SFAs, SSAFA, HIVE, DE - I just smiled a lot and thanked goodness I had the children as a visible and highly audible excuse for my befuddled state.


We also visited the local nursery and got Humphrey, the toddler, registered. I love my children but am not one of those mothers who weep as they say goodbye to


their children (on Humph’s first day of school, a couple of years later, one mother asked me if I had the tissues ready… ‘Tissues?’ I said, ‘I’ve got a bottle of bubbly waiting at home!’).


March 24. Moving off the boat. A fireman friend and his mate had said they’d help with a van. They seriously underestimated just how much you can get on a narrowboat if you try. Late that afternoon they were still running up and down the gangplank, which was by now almost vertical, since the tide had gone out. I think it was the flowerpots that nearly broke them… My challenge that day had been to arrange things so that they would be able to get into the base at Wittering without me. I think one had formal ID but the other didn’t – but by sheer chance he was on the list for access to the base because he was a Northamptonshire fireman. Phew.


March 26. My sister took the toddler for the weekend, and Andrew was out from Cranwell for the weekend. Two fantastically bossy friends arrived to help us unpack; after my living for nearly 10 years on a boat they were convinced that I would be unable to do anything logical in the kitchen. They were probably right and I left them to it. There’s a time when being hopeless is the only way forward. (One of the enduring legacies from living afloat is an inability to stack anything in any way that might topple when a wind gets up or the naughty river taxi comes hurtling past.)


March 28. Collect Humphrey from a service station somewhere near the M4.


March 29. Andrew returns to Cranwell.


March 30. Yes! Humphrey goes to pre-school for an afternoon.


April 7. I meet two of my neighbours. I am introduced to The Social List – which sounds pretty odd to my virgin ears. It is, in fact, an incredibly useful and friendly document, updated monthly, with the names, jobs, addresses, phone numbers, and ages (of children only!) of all my neighbours. So one of my two new friends had seen that I was arriving with similar aged boys to hers and promptly came calling! These two and I are still good friends today – we have an annual camping holiday somewhere in the UK.


I have learnt that it does not do to wait around to make friends when you move as often as we do. In civilian life one might wait a respectable few weeks before extending the hand of friendship to other mums in the playground, or other ‘dependants’ on the patch, but in service life time is a luxury you do not have. Before you know it that mum in the park who you thought looked like a potential friend has moved. Or you have. So I’ve found that with each move my ‘settling in’ skills have increased in speed. My


Winter 2007 13


April 1. An inauspicious day for Andrew’s passing out parade and ball at Cranwell. The logistics of this one nearly finished me off – although looking back, how lucky we were to be near to Cranwell. I can’t imagine how much more complicated things could have been. I’d managed to find a babysitter, and booked her in for most of the day and half the night.


My Dad was coming for the parade bit. The only two things I really remember was the awful moment when we saw Andrew for a fleeting second before the parade and I pointed at his very, very, very shiny shoes with my toe – unfortunately just touching them… Whoops! I learnt a thing or two about ‘bulling’ in the words that followed. The other was a moment of huge satisfaction for my Dad, an ex-Coldstreamer, who observed that he’d always known the RAF couldn’t march for toffee and they were all out of step. This wasn’t quite true but hey – it gave him great pleasure!


As for the ball – terrifying! I didn’t know one end of a mess from another, one rule from another. I simply couldn’t get the hang of gambling without hard cash being involved, spent most of the evening pulling in my post-pregnant stomach and I was nervous that my skirt, half of which was floor length and half of which was nearer the knee and definitely revealed ankles. (It’s made out of large silk handkerchiefs – or does scarves sound more elegant), was not regulation ball-wear.


April 6. Henry is 12 weeks old, we’re still in the midst of selling the boat, and Humph weeps at night and says he doesn’t like living in a house and wants to go back to the boat... Andrew is enjoying his job.


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