40s and 50s Memories
9
Myself and Romeo, my other head waiter in Saudi
I signed a two year contract to work for the
Royal Saudi Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh.
This hospital, the largest in the Middle East,
had within it's confines a leisure centre with
an indoor swimming pool, ten-pin bowling, a
theatre and a 110 seat à la carte restaurant
which catered for the 45 different nationalities
that worked there. I was appointed Restaurant
Manager having 12 Sri Lankan waiters and
five chefs. The menus were changed every
three months and the restaurant had to break
even. International medical symposiums were
regularly held, with catering provided for up to
400 guests.
The catering team, Royal Saudi Armed Forces Hospital
I extended my contract for 6 months and though
my Saudi manager pleaded with me to extend
for another year, returned to the UK, to be
nearer my family, a reason that he understood.
I have since managed a country hotel near
Minehead, and a restaurant in Watchet. About
nine years ago, I contracted cancer of the
oesophagus from which I recovered after a nine hour operation. Having heart surgery two years
later I felt it was time to 'wind down' a little and
ever since I have been employed as a Health
Care Assistant, caring for patients in their own
homes, many of them suffering from terminal
illness.
2014 - Healthcare
Assistant
At the age of 73, I'm still going strong, playing
badminton and tennis, and consider myself
very lucky, being married with four children,
now grown up and eight grandchildren. What
a life! And I do owe much to my time at King's,
and the independence it gave me.
B.E.P. BLYTH
Woodard 1940
Bryan Blyth left King's and Woodard as House
Prefect in 1940. His Housemaster initially was
the Revd. Chester-Master and later Mr. S. J.
Fulton. He is modest about his achievements
at school, but recalls particularly that after the
outbreak of World War II in 1939 he and a fellow
pupil, a farmer's son, undertook to develop and
maintain an egg production unit as part of the
school's food production initiative. When his
fellow pupil left the school, he continued on
his own under the guidance of Mr. Fulton. His
experience in the school's OTC had prepared
him to make an immediate contribution to the
country's war effort on leaving King's.
Of his later life he writes:
I was a pupil at King's from 1936 to 1940, and
thus left school entering adult life in a country at
war. I had learnt the Morse Code in the Officers'
Training Corps (OTC) at school which helped
me to become an interceptor radio operator
immediately afterwards, intercepting enemy