Enigma

There’s a story here; two in fact.

Anniemay thinks I could do with some fresh air and suggests a walk round Bletchley Park. It’s packed; partly half term, but also lots of visitors of a certain age, all, I guess with some sort of connection to this place.

We’re lucky being local and have a year’s pass, so we can afford to come for a stroll and discover the place at our leisure and in chunks, rather than have to pack in the full Bletchley Park Experience in one visit.

I’ve been here before, in a previous life, when Bletchley Park had a previous life.

In the 1960s it was the site of a training school for the GPO. I was a young, fresh-face telecoms engineer and came here, aged 17 for some …. training.

The flat-roofed buildings which now house the wartime exhibits, were dormitories and classrooms for a couple of hundred 17-year old lads away from home for 4 weeks, with a pub just outside the main gates and plenty of unsupervised leisure time.

The buildings are almost unrecognisable in their fresh paint, but I can still remember some of the things we got up to. I have no idea how, but one night we managed to get a Mini on to the roof of one of the buildings.

Another time the Pretty Things (anyone remember the Pretty Things?) were playing in the local dance hall and a crowd of us had gone to see them. The local motorcycle gangs took great exception to this and declared war on the park. It was mostly fighting by shouting - “my Dad’s bigger than your Dad” - sort of thing but frightening enough for those who had led a sheltered life up to that point. An alternative Bletchley Park experience.

I’m explaining all this to Anniemay and she’s still trying to work out how the Mini got on the roof. Blocks and tackles? I don’t know, but I do remember a lot of beer was involved.

This is one of the buildings - it might even have been the very one. It’s all a bit vague now. On reflection, it’s all a bit of mystery. An enigma.