DAVID BENTATA

LOVE IN MONTREAL (part 1) 1967 was a wonderful year for me in many ways. But this chapter really started in 1964. In these early 1960s Gibraltar was the port of call for two liners that I can remember, the MV Dunera was one of them. What was special about these trips to Gibraltar, was the "Questors". As far as I can tell they had as passengers, a senior school youth group organised by the Canadian Department of Education of Montreal and an anonymous millionaire who paid for the trip to Europe of a chosen few students as part of a cultural education, visiting Europe. They all dressed very smart, with red blazers and their crests, white shirts, grey trousers fir the boys and skirts for the girls. The students were given the usual Rock Tour, supervised by a couple of teachers and this took most of their one-day stay. Later they were allowed free to flavour the real Gibraltar by themselves. Those of us guys who knew the day the liner was arriving would get ourselves ready with ou...

  CONSCRIPTION When I turned 18 I was called up for conscription. Now whatever you hear about the intakes of the Gibraltar Regiment (GR), & also by its previous name, Gibraltar Defense  Force (GDF), all the stories that you have heard, half of them are untrue and the other half are exaggerations of a possible truth. But most of the stories, fact or fiction, make for good jokes over reminiscent drinks with old soldiers everywhere in the world. If you have been reading the previous chapters you will know that I was a bad asthmatic as well as having a bad leg. Obviously when I went for my medical, I was pronounced medically unfit and excused conscription. What! My friends were going up to be soldiers and I was not? No way! I requested "Volunteer Status" and managed to get myself in with the 29th intake after signing waivers that were I to die, the Regiment would accept no liability for my stupidity. A couple of days later we were gathered at the boulevard ( la ...

    GETTING   TO GRIPS I must confess that by the age of 15-16 I was just a brat! Those who knew me then would agree, those who know me now are smiling ruefully thinking "You bloody well still are!" As you may have read in previous chapters I was very much a bullfighting aficionado. In those days, the 1960s, there used to be a very good and popular bullfighter from La Linea called Carlos Corbacho. His rivals were Miguelin from Algeciras and El Cordobes, obviously from Cordoba. I really cannot remember how but at one of the Corridas in La Linea, Carlos tossed the bull's ear he had won as a trophy for a particularly good " faena ", to me. This I treasured for a long time. Of the 3 bullfighters mentioned he, Carlos, was by far the most elegant…. if rather dull. El Cordobes was a rising star and an innovator with some of his passes. Miguelin was the darling of many, yet despite already with a good career, he would snap the “banderillas” into just half thei...

  PRIMA FANNY I had a cousin, a lady called Fanny Benady. Well, not really my cousin, sort of my mother's cousin once removed..... or something like that ... anyway she was the cousin of my maternal grandfather and she lived in Governors Parade.  She was an elderly spinster and lived on the third floor of a building next to the old Theatre Royal. It was always a bit of an effort those tea-time sessions with Mum, Prima Fanny (who even had a lady in waiting employed) and myself. I think the age gap between Prima Fanny and I had enough years for a whole new programme by David Attenborough. We are talking about the mid-1950s. I was just a kid then. TV had not been invented and there were no games to play at Prima Fanny's  while the ladies chatted and had tea and home-made cakes, discussing various recipes with great enthusiasm. Meanwhile back in my own Lonesome Land I would trance out having already learnt it was a home with no comics either. As you can imagine, one day...