After spending three nights with DMs folks last week, (and with only a single night at home before coming back 'upcountry') it’s now my family’s turn to put up with my fretting and worrying. I’m staying with my folks tonight so I can be conveniently placed for an early morning meeting tomorrow, only a few miles from their Buckinghamshire home.

When I arrived here, I hadn’t got a picture yet and my Dad was looking at me funny as I wandered around with my camera in my hand looking puzzled….as if to say ‘you dare point that thing at me’. Mind you, given that he has boxes and boxes of pics of me and my little sis from his days as a photography enthusiast I think it’s a bit rich really.

Anyway, this clock was his idea for a subject so I thought I’d tell tale of my Mum and Dad’s infamous gangland criminal past!!!!

This clock is the last remaining spoil of ‘the egg racket’. The ‘egg racket’ gang was a dastardly criminal gang of which my folks were leading members. Picture the scene – an RAF base in the Middle East – several thousand ex-pat Brits all desperately trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life, despite being in a far away land.

There were rules – no drinking/buying the water – everyone broke that one, we used to buy huge oil-drum-like vats of water from a local chap and they stood on huge wooden stands in the kitchens of every home.

One of the other rules was that all eggs were ‘injected’ – don’t ask me what with – it was something to stem the ravages of the intense heat and stop them from going rotten. The trouble was, they tasted rank – a sort of vinegary nasty taste that wouldn’t go away when you’d finished eating them.

So, the air crews used to smuggle in fresh eggs from home and my folks, along with ‘Uncle Tony’ and ‘Auntie Shirley’ (not real rellies but in those days respected elders all got the name ‘Uncle’ or Aunt’). When the eggs arrived on base, my folks would deliver them to half the homes on the base and Uncle Tony and Auntie Shirley did the remaining ones. This was STRICTLY against the rules and they could have been court-martialled had they been found out. Mind you, I think the base’s commanding officer was a customer so I think that was pretty unlikely!

We had an old Austin Westminster with leather seats that the boxes were stacked up on and transported around the married quarters.

When we left the base, my parents were given this clock by Uncle Tony and Auntie Shirley as a momento from their days as smugglers in the ‘egg racket’. They may have been smugglers but everyone on camp loved them for it.

They have long-since ceased to be a couple but we are still in touch with both of them and their two remaining children. Their son Kenny, my age, died about fifteen years ago in a freak accident and his body lay unfound for the best part of a week. We all went to his funeral on a bleak, cold day in the North East though I can’t even remember the town.

In one of the most bizarre twists of fate I've encountered since doing this diary, I mentioned Uncle Tony and Auntie Shirley in my post on this day last year.....I doubt they've ever appeared more than that once. The year before, DM was in a scandalous threesome while my back was turned!!!