Matthew Parris Matthew Parris

The secret excitement that lurks beneath our distress

Something about the word ‘bomb’ has always thrilled me, and I know why. No school today.

In the 1950s we lived in Nicosia, Cyprus, when the island was a British colony and Greek Cypriot terrorists were trying to kill us. Our house was near a big army camp and our Cypriot neighbours were friendly, so home felt protected. It never occurred to me, just starting school, that proximity to the military was not a guarantee of security; and it never occurred to Mum and Dad that our neighbours had a small bomb factory, later discovered underneath their chicken house; so indoors seemed safe.

But outdoors was different. Our parents, apparently anticipating by about half a century the casual use of improvised explosive devices, issued the sternest of warnings about kicking old tin cans we found lying around. They might be bombs. To this day I eye any rusty old tin with suspicion. I never wanted to be blown up myself. I didn’t want Dad to be shot, either, as some British businessmen had been; and we worried a bit about Mum, a continuity announcer for the Forces Broadcasting Service — voted by the troops as ‘Miss Pussy Voice 1957’ — who was taken to the studios in a military vehicle and said the armed 18-year-old squaddie who escorted her seemed more nervous than she. We did worry lest she come to harm.

‘I’m dreading them closing the schools.’

But other people? They were just other people. We didn’t know them. And when a bomb went off, reported on the wireless, it was always somewhere else. And when a few bombs went off — three cheers! — the newsreader would announce that all schools were to be temporarily closed. At the very word ‘bomb’ on the radio I would prick up my ears.

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