Return to the Falklands
LANDING ON the Falkland Islands, in the years after the war ended, was like being escorted through a time warp, back to a Britain that used to be, where front gardens were neat, pubs didn’t have big screens, a corner shop sold everything, and a single red phone box was scrubbed clean with all its glass intact.
‘Escorted’ is the right word for it, by the way.
On its final approach to Port Stanley, the TriStar flight from RAF Brize Norton would be flanked by jet fighters, one on each wing, edging so close that nervous civilians among the passengers could see the pilots grinning at them with a bit of Biggles bravado, a reminder that the battles might be over but threat was still hanging in the air, as if the Argentinians might suddenly try it again.
A little bit of the place had changed, just slightly, each time I visited.
The corner shop grew into a small supermarket, mobile phones and the internet arrived, a few more of the old minefields had been cleared, and the last time I was there they had a scheme for a traffic roundabout on a new stretch of road outside Stanley, though only the gods of planning knew why, because there was barely
