Whatever happened to.. -part 2

When memories begin to re-surface you start wanting physical evidence, you want more.. well i do anyway. Reliving the old Singapore days was a great feeling, i found myself back there in my dreams because there was no where else to go with these memories after exhausting them all via emails with Andrew. Vivid dreams where it felt i was actually back there walking the streets (always at night) exploring the kampong of Nee Soon, trying to remember the route the school bus took to Woodlands (and telling the driver he was going the wrong way) walking around the pool on Nee Soon army camp.

All memorabilia came out of my camphor wood chest. You remember those, the ornately hand carved boxes with a hinged lid found anywhere in Singapore back in the day. The aroma of camphor rises when you lift that lid. I call it my treasure chest, because, well, it holds all my treasures. Things i've held on to over the years, which isn't an easy thing to do when your Mother wants to keep your chattel and effects to a minimum for the many moves you will make as any good serviceman wife did. Out came photos and school reports, little Singapore nick knacks i'd been given as gifts by my sisters, a swimming trophy .... anything i could find.

My swimming trophy, i looked at it, the only real award i ever won. I remembered the day i got it, the only person still at the Nee Soon Camp pool when it was handed to me was Glen Mooney and he even took a photo. Ahh..the pool. We loved the pool, it was our place to meet and swim to cool down in the tropics. I thought about our group as we were as kids. I belonged to the older group, the teenagers, small exclusive group we were with our own area right up the back of the pool grounds. We had 4 tables to choose from which we sat at most days after school, most weekends and certainly every day during the school holidays. One of those teenagers who was almost always someone who could be seen at the pool was Glen Mooney.

Glen was the oldest boy of the Nee Soon camp kids. He was a tall 16 year old boy, friendly face, polite, considerate and funny. Always felt safe around Glen and he was always good company, even if we had to suffer through listening to his Black Sabbath or Rainbow cassettes while he played pretend drums beating on the concrete table we sat at and told us how Ritchie Blackmore formed the band after leaving Deep Purple. Not something a teeny bopper 13 year old girl wants to listen to, we'd screw up our noses at it and he'd just laugh.

Those memories came back and i wondered whatever happened to Glen. My family left Singapore to go home to Australia before Glen's family but we kept in touch with letters for a few years after. He went home to New Zealand in 78 so i was kept up to date with what had happened at school after i left, his new school back home and his first job but i didn't know what had happened after that. We had lost contact which is something easy to do when you move around like a brat does, new addresses all the time.

I started to feel the need to find Glen to continue this travel back in time i found myself in, where in the world do i start? Back then there was a IM program called ICQ (i seek you) which had a search feature. Type in a name and if they are using ICQ with details of their full name and location and you might come up with something. Glen Mooney isn't a common name, surely there is only one in New Zealand. I gave it a shot, and there was only one so i sent a message. "Did you go to school in Singapore and do you remember a girl named Jo Rendle?"

It took a few weeks, maybe a month, before i got a response. I checked every day, and finally a message - it was him. I'd found Glen.

The lost brat had awakened after contact with Andrew, now i was catching up with someone who knew me as a girl and remembered me. Remembered more of the same things i did because we were in Singapore at the same time and we knew the same people. We shared the same table at the pool..we shared Ritchie bloody Blackmore.

If finding my first adult brat of Singapore was overwhelming, it was nothing in comparison to finding Glen. The last time i saw him was my last day at the pool, next day we had to leave for the hotel where we stayed overnight before flying out the morning after. It was school holiday time, just after Christmas but monsoon season so no-one was there, but Glen was there, in the rain.

It was appropriate that he was the first person from our days to catch up with again when he was the last person i had seen that day before we left  Nee Soon. We talked and talked for hours over the weeks, months, about the old days and he had stories of school brats, where they were and what had happened to them since. More and more memories surfaced and greater became the my need to do something with them, about them. The question was...what?