Posted by ACB on September 01, 2001 at 16:53:05 from 195.93.33.173:
In Reply to: Re: Jim Turner's earlier life posted by Patrick Newman on August 20, 2001 at 07:49:31:
Oxford's winning streak in 1909-13 fits well with Jim Turner remembering the 1895 freezing of the lake.
Jim would probably have been involved in WW1, such a thing would not call for comment since most men were involved unless medically unfit or in a reserved occupation. AR was not in the forces because (a) he would have failed any Forces eyesight test even if he passed the rest of the medical and (b) in any case he was in Russia, where he was considerably more use!
I have a different theory about Bob Blackett's death; I think that the "chronology" of SA is out of line with the rest of the series and the AR, remembering the actual holiday on the lake with the Altounyan children, set SA in 1927 or 28. He had to adjust it when a sequel became a possibility and he sat down to write SD, and there are several places where "the gears clash" as a result, such as Vicky/Bridget. But Bob Blackett in SA had died in WW1!
It would have been far from unusual for children to have lost a father in the Great War; a great many did. The counter-argument is that in SA the Amazon's father is just absent like the Swallows' father; not until SD is his death remarked on.
Colonel Jolys, remembered as a child by the GA, might not be very much younger than her; she might be remembering him as a toddler when she was a "grown up" ten year old! In which case, plenty of opportunity for colonial wars as well as WW1. Winston Churchill, for example, managed to fit in Omdurman and the Boer War.
Perhaps Jim Turner, on going down from Oxford, took a post with an Eastern firm, maybe he became a rubber planter for a bit, or maybe he was doing something which involved a lot of travel in the East.
However, we should not overlook the most obvious explanation for his gadding about the globe; that, like AR, he became a journalist!
Journalism was not "respectable", really, when compared with, eg. the Indian Civil, so, like my own grandfather (Reuters, 1890's onwards) he would have been labelled a "black sheep" by his family.