Decades of memories

111115PBAuret John Auret, at 101, takes each birthday as it comes, as well as a nightly whisky and water. PICTURE / PAUL BROOKS

John Auret turned 101 on November 8; it just happened, like every other birthday he has ever had. On that date, John celebrated a life well lived and a century-plus of memories and experiences that modern generations can only dream of. He is of a different time, almost a different culture.
His accent speaks of Empire - the one on which the sun shall never set - and his face tells a silent story of years spent under foreign suns. His hands are bony but unmarked, long fingers graced with strong nails. They are the hands of a younger man, and they have turned to diverse occupations. Soldier, farmer, teacher and author, John Auret has sampled them all and excelled in most.
Now he lives quietly in Broadview Rest Home in Mosston Rd, his room decorated with memorabilia from his century celebrations a year ago. Photographs of his children, their children and their grandchildren tell of a family with love and respect for their patriarch. A quilt made by daughter Louise Rostron hangs on the wall, squares decorated with photos printed on the fabric - a work of genealogical art.
Louise is there with her father, to help him if his memory should fail. His hearing is not as good as it used to be, but it's not too bad, either.
He starts, not at the beginning, but with an episode from his youth, when he was a soldier with the Indian Army. He was 12 years on the sub-continent, arriving in 1935 and rising to the rank of Major. John remembers it like it was yesterday.
"I heard about this man-eating tiger when someone from the village came to me and asked me to bring my gun." John was on leave and quite near the village - actually two or three hours away but when villages are so far apart as in India, that counts as close. The locals supplied him with a buffalo yearling for bait and built him and his shikari (guide) a platform of boards in a tree. He confesses to dozing off during the wait but woke when the tiger growled. "Usually you know where a tiger is because suddenly there's a complete hush over the forest ... he circled the tree twice and on the third time he went for the prey. That's when I shot him. It was a perfect shot; through the shoulder and straight to the heart. Of course I always shoot twice to make absolutely sure." The villagers gave him a feast afterwards; the tiger had killed seven people, killing one outright while the other six died of bite wounds that turned septic.
"My job was on the north-west frontier; along the Afghan border. My expertise, forgive me boasting, I was very fluent in a Pushtu and Urdu." Louise explains her father was an interpreter for the army.
John says he joined because his father was in the Indian Army and John was born in India. At the age of four he and his younger brother were sent home to England where they lived with a grandmother and an aunt in a magnificent Elizabethan house called Wilton Court, now a hotel in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire.
When he was about 10 he was sent alone to the railway station to meet his father who was coming home on leave. When he got there he realised he didn't know what his father looked like so he found the baggage car and waited by his father's luggage for him to arrive.
"Dad was educated in England and went to Sandhurst military training college," says Louise.
"You can't join the Indian Army direct," says John.
"I went to the Royal Hampshire Regiment because I had to spend a year with a British battalion."
John remembers the isolation of his postings with the Indian Army. They were such that there was never any contact with girls. He had to wait for leave in England to meet Cynthia, his future wife.
They were introduced on a ship sailing to the Shetland Isles. Her father was also in the Indian Army so their parents were already friends.
They were married in 1945.
Following India's independence in 1947 and the end of the British Raj, John, Cynthia and their first child, Jenny, followed John's parents to Kenya where they set up as farmers in 1949.
"They were desperate for British people to settle the land," says John.
"I could afford a farm there. We grew maize and wheat mainly; cereal crops in rotation."
They also grazed cattle and tried dairying for about three years but it was uneconomic.
"I put in 30 acres of coffee. Of course you get nothing for four years and then you get a fortune," he says.
Three years later Kenya achieved independence and the family, now with children Jenny, Caroline, Nigel and Louise, had to leave empty-handed before the coffee returned any profits.
A small legacy enabled them to travel to New Zealand, the perceived land of opportunity. It was 1963.
Circumstances and a contact in Adelaide led John to a teaching position at Wanganui's Collegiate School. Although unqualified, John's accent and public school background earned him a position teaching English and Geography while he earned the necessary degree extra-murally at Massey.
John taught at Collegiate, then Boys' College, then Collegiate again, and, by all accounts was well-liked and respected. He retired at the age of 64.
In 2009 he wrote a book, May You Never Be Weary, an account of his life with an emphasis on India.
Soldier, farmer, teacher, author ... what might he do next.
"Yes," he looked at his daughter, "What shall I do next?" and he laughed.
And how does it feel to be 101?
"I don't really know," he says. "I thought, oh well, I'm doing all right at 80; I'm doing all right at 90; I thought it won't go on forever, but it has gone on forever. I can't explain why."
His secret could be the glass of Famous Grouse and water he has every night before dinner.