S’pore calling: How a baby’s first cries and an ST article brought a Briton back here after 65 years

SINGAPORE - In a heavy camphor chest in his late parents’ home, an Englishman found a trail of effects leading back to 1950s Singapore – his birthplace.

Among them were a 78rpm record from 1954 of baby Simon Garner’s first cries, taped in the delivery room, then air-mailed to the UK, and a clipping of The Straits Times’ article on the novelty of the newborn’s welcome.

These set Mr Garner, now 70, on the course back to Singapore this week, for a tour of his early childhood, he told ST over local coffee at a Toast Box outlet on Nov 27.

The retired sales and marketing man brought with him the flaking shellac disc of his first cries.

It had been 65 years since his family left for Hong Kong in 1959, but his parents’ thick dossier of their Singapore years – a stack of documents and pictures stowed in his backpack – helped map the contours of their time here.

The Garner family’s first home at Windsor Park Road off Upper Thomson Road, the Green Hill Nursing Home where he was born, the Killarney School and The Dean School where he studied are all shuttered or torn down, he said.

Only a later home, a colonial bungalow in Cable Road, remains, said Mr Garner, who had written to a local librarian in September to track down the lost addresses.

Built in 1913 by former government architect David McLeod Craik, the black-and-white house in the River Valley area is of some renown, he said.

It is untouched, save for a high wall in place of a low hedge, a new covered pool and taller trees, he added. The portico also appeared to have been repurposed and the tennis courts are gone.

“It was almost surreal to see, and it triggered some long-lost memories in my mind... playing in the back garden with my sister and our dog,” he said. “I took many pictures and wandered around the area for quite a while.”

Of his first five years in Singapore, he recalls only a few set pieces: learning to swim in the pool of Raffles Hotel when it was still open to non-guests, and a muggy heat that turned his mother into a sunscreen “fanatic”.

A terrific sunburn that once blistered his shoulders also sticks. “I couldn’t even wear a shirt!”, he said.

Mostly, he remembers his parents’ stories.

The eldest child of the “Far East representative” of former engineering giant Metropolitan-Vickers heard tales of casual glamour: breezy sorties to Fraser’s Hill in Malaysia, military parades marking the Queen’s birthday and his mother’s busy social calendar, entertaining other expatriate women.

It was “much glitzier” than life in the United Kingdom but then, that was the age, said Mr Garner. “In the 50s and 60s, as a senior in a British engineering company, you had a pretty good lifestyle coming out here.

“Local technology was limited. Most of Singapore and Hong Kong at the time relied on technology and expertise from either Europe or the US. Of course, that’s reversed now,” he said.

Mr Garner, travelling with a friend, was particularly impressed by the public transport system and the soaring architecture of the Gardens by the Bay.

His return was a “long-held” dream, first deferred by work and life, then shelved 10 years ago when his wife fell fatally ill.

He said: “(This trip) has been on my bucket list for over 10 years. When I turned 70, I decided, ‘Well, now’s the time’.

“You don’t get a second chance.”