Phone calls home when we were there in 1952 were virtually unheard of, would have cost a week's wages and had to be booked a week or so in advance, even then could take an hour or two to set up. Families used telegrams, welcome if a happy event was expected, dreaded when unexpected as it was usually bad news.
The Last Post gives a good idea of up-country Aden though no way would the Services have taken a civvy on patrol, still less a woman. A real-life patrol is pictured above; imagine the heat in the cab of the Bedford QL, with its engine between the seats. (As a 10-year-old in those innocent Fifties, Geriaviator cannot comment on the authenticity of the bedroom manoeuvres. All the mummies and daddies I knew were too exhausted for such gymnastics, though on second thoughts ...)
Khormaksar was normally quiet in the sweltering afternoons, adults taking to their charpoys, we Kids plotting mayhem around the swimming pool a mile away on the east of the airfield. Except for the afternoon when P/Off Gurd flew his Brigand between the group of three airmen's barrack blocks shown on the aerial pic above. The twin-Centaurus thunder awoke the Patch and most of Maala as well, while one of my father's airmen on the third floor said he had looked down on the top of the Brigand. We Kids thought it was terrific, the OC did not, and Dad said afterwards that the offending P/O had a further eight months added to his Aden posting. This was reckoned to be worse than the Glasshouse.