Every town and village has its characters
–
the people that have been integral to the
heart and
history of wherever it may be.
A Carterton Character is a series of pieces
focusing on the experiences of a resident.
Sam Bennett visited Julian Carlin…
Carterton Liaison with a target on his back.
Julian Carlin first guided me through to his kitchen,
which
he spent seven months building it with his welfare officer,
Mike Bulley, and his son. Two mugs with coffee granules
in the bottom stood on Julian’s kitchen top and the kettle was not long boiled.
Sorting out a coffee for yourself and whoever you have coming over means very
little effort for most of us; for Julian it requires quite a bit more. Multiple injuries
during his 50 years have made it so he has to move about his home on sticks
and travel around town by mobility scooter.
“People look at you and just judge”,
Julian said. “I’m a working age man and
it’s really been quite hard. You have to
prove everything these days. Someone
will say ‘that’s a good way to walk
your dog’, thinking that I’m just using
the scooter for that. I think ‘you don’t
understand’.” The dog in question is
Coco the Weimaraner. “I’ve got post-
traumatic stress disorder so I can get
quite tearful quite quickly”, Julian told
me. “Coco has been very helpful. If I’m
crying he’ll come up and he’ll lick me –
he’s very affectionate, very intelligent
and aware of what’s going on.” Post-
traumatic stress disorder, of course,
strikes after trauma. And Julian Carlin’s
life has not been without it. He is
always in pain and in a situation where
any jolt could potentially paralyse
him, but he has a determination to get
on with life no matter what, and it’s
nothing short of inspiring.
Born in Essex in 1965, Julian joined
the RAF at the age of 17 as an aircraft
technician. When he did leave the
airforce it was with a lot of injuries,
the first bad one being tearing his
stomach muscle in half. “I worked
quite hard,” he told me. “I used to get
called Packhorse or Duracell!” He was
married when he was 19, and his wife
accompanied him when he was posted
to Germany. It was here the couple
experienced a horrid car crash. “This
girl on a moped came through the
windscreen”, he said. Fortunately there
were no fatalities.
After Germany, Julian ended up at
Northolt where he assisted the SAS
in numerous operations. “That’s
really where my career changed”,
he said. I suppose everyone in the
RAF is working for the Queen, but
Julian’s duties really did mean he was
directly concerned with the safety of
the monarch. “I’d have to go over to
A Carterton Character
Julian Carlin
10
