An Affair to Remember!

Happy New Year, evereeebody!!!

Just collapsed sideways into the chair and promised my belly a two-size drop in girth before spring hits us. That gives me about (using my fingers)... nine weeks of borderline, starvation dieting. Will I make it? Nope. Same as last year – the road to hell, etcetera. Nevertheless, cokes, crisps and cakes are, from now on, banned in our house. At least for a month – or a couple of days, whichever comes first...

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Another piece of, An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa:

  

‘You can look, but no touching though, not without your shilling.’

So I looked but didn’t touch. I looked so hard it made my eyes water; a bit like looking for marbles on the bottom of a swimming pool – all blurry and fuzzy – still not really sure of what I was looking for.

‘Do you want to kiss again?’ I was bored. Gloria dropped the front of her frock and smoothed it down.

‘Okay, but not for too long and don’t bump me with your teeth.’

 So we kissed and did the flapping fish in the sink again with our tongues. Only banged against her teeth once and said I was sorry.

The light, when I first saw it, floated between the mango trees like a coloured match on bonfire night. The closer it came, the redder it flared – sometimes sparks came off of it. Gloria saw it and hurriedly undocked her mouth from mine.

‘What is it?’

‘Dunno,’ I croaked, but then, from between the trees and armoured with silver moonlight, the wraith from hell floated towards us, spirit-like. Those next ten seconds fell upon us as some screeching banshee. Okay, perhaps not quite so bad, but pretty well up there with the biggies on my Richter scale of scary experiences.

Gloria legged it. I toyed with the idea of following her, but my feet refused to move; roots of abject terror had woven in with my shoelaces.

Veiled in juniper fumes and fag smoke, my vengeful mother swooped upon our little nest of first amour like a helicopter gunship – hands outstretched for Gloria’s throat, eyes bulging from that final twenty yard sprint to save her son from supposed ‘deflowerment’.

‘Bloody little strumpet!’ she shrilled and thundered past like a protective mother rhino, crashing through shrubs, mangos and almost demolishing the greenkeeper’s shed before skidding to a standstill. Still alight, her cigarette just sort of hung there, decapitated – right-angled by a branch. She broke off the damaged end and shoved the burning bit to what was left of her Matinee. She sucked in the smoke and calmed herself.

I just stood there, a becalmed lover bathed in fear and moonlight. Gloria had disappeared. Her smell was still on my shirt and my tongue was sore, but I never saw her again. So I looked at things from the bright side, I’d had my first, brief taste of Eden’s apple and still had my shilling, as well as my flower...

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A Merry Blog on Christmas Day!

Made it! All the way through 2011 and now proudly stand (sit) within striking distance of my first Christmas blog. Remember posting my start-up attempt at communicating with real, out-there-in-the-world people; that very first, next-day’s turning on of my computer – one eye closed, the other fogged with apprehension, lips all scrunged up. The cursor blinked and laughed and whispered ‘don’t be such a wannabe plonker, who the hell would want to talk to you anyway’. Think my finger trembled into a downwards, juddery, no confidence spiral rather than purposely left-clicking the mouse button. But that was a long time ago and all you beautiful, slightly crazy people are still hanging in there. Without you, my blog would crash and burn so here’s to next year’s talking to ya!

A very, very Merry Christmas to all my readers; hope today’s posting makes you smile – slightly risqué, but in a nice sort of way. E-mailed Santa and he said it’s okay; his elves loved it. Now go get some more turkey and the hell with easing back on those roast potatoes...

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Excerpt from, An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa: (re-wrote this piece – think it’s just about right)

...The following two years flew by. They were sort of ‘settling in’ years and not a lot happened; then a girl came down to stay with her Gran for the school holidays. Gloria she was called. I liked her, made me feel sort of hot all over, but she said that was okay because she felt the same. Gloria was nearly thirteen, so quite a bit older than me. Mother said she worried about me. Heard her telling my dad – said our relationship was ‘unhealthy’. Not really sure what she meant. Anyway, Gloria was still my friend and I saw her every night if I could outfox my mother – under the mango trees, next to the Wankie Club Bowling Green. Got a bit dark sometimes, before the moon came up, but Gloria had inquisitive hands and worked hard on distracting me. I soon forgot the dark.

I had to wait for mother to fall asleep in her chair with her third gin and tonic before I could sneak out. Once her eyes were closed I was over the fence and away; by this stage, totally besotted with Gloria.

Gloria always waved her arms about so I could find her in the dark. She always wore white and her hair was long, the colour of corn and smelled of flowers. She went to boarding school in Bulawayo. When she stood up her head was higher than mine and the top of her dress was really tight at the front; sort of pushed out.

Mother often scrutinised me from across the dinner table.

‘This Gloria girl, Jeffrey – she looks a lot older than you?’

‘Just a bit. She’s nice, though – I really like her.’

Mother huffed and puffed into her coffee cup and lit up another Matinee. I think she was angry about something because her eyes were thin.

‘She’s down from Bulawayo?’

I nodded. ‘Staying with her Gran; going back home tomorrow morning.’

Mother visibly relaxed and her eyes went back to normal; not like a lizard’s anymore. The matinee flared.

‘We’ll be going to the club tonight.’

Saturday night, movie night, or as everyone in Africa called it – bioscope night. Gloria’s Gran said she could go. Once the interval lights went down we would still have more than an hour before anyone missed us.

The moon was full that night. Our last night. When the moonlight came through the mango trees the buttons on Gloria’s blouse turned silver. Her eyes were big – glittering – bright as the buttons on her blouse. I could smell the sweet aroma of a Sunga Springs, cream soda on her breath.

‘You can touch them if you like.’

I’d never touched a boob before, nor did I understand why I felt so good when I did. My breath shook more than my fingers, Gloria’s breath was hot on my face, but her hands were steady – she knew a lot more than me about girl/boy stuff.

‘Can you kiss with your mouth open?’

I did it – I mean, kissed like she said. Her tongue flicked up and down like a goldfish tipped in the sink.

‘I’ve done this lots of times,’ she said. Strangely enough, I believed her, then, face-on to the moonlight she lifted the front of her frock. ‘Lots of boys have touched me here as well. For a shilling I let them see my pussy.’ I squinted into the gloom.

‘I had one as well,’ I told her, ‘but I left it behind in England. My Grandma’s got it now because hers was getting old and didn’t do much anymore.’

‘This one, silly.’ She pointed down below her waist – knickerwards. ‘Have you brought your shilling?’

I shook my head. I’d forgotten my money, but Gloria didn’t seem to mind...

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England's Christmas Car Parks - Any Driver's Nightmare!

Hi. Weekend again and our Christmas countdown has really started in earnest; time for last minute shoppers to have their tail lights vaporised by irate, car park escapees – a phenomenon that makes Cannon Ball Run appear positively docile. Whose bright idea was it to position the bays at ninety degrees anyway?

Drivers, more often than not, now wave at one another with single, festive, raised fingers – or two. Then there’s the ultimate rebuke, the clenched fist ‘up and down you-should-be-polishing a pole’ wave for the more adventurous. A last resort, though as this may well result in loss of blood and hefty fines. However, freeing one’s car from most high street supermarket car parks takes nerves of steel and firm control of the road rage syndrome. If common sense had prevailed from day one and our mastermind, line painters had thought the job through before unleashing their paint brushes, all our frustrations and insurance claims would, to this day, remain virtually nonexistent.

Why then, (sticking out neck time) weren’t the lines painted at an angle? How much easier it would be to glide in or out of a car park space without fear of hospitalisation. Perhaps we could borrow some line painters from so called third world countries? They seem to have got it right – fifty years ago...

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An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa; an excerpt:

... Apart from that, things went pretty normally and from my shadowy den amongst the bougainvillaea I got on with my education. The pattern was always the same – ten sun-crazed, semi-inebriated adults sitting under a tin umbrella in some far-flung tropic – all of them talking at once. Then everyone went quiet and my father managed half of ‘Nellie Deen’ before mother got back from the ladies room. She gave my dad a hard stare, scowled about for more insects and then re-took her place at the water hole. No one mentioned the insect and my father never finished his Nellie Deen.

Sometimes I went treasure hunting round the beer garden; people dropped money and couldn’t find it in that sort of half dark. If you crouched down and looked at an angle the money showed up between the fag-ends and chip packets, but you had to be careful picking things up because there were scorpions and spiders; ‘big hairy bastards’, dad called them. Aunt Ann said they were baboon spiders – big as side plates with nippers big enough to have a dogs leg off at the knee. Found one by mistake when I reached under a table for what looked like a sixpenny piece and moved a chip packet. Stood up like a fox terrier and looked me in the eye, never forget it; long hairs all over it, bit like an upside down armpit. When they get angry they sort of do press-ups and wave their front legs at you. Uncle Ron said to my dad that was time for you to ‘fuck off smart-like.’ Anyway, the best I ever did without getting bitten was two bob – two shillings in posh money.

The waiter came back to our table; twice because his tray wasn’t big enough. Always the same – six, quart bombers and four gins with lemon and ice and tonic water – the latter to stop you getting malaria, aunt Ann always said. A coke with a straw and a packet of chips for me, if they remembered, otherwise dad would shove a shilling in my hand for me to get my own.

I think the bar closed at half past ten, but that didn’t matter because everyone bought two drinks and carried on talking; leaning on the table, cigarettes all pointing inwards like red eyes moving about in the dark. When the drinks were finished everyone stood up at the same time and in a murk of Lancashire dialects, Geordie twang and other accents foreign to Africa, said things like, that’s it ‘til next Friday then or bloody hell is that what the time is, and then teetered off like bemused penguins for the car park. Everyone walked like their legs were broken and when they got to their cars it always took forever for them to find their keys. Uncle Ron usually dropped his and said rude words when he knelt on a thorn or a stone. We were always first to leave. Let the others go, mother would tell my dad, but he never listened because we had a Morris Minor now with red insulation tape on the steering wheel where the sun had cracked it; and anyway, in Africa, men were always the boss – that’s what my dad said...

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Scented Candles & Global Warming!

Hi – Sunday morning seems to have established itself as my favoured blogging window. Watched the debate on global warming last night and re the subject of air pollution have just found out why my eyes are streaming. Thought I had suddenly developed hay fever brought on by lurking clouds of volcanic dust or weird pet allergies via our three, over-hairy dogs, but their guilt-slates have all been wiped clean – ‘twas the dreaded scented candles that caused my malaise! Packing them off as Christmas presents to my least favourite people (the candles, not the dogs).

Talk more about global warming next time – got to go turn the heating on and bag up more candles ready for posting...

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An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa; an extract:

... Friday night was ‘club night’, a gathering of the clans, a pouring out of immigrant pomms and never missed. Almost every die-hard ex pat mine employee and their families converged lemming-like on Wankie Colliery Club. While the kids all played in the pool or just ran around, their parents got drunk. That was the norm.

Unbreakable metal chairs, metal tables and metal umbrellas were clumped al fresco-esque across the beer garden. Almost Parisian-like, dressed in yellows, whites and blues, people gathered for their weekend working class soiree amongst ornate goldfish ponds and miles of terraced bougainvillaea. White-suited waiters rushed about with trays of bombers and gins and the kids all sucked up cokes and cream sodas and crammed their bellies with potato chips and foot-long chunks of dried meat called biltong. That’s what happened on Friday nights. Because we were living in Africa and in Africa, everyone went to their clubs on Friday nights and forgot about work and school time. I heard my mother say, ‘shit it’s hot’ and everyone agreed and ordered more bombers and gins, and if we were in hailing distance, cool-drinks for the kids.

When the lights were turned on, every able-winged insect within a hundred yard radius revved up its engine and homed in on the beer garden.  Swarms of clickety-clackety bugs and scratchy, creepy creatures dropped in drinks and down cleavages; most of them harmless, though some were armed with stings and nippers large enough to fell a buffalo. One such beast found its way to mother’s hair; half the size of a T-Rex, this six-legged, airborne catamaran crash landed somewhere between her right ear and back of her neck. This provoked a scream, a vertical uplifting of her entire body and a vicious, round-house sort of a slap at the offending insect. Unfortunately, having already been mentally disarmed by six gin and tonics, mother forgot about her cigarette, stabbed herself in the neck with the hot bits, swore she had been ‘invenomated’ and ran off to find a mirror...

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The Art of Staying Afloat!

Hi – just finished reading the reviews on Amazon for Sons of Africa; my thanks to those of you who took the time to comment – long may the interest continue. Marketing a book without the clout of a major publishing house behind you really takes some doing; contrary to the negativity of one well-known London literary agency, good ‘old fashioned’ story telling does sell...

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An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa – (an older piece and more):

‘You’re going to learn how to swim, Jeffrey.’

‘Why?’

My mother lit a cigarette. When she sucked in the smoke her eyelids trembled.

‘Because drowning won’t be good, Jeffrey; people will stare.’

She bought me a fluorescent yellow costume; I would have preferred a blue one and a size smaller. Sometimes my willy stuck out through the leg hole. Took a month for me to rid myself of the nickname, ‘three-legs mango-arse’. Once the yellow had faded and mother boil-shrunk my cozzi, going to the pool wasn’t so bad.

‘Out one – two to the side,’ my mother warbled. ‘Out one – two to the side.’

All my friends were watching. The pool bottom looked good; peaceful, enfolding. I could drown down there quite comfortably with the decomposing frogs and dead ants.

‘Breaststroke, Jeffrey! For God’s sakes stop waving your arms! Out one – two to the side!’

Apparently, my father realised I wasn’t floating anymore and jumped in with his clothes on. From then on mother was sent to sit with her gin and tonic and Matinee cigarettes in the beer garden. My dad took over my swimming tuition and eventually, I mastered the art of staying afloat. Now, every day after school I thundered down to the pool with my faded yellow cozzi strung on a towel, draped round my neck like the other kids. I was almost one of them; the sun had burnt me brown and my hair had turned a gold colour. ‘The colour of sunlight,’ my mother cooed.

A week later and I plucked up courage enough to climb up to the ‘top board’. The platform itself was covered in ropey stuff to stop you slipping; the board stuck out into nothingness – over the abyss – thirty feet above the water, but it looked further because I could see down to the tiles, another twelve feet or so to the bottom – it was a long, long way down.

‘If you’re not a chicken you’ll jump!’ a kid shouted up to me. A big kid from two classes up from mine, I wished I’d stayed on the ground. Every kid in the pool was watching me; all of them with evil, malicious grins strapped to their faces. ‘Chicken!’ the big kid wouldn’t let go and flapped his elbows out at right-angles. ‘Squawk chicken, squawk chicken, squawk squawk!’

I came off the board like a startled gecko; arms and legs stuck out and flailing for whatever help I could grab a hold of. Wind rushed up my nose and pulled my eyelids back so I was forced into watching my descent, then, miraculously, feet first I hit the water. Engulfed by the deep, gratefully, I slipped from view. My tormentors were gone.

There were leaves on the bottom; I felt them with my toes, leaves from a syringa-berry tree that grew by the wall. They’d turned all slimy and puffed out clouds of wet dust when I shoved my feet at them. A dead scorpion rose up wraith-like through the floating bits and I kicked it away and pushed off for the surface.

When I came back up the big kid was waiting for me, his hand outstretched to pull me out.

‘You were great!’ he told me. All the other kids went quiet and from then on they called me ‘Jeff’ instead of ‘three-legs mango arse.’ Life was getting better. Africa ruled...

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Encouraging Words!

Indulgent prose; my own, of course. For all you wannabe word grinders:

Some, as great forest trees stand well above the rest; men and women of courage and forethought, those who start with little and often die with less – those of us who dare to dream.

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Back to, An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa:

... The headmaster, a Mr Wood, from behind his glasses peered myopically at my mother and Aunt Ann. I was just sort of there, between them, apparently invisible.

‘I shall put him in Standard Four and see how he gets on.’

Mother and Aunt Ann peered back at him and nodded compliantly, then, obviously pleased with their successful first attempt at child disposal, disappeared. I had been abandoned to the care of ‘old Woody’ and was just as quickly despatched to the relevant classroom. That same day, on my way back home from school I experienced my first mango fest.  I returned home covered in yellow mango juice and toting a sore belly. Dad said that I wasn’t used to different fruit, but not to worry because the ‘squirts’ didn’t last more than a couple of days. So I had the squirts quite often and then one day they stopped – I was mango-proof.

That Sunday night it rained, I mean, really rained. Not like English rain; this was like getting slapped all over – drops the size of plate pies. Three would have filled a fish bowl. Half a dozen would ‘drown the dog’ my Dad said, and I believed him.

I knelt on a chair by the window and watched the sky light up. Here, the rain sneaked up on you – bit like a cat sneaking up on a mouse. Before the storm broke, the wind dropped. Lightning slashed the sky and I counted, ‘one, two, three...’ before I heard the bang. Each separate count represented ten miles so we were safe for the next half-hour.

Thirty miles away the storm had scrubbled the clouds into a tight and angry ball; it rolled them over dark valleys and in an instant, parched riverbeds ran bank-high with chaotic walls of whitewater. When it reached our driveway the thunder bellowed so loud that I jumped backwards off my chair. Everyone laughed and Aunt Ann threw peanuts at me and said I was soft.

The roof was made of galvanised iron zincs, that’s what people called them out here; corrugated iron sheeting to anyone living elsewhere in the world. The zincs were always painted red or green and when the sun went behind a cloud the zincs made funny pinking sounds.

The first drops were wet socks thrown at the landing window; sort of sideways on at an angle. Dust mixed up with the rain and ran down the glass like red tears. On the roof the first drops must have been bigger up there; fat frogs flapping against the zincs – then the flaps joined up as one, continuous roar and I hardly heard my mother shout for me to close the window.

Dad opened the fire escape door (we lived in the top half of the old nurses’ quarters) and stood out under the awning. He waved me over and side by side we watched the rain. I shivered when the cold air touched me; my Dad was smoking, I could see the cherry-red end of his cigarette. The sky had gone – the ground had gone – just the light from a neighbour’s bedroom window made it through to where we were standing.

‘So much water!’ I shouted over the noise and dad put his arm round me. Nothing could touch me now, not the rain the lightning nor the thunder. Then the rain stopped and like a grumpy old man the storm sulked away to the south-east.

Now I could see the street lights and the warm air came back, pleasantly moist and sort of musty-smelly – like the smell of an English potting shed in early autumn. I leaned in closer, not wanting my Dad to take his arm away. Not ever...

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A Slight Twist in the Road!

Hi – here’s the promised bumf on ‘Feeders’, my latest addition to an ever-growing e-book fraternity. Feeders knocks out at £0.99 in English money, $1.39 in good old US greenbacks – an ideal commuter read, a great forty minute run-in with witches ‘n werewolves and splendidly written (my tiny bit of self praise!).

As is made obvious by the cover, Feeders has been published under my pen name, Enoch Gray. Keeping things separate from, Sons of Africa which is soon to be followed by its younger sibling, Empress Gold; a runaway thriller that will fry your brain cells. It’s that good – believe me, or wouldn’t put my name to it.

Try out the Feeders ‘look inside’ option on Amazon; my little genre diversion just might float your boat. Here’s an excerpt. Have a gander:

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... Jack stood at the window until the Defender’s headlights disappeared, the night outside still wildly unpredictable. Taller hedgerows bent and whipped like shirt tails, wind hissed and howled as wolves hunting the dark slopes of Pendle Hill. He crossed the room and felt inside the bottom drawer of an oak writing bureau.

The photograph had been shot in black and white; to a background of high moor, rows of orphaned children stood statue-like for the camera. Ranked along both sides were the austere images of their guardians. The children’s names were listed at the bottom – from left to right and again, all were neatly aligned in corresponding order. The grey patina of age dulled the text.

One by one, Jack read off the names, remembering those that had stuck in his mind. Some had faded completely, all of those wan and sickly children, like himself, discarded by a malicious society. Most were already long dead.

Habitually, he traced the print with his fingertip, settling it over his own likeness. The fire licked and crackled excitedly; driven by the oncoming storm, the wind howled inside the chimney pot.

On the photograph’s sombre moorland, hidden from the casual onlooker by cloud shadows, a woman had stopped to catch her breath; looking back through the rain it seemed as if she resented the presence of the picture-taker. Her limbs were crippled with age and a veil of poverty and terrible hardship hung about her. Jack nodded his head, the smile on his face now thin with malice. He spoke with slow deliberation, the voice coming out from his mouth not his own...

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It's Africa That Does It!

Hi, lots of interest in the little boy story so here’s another chunk – I’m amazed by the number of readers who still empathise with Africa in the fifties. Good days. Oh, almost forgot – this week, will (under a Pen Name) be putting up ‘Feeders’, the threatened short booklet of horror on Amazon Kindle. Different, but thoroughly enjoyed the genre change. Hope you do too. My next blog will reveal all so stay with me...

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Another extract from An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa;

... The bottles and glasses clinked together because the waiter’s hands were shaking and the tray jumped up and down. He lined up the drinks on the table, big brown bottles of Lion Lager beer – ‘bombers’, Uncle Ron called them because they were quarts instead of pints. I think they had two drinks inside them instead of just one. Mother and Aunt Ann had gin and tonics with ice and lemon slices, but they weren’t bombers. Aunt Ann smiled a lot now and her eyes sparkled. I had a coca-cola in a bottle with a straw stuck in it, my second coke in all my life; and a packet of crisps, which I later learned were called chips in Africa. Real chips were called that as well but everyone knew what you meant. Hilda had the same as her husband – a bomber. She was really thirsty. I could tell because she’d gone really quiet and her eyes were getting smaller.

Apart from Ron’s wife, everyone talked really fast now. The waiter brought some more bombers and gin and tonics. Aunt Ann tipped the ice and lemon out of her old glass into the new one and mother did the same, I think she was learning what to do in Africa, so now she had two ice and lemons in one glass and looked really pleased with herself; she chased a pip round the glass with her finger, but couldn’t grab it. I got another coke but no chips. The waiter nodded his head and smiled when Uncle Ron tipped him a sixpence. He dropped the sixpence inside his jacket pocket then went and stood at the other end of the veranda, watching for someone to put up there hand for some more bombers and gins. Maybe I would get another packet of chips. Maybe my friend with the white teeth would get a shilling next time. I smiled at him and he smiled back. I learned a lot from the old man – how to watch and judge the moment; how to listen without being watched. Say nothing, but hear everything. Unless he looked at me his eyes seldom left the table.

Even the veranda’s covered over bit was getting hot now. Uncle Vince said the hotel man liked the sun because it made people buy more drinks and he put out bowls of salted nuts – all for free to make them thirsty. Sometimes they would stay there all night because their legs wouldn’t work, or the road moved when they drove and made them go in the bushes. Bombers and gins made them talk fast; some couldn’t talk at all and they wobbled when they walked. Some lay down on the grass outside and slept, but nobody cared and for years later my Dad would try desperately to educate the non-believers; ‘it’s Africa that does it,’ he would pontificate, then, with stronger, punitive words he would curse the heat and kick up clouds of ‘red sour earth’ from beneath his feet. Beer helped him feel better, helped him forget, but sometimes he still looked sad. I think he missed England. Mother just smiled and conversed on a daily bases with compliant, nodding flowers in her garden. She loved Africa, it was always warm, the sun big and yellow, gin and tonics plentiful and her Matinee cigarettes, a shilling a box of thirty; but she coughed more now – Aunt Ann said it was the dust.

Those who chanced a drunken arm at driving home took to the road as a weaving, erratic convoy, the kids now frightened into a state of total silence; dead quiet on the back seats – mothers, fearful of their husband’s wrath said nothing. Not all of them reached their destination. My Dad was right, I think the sun and too many bombers made people crazy. Most people in Wankie were crazy because it was so hot and the only things that stopped you getting hot were bombers and gins. But you still went crazy, because that’s what white people did, in Africa...

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Back To The Fifties!

Hi – blog time again; hope I haven’t confused everyone by posting another excerpt from An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa. From Travel to African Adventure to Werewolves and back to Travel – hopefully, not too diverse. Another random insight to my time in the fifties, see it for what it is; a small piece of a bigger story which, as usual, is in a constant state of flux. However, despite the confusion and much shaking of heads, most of you are still here and I thank you for that...

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From;  An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa:

... ‘Thought you were asleep?’

Shook my head and grinned at my mother. Dad was snoring.

‘Too excited. Don’t want to miss the coal mines. The man said seven o’clock so we can’t be far away from the station.’ I slid off my bunk and muscled in close to the window.

‘Hopefully, your aunt and uncle will be waiting for us. A friend of theirs is bringing his car to the station; a shooting-brake I think? Lots of room for our luggage.’

The carriages rocked against their couplings, as a child’s wooden snake our train hinged its way round bends and clattered through cuttings.

I looked down – at the ground alongside the train. Maybe I would see some animals.

‘Are there schools in Wankie?’

‘I should imagine so.’

‘What if they all speak African?’

‘What if you start making sense, Jeffrey.’

To me, it was sense. African kids, seeing as they were from Africa would surely speak and write in African?

‘Why not, English kids speak English?’ How would my mother know? She lifted up the table and secured the strap. The stainless steel wash basin with its single, cold water tap leered up at me. I was being punished for my cheek. Sounds from under the train came up through the plughole. Mother dropped my toothbrush and tube of Colgate into the basin. They rattled round like pebbles then settled at the bottom. There was still some toothpaste on my brush from last night.

‘Clean your teeth and have a wash before we reach the station. Rinse the flannel out when you’ve finished and put the soap back its container.’

There were hardly any trees now, just short bushes and dried out elephant grass. Clicks and clacks over points and joints in the rails – further apart as our speed slackened. A road had been built alongside the railway line. A black Morris Minor drove on it; sunlight flashed off its chrome bumpers, our doctor had a car just like it. On the ground all the rocks were black – the soil, if that’s what it was, was black as well. A black man on a yellow bike smiled and waved to me. I thought about my cat back in England, then the memory went all fuzzy and I forgot about it. Coal dust – everything was covered in glittering lakes of black, Wankie gold.

Mother saw them first. ‘There they are!’ she chirruped and leaned out through the window. Their friends were with them; Ron and Hilda, originally from the same town back in Blighty – scrutinising every incoming carriage window for familiar faces. Uncle Ron (not my real uncle) and my uncle Vince were both decked out in beige safari suits and floppy hats – Ron, tall with a big belly, my uncle, shorter; also with a belly, but not as big. Tweedle Dum and Dee-like they just stood there on the platform, grinning. Hilda, roofed over by a sun-battered pith helmet and dressed in khaki shirt and Rupert bear pants stood compliantly behind her man. For whatever her reasons, like some myopic owl she stared at me through thick, coke-bottle glasses. Aunt Ann was as I remembered her in England in the summer time; done up with bright red lipstick, flowery cotton frock and trademark straw hat. A little unsteady on her feet; the excitement of new arrivals, the heat and the eternal lure of the gin bottle had convinced her to seek out early solace. Her arms were brown and covered in freckles.

Mother waved the end off her cigarette. Dad, with sweat patches springing out between his shoulder blades and a curse from between his lips, set to the arduous task of dragging suitcases down from the spare bunk. The rest of our chattels were locked away in the baggage car; cabin trunks, crammed solid with our belongings, four feet long and still covered in ‘not-needed-on-the-voyage’ travel stickers. Besides bedding and towels and four sets of second-hand curtains, mother’s treasures were in them – clocks that didn’t work and her plethora of knitting gear, brass knick-knacks and family hand-me-downs her sisters had been keen to get rid of.

Father’s bête noir was the dreaded sea chest; a wood and metal abomination held together with leather straps, big catches and brass locks. Weighing in at a couple of hundredweight it would grin demonically at all who tried to lift it. As some possessed, pirate’s plunder box, gleefully it waited for him in the dark confines of the baggage car.

A hand came in through the window and dragged me over for a welcome to Wankie kiss. I suffered my Aunt Ann’s full repertoire of ‘haven’t you grown’ remarks before being released. Like my mother, aside from gin and tonics, Aunt Ann’s first love was cigarettes. Permanently haloed in smoke and juniper fumes she swore to them being her only successful defence against mosquitoes and dengue fever.

Our suitcases, cardigans and assorted paper bags were fed through the window, then we trooped off the train and for the next five minutes were set upon by huggers, kissers and hand shakers.

Dad hugged back and nodded his head, sweat trickled down from his hairline; already his white, English face was streaked with coal dust. There were blue lines under his eyes, painted there by fatigue and worry; the meagre sum of money we had left England with had almost run out, his clothes now permanently scrummaged up from living out of suitcases. Another rag-tag migrant family had come to Wankie to make a living from digging out coal – tricked from our green and pleasant land by his brother’s promise of an African paradise we had slipped to the very back of nowhere. Now, instead, we were gathered in murderous sunlight, standing inside of what my father saw as the hottest, blackest valley in all of Africa’s hell.

Uncle Vince grinned up at his brother. ‘You made it then. The heat’s not so bad, you’ll get used to it.’

I thought my dad was going to hit him, then, calmed by mother’s silent plea for temperance he sweated out a matching grin and shook his brother’s hand. A year apart had healed their last sibling rift, enough for them to share a house and smile at one another, a situation that filled my mother with trepidation, but we had no choice; sleeping outside in the veld with lions and coal would never have worked...

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Writing - My Obsession!

Hi everyone – being pestered, albeit pleasantly, to finish putting An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa together as a completed book, so getting to it – in my spare time. Maybe I just love writing, or I’m obsessed – whatever. For me, the perfect indulgence is in watching filled pages roll of the screen, new adventures take shape. Be they Africa’s rough and tumbles, horrors or funnies, I love them all; the urge to produce the perfect story is constantly at my shoulder.

Preparing Feeders for my next Kindle upload, here’s another sneak peek at one of four stories: Wolf Slayer. Good one, this – way back in the seventeen hundreds.

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Extract from Wolf Slayer:

... Where the forest opened, lakes of moonlight flooded in. Still hung with drizzle, ancient trees trembled under the weight. DeLacy’s eyes tricked with the shadows; through his own rampant imaginings, grotesque shapes rose from the earth as living beasts to run alongside him.

‘Keep your eyes well peeled, lad and your sword to hand. You’ll find neither man nor beast of good intent abroad on nights such as this one.’

Swayed by the roll and yaw of the Suffolk warhorse, the silver cage of his sabre nuzzled against his hip. Strapped diagonally to the mare’s left flank, the black, double-handed hilt of a claidheamh mòr, the Great Sword, leaned from its scabbard. Lifted by his father from the Scottish battlefield of Killiecrankie, the double-edged blade was lavishly inlaid with silver, the steel itself honed to a fine edge. Like that of DeLacy’s sabre the pommel was cast of solid silver; the head of a grey wolf was the shape of it – set with those narrowed searching eyes and bared fangs of the mythical beast.

DeLacy slowed his mount and waved the boy alongside him. Up with the Suffolk mare, the boy’s horse stood four hands shorter, though her step was lively and her ears were pricked for every sound.

‘Are you of an open mind, lad?’

‘I like to think so, squire. Though separating the truth from what is unreal can sometimes prove troublesome.’

DeLacy smiled at Jack’s honesty. Though barely sixteen the boy stood almost as tall as his master, his outlook more that of a grown man and with a quick eye and loose limbs he could place the point of his sword faster than most.

‘The beast of Bowland, lad, how do you see it; truth or fable?’

The youngster took his time in replying. ‘I should say truth, sir. Too many men have died in these forests; I know of five good souls who have perished here. Their womenfolk still search for them but find nothing.’

‘So you say the beast is real?’

‘Wolves are killers, squire. If a man is foolish enough to walk the forest alone, then as would the deer or the sheep he might well fall prey to wild beasts.’

‘I have seen it, boy. Believe me; not far from where we are now.’

‘The wolf, squire?’

‘That I did Jack, but only once mind, and no ordinary wolf was this one. Though many have laughed at what I told them.’ Instinctively he reached across for the great sword and drew it half way out from its scabbard. In the moonlight, the blade fired out with lights of brilliant silver; the icy fingers of superstition reached beneath his cape and for a moment he struggled to quell the fear that followed them. ‘Six feet high at the shoulder, Jack, from that day onwards nothing has frightened me more than the sight of that hellish creature walking beside me.’ He sensed the boy’s uncertainty. ‘Like a man, Jack; not on all fours but straight backed and upright, its forelegs hung as arms and its jaws, though shorter than a wolf’s were filled with fangs; some, as God be my witness, were long as my fingers.’ DeLacy paused for a moment and drew his cape closer in to his throat. ‘But the eyes, Jack; they were the worst of any man’s nightmares, yellow in the moonlight, the eyes of Satan, those of Lucifer himself...’

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