Saturday morning - I think?

Sorry – been rambling along – maybe I’m poised at the entrance to ‘old fartdom’. Africa? Yes I remember it well. Maybe if I dropped in the occasional ‘excerpt’ things might liven up; so here goes – from my soon to be finished, ‘An English Boy’s wanderings in Africa’, this is how it all started. Still pretty rough but stick with it. We’ll get back to the serious stuff later...

‘An English Boy’s Wanderings in Africa’ ( a lighter side of my life)

In the fifties, to yours truly as an eight year old, the word ‘Africa’ translated roughly as, ‘Tarzan, his girlfriend, Jane and some crazy chimp with roll-back lips’; all of which, before my mother’s announcement, had little bearing on my cherished, unnoticed existence. Then my life changed – forever. Up to that moment, what really mattered was England, her green and verdant fields, my grandmother’s house, her apple pies and pickled onions sweet and sour enough to die for. An occasional glimpse of Valerie Wesswell’s knickers didn’t go amiss either. But all that came to an end…

...‘We’re going to live in Africa,’ my mother chirruped and had I realised the effect, four letter words had on grown-ups I might well have used them there and then. ‘On a big ship, sweetheart. Bigger than from George’s toffee shop to Sanderson’s at the end of William Street?’ She looked at me with big eyes. Maybe I was supposed to explode with excitement, but at eight years old, going to Africa was way down on my Christmas list. ‘Africa, darling? where the Zulus live?’ I remember her leaning on the ‘ooolooos bit, but I wasn’t impressed.

‘Why?’

‘To live, sweetheart.’

I’d worked that one out for myself.

‘But we live here.’

Mother nodded; long, sweeping ups-and-downs like one of those American oil derricks.

‘Your father and I have decided.’

‘What about me? What if I don’t want to go?’

‘You’re being silly, Jeffrey. Why wouldn’t you want to live in Africa?’

I could think of a thousand reasons. All of them linked to stings, claws and big teeth.

‘Well?’ Mother was getting ratty. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

By this time, the special effects people inside my head were jumping out of windows.

‘I don’t like snakes.’

Arms went up in the air.

‘It’s not like that.’

She was lying. Everyone knew there were snakes in Africa. Even the kid next door and he was pretty dumb.

‘And lions. They eat people. I’ve seen them do it.’

Her eyebrows must have been linked to her arms because they went up as well.

‘Only at the pictures, Jeffereeee! All that Tarzan stuff isn’t real.’ Arms and eyebrows came back down. ‘Anyway, not for months, yet. Somewhere around the end of October; there’s still ever so much to organise.’

That was that; we were going. My life had just been bollocksed.

‘What about bonfire night?’

Bonfire night was big – I mean huge – on any kid’s calendar – and I already had fireworks. Twenty, two-penny bangers and a bag full of rockets hidden away in the coal shed. The bangers were for tying to the rockets; prototype, high-altitude smart bombs – the then equivalent of Tomahawk cruise missiles. Cats hated them; so did old people. One of them went down old man Sager’s chimney and nuked his fireplace.

‘I’m sure there’ll be bonfire nights in Africa. You can go to one there.’

I squirmed in my seat. There was more to it. Fog and candles in jars for signalling up the alleys. Ham lumps and mushy peas all mixed up in a mug. And the smell of burning wood and burning sofas burning the tar between the cobbles. Everything burned on bonfire night. To an eight year old, these things mattered.

‘What about the cat?’

‘You’re grandmother’s having him.’

‘Why can’t he come with us?’

Another irritable shake of the head; ‘Timmy wouldn’t like it there; too hot.’

She was lying again. The snakes would eat him. Running away was now a priority; with my cat and my fireworks. A day at my grandmother’s house then head for the woods. At least until it got dark...